《The Insider System》
Chapter 1: The Insider Prologue
Chapter 1: The Insider Prologue
Lake awoke to feel his whole body screaming; feeling this he remembered what had happened, how his house had burned down with him and his whole family inside.
Opening his eyes to find his vision extremely blurry he saw that he was in a hospital room inside a transparent box. There were wires and tubes running in and out of his body everywhere, so many that he couldn''t see past his chest.
Attempting to move his arm he found he was unable to. Lake wasn''t sure if he was too heavenly burned or if it was strapped down. Unaware that this slight action had alerted the nurse standing in the room, Lake continued to try to move his various body parts and found he was only able to slightly move his neck and jaw but he had a breathing tube in his mouth so he didn''t think he would be able to speak.
Hearing a zipping noise, Lake moved his eyes to see three people in hazmat suits entering the transparent box around him, " I''ll be damned, He is awake and look he''s actually staring at us, Lake can you hear us?"
Lake tried to shake his head yes but found it to hard so he just started blinking, Seeing this the man in the hazmat suit said " I''ll take that as a yes, we''re going to take the breathing tube out so we can speak to you blink if that''s alright with you." Hearing this, Lake Continued blinking.
The man started to unstrap the mask and remove the tube in Lake''s throat. After taking the tube out the man put an oxygen mask back onto his face. "Are you able to breathe on your own?" Taking abored breath, Lake answered " Yes."
Hearing his own voice Lake couldn''t believe how raspy it was. He started tough but as soon as he did the amount of pain it caused made him stop. Seeing Lake''s face twist in pain, the man said " Don''t strain yourself, you''re heavily injured. I''m Dr. Field And this is Dr..." Not caring who they were, Lake croaked out " My family?"
After He said this everyone was quiet, after a few seconds of thiske could feel the fear building. He had assumed that his family had made it out since he was the only one who slept on the second floor.
Deep down Lake knew His situation wasn''t good. He believed his arms and legs were gone either from the fire or amputation. The only thing keeping him calm was that his family was going to be fine, and they were in the waiting room hoping he would wake up.
Lake could feel pain in his chest and couldn''t tell if it was emotional or physical, But he could hear the beeping of the machines around him getting louder and see that one of the people beside Dr. Field started moving to readouts around the room.
" Dr. He''s about to have another heart attack!" Moving into action Dr. Field said " We need to sedate him." The other doctor grabbed a syringe and injected it into a iv dip connected to Lake.
Dr. Field leaned down next to Lake''s ear and said " In case this is thest time we speak, what do you want to do with the Insurance money your parents left you?"
Lake realized this was probably the closest thing he would get to a will, so he said something that had always weighed heavily on his mind. " My cousin James, A full time nurse for him."
James was his cousin on his mom''s side and had been in a car ident as a child that had left him with brain damage and had killed James'' father leaving his mother alone to take care of him.
Turning around to the person who had not moved from behind him, Dr. Field said " Did you hear that Ms. Ludwik." Only now did Lake realize that the third person in the room was his family''s attorney.
" I guess I should have listened to the introduction." thought Lake as he could feel his consciousness fading and see his vision turning ck. " Dr. His heart is failing." hearing this Dr. Field said, "Prep the paddles." but he knew this was it, Lake was never going to wake up again, Since Lake had been admitted it had been one organ failure after another and no one could believe he had survived the ambnce ride to the hospital.
" Clear!" Nothing, no reaction at all, Lake was dead. This was the second time Lake''s heart had stopped and it took them 3 minutes to restart itst time. " I''m calling it 4:19 PM January 6 2022." After saying this the doctor turned to the person standing quietly in the back of the room. " Ms. Ludwik Let me walk you out of the sterile room. There are a few things I would like to say to you."
Stepping out of the room there was no way for the two of them to know Lake hadn''t truly died but was currently standing in a column of light. Lake had heard people say there was a tunnel of light when you were dying but they never mentioned the giant man.
" Is that god?" Lake wondered out loud, kind of hoping for an answer. They were both floating in what seemed to be a ck void. The only light was what was illuminating them.
Looking closer the giant seemed to have a small dagger sticking out of his chest. After a few seconds of waiting, Lake couldn''t help but guess that this was just where dead people were sent, and they were going to be neighbors in the afterlife.
" Well I''m able to speak so maybe he can too." Lake''s body seemed to have recovered so he thought it was a little weird that the man was still injured. Taking a deep breath, Lake screamed "Helloooo!" After screaming, Lake saw the man twitch and was relieved that at least he would have something to do for eternity, startling a half dead guy.
Getting ready to scream again, Lake saw the man''s eyes open. After them staring at each other, Lake saw the man smile and then say. "So, You''ve passed my test." Not remembering any test Lake yelled back " No we''re dead, you''re in the afterlife." The man started tough but stopped soon after from the pain, seeing that Lake remembered doing this right before his death. " No, what I mean is the fact that you''re here means you meet the requirement I set. Unlike you I''m still in the process of dying."
Seeing this was turning into a situation where he was going to get something, Lake asked "What requirements?" The man moved slightly to show he was holding a piece of paper with what looked to be blood scribbled on it. " I cast a summon soul spell a few days ago to look for a sessor, the requirement, they be at least 80% like me, so good job dying it really helped me out." Lake looked down at himself and said "I think your spell failed, I don''t think I''m even a percent of your size."
The man once again tried tough but instead coughed out blood. " Stop joking around and listen I''m running out of time. What''s your name?" After he said that the man reached down into his pocket to pull something out. " Oh my name''s Lake." Pulling out what seemed to be an orb the man said " That''s funny my name''s Laka."
Lake didn''t really see what was funny, and it seemed to show on his face because Laka said " Not only are the first three letters the same but my mother named me after ake that was close to her vige growing up."
That made more sense, Lake figured as far as coincidences went that was pretty good. " Alright before I give this to you; Do you ept bing my sessor?" Lake couldn''t see any reason not to say yes so he epted " Yes, um Laka."
Passing the orb to Lake, Laka said " It''s fine you can call me whatever you want. I call the one before me Master even though I only knew him for like 10 minutes before he died." Lake Looked at the orb that dwarfed him and said " How do I?" " Just touch it, it will do the rest."
After hearing this, Lake reached out and as soon as his hand made contact the orb disappeared. " Wow! Where''d it go? " Pointing at Lake, Laka said, " It''s inside you now. If you never need it in the future my master said the best way is to pretend to take it out of your pocket. It seems to like the little deception." Lake was a little confused but decided to let it go he was sure he would understand eventually.
"Alright time for the speech. I''m no good at them so I''ll just steal my masters. The insider is a mantle created the first time someone concealed their identity to steal something they wanted. But over the generations it''se to have a righteous purpose it''s been handed down to the unfortunate over countless generations and their wish to change the world, that has given it its mission to steal reality from the very gods and I''ve gotten close, this time I made it to the pantheon but my identity was seen through. Then my master started to lose consciousness and said, Lies change the world; Deception bes truth. And died, I guess that was some sort of poem he wrote. I always thought it would of made more sense the other way around but you know, He seemed to think he was some kind of hero but in reality I just used the insider to have everything I ever wanted, so it''s really up to you. I only made it to the realm of the demigods so the mission my master gave me was really hard and I don''t n on burdening you like that, and you would just die in the process so just do what you want. The only thing you have to do is pass on the mantle before you die."
Lake couldn''t help but think he would''ve preferred it if it had been Laka''s Master that had summoned him instead; he sounded like someone Lake could have looked up to. " Ok I''m about to die, so I''m gonna cast a spell to reincarnate you to the same world my master sent me, it was a nice first world. The insider will walk you through it, just know your main goal will be to collect world items, usually it''s like a cool gem or a big sword; Ok goodbye."
Laka did something with the piece of paper he had shown Lake earlier and Lake felt himself start to fade away, and wondered if that meant Laka was nning on dying alone. " Am I being sent now?" That was thest thing Lake said before he disappeared.
Chapter 2: Please just walk
Chapter 2: Please just walk
After what felt like a free fall, Lake''s feet touched the ground but he still couldn''t see anything. "Yep, my eyes are closed, that was a little dibobting." Lake had his eyes open when he was just a soul but the body he was shoved into had its eyes closed. With his eyes locked and loaded, he felt like breaking them in.
Lake started with the scenery; he was on a path between two fields of what seemed to be corn. He also noticed the sky was extremely blue he had not lived in a ce with nice weather back on earth, so he couldn''t really tell if it was actually more blue but it was making him realize he was actually somewhere different almost like he was an explorer, "To boldly go somewhere new; Is that how it goes?"
Lake felt he had heard someone say that in the past. He had never been a big fan of watching Tv so he wasn''t too sure, but it wasn''t like there was anyone here who could criticize him for being wrong. Then Lake looked down to inspect himself to see all he had was shorts and they didn''t even have any pockets. "If you''re only wearing shorts, and the shorts have no pockets, are they actually underwear?"
Lake guessed it was a mystery and would stay that way. "No wait, they can only be underwear if there''s something over them." Lake thought this had been a fruitful few seconds. Not only had he made a riddle he had solved it; also you had to factor in fruit was a brand of underwear. It was almost two funny.
"Ok let''s get serious, where am I?" [ New quest: Open status screen] " I hope that ding is a one time thing. It scared me." Lake had already died from a heart attack once, and he didn''t want it to happen again. People said you only had to worry if you''re over 40, but he was an example of someone who always died from Heart attacks while not even close to 40. " Ok what does this say? Um, Open status screen."
Lake actually already knew what it said. He was trying to be slick, and finish the mission like it was an ident but it hadn''t worked, But it was fine he had done it in a way that people couldn''t tell he failed, and that was the true essence of being really cool.
In the past the reason he had never watched tv was because he preferred books and while he had only read a couple with reincarnation plots, he knew how he should be acting, how he was supposed to fall assbackwards into sess, and make everything look easy but it didn''t seem like a clueless approach was going to work this time. Switching to be a more purposeful kind of guy, Lake said. " Status."
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1
Job: none
Special: The Insider Lv.0
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
[ Questplete ] [ New quest: Reach a town] Lake realized the only way to do the current mission was on purpose so he started right away. Lake had spun a few times earlier when he was taking in the scenery so he wasn''t too sure which direction he should go. " Let''s do heads or tails."
After saying this Lake remembered he didn''t have a coin and was a bit sad because even though he had never been rich in his previous life he usually kept a coin on him for situations like this; well maybe he had been rich the doctor asked him about insurance money before he died, Lake wondered what kind of fortune he had given to his cousin "I hope it was a lot." Rereading the quest, Lake noticed it said a town, not the town, and that probably meant he could go either direction.
"There''s probably a small vige one way and a bigger town the other." Thinking back to flipping a coin, Lake couldn''t help but feel a choice like this had to be left to fate. After a few seconds Lake had an idea he closed his eyes and started to spin, after getting himself real dizzy he opened his eyes. " This is the right choice."
When Lake opened his eyes he had been facing the corn. While Lake had never read a reincarnation novel about farming he knew a lot of protagonists chose the farming profession so after making his choice, Lake walked directly into the field and took an ear of corn off a nt. [New job acquired: Thief]
This was true fate after 3 steps he had already fulfilled his divine purpose. Laka said he was supposed to be the best thief, good enough to steal from the gods. And here he was the first job he obtained was thief, and the perfect crime no one would know he took corn. Wanting to know if the job was automatically equipped, Lake looked back at the status screen.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1
Job: Thief Lv.0
Special: The Insider Lv.0
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
Now that his destiny with this field was out of the way, Lake took his corn and just chose a direction to go and started walking; He never really needed to flip a coin to decide, he didn''t know where he was so the choice was already random.
Chapter 3: Corn goes hard
Chapter 3: Corn goes hard
Walking through the fields, Lake was surprised at how big they were. If the farmers here were doing all this by hand, that really highlighted how much of a difference these jobs could make. "I wonder if I can level up thief by taking more corn?" Walking over to a corn nt, Lake took another corn and then he waited for any indication, " Maybe it''s not valuable enough to count or because I already stole some corn."
Either way Lake had now acquired the max amount of corn he could carry any more and it would be a burden. Dual wielding his corn Lake continued towards his goal of finding a town. " Look a scarecrow." This was the first thing Lake had seen other than corn. "Maybe I can use it as a vantage point."
As Lake was walking towards the scarecrow he couldn''t help but smile, birds had always been his favorite animal, and this sort of confirmed they existed in this world. Stopping in front of the scarecrow, Lake looked at the pole it was attached to.
It had been built into a T shape but it was kind of thin, Lake felt if he tried to climb it it would snap, but he didn''t own it so whatever. Setting down his corn Lake carefully pulled himself up to sit on the shoulders of the scarecrow, but he could still only see corn. "Damn this corn is too tall." Lake knew he was going to have to stand up to get a better view, but he didn''t want to because if he did, and the pole broke he might get impaled on the surrounding corns. "I''m a man who lives life on the edge." Lake said as he stood up.
Trying to look around without shifting his weight. He could feel the bar he was standing on bending slightly. After looking in the direction he was heading. Lake couldn''t see anything so he slowly spun to face the other direction to see what seemed to be thatch roofs in the distance. "So I went the wrong direction."
Getting down and retrieving his corn Lake got back onto the path and headed in the direction of the houses he had seen. After a few hundred steps Lake heard some rustling in the corn. Freaked out that someone might of spied on him stealing corn, Lake said. "Is anyone there?" With no reply "It''s probably a bird or something." But then he remembered the scarecrow "It can''t be a bird, not this close."
Walking towards the sound, Lake saw a rat had climbed up onto a ear of corn and was eating. Not wanting to disturb him, Lake turned back to leave, but then he heard a squeak, and without even looking back Lake started to run. He could feel the tone in the rat''s voice and it wasn''t good. After he got back on the path he risked a nce over his shoulder, and he had been right, The rat was chasing him.
Switching to turbo gear, Lake ran as hard as he could Lake gripped his corn so he wouldn''t drop it; But he felt the way he gripped his corn was nostalgic somehow. "It''s like those baton pass races from elementary school." Saying this gave Lake a brilliant idea. Turning around, Lake screamed. "Eat this corn!" And threw his corn at the rat; It was a direct hit. [New job acquired Tamer] "Tamer that''s useless." Seeing the rat continueing, Lake was sure the taming attempt had failed.
Trying again Lake threw his other corn; missing Lake was devastated, now he was unarmed and seeing how fast the rat was Lake was sure it was going to get him, his only option was to fight. Making his hands into fists Lake entered abat pose, And as soon as the rat entered range, Lake stomped and then kept stomping, after the third stomp Lake felt a gross sensation of stomping on a dead rat, and knew he had won. [New job acquired Exterminator]
With victory washing over him Lake started scraping his foot into the dirt to clean it. He had only won because the rat was much smaller than him. That had been quite nasty but looking at his stats Lake was impressed with his spoils.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1
Job: Thief Lv.0 3/5
Special: The Insider Lv.0
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
He had almost leveled up from this rat he killed, and if his only form ofbat wasn''t his bare foot he would be seeking his next victim. After being defenseless this time, Lake''s thirst for power had reached a peak. From now on he would do anything to get stronger, nothing mattered anymore, as long as he didn''t have to stomp a rat with his bare foot ever again. "I must finish my Quest." Lake looked in the direction of town and knew everything would change for him there.
Chapter 4: The Mayor of Corn City
Chapter 4: The Mayor of Corn City
Lake was getting close now; The path was getting wider and he could see a fence that represented the edge of the corn field. " The only way this could have taken longer was if it was a maze." Lake thanked the gods it wasn''t Halloween. " Wait this isn''t earth, Halloween might not exist, But with how much these people love corn I bet there''s a corn festival."[New quest Find something you want]
Lake could kind of see where this was going and to be honest he was looking forward to it. As a child he had stolen some candy, and been caught by his mother and after a long conversation he had done what was right, and from then on stole much less. For example he would only take half the candy, or take his least favorite, and leave all the good candy.
Looking into the town, Lake estimated there were 30 buildings of varying size. But before even entering the town Lake had already seen his target. On the fence was a child and on this child were some shoes. [New quest Acquire item] " Why does it have to sound so sinister?"
Walking over to the kid, Lake got right down to business and said " Hey does this town have a corn festival?" The kid turned around and said " Yeah but you''re a few weeks early." See people thought Lake was dumb in his past life because he would do and say crazy things but he always had thestugh, and because of the way he was most of the time he would have the firstugh as well.
After his feeling of vindication passed, Lake asked the kid. "Do you guys cut the corn into any shapes or mazes?" The kid turned and Lake could see this question had fully engaged him. Lake couldn''t help butugh at how much corn probably mattered to this kid for him to get this excited over a new way for it to be used. " What do you mean by this corn maze?"
Crouching down Lake used his finger to draw an example in the dirt. " Like this, it''s like a game for your festival." Looking at the kid''s face, Lake could tell he had blown his mind. Maybe he was the first person toe up with corn games. Suddenly the kid grabbed Lakes'' hand and said "Come with me, my father will love this!"
Following behind the kid, Lake realized if he ever handed off the insider, and sent his pupil here they might have to deal with a maze. He silently chuckled to himself at pranking the next in line. Taking a few turns the two arrived in front of the only building with anything resembling a second story, on the roof was a man sitting on a chair.
The kid didn''t stop and tried to push the door open but it wouldn''t budge. "Hey sam who''s that bum you got with you?" After hearing this both of them looked up to see the man had stood up and was pointing towards them. " Open the door Wace. This guy had an idea for the corn festival."
After the man on the roof realized this was rted to the corn festival he instantly lifted the lock and said "Sorry for calling you a bum, Sir." Relieved, Lake said, " It''s no thang." Since this man had apologized, Lake would let this matter end here, there would be no retribution. He would count it as his good deed of the day.
Stepping inside Lake felt underdressed but that had been true outside as well so he disregarded this matter. " My dad''s office is this way,e on." Following the kid into an office, Lake saw everyone inside looking at him so Lake raised his hand and said "Hey y''all." This was farnd, so Lake felt it was an appropriate time to use y''all. Maybe ingratiate himself with the locals. It worked like a charm after he said it everyone went back to work. The kid started walking up to the desk in the center of the room and said, " Dad, I found someone with ideas for the corn festival."
After Sam said this all the people around stopped working again. Standing up, Sam''s father said "What are all you doing standing around? Bring our guest some food and clothes, He''s clearly traveled a hard path to bring us this idea."
As the man watched his men run to fetch the things he turned to Lake and said, " My name''s Wace, I''m Sam''s father and the town mayor." Thinking back, Lake was sure the man at the gate/door had been named Wace as well but before he could ask. Wace said " Please, if you would, I''m dying to hear your idea." Lake realized he had the upper hand in this transaction so he would wait until he had his new clothes before he spoiled his beans.
Chapter 5: Corn sensitive
Chapter 5: Corn sensitive
Lake stoically waited for his clothes to arrive, and he could tell his aura was scaring Wace, if it wasn''t for the fact that he and Sam were best friends, Wace would have already kicked him out. Seeing someone walk in with his new things Lake was ecstatic, acquire item was one of his main concerns.
Putting on his new pants Lake started lying through his teeth. "On my way here to bring you some ideas I had for the corn festival I ran into some hardship. While I was walking to town I heard some strange noises in the corn, and as a fellow farmer I went to check it out only to discover a rat feast; and all of them eating your corn." "Gasp." As gasps rang out around the room Lake knew he had them on the hook, now he just had to be the hero of their hearts. " Unarmed I used the only thing I had at hand, my clothes.
Pulling my shirt of my back I used it as a incapacitating 3 rats simultaneously, Next my shoes, I used them to rain down blows upon them but after a few my shoes had been devoured, and not only that the rats had eaten through my shirt and freed themselves, so as ast resort I took my pants and used it as a whip, but since they were truly just pants it had no effect." Lake paused to put on his shirt and shoes.[Questplete: Reward Skill: Marks of interest] Lake could feel as something stirred inside him, so he looked at his status screen.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1
Job: Thief Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
Skills:
Marks of interest (U) Lv.1
Marks Unique Items, people, and locations, after they are marked they can be sensed, and located at any time in the future.
Lake knew how strong this ability was at first nce and he also noticed, The Insider had gained one of whatever its equivalent of Exp was. " So what happened next?" Lake realized he had been distracted in the middle of his story and left his audience high and dry. " Where was I?" Lake actually did not remember he was just spouting nonsense and couldn''t remember what he said. "Um, Whip pants."
Sam had stepped out to remind him. " That''s right, After my pants failed I did the only thing I could, and stomped, as you all know that''s a sure fire way to kill rats and it worked, but only on one. I was being overrun, and not only that they were surrounding me, so I ran away because I knew if we all worked together we could stop this rat attack. And as I was running It hit me, an idea that was better than the one I risked my life to bring you."
Lake stopped talking at this point and just kind of waited. "Please, what''s the idea? I can''t stand the suspense." Lake turned to Sam and said, " You tell them, I don''t feel like it, and I already told you." He was throwing Sam a bone for helping him even though he was a guy with no clothes, and Lake knew kids loved breaking big news.
Lake sat down to listen to Sam exin the idea. And he did a good job because soon everyone was in an uproar. " Tell me how did being chased by rats make you think of this?" Smirking Lake said " Because there''s no way a rat could ever solve a maize."
Once again, gasps rang out across the room, and one guy directly fainted. Lake guessed a medieval farmer wasn''t used to all this excitement. But Lake could see that Wace wasn''t fully satisfied, and Lake knew why. Wace was a true magnate of the corn industry, and like any businessman, Wace wanted more profit.
But Lake would make him ask, Lake watched as Wace''s greed overtook hismon decency, and he asked, " What was your original idea?" Lake loved it when people were corrupted, so he said, "Spin the corn. I envisioned a game where young eligible people could let corn decide their future spouse, by standing in a circle and spinning it."
Wace sat and rubbed his beard while he thought aboutke''s proposal, and said " You''re right it''s not as good but still usable. With this we''ll have two new things for this year''s corn festival." Wace put on a joyous face but Lake could tell it was all an act. Now that Lake was wearing his clothes there was no difference between the two, and Wace was afraid that Lake could use his brain for corn to win the peoples hearts, and usurp his corn kingdom.
But what Lake knew, and Wace would find out was Lake was about to leave town to kill rats, to level up. Now that Lake had new shoes he nned to decipher this cryptic job system. But first he needed some sort of weapon, maybe a stick or rock of some kind.
Chapter 6: Rats on the verge
Chapter 6: Rats on the verge
Lake knew now that these people loved him for saving their vige. If he was to just try and leave they would all beg him to stay, so he needed to give them time to repay him and readjust to him being gone. "Now that I''ve brought you my idea I must get back to my home." Lake grabbed his cornbread they had brought him and started to leave when Sam ran out and grabbed onto his ankle. "You can''t leave now, what if the rats are still out there?"
Lake had hoped more people hade to stop him. But he knew Sam and him had be very close, and Sam probably saw him as a cool older brother. "You''re right I should wait for a while, Why don''t you show me around town." This would let Lake possibly use his new ability while seeing the rest of the town, maybe they''ll have something he needed.
Walking back onto the street Sam led Lake over a few buildings and said, " This is the guild outreach building. They build them in towns too small for proper guild halls." Then Sam turned around and said, " That''s the storage house, it''s where we keep all our food and extra tools." After saying this Sam stopped talking. " Is that everything?"
Sam shook his head yes. " Alright, why don''t you show me the inside of the guild outreach building." The name was a little confusing so Lake wanted to see what was happening inside. But this was all part of the long con. Lake really wanted to go to the storage house.
Now that he knew it existed he was hoping to get a shovel, or maybe a hoe to use as a weapon. Stepping inside Lake saw ady standing behind a counter surrounded by 5 or 6 different boards walking up to the counter Lake saw a new screen appear, [New quest: Join a guild] Lake had no problem with doing this mission since he was about to join a guild if the process wasn''t toplicated anyway. " What are the requirements to join a guild?"
Thedy smiled and said " A level 10 job associated with the guild." Lake was happy that the requirements were so low, but still he barely missed the mark, " What guilds could I join with the exterminator job?" Thedy kept smiling but Lake could tell she started to look down on him as she said, " That is not a sought after job but the growers guild might take you if your level is high enough. Is that your only level 10 job? Because the growers guild is mainly meant for farmers." Being treated this way, Lake directly left for he feared if he stayed he would lose his temper. Also, He was afraid that she might get some sort of bonus if he signed up now, and he hated her.
Back outside he said, " That was a bust, why don''t we go to the store house now." This was it, everything up to now had toe together perfectly for him to gain ess to the store house. "Ok we can, but I have to ask my dad first." Sam ran off to ask and was back within a minute of leaving. "He said we can. Also he said you can take something with you if you need it."
Hearing that Lake knew this was a bribe, Wace was saying with this they were even, and he could take credit for Lake''s ideas. Lake would take what he could get. Wace had caught him at a vulnerable time, Lake desperately needed any form of weapon.
Going inside Lake was bbergasted by the amount of corn, bags of dried corn as far as the eye could see. " Why is there so much?" While looking proud, Sam said. "Ever since my dad came up with Scarerats, to scare the rats away our harvests have be too big for the cart to bring to town, so it''s been piling up." Lake was startled by this, Scarerats was such a dumb name. " Is that why your dads the mayor?"
Leading Lake to a smaller room on the left Sam said " Yeah when we moved here my dad was just an inventor, but after he built the prototype that''s out in the field, everyone was so surprised at how well it worked that they all voted for him during the election even though he didn''t run. But he said once he''s sure the Scarerat works right he''s going to build a factory in this town and start selling them to other farmers."
One of Lake''s fears was bing more likely with every second that passed, wiping the sweat from his brow he asked, " Are the Scarerats for any other pest or do they only work on rats?" The two of them had just arrived at a tool room. Sam turned and motioned to the tools and said. " These are what they used to kill rats before the Scarerat. You can take one if you want it. But what do you mean by other pests?" Lake was quaking in his shoes as he said "You know, like ones that can fly." Sam had a nk look on his face as he said, " Do you mean dragons?"
Chapter 7: Rat Hole Siege
Chapter 7: Rat Hole Siege
Lake would fall to his knees if it wasn''t for the fact he didn''t want to. It would just make this moment more dramatic and his pants dirty. But that didn''t make this moment any less soul crushing. Ever since Lake had gotten here he had a nagging fear that something about this world disagreed with him on a fundamental level and here it was no birds. Not losing hopepletely, Lake threw out a probing question. " Feathers?" If the dragons had feathers Lake would take it at this point. Comprehension dawned on Sam''s face as he said " Oh, you mean wyverns, But those don''t eat corn."
At least there was something with feathers in this world. Getting back to what he was actually doing, Lake started looking through all the old tools And was happy to find that some of them were actually metal; he had been worried there would only be wood and stone. Lake settled on a 5 foot long metal shovel. He chose it because the tip was pretty pointy and he felt if he sharpened it and shortened the handle some, he would be left with a wide dagger.
Happy with his choice, Lake told Sam he was about to go see if he could find what was left of his shirt and pants in the field. Sam was confused why he would do that but let him go because Lake said he would be back.
" It''s nice to be back outdoors." After being stuck in an office environment it was always nice to go on a walk, or if you were feeling a little naughty a hike. Back on earth Lake always considered himself to be an outdoors kind of person and would take a 5 minute walk almost everyday as long as the weather was nice. Reaching the ce where he had fought the original rat. " I guess criminals do always return to the scene of the crime."
Lake inspected his work and thought to himself if he was able to do this much damage with his foot just think what his shovel could do. He now had nothing to worry about from rats, so he just had to find some. Lake just started wandering in and out of the corn randomly hoping to hear something after a while Lake realized how unlucky he had been originally. " Maybe it had something to do with the sun justing up, maybe rats are nocturnal."
Lake wasn''t sure how long the days were here, but assuming it was the same. Lake had maybe 7 hours till the sun went down. "This sucks, I was excited to fight." Lake could not wait to test his shovel which confused him because on earth he never had the bloodlust. "Maybe Exp is addictive." Throughout the day Lake had thought back to killing the rat around 100 times and it was mainly the part where he killed the rat and gained Exp. " If that''s true this world must be filled with bloodthirsty people."
Getting back on the path, Lake just started walking away from town. He had 7 hours so he might find something. But after an hour of corn he felt he had made a mistake but he pushed through the pain. After another hour Lake finally heard something, "Finally, ready yourself rat."
Lake rushed into the corn But as soon as the rat saw Lake it started to run, without thinking Lake grabbed a corn off a nt and threw it at the rat. It was pretty close but the rat just kept running. He had thought maybe the rat would inspect the corn because of his Tamer job.
Lake stopped running because the rat had clearly gotten away, but he did keep going in the direction the rat went. Lake thought maybe he could find some kind of rat nest where he could get a multikill. A few minutester Lake was standing near a hole. " This must be it." Lake knew he could probably use his shovel to get into the nest but he felt that would be stupid.
Thinking back to his earlier attempt at using corn to make the rat stop he felt he knew what went wrong, looking at his status screen he used his finger to touch where it said job after he did so a list with all 3 of his jobs appeared the only difference was this screen was a golden color instead of the sky blue all the rest of the screens had been up till now. Choosing Tamer he felt a sensation simr to the one he felt when he had unlocked his ability. Thinking of his ability Lake pped his forehead, he could have used it earlier to track the rat so he could follow it home. Getting over it, Lake looked at his status screen.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1
Job: Tamer Lv.0
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
Seeing his job was sessfully changed, Lake grabbed a corn. He was going to see if he could set a trap and lure some rats out.
Chapter 8: Trick Trap Ratty Wack
Chapter 8: Trick Trap Ratty Wack
Taking the corn he just picked Lake, stuck it into the hole and said, " Corn time." Lake felt the Exp feeling again so he looked at his status screen.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1
Job: Tamer Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
Seeing he had indeed gained an Exp Lake was happy. " Does that mean I sessfully lured something?" Lifting his corn out of the hole he saw there was indeed a rat hanging off of it. Flinging the corn, Lake waited to see what the rat would do, and as soon as the ratnded Lake saw it get up and run towards its hole, Lake cut it off blocking its path.
Staring into each other''s eyes Lake could feel this rats willpower, it had no problem fighting to the death and neither did Lake. They both enteredbat mode at the same time but Lake acted first, swinging his shovel hoping to finish this in one blow. Lake could feel the bloodlust taking over, he couldn''t wait for this rats 3 Exp, But of course the rat wouldn''t just stand there, and on instinct the rat dodged to the left, with dinging noise Lake''s shovel hit nothing but dirt.
Lake braced himself for a counter attack but it never came. Looking around Lake saw the rat rushing off into the corn. Remembering the p to his forehead Lake said, mark in his head after doing so he saw a golden spot of light appear on the rat the interesting thing was even after he lost line of sight he could still see the golden light. " That''s enough for now."
Lake was going toe back tonight, and see if the rat would lead him to the pack It might be part of. Either way he was thirsty and needed to go back to town to find something to drink. It had been a mistake to eat the cornbread without water. " I need like, a water skin or something." If he was the first person to think of a water skin here that would be a little bonus, he could set up shop or sell the idea to Wace.
Lake thought it wasn''t a good idea to go into business with a greedy person but he had hundreds of things from earth to invent so it wasn''t a big deal if a few got stolen from him, he would just make them pay once he got stronger.
After about 2 hours of walking, Lake reached town once again. He saw Sam sitting on the fence where he had been sitting when Lake got here the first time. After seeing Lake, Sam ran over and said. " Did you find your clothes?" Putting on a sad face, Lake said " Nope, I guess the rats finished them off." Lake''s mouth was really dry at this point so he asked, " Is there a ce to get water?" Sam shook his head yes, and led Lake to a well not far from where they were. Lake nned to ask about the water skins if he didn''t see anything like it around.
At the well Lake helped Sam get some water from the well, and afterwards Lake drank almost a full bucket, which in his opinion was a little exaggerated. Looking around at the other people getting water, Lake saw none of them had any kind of water skin or sk; they were all drinking from buckets ordles so he turned to Sam and asked, " Do you have anything I can use to bring water with me?"
Sam Looked at him like he was stupid, and Lake knew it was because he was holding a bucket. " No, I mean something with a top so it doesn''t spill while you''re moving." Sam startedughing and said, " You mean a sk like the hunters use?" Whatever Lake wasn''t too attached to this idea to begin with he was only going to use it to bribe Wace for a ride to a bigger city anyway.
But now that he heard hunters his ns had changed. If he could join them it would probably be a good way to level some of his jobs. " Where are the hunters? I''d be interested in joining them for their next hunt." Sam pointed at a building down the street and said, " That''s the building they use, but they leave pretty early so you''ll have to be there before sunrise to join them."
What Sam said made it seem like anyone could go as long as they wanted so Lake asked, " Can anyone join or are there requirements?" Sam looked proud and said, "My dad said anyone can go, but it''s on them to keep themselves safe." Lake nodded his head in approval, Wace had some good policies. Lake hoped tonight''s rat hunt was fruitful or he wouldn''t be strong enough to go safely.
Lake turned to Sam and said, " I''ve decided to stay here until the Corn Festival. Can you ask your dad to let me stay with you? Tell him I''ll give him any other ideas I have for the corn festival while I''m staying with you." Sam looked excited and ran to ask his dad right away. As long as Wace says yes, I''ll have somewhere to sleep until I''m strong enough to go and join a guild, another bonus was Wace was soon to be a sessful inventor. Lake had seen the Scarerat in action and it was going to be a sess. " It''s always nice to have powerful friends."
Chapter 9: Sweep the fields
Chapter 9: Sweep the fields
The sun had just gone down and Lake was once again going into the corn but this time he had a target off in the distance Lake could see the golden spot that represented the rat "The way this ability works is pretty cool."
When Lake had stopped thinking of the rat the mark had faded but as soon as he wanted to know where it was the mark reappeared. Lake had a bit of a walk to get to the rat, but if his earlier assumption of rats being nocturnal was correct he was hoping to find a few more on the way. Lake thought it would be faster just to walk in a straight line towards the rat off the path, and it wasn''t long after he had started walking towards the rat that he heard something Lake quickly changed his job back to Thief, and rushed in Lake did this because he only needed 2 more Exp for Thief to level up and rats gave 3 Exp as far as Lake knew.
After a couple of steps Lake Saw his target A rat who had yet to bite into a corn, he was still in the process of climbing the nt so Lake knew if he acted fast he could save the corn. Swinging his shovel Lake heard a satisfying ping noise and saw the rat go flying Lake rushed after it in case it was somehow unscathed and tried to run. Lake knew it was still alive because he hadn''t felt the Exp. Running over to where the ratnded Lake swung his shovel down on top of it. " There it is." Lake felt as the Exp entered his body. [Level up] excited Lake looked at his stats.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 1/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.1 ( 1/10 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 2
Endurance 2
Agility 2
Dexterity 2
Perception 2
Intelligence 2
Charisma 2
Free stat points: 3
Lake was happy that his job had affected all his stats and even gave him 3 free points seeing that his skills page was also shing Lake switched to it, to see he had gotten two new skills.
Skills:
A Thief''s Sense (U) Lv.1
Gives a 6th sense for how much attention is on you, Also gives increased lie detection, night vision and increased hearing.
Intangible Loot (U) Lv.1
Allows for the random collection of Exp, abilities, jobs, and stat points off of corpses.
After reading the skills he had gotten, Lake saw some inconsistency in the way it looked. For example after thea in A Thief''s Sense the writing was golden and the font changed; Everything in Intangible Loot was golden but the font was once again different. Lake shrugged his shoulders and just put his free points in agility.
He didn''t have time to worry about it now he needed to focus on getting stronger. But looking away from his stats screen, Lake did notice his vision had gotten better so he guessed the color and font didn''t matter as long as it did what it said. Lifting his shovel off the rat, Lake saw a strange golden lighting from its body, reaching out to touch the light Lake felt the feeling of Exp. Looking at his stats Lake saw his skill had given him an extra Exp. Lake didn''t understand how, but as long as it worked he was happy.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 1/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.1 ( 2/10 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 2
Endurance 2
Agility 5
Dexterity 2
Perception 2
Intelligence 2
Charisma 2
He chose agility in hopes he could keep up with the rats. Before starting moving again Lake took a second to see if everything was good, then he jumped. Lake didn''t jump often but it did feel higher, afternding on the ground Lake readied himself and broke out into a light jog. "Yep, I''m definitely faster." He was already moving almost as fast as he used to run. Lake chose to stay at this speed because he felt any faster and the corn nts around him would start to hurt him as he ran past them.
After running for a few minutes Lake heard another noise, Stopping Lake tried to pinpoint where it hade from, focusing on his ears Lake realized the reason he was having a hard time was the noise wasing from further than he would of thought he could hear a rat. Lake remembered the skill upgraded his hearing, after getting over his confusion Lake readied his shovel once again and rushed towards the noise, a few secondster a loud bang rung across the field andke earned 3 Exp.
No need for a second hit, after its death Lake examined the corpse and waited for the Light but it never did start to glow, shrugging Lake moved on the skill had said it was random. It took a while for Lake to find the next rat. He guessed it was caused by the noise he made when he killed thest one, he had been to loud and scared them all away. But with this he only needed one more and he would level up again, and Lake knew just the rat.
After all this running he had gotten close to where the marked rat was. Rushing over Lake let his speed go, earlier he had found the corn had not hurt him at full speed so there wasn''t a reason to hold back this close to his target. sting through the field, Lake arrived at the rat in no time. He didn''t even slow down, he just swung his shovel and with a boom the rat was split in two.
[Level up] Lake was grossed out and was about to look away when he saw the body parts of the rat start to glow and Lake was sure the light was brighter thanst time, reaching out Lake felt something simr but stronger than Exp " Boy that''s some good stuff." Looking at his stats, Lake looked around to see what he had just absorbed and found it to be a stat point in endurance.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 2/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.2 ( 1/20 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 3
Endurance 4
Agility 6
Dexterity 3
Perception 3
Intelligence 3
Charisma 3
Free stat points: 3
Lake felt he was plenty strong for rats so he chose to save his free points for an emergency. But thinking about the free point in endurance Lake was overjoyed didn''t this mean if he killed enough rats he could be all powerful. Looking at his job Lake did some quick math and found not ounting for Intangible Loot he would need to kill 7 rats to level again. " Maybe it''s time to level a different job." Lake opened the job page and switched to exterminator for obvious reasons. "Alright, let''s go." Lake rushed back into the corn looking for more prey.
Chapter 10: Lake finds out he’s special
Chapter 10: Lake finds out he''s special
After a while of running around Lake finally heard another rat, Lake switched directions to rush towards it. Once he saw the rat Lake slowed down so it wouldn''t explode from the impact he also didn''t swing as hard as he could. Ding, Lake watched as the Rat went flying and was happy to find it stayed in one piece, as the Rat''s corpse started to glow, but before he got the extra loot he wanted to look at how much the kill had given him because it felt like less than earlier.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 2/10 )
Job: Exterminator Lv.0 ( 2/5 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 3
Endurance 4
Agility 6
Dexterity 3
Perception 3
Intelligence 3
Charisma 3
Free stat points: 3
Lake saw he only got 2 Exp for killing the rat even though it had been giving him 3. Lake reached out to get the Light from the rat''s corpse and watched as the number went to 3. Before moving on, Lake wanted to find out why he had gotten less, if anything it would make sense for him to get more. He was wondering if it was because this rat was different or the job change had caused it. "Why would a Thief get more Exp than an Exterminator?"
Lake started to poke around in his system interface, Quickly he found himself in the job page But when he picked a job it would just switch him to it. "There has to be a way to inspect the details about jobs." An idea popped into his head, up until now he had been using his finder and he bet it wasn''t necessary. With a thought Lake watched as his jobs switched back and forth. Looking at exterminator Lake said, "Details, Boom there it is." It made sense for the system to be hands free.
Exterminator (C) Lv.0/10 (3/5)
On level up:
1 Strength
1 free
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Kills protecting crops
Skills from job:
Lake was surprised to see how bad the rewards for Leveling Exterminator werepared to what he got for Thief, switching to Thief Lake looked at the details.
Thief (U) Lv.2/100 (2/20)
On level up:
Strength 1
Endurance 1
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Perception 1
Intelligence 1
Charisma 1
Free 3
Exp conditions:
Kills
Theft of money or valuables
Bonus Exp conditions:
X3 Kills
X8 Stolen Kills
X15 Theft
Skills from job:
A Thief''s Sense (U) Lv.1
Intangible Loot (U) Lv.1
Looking at this page Lake felt it was like looking at a ransom letter The fonts were different on almost every line. Lake felt like he understood. Laka had said The Insider was passed from generation to generation. Maybe the pass holders were able to make permanent changes somehow this was how the generations kept getting stronger. " I wonder how it''s done." Lake guessed he would find out in the future. " I''m getting tired."
He needed to go to bed. He had told Sam to wake him in time to go to the hunters building before they left, so he needed to get some sleep because tomorrow was gonna be the first time he was in actual danger sinceing to this world.
Thinking about returning to town Lake smiled. He was much faster now and wanted to know how fast he could return. This trip had been about 4 hours long but he ran all over the ce so he wasn''t sure how far he was from town. Lake switched back to Thief and found the path, he was gonna run as hard as he could and did not want to hit any corn nts. Right when he was about to start running Lake heard another rat.
He didn''t really want to go, but he thought of Intangible Loot and the fact he might get a stat point he went for it, a few secondster Lake was 3 Exp richer Sadly he didn''t get anything from Intangible Loot. " Alright time to go." Lake started running and he found his eleration was crazy after a few steps he was max speed. Going this fastke thought he could actually feel the drag his clothes produced slowing him down, the air resistance was crazy. He wondered if people were here what would he sound like as he ran past?
After a few minutes of running Lake heard another rat without stopping Lake ran in and out of the corn with another 3 Exp. After about 10 minutes of running Lake passed where he thought the Scarerat was but oddly it wasn''t there. Stopping Lake looked closer and saw the pole it had been on was now empty, then he heard it. It sounded like something was crashing through the corn away from Lake. He understood someone was taking the Scarerat for some reason, " Maybe somepetitor of Wace''s." Casing after it, Lake felt he should at least Mark it so he could tell Wace who took itter on. It didn''t sound like they were moving so fast so Lake felt he could catch them pretty quickly.
Trying to move more quietly, Lake moved to get a glimpse of them. Seeing someone carrying a sack Lake marked them with his skill. With the missionplete Lake started to go back to town. He would get revenge in the future for this theft, running to Wace''s house Lake went straight to bed. He would worry about this and the 12 Exp he needed to Level up again tomorrow.
Chapter 11: The Magic of Magic
Chapter 11: The Magic of Magic
Lake felt something moving his body and was about to freak out when he remembered that he asked Sam to wake him up in time to go hunting. Opening his eyes Lake was relieved to find it was in fact Sam. He was a little worried that Wace hade for rent and Lake hadn''t decided what game he was going to shove corn into next.
Sam saw that Lake was awake and said " The hunters are gonna be meeting up soon we should get going." Done rubbing his eyes, Lake asked " We, why are you going?" Sam held up a piece of paper and said, " My dad wrote this letter and told me to give it to whoever''s leading the hunt today." Seeing the letter was sealed, Lake was curious what it could say. All he could do was hope it was telling the hunters to look after him.
Feeling his stomach rumble, Lake realized how hungry he was, "Hey Sam, do you have a bag I can borrow? I need to bring some stuff with me." Sam shook his head yes and left the room when he came back he had a small satchel with him. " This is the bag I used when we were moving, but I haven''t used it since." Lake took the bag and thanked Sam.
He was starting to be indebted to Sam and would need to pay him back before he left, and Lake knew how he could do this, by getting Wace''s Scarerat back, or at least getting revenge on whoever stole it.
Putting on a solemn face, Lake told Sam " Last night when I wasing home I saw your dad''s Scarerat was gone." Sam puffed out his chest and said " Can you believe how well it works? It can go for 8 hours on full charge." Lake was so confused, what did Sam think he said? Lake thought it would be best to check where whoever he markedst night ended up going. Using his mark skill Lake saw the Light was back in the field around where the Scarerat should be. Seeing that he might have been mistaken, Lake thought back tost night.
He hadn''t gotten very close because he didn''t want to start a fight. But remembering he had marked the person and not the sack it had been carrying Left Lake with one obvious possibility the thing he had seenst night was the Scarerat. Lake had just assumed the scarerat was just an inanimate object when he first saw it, Lake realized he had seen it from an earthlings perspective and had not ounted for the fact that magic existed in this world. This opened his eyes to the fact that he needed to learn how magic worked; he had yet to see anyone cast a spell that he knew of but Lake guessed that most obvious spells were used inbat situations.
Lake saw no reason not to start now, " How does the Skarerat work? I saw it movingst night." With his chest still puffed out from pride, Sam said, " My dad makes golems. But what''s special about the Scarerat is that it is self-sufficient and ignores everything other than rats. You see, normal golems are a pain to charge, and attack anything that gets too close." This really changed the way Lake saw Wace; he realized he was a wealth of knowledge and he could probably learn a lot about magic from him. " So what did your dad change to make it better than other golems?"
Sam changed to a new pose that Lake hadn''t seen before, he looked like a teacher in front of a ck board " First is the pole it sits on during the day, it lets the Scarerat charge during the day by absorbing the magic in the environment, the second is the sack it carries and puts the dead rats in. You can think of it as its stomach, my dad said most people don''t realize small monsters like rats have magic cores because they are too small to use but the sack can absorb the magic so the Scarerat is able to use them to keep going for longer. The way he got it to not attack." Sam suddenly covered his mouth and said, "My dad told me not to tell anyone about the Scarerat, he said these are trade secrets."
Changing the subject slightly, Lake asked " What is your dad''s job?" Sam thought about it for a moment " I''m not sure, he went to town a few months ago to change it because his Enchanter job had reached max level. So you''d have to ask him." What Sam said and the fact that the job screen was a golden color made Lake think being able to change your job at any time wasn''t normal, but he had no way to confirm this right now.
Lake remembered he had a ce to get to and said " Let''s go. Also, is there any breakfast? I''m hungry." As they left, Sam ran into the kitchen and came back with cornbread for the both of them. Scarfing it down, both him and Sam decided to stop at the well for a few seconds to drink some water, then they both raced to the meeting spot.
Chapter 12: The Death of Anonymity
Chapter 12: The Death of Anonymity
Arriving at the meeting spot Lake saw 5 other people were there already. Walking up to them Sam said " Who''s leading the hunt today?" An older man walked out of the group and said " I am, Sam." Sam walked up to the older man and handed him the letter. After the man read it he walked up to Lake and said, " I''m Stan, I was told you don''t have anything with you and you need an actual weapon to hunt with, soe with me."
Stan started walking into the shed following him inside. Lake saw a bunch of things he wanted. "Wace said you can take some things on credit and he''ll pay us backter." Lake couldn''t help thinking how helpful befriending Sam had been so far. He would have to remember to be friends with powerful people''s kids in the future.
Lake started to rummage around and after a while settled on a spear and he also took a sk. They had bows but Lake decided to pace himself; he felt the spear was just a step above his shovel. "Is that all you want? You should really take a bow with you."
Lake decided to be honest and said, " I don''t know how to use it." Stan looked a little confused and asked, " If you don''t know how to use a bow, why do you want to go hunting with us?" Lake decided to be less honest and said, " I only need a few more levels to join a guild." Lake saw as the confusion left Stan''s face " So what guild are you trying to join." Lake really didn''t know anything about guilds, so he answered in a way where Stan could tell him, Lake held up the spear. " So you''re a Spearman. You gonna join the fighters guild?" Lake thought the fighters guild sounded good so he nodded his head. " Still you should take a bow, you can practice while you''re out there."
Shrugging Lake picked up a bow and a few arrows. " There''s a lot of downtime while you''re hunting so you can take potshots at small animals while you''re looking for actual prey. It''s a good way to unlock the Archer and Hunter jobs and if you want we can stop by the hunters guild so you can change your job once you max spearman."
Seeing Lake was done filling his k, Stan said, "Alright let''s go. We have an hour''s ride to get to the forest so the sooner we leave the better." Going back outside Lake saw everyone was getting into the cart that was parked next to the shed, Lake also took a look at the horse that was pulling the cart and was blown away, it was huge. In a fight Lake felt he would stand no chance, even if you gave him a week to level up.
This made Lake wonder if Animals and monsters leveled up to, maybe this horse was just a high level. Pulling himself into the cart Lake saw every seat was taken except one, with no other choice Lake sat down. He didn''t start talking right away; he was hoping to wait tillter once the conversation was already going to ask some questions. Lake was trying to avoid questions about him because they might notice how unsure he was of what was consideredmon knowledge in this world.
So Lake decided to close his eyes, and pretend to sleep. Soon the cart started to move. After about a minute of nothing but the sound of the cart moving, Lake heard Stan who was driving the cart yell out, " Hold on!" Lake felt a jerk from the sudden eleration, and he would have fallen out of the cart if it wasn''t for the person next to him holding him in his seat, opening his eyes. He looked over to see a man probably in his mid 20s grabbing his shirt. " Thank you, I wasn''t expecting the cart to be this fast." The boy startedughing and said "You''re lucky you sat next to me, if it had been Mandy she would have let you fall."
The reason Lake sat next to him had nothing to do with luck, but whatever he still owed him so he decided not to point it out. It would be Lake''s good deed of the day. Lake looked at the woman on the other side of the cart and decided she did look like someone who would have let him fall.
Looking back Lake saw the hand that had grabbed him was now outstretched waiting for a handshake. Not wanting to be rude Lake reached over with his left hand and shook it. "My name''s Dan. Nice to meet you." Suddenly Lake saw the person next to Dan reach over for a handshake " Hello I''m Jeff. I''m Dan''s brother."
This wasn''t good, getting to know people usually entailed questions. After shaking their hands Lake said " My names Lake." He was hoping if he was curt the conversation would end here. But Dan didn''t seem to care at all and said, "Where you from?" Damn, Lake''s worst nightmare, an overly nice person.
Chapter 13: Boring Cart Travel
Chapter 13: Boring Cart Travel
Lake decided to go for the tragic background, it would make anyone feel bad for asking about it and shut down any further questions. Putting on a sad face, Lake said, "I''m not really sure, my vige was destroyed when I was a kid. I only came here because I heard your vige had a corn festival like mine did."
Lake could feel the awkward silence and knew it worked. He smiled on the inside as the ride was quiet for nearly 40 minutes before anyone said anything. "We''ll be there soon." Everyone looked relieved, sitting in the cart had been very awkward since Dan had asked Lake where he was from. One of the men who had not introduced himself yet said, " We made good time today. We might be the first cart through the gate." Lake wanted to ask about the gate but decided to just wait because everyone would think it was okay to start talking to him again if it looked like he was over what happened earlier, and he was right to wait because a few minutester they hade to a stop.
Dan nudged him and said, " Look outside and tell us if there is anyone in front of us." Sticking his head out, Lake saw a massive wall Lake guessed it was 200 ft. tall but he really had no idea. After taking in the wallke did what he had been asked and looked to see if anyone was in front of them, seeing no one he put his head back inside and said, " We''re the first in line. But why are we going in there to hunt? surely it would be faster to go somewhere else."
Dan spoke up to answer " The forest we''re going to is next to a town with a lot of fighters and adventures, so the forest is usually pretty clear of monsters. It''s safer to go here even though it''s a little further."
This made sense, Lake wouldn''t want to run into monsters if he was just trying to get food either; this sounded like a good ce to go for now. Soon he would want to go somewhere with a lot of monsters to level up faster, but not yet. Last night he had done some math and found he had stats equivalent to someone with a level 10 job, only his stats were more spread out. He wasn''t sure how strong that made him but once he found a good source of Exp it wouldn''t be long before he started to surpass regr people. Each level of Thief was like five of a normal job, and with the Exp multipliers it wouldn''t take long.
Thinking of this, made Lake think about what allowed the past holders to change the system like they did. Looking at the only mission he currently had Lake realized the writing was gold which meant it was probably rted to the insider, the only problem was he had to level a job other than thief to 10 so he could join, unless there was some sort of criminal guild but how would he find them.
Lake guessed criminals needed a way to switch jobs to, so somewhere there had to be some underground guilds. Thinking this made Lake realize why one of the pass holders had made it possible to switch jobs anytime, there was probably a way to tell if someone had a criminal job where people switched jobs. " The gate''s opening!" Lake heard Stan call out and a few seconds Later the cart started moving slowly and then came to a stop again. " Looks like the guards are checking for someone again."
After Dan said this, Lake saw the sheet on the back of the cart be pulled open, and a guard holding a wanted poster look inside. While the guard was studying everyone''s faces, Lake tried his best to get a good look at the poster. If Lake ever saw the guy he could mark them and possibly follow them to a secret guild, it was hopeful thinking but better than nothing.
Memorizing the name Nat Green, Lake moved on to the face. It was pretty easy to remember because the guy had an odd scar on his lip, Lake guessed from being punched. Lake hoped to be Lucky enough to run into this guy in the future. " What''s this one wanted for?" Asked the woman Dan had called Mandy, " Murder and theft, he''s the prime suspect for a crime in the capital. Alright Stan, you can go." Said the guard as he left.
Feeling the cart start to move Lake thought about murder and wondered if there was a job associated with it, maybe like killer or assassin, Lake had been wondering if Thief was the only job that had been tampered with. He would put his money on that it wasn''t; if he had any that was. Turning to Dan, Lake asked, "How much longer till we get to the forest?" " Less than 10 minutes we''ll be there soon." Lake was getting antsy, he wanted to get stronger so he could unravel some of the mysteries surrounding The Insider.
Chapter 14: The Hunt for Exp
Chapter 14: The Hunt for Exp
Feeling the cart stop Lake hoped it meant they were there because thesest 10 minutes had felt like an hour. Seeing everyone start to grab their stuff, Lake followed suit. He was in Dan''s way so he hopped out the back of the cart. Looking towards the forest Lake confirmed that they were indeed there. " Nice we beat the crowd today."
Lake saw the Man who he hadn''t spoken to yet climb down from the cart and then help a woman who had been sitting next to him down. Lake could tell they were an older couple and they seemed nice enough, the only person who didn''t seem that nice was the girl named Mandy she had already walked into the forest soke just assumed she was the loner type.
Lake guessed if he hadn''t made it awkward these two would have introduced themselves already, so he walked up to them and said. "Hello, I''m Lake. It''s nice to meet you." The older man smiled and reached his hand out for a shake, "Hello I''m Kyle and this is my Wife Mary."
Lake shook his hand and was about to go and talk to Stan when the man said, " If you''d like we can show you around the forest, Me and my wife pick nts for the alchemist guild so you might learn something." Nothing Like old people, they really hand out benefits just so you''ll spend time with them. Having no reason not to, Lake said " Ok I''ll do that, to be honest I was a little afraid I''d get lost."
After saying that Lake marked the cart and all the people still standing around, this way he could find themter if he needed to. " If you follow us today we''ll show you some of the safer ces in the forest. It''s good not to roam around randomly; you might stumble into a monster den by ident." After saying that, Kyle started into the forest so Lake followed.
Entering the forest Lake could hear various small animals but couldn''t see them, he still took out his bow just in case. " Don''t let us stop you from hunting if you see anything, feel free to shoot." Lake hadn''t asked, but it was still nice to know these two wouldn''t stop him from hunting. He had noticed these two weren''t carrying bows and only had small knives and was wondering why. "Why are you two not carrying weapons?"
Lake was expecting Kyle to answer but Mary did "We got too old to be fighting. When you hunt there are times you run into monsters, It''s usually small monsters Like goblins or wolves but still. These days we just harvest nts on the edge of the forest." That made sense Lake Lake was about to ask another question when he saw something fly past excitedke looked up to see a bird, but then Lake remembered there were no birds here they called them wyverns. Lake saw it swoop down and grab a squirrel out of a tree getting a good look Lake could see the difference, the Hawk like wyvern had a short tail with no feathers, but other than that it was pretty much a bird. "Nice." Lake loved birds and that included these monsters, he thought maybe in the future he could tame one he had the tamer job so it wasn''t impossible. " I was expecting you to shoot at it."
Lake looked to see the pair were looking at him, not wanting to reveal his secret weakness he said "I don''t know how to use a bow." Lake was fishing for benefits, maybe one of these two was a bow master and would show him the way. " Come here, I was a max level archer by the time I was 20." Bingo. Lake walked over to Kyle. " Pull your bow back."
Lake did as he was told, seeing how easy he did so Kyle said "You must have a job that gives strength so you won''t have a problem using that wooden bow but dexterity and perception are more important with bows. Alright get an arrow out." Lake got an arrow out and waited for further instruction to see Kyle reach out his hands and take the bow. " Alright watch as I do this you see how I''m holding my shoulders." Lake looked real close, almost too close. "Now look at my elbows and fingers. If you do this you should hit most of your shots for now this is a good starter pose that helps with uracy. Once you get a few levels in archer or hunter you can switch to a pose that feels more natural for you."
Handing the bow and arrow back to Lake, Kyle said " Alright let''s see if you can do it." Lake pulled the bow back and shot the arrow. Looking at Kyle, Lake could tell he was surprised at how well Lake had copied his actions; it was like a reflection, not only that Lake had actually hit something, Mary. Lake hadn''t held the arrow correctly and it had spun off and hit Mary. Thankfully she was fine but Lake still learned something, so it was all good.
Chapter 15: Meat Dinner
Chapter 15: Meat Dinner
Lake pulled out another arrow and was about to try again when Kyle said " You can practiceter, we need to move on." Lake shrugged he really didn''t want to use a bow honestly he preferred the spear. A walkter Kyle said " This is a good ce to find Whanto leaf." Lake saw the nt that Kyle was pointing at and asked "This is Whanto leaf, what''s it used for." Kyle crouched down and picked a leaf of a nt and ate it. "Most people eat it because it grows all over the ce, but the alchemist guild uses it as a stabilizer in the lowest tier of healing potions." Said Mary.
Lake was kind of hungry so he crouched down and ate some. It was pretty good. It had a bit of a strange herbal taste that made it seem really healthy, but it was free so Lake could see why people ate it. Lake went to town, and ate as much as he could after a few mouthfuls Lake had an idea he loved tea so he opened his sk and put a few crumpled leaves in and shook it.[New job acquired Alchemist] Lake felt this was closer to cooking but he would always take a new job, it had a chance to be tampered with like Thief was. Wanting to see if he had hit a jackpot, Lake pulled up the details of Alchemist.
Alchemist (U) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Dexterity 2
Perception 1
Intelligence 3
Exp conditions:
Kills
Crafting potions and poisons
Bonus Exp conditions:
X3 Potion crafting
X5 Poison kills
X8 Poison crafting
Skills from job:
When Lake saw the golden U he knew someone had tampered with it. It seemed to be all the same person because all the golden stuff was in one style, and they also seemed to like poison. Lake also noticed the level cap was 10 so they hadn''t added a 0 like someone did in Thief. Lake wondered if changing the Level cap was more difficult somehow.
Looking up from his system screen, Lake saw Kyle and Mary were staring at him " Sorry, I just unlocked a new job." After Lake said this he knew he shouldn''t have, he didn''t even know if other people unlocked jobs like him. But luckily it didn''t seem to be a big deal and Kyle walked over to a nt with a purple stalk and said "This is what people call chew sticks. People chew it for energy like this."
Kyle cut the nt at the base and ripped a branch off and started to chew on the end. " I''m sure it''s obvious but the alchemy guild uses it for simr purposes, if you were to fill a bag this size with either of these you would make a gold coin." Kyle held up a small bag, Lake thought it was about the size of a grocery store bag from his old world, wondering how much he would get if he killed something like a deer.
Lake asked, " How much would I get for a day''s worth of huntingpared to this?" Putting his bag back on his belt Kyle said, " This pays about half of what hunting does, even counting days you don''t get anything while hunting. An added bonus to this is if you find a rare nt you get a windfall. I''ve known people to retire off of one nt."
Lake guessed those situations were extremely rare. " What about farming, how much does that pay?" They had started to walk to the next ce already so Lake was wondering why these two even came out here to begin with if you were opposed to danger, surly farming would make more sense. "Farming has a lot to do with the amount ofnd you own and if you actually own it since we don''t ownnd, we would probably make a few gold a week which isn''t enough."
Lake could feel the sad backstorying but didn''t have the heart to take this moment away from them. There wasn''t an old person in existence who didn''t love talking about how hard it was being old, readying himself Lake asked, " Enough for what?" Looking sad Kyle said " Mary''s sick, the reason we work for the alchemy guild is so they discount the medicine she needs."
Lake had to say she did look a little frail and he had been wondering why she had evene. He also started to feel bad for when he hit her with an arrow. He should apologize but not now that would be weird and make it seem like he only cared because she was dying. Which was true but that would make him a bad person.
Arriving at the next ce Kyle said " Looks like somethings been eating the nts here. We should move on in case it''s still here." Looking around Lake could see what he meant the ce was a mess and he also wanted to move on. Whatever had been here was probably pretty big. The upside was it ate nts. As soon as Lake thought this he heard a snapping noise in the tree above them.
Chapter 16: Open Ended Plan
Chapter 16: Open Ended n
Lake didn''t even bother looking up; he just dashed forward. The worst case scenario was he looked like someone who got scared easily. After getting far enough he looked back to see the other two had also moved away from the tree.
Looking up Lake saw some sort of shiny surface moving around in the tree. It seemed spherical but Lake couldn''t wrap his mind around what he was seeing. "It''s just a Var beetle." Said Kyle. Lake saw at some point they had both drawn their weapons but were now putting them away. Seeing this, Lake took it as this bug wasn''t dangerous so he dropped his guard and walked over to the two of them. " What''s a Var beetle, are they safe to be around?"
Kyle had a grossed out look on his face, so Lake assumed Kyle didn''t like bugs. "As safe as any animal that size is, but yes they are considered to be non-aggressive the only thing annoying about them is during their mating season they start to eat every nt in sight, but that means the culling order will be sent out soon. Its a good way for young adventures to make some money, you see during their mating season their shells get harder. Hard enough to make armor each beetle is worth around 10 gold, and they don''t even put up much of a fight you can think of it as free range armor."
This did sound like a good way to make money so Lake asked, "How much longer do you think it will be before the culling will start?" Kyle took too long to answer so Mary said " I''d say less than a week, seeing as this one has already started eating." This was good news for Lake. He wondered how much Exp they gave, if it was a lot this was a perfect situation for him. " Are you two going toe and hunt beetles?"
The two acted a little strange after Lake asked this but eventually Mary said "Kyle wants to but I think it''s a bad idea if he gets hurt our ie will plummet." The ssic old man who tries to work like he''s 20 still, and gets hurt routine. Lake tried to think of a way to use this to his advantage and it didn''t take long for him to say, " I could go with Kyle and do all the heavy lifting if you''d like, this way he''ll have backup in case he runs into a monster." Lake could tell Kyle was into the idea but it hadn''t won over Mary. Lake needed to find a way to sweeten the deal without losing anything because the benefits he would gain from this were already questionable. " It''s too bad, think of the efficiency we could achieve with all the tricks you''ve learned over the years. Oh, what if we ask Dan and Jeff with the three of us Kyle will just have to tell us what to do."
Lake had understood Dan and Jeff almost instantly. Dan was definitely in charge being the older one, so Jeff would do what he said and with Dan being so nice there''s no way he would say no if Lake asked for his help. Not only would he be helping Kyle he would see it as a way to atone for upsetting Lake by asking about his past. And another reason to rope more people in was Lake was hoping to steal some kills he got X8 bonus Exp as a thief.
While he had no idea how kill stealing worked, he hoped that as long as he had nefarious intentions it would work. Lake saw his n of roping in Jeff and Dan had won over Mary so he said, "Since Kyle''s the leader he can get 40% Dan, Jeff, and I will take 20%. We can talk to them on the ride back to town."
Lake saw the possibility of lots of money win over Mary, and the best part was this deal was fair if Lake ounted for all the tricks he could learn from Kyle he would probablye out of this hunt with increased skill, and lots of levels which is what Lake actually wanted he didn''t care about the money he was hoping to make money from stealing, not work. To be honest Lake wasn''t sure if he should steal everything and run at the end it would be pretty easy because everyone would trust him.
The problem was he didn''t want to end up on one of those wanted posters. But thinking of the Exp Lake wasn''t sure he would be able to stop himself, he bet the final sum would ignite his greed. Lake usually only stole from people he didn''t like, and so far almost everyone he had met had been nice. He knew it was because he was in a small town, he needed to go to a big city that''s where all the dickheads were.
Chapter 17: Time to Kill
Chapter 17: Time to Kill
Lake knew this n still needed some work but he had at least a few days so it wasn''t that important, also Kyle was old, and old people liked to do stuff their way so he would probably take care of all the preparations that would go into this n. So Lake just needed to level up. Every problem just came back to the need to level up, after thinking this Lake really started to look for stuff to kill. A few minutester Lake saw a huge moth trying its best to blend in with a tree. "Is that something I can kill?" Kyle looked at the moth Lake was pointing at and said "Yes but they''re not edible so don''t try to harvest any meat from it." This was a gross thing to say.
Who would eat a bug? "Do they have a monster core big enough to harvest?" The moth Lake was talking about was over a foot in length so he thought this might be the first money he''d ever make. "It should. With monsters that size it can be hard to tell but even if it does it will only be worth 1 or 2 gold." This was good enough forke so he grabbed his spear and charged. Right before his spear pierced the moth it dropped off of the tree,nding on the ground Lake saw it arch its back like a scorpion, so he jumped back to put some distance between them. This ended up being a mistake, Lake saw as the moth fired some sort of green liquid towards him, it was aimed sort of high though it looked like the moth had shot towards his neck.
Ducking Lake saw the glob go over his head looking back to the moth Lake saw it had started to fly and would soon be out of his reach. Without thinking he dashed forward and jumped. his spear tore through the moths right wing and they both fell to the ground. Luckily Lake seeded innding on his feet so he used one of his feet to pin the moths shooter to the ground and stabbed his spear into its back.
As soon as the spear entered the moth started to squirm and pped its good wing the fluttering didn''t hurt but it was smacking him in the face a little so he took the spear out and stabbed down again, this time aiming a little higher. After this stabke felt the struggling get weaker and knew it would probably die in a few seconds even if he backed off but why wait. He lifted the spear again and stabbed in between its antenna.[Level up] [New job unlocked Spearman]Lake felt the Exp but the bug hadn''t stopped moving. Lake had seen bugs twitch after he stomped on them before so he understood it would continue to move for a while after it died. Taking his spear out of the body, Lake backed off of the corpse so he could check his stats.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 3/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.3 (12 / 40)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 4
Endurance 5
Agility 7
Dexterity 4
Perception 4
Intelligence 4
Charisma 4
Free stat points: 6
With some quick math, Lake fingered out that this moth had been worth 24 Exp so 8 for everyone else. Even if this was the only kill todayke was still satisfied, but he still had hours before the cart would leave for town so he doubted this would be it.
He also couldn''t decide what to put his free points in so he just left them, he hadn''t really found his fighting style yet so he felt it would be a waste to spend them now. He also saw that the amount of Exp required to level up had doubled once again, if this continued like this he would have to steal everything in the world to hit level 100 in thief. Or maybe one World Item Lake didn''t know what they were. But if they were important enough for Laka to mention they had to be something good.
He wondered if they had anything to do with the golden writing in the system, but he had no way of knowing. Looking up from his screen Lake saw the body of the moth had started to glow switching his job to Alchemist Lake reached out.[Level up] Lake smiled he had thought of this method of leveling jobs that don''t have Exp bonuses forbat. Looking back at his status screenke couldn''t help but think this was the use of Intangible Loot.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 3/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.1 (3 / 10)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 4
Endurance 5
Agility 7
Dexterity 6
Perception 5
Intelligence 7
Charisma 4
Free stat points: 6
It seemed he also got some new skills so he opened the skill page.
Distill (C) Lv.1
Allows for the greater control of the final attributes of crafted potions.
(Scales off of intelligence)
Poison Taster (U) Lv.1
All poisons have the opposite effect on you.
This was the first time Lake had gotten amon skill but it did seem good so he wasn''t worried about it. Also Poison Taster seemed to have the added benefit of Making him immune to poison so that was awesome. It was too bad Alchemist only had 10 levels. Lake felt like he would hit the cap in no time with this method.
It was also nice to finally see what intelligence did, he had been wondering if it was actually making him smarter. Lake decided to leave the core, the smelling from the body made him think it wasn''t worth it, he would just ruin his clothes and Lake felt he had already spent too much time on this moth.
He looked to see if Kyle and Mary were still standing where they had been when he rushed the moth. Seeing them still waiting for him he decided to look at spearman''s detailster. Running back to them, Lake said, "I''m ready, sorry that took so long." With a wave Kyle said "The next ce is where me and Mary spend most of our time while in the forest, so you''ll have to keep yourself busy while we gather nts." Lake was fine with that, they had waited on him and he was sure he could find something to do.
Chapter 18: To Frolic With Goblins
Chapter 18: To Frolic With Goblins
Arriving at the next spot Lake could see why Mary and Kyle liked it here, it was arge clearing with lots of fancy looking nts. Seeing the two get to work, Lake said "I''m gonna look around for any prey, I''lle back every hour or so to see if you''re done."
After he said this he left and started to look around. With the marks of interest skill he didn''t need to worry about getting lost because he had already marked not only Mary and Kyle but the ce they were.
Lake was looking forward to killing some more monsters, he was hoping to find something big enough to have a core he wanted to see what they looked like, and he didn''t think he would have to wait much longer because he could hear something walking close to where he was.
It sounded like it was pretty big and as he listened he thought he might be able to tell it had four legs, or maybe there were two of them. He would need to get eyes on it to be sure.
Slowly he started to creep up the ridge that was separating him from where he thought it was. Peeking over to the other side, Lake saw green skin that he thought might have belonged to a lizard or something, but after getting a better look at them he saw it was two small green people.
Lake realized these were probably goblins so he wanted to kill them for the Exp, but this would be the first time he would fight two enemies at the same time. Then Lake remembered he had another weapon, and if he got lucky he would be able to take one out before the fight even started.
Lake loved this idea; it was good enough to bet his life on, but first he marked both incase they tried to split up or hide after he attacked. Now he would be able to find them. He actually hoped they split up that would make it a lot easier to kill them, and Lake doubted he would chase them if they ran together, he''d be afraid they would bring him to a bigger group.
Standing up Lake pulled the bow back like Kyle had shown him, but this time he paid more attention to his fingers. Releasing the arrow Lake watched as it grazed one of the goblins. Though it wasn''t the one he had been aiming at. Damn, too bad it wasn''t poisoned, this would have been the perfect shot if the arrow had been.
Shrugging Lake put the bow down and readied his spear, after the arrow had hit one of them, neither had reacted right away it was almost like they were stunned. but now they had both turned and faced him, Lake saw them ready their weapons which were just sharpened sticks.
Lake thought maybe he had been worried about nothing; these two were losers. charging Lake saw the will to fight leave one of the goblins eyes. It dropped its spear and ran.
Lake was happy to see this but it was the one that he had been charging at so he switched to the other goblin but as soon as he did it to dropped it''s weapon. Lake was a little disappointed to see they had both ran.
He thought maybe one was going to sacrifice itself to save the other, but in the end they were actually both cowards. Checking to see where the first one had gone Lake confirmed this wasn''t some scheme to ambush him.
They had actually abandoned each other and ran for it. Lake just gave chase to the one he was closest to and a few secondster he drove his spear through its back, they were much slower than him so it hadn''t taken much effort. Stopping Lake pulled up his stats to see how much Exp this goblin had given him because he hadn''t leveled up.
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 4/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.3 (30 / 40)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Lake saw this goblin had only given him 18 Exp, which meant it was only worth 6, 2 less than the moth. " Maybe with goblins it''s a numbers thing since there''s a lot of them you can get a bunch of kills."
Lake also remembered this thing had a core somewhere in its body Lake decided to leave it here for now he still had to chase down the other one before it got too far, this would also give him a chance to ask Kyle how to get a core out of a body.
Lake didn''t want to just dig around inside it, he wanted to be as precise as possible. Checking to see where the other goblin had gone, Lake saw it had given up on running and hid from him instead, it was probably only 100 feet away.
Lake moved in an indirect way. The goblin didn''t have much time but it was still possible that it had set some sort of trap behind it while it ran. Moving behind where it was hiding Lake Lake saw it was hiding in some sort of hollow log.
To be honest if he didn''t have the Mark on it he probably wouldn''t of found it. Feeling a little like he cheated he stabbed his spear through the thin barkyer surrounding the goblin and heard a shriek.
" Looks like I hit it." Pulling his spear out, Lake waited a few seconds. He was hoping it would crawl out because he felt it would be a pain to drag its dead body out of the log, sighing Lake stabbed down again in a slightly different ce.
This time he had not aimed for it but near its head hoping to scare it out of the log Lake watched as the Mark slowly crawled away from where is spear had stabbed. When Lake saw the mark stop moving he did it again, then again until finally he saw the goblin reach the end of the log.
The goblin hoped out and made a break for it, as it ran Lake saw he had only hit its arm with the first stab so it wasn''t fatally wounded. Charging Lake did what he did to thest goblin and stabbed it in the back but Lake could tell this stab wasn''t as deep.
After the goblin fell to the ground Lake drove his spear deeper by putting his weight on it. [Level up] [New job unlocked Archer]Lake smiled; this had been a pretty good hunt. Now he would have two jobs to look at on the way home.
At first he had been confused with the job, but then he realized this was the same goblin he had hit with the arrow. Looking at his stats Lake smiled he had made some good gains today.
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 5/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.4 (5 / 80)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 5
Endurance 6
Agility 8
Dexterity 7
Perception 6
Intelligence 8
Charisma 5
Free stat points: 9
The only thing he wasn''t happy about was the fact that the amount of Exp he needed to level up again had doubled once more. Lake also noticed that this goblin had given less Exp than the first one, this one only gave 15.
This made Lake wonder if monsters varied, maybe they had a level system too, Maybe even a job system. If this was true he needed to be careful even with weak monsters. Maybe someday he would run into a goblin badass. But like with every problem he couldn''t solve, Lake shrugged it off. It was time to check in with Kyle and Mary.
Chapter 19: What Cores Do
Chapter 19: What Cores Do
Rushing back to where Kyle and Mary were, Lake could see they were still there harvesting nts, and if he didn''t need to ask Kyle about cores he would probably just go back to hunting. Arriving next to Kyle Lake said, "Hey Kyle I killed some goblins and was wondering how to get the cores out of them."
Kyle stopped cutting nts and showed Lake his knife. " This is the best way cores are really hard so you don''t have to worry about damaging them, just stab where you think it will be, usually it''s near the heart, you''ll feel the knife hit something really hard then just use your knife or finger and pull it out."
Lake also wanted to know if cores had uses other than selling them for money. Things were usually only valuable because they were useful. "What are they used for, why does the guild buy them?" Kyle looked a little amused by this question, "They''re useful for people with magic jobs. Some of the more rare ones are useful to everyone because they can grant Exp, stats, and some even give skills."
This exnation Made Lake think about Intangible loot, it did something simr to cores but now he had another question. "How do you tell the rarity of a core? Kyle thought for a few seconds, Lake guessed he was trying to think of a good way to exin it so Mary started to answer. " It''s a feeling you get when you hold them the only people that can actually tell are people with the Appraiser job."
Kyle shook his head in agreement. Not having any more questions, Lake said he would see them again in a couple of hours. He could tell they weren''t even close to being done and he wanted to be able to go further into the forest this time.
Getting back to whereke had killed the first goblin. Lake got a glimpse of something brown near the body. Lake quickly hid behind a tree, and peeked out to see something that looked like a bear was eating from the corpse.
Looking at the size of the bear Lake wasn''t to sure about his chances of winning if he were to fight it. Lake felt confident of winning if he was to use his free stat points. What should he buff though? for some reason Endurance was screaming to him.
Lake knew it was out of fear, he was afraid to get hurt. This made him think back to the screaming goblin that tried to run after he scared it out of the log; it had been so easy to kill because it ran.
If the two of them had stood their ground at the beginning, they would have had a better chance of at least injuring him. This made Lake think any decision made out of fear wasn''t the best.
After thinking this, Lake knew if he chose Endurance it would guarantee that he would be hit. It was better to try and never get hit, at least until he knew more about Endurance.
He really didn''t even know if it made him more durable. This made Lake decide to buff Agility again. After putting the first 2 points into it Lake felt something happen as it hit 10. Stopping he opened his status screen to see the skill page shing.
Burst (U) Lv.1
Doubles the effect of the Agility and Strength stat.
Consumes Stamina (1 per hour)
Lake almostughed when he saw this skill someone had added in the Strength and changed the rate at which it used Stamina, and with these two changes it becamepletely busted. Lake only had 10 stamina at the moment so that meant he could keep this skill active for 10 hours.
But what about in the future if he ever had more than 24 stamina he would be able to have it on all the time. Lake shrugged it was his enemies problem not his. Lake decided to keep the other 7 free points.
With this skill this bear was dead. All it took was Lake wanting to activate the skill and he could feel the power; it was like adrenaline on steroids. Grabbing his spearke directly charged. A few stepster Lake felt the bear be aware of him, but he didn''t slow down.
Lake was hoping to sever the bear''s spine with the first thrust, but instead of dodging the bear turned its head towards him and went for a bite. Lake scoffed at thisme counter attack he had a six foot spear in his hand.
There was no need for him to get close enough for this bear to bite him. Lake watched as the spear tip started to enter the bears neck, it felt like there was almost no resistance. He guessed that was the benefit of moving so fast.
It changed as the wooden part of the spear started to go in. Lake felt as the spear shaft started to bend; afraid it would break he let go. Lake still had a lot of momentum, so instead of barreling into the bear Lake jumped over it.
After hended he took a few steps to slow down. Turning around, Lake saw the bear was on its side with massive amounts of blood gushing out of its neck, but it was yet to die. Lake decided to wait.
He didn''t want to get close to it until he felt the Exp. Almost 10 minutester Lake saw [Level up] he smiled walking over Lake pulled the spear out. It had gone pretty deep so it wasn''t that easy.
Seeing the size of the monster he had killed, Lake wasn''t sure how he was supposed to get it back to the cart. " Is this something people would eat?" He wasn''t sure if this counted as food. Lake sighed and started back towards Kyle at least he could look at his stats while he moved.
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 6/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.5 (55 / 160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 6
Endurance 7
Agility 11
Dexterity 8
Perception 7
Intelligence 9
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 10
This bear had been worth good Exp. Lake also noticed he only needed 1 more point in intelligence for it to hit 10, he wondered if he would get a skill like he did with agility. Lake would think about which skills to buff to 10 on the way home. For now he was more worried about getting the bear home.
Chapter 20: Spend Money To Make Money
Chapter 20: Spend Money To Make Money
Lake used his burst skill, and was to where Kyle and Mary were in no time. Stopping next to Kyle Lake could tell Kyle was surprised to see him again so soon. "Hey Kyle I killed a Bear, how am I supposed to get it out of the forest?"
Lake could see the surprise turn into astonishment, as he said " Wow, a bear all by yourself you must be a lot stronger than we thought you were." Lake waved his hand and said, " No no, I was just Lucky it wasn''t paying attention because it was eating. I got it in the neck and let it bleed out."
Kyle seemed to ept this exnation, " That''s a big monster it''s not going to be easy to get it out of the forest in one piece. So your best bet might be to just take out the core and leave the rest. Bear meat is not very good anyway."
This sounded good to Lake. He didn''t want to deal with all that to just eat gross food, but getting the core out sounded like a hassle to, " How much is the core worth?" Lake saw Kyle do some mental math and say. "Even the worst bear cores go for 30 gold."
Hearing this, Lake wasn''t willing to just leave it so he said, "If you show me how to get it out I''ll give you half." Lake had seen the bear; there was no way its core would only be worth 30, if that was as low as it could go.
Lake saw Kyle look back at Mary and Lake knew he was worried about leaving her alone so Lake said, "She cane to, it''s not that far and we can do it after you two are done here. I''m gonna go and watch it so no one takes it I''ll be backter."
Lake Left to go hunt in the area around the bear, but he felt with this kill his day hunting was pretty much done. He doubted he would see anything worth as much Exp as the bear today.
A few hours had passed and Lake had been right, other than a few small monsters like goblins the only thing worth mentioning was Lake was starting to think his spear wasn''t strong enough. Every time he used his full strength he felt like his spear was about to snap.
He needed to ask Kyle where to get an actual weapon, and maybe some armor. He was still in the clothes Wace had given him and he felt they weren''t up to the task. His pants had already ripped in a few ces.
Thinking it was about time to go and see if Kyle and Mary were done. Activating his skill burst, Lake rushed towards the couple. When Lake saw them he could tell they were done. Stopping next to Mary. Lake asked " Would you like me to hold those for you?"
She was holding what looked to be 20 pounds of bags, and while she looked fine he bet this would make Kyle like him more. Kyle would think he was trying to help his sick wife. Lake could see the affection multipliers going off in his head. Soon these two would start to see him as a grandson.
"No, I''m fine. It''s good to get some exercise." This sounded exactly like something his grandma would have said if he had offered to help her. So Lake shrugged and said, " Ok Lets go. It''ll probably take 30 or so minutes to get there."
Since they had a bit of a walk, Lake saw this as an opportunity to ask about weapons and armor. "Hey Kyle, where would I get a better weapon and some armor around here?" This was a question Kyle knew right away, " The best stuff around here is made at the cksmith guild a few towns over, but Feldon has both an armor and weapon shop, but it''s not as good as the stuff you can get at the guild."
Lake guessed the town this forest was next to was Feldon. "Are we going into town after hunting today?" Kyle shook his head no, " We only go to town every five days to sell monster cores. It saves a lot of time and monster cores aren''t very big so it''s not a hassle to carry them for a few days. The next time we go into town will be in two days." Lake wasn''t ready to go to town anyway so he was fine with waiting.
Arriving at the Bear Lake saw Kyle and Mary look at him. Maybe this bear was impressive; he had no idea it was the only one he had ever seen. Walking over to the wound on its neck, Lake said, " Look at this, I must have hit something important because it gave up as soon as I stabbed into it."
Looking at the wound Kyle said " You severed its windpipe at the least; I bet it couldn''t breathe anymore. Alright, help me move it to get better ess to its chest." Lake and Kyle moved it further onto its side.
"Alright, watch this. It works on most monsters." Lake watched as Kyle stabbed into its chest. Lake could tell he went between the ribs because the knife went almost all the way inside. Than Kyle used his knife like a lever and popped out a gem looking thing.
Kyle picked it up and looked at it for a few seconds. " It''ll probably be like 70 or so gold. I''m not an appraiser so that''s just a guess." Kyle handed the gem to Lake. Lake put it in his satchel then pointed at the goblin and said, "Will that work on a goblin."
Kyle handed him the knife and said, "Yeah give it a try." Lake walked over to the goblin And touched its ribs. " It''ll be easier if you roll it on its side, you''re also less likely to get squirted with blood if you hit the heart on ident."
Doing what Kyle said Lake went back to feeling its ribs. "That''s about right." Hearing Kyle Lake stabbed into the goblins chest Lake felt as the Knife hit something hard and maneuvered the knife to pry it out.
Seeing a small gem fall out, Lake grabbed it. "Alright, try to feel what the core does." After a few seconds of feeling it Lake said " I don''t know it feels so weak." Lake could barely feel anything from this core. " That means it''s the lowest rank, it''ll be worth 1 or 2 gold."
Lake stood up and said, " I''ll walk you guys back to the edge of the forest then I''lle back for the rest." Kyle started tough and said " You''re really going toe all the way back out here for a couple of gold, also you don''t have a knife. You''d be better off moving on with us, it''s almost time to head back to the cart anyway."
Lake knew he was right, also he should have grabbed a knife; there had been some in the shed. "Ok let''s go, I''m done here." Lake was satisfied with today. The only thing he didn''t like was Intangible Loot only went off once the whole day. He hoped somewhere he was banking up fortune points or good karma; maybe it would all add up into one good reward.
Chapter 21: Ground Work
Chapter 21: Ground Work
The three of them had just arrived at the cart to see they were almost thest ones to arrive; the only person missing was Mandy. When Stan saw them he said, " Alright looks like we''re ready to go. How was your first day Lake?"
Lake was confused, was Mandy already in the cart? "It was good. Is Mandy in the cart already?" After Lake asked this everyone startedughing, after a few seconds Stan said, "You''re barking up the wrong treed. That girl ain''t interested in anything but leveling up."
Lake understood now why they wereughing, they all thought he was interested in Mandy. Dan patted Lake on the shoulder and said "Don''t feel too bad I liked her the first time I saw her as well. But I found out soon enough it''s best to leave her be. On our first day Jeff sat next to her and she let him fall out the back of the cart and it''s the only time I''ve seen her smile. The only thing I''ve seen her talk about is joining the Royal guards."
Lake didn''t care enough to clear up this misunderstanding so he just said, "Thanks for the advice, But you still didn''t answer my question, are we just leaving her here?" Dan shook his head Like his persuasion had failed and said, " She stays overnight, she''lle back with us tomorrow."
This was a good idea. He should do this as well. He bet there were a lot more monsters at night and with his night vision he would have an advantage, but he wasn''t prepared to do it tonight he had no food with him, and the tea he had made was almost out.
So this was something for the future. Seeing Dan start to get into the cart Lake followed suit, and soon everyone was in the back. Lake felt the cart start to move. Now he had an hour to kill and he also needed to talk to Dan about the beetle hunt, but first he should make small talk.
"So did you two kill any of those monsters on the side of the cart?" Dan started shaking his head and said, "The deer and the boar. We killed a few other things but nothing worth bringing home. What about you, did you just help Kyle and Mary today?"
Lake shook his head and said, "I was unlucky today only killed stuff I wouldn''t eat." Everyone nodded after he said that. "That''s how hunting is. You never know what''s going to happen, but at least you made some money." said Jeff. "Tell them about that kill you got."
After Kyle said this Lake could tell everyone''s attention was on him. Lake guessed hunters loved good hunting stories. Instead of telling them right away Lake pulled out the core from the bear.
"I''d never harvested a core before because I''ve always killed small things like rats or bugs, so after I killed a goblin I went to ask Kyle how to get a core out without digging around in them. And once I got back I saw something was eating the goblin. Seeing that it hadn''t noticed me I sneak attacked it, and managed to kill it in one blow."
Lake could tell Dan and Jeff were loving his story. "So what was it?" Instead of answering he handed the core to Dan. "It was a bear and a good sized one." Lake really didn''t know if that was true but why not pretend. "Wow this core is probably worth 80 gold at the least."
This estimate was close to Kyles, so Lake guessed it was pretty close to the right amount. Getting the core back from Dan, Lake held it for a while and felt how much stronger it was than the goblins. It was pretty cool, it felt almost hot, but Lake could tell there wasn''t actually any heating off of it, so he assumed it was Magic. "I can see why you didn''t bother bringing it to the cart. I bet it was huge."
Lake felt this was a good time to ask about the beetle hunt. It didn''t take long to convince Dan he actually seemed to like the idea. Like Lake had thought Kyle said he would take care of the nning, so nowke just had to wait for the opportunity to steal some kills.
Now that all the talking was out of the way, Lake felt it was a good time to check the new jobs he had gotten. Lake started with the archer job because it felt like it was more likely to have been tampered with.
Archer (U) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Agility 2
Dexterity 4
Perception 3
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X3 Kills
X10 Headshot Kills
Skills from job:
And he was right it was shown some attention quickly going over its details Lake moved on to spearman.
Spearman (C) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Strength 1
Agility 1
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Spear kills
Skills from job:
Lake was a little disappointed to see Spearman wasn''t special in any way he had been enjoying using the spear. Maybe this would be what he would put his gold writing in in the future, but he understood it really didn''t go with the whole thief aesthetic. Tomorrow he would put some effort into Leveling up Archer to the first level at least.
Chapter 22: Lake The Early Bird
Chapter 22: Lake The Early Bird
After Lake arrived back in town he only stayed up long enough to tell Sam and Wace about his first day and eat some cornbread. He hadn''t gotten a lot of sleep the night before so he was pretty tired.
Feeling his body being shook Lake knew it was time to get up to hunt. Opening his eyes Lake saw Wace and knew what was about to happen "Hey Lake, I was wondering if you had the chance to think of something for the corn festival?"
Lake could tell this wasn''t a question. Putting his brain to work Lake said, " What about a corn cook off." Wace started shaking him again and said, " We already do that, what the hell do you think corn festivals are about!?"
Thinking of a new idea, Lake wanted something that would keep Wace busy for a while, "What about a corn shucking golem that people can race against." Lake saw Wace''s eyes turn red and he thought it meant he was mad. "Genius!" Shouted Wace then ran out of the room.
As Lake watched Wace leave he saw Sam in the doorwayughing, "Hey Sam is there any breakfast? I need to get going." Sam walked into the room already carrying some cornbread. Lake thanked him and hit the road.
He wanted to be early so he could ask Stan if he could get a knife out of the shed. When he got there he saw Kyle and Mary had beaten him. "Here you go Lake, this was mine back when I was still a hunter."
Mary handed a Knife to Lake but when he held the handle he felt something; startled he almost dropped it. "Sorry, I should have warned you it''s enchanted." Just like a grandma to give something to you and then apologize. "Thank you. I was just about to ask Stan if I could take one of the old ones in the shed. So what does it do?"
Mary smiled and said, " The de is enchanted for sharpness and durability." Lake thought this sounded pretty good for something he didn''t pay for. "I appreciate it. If you ever need help just tell me and I''ll do it." This was an easy promise to make because Lake was going to leave soon, so he doubted anything major would happen within that time.
After a few minutes Dan and Jeff showed up so they all filled their water sks and hoped in the cart, and in no time they were speeding towards the gate. Lake felt they were a little early, and he was right they ended up waiting close to 20 minutes for the gate to open.
For some reason the guards did not check the back today. "Why didn''t they check us?" Dan shrugged but Kyle said, "Either they caught him or the guards didn''t feel like it." Lake felt Kyle was right because what else could it be, andzy guards was something Lake liked to see.
Ten minutes Later they arrived at the forest. "Hey Lake, are you going to stay with us again today?" Lake thought about it for a second before he said, "No not today, I feel like I should go deeper today. But I''lle see you at the spot you showed me yesterday in a few hours."
After finishing his goodbyes, Lake walked into the forest alone, and just like yesterday he could hear lots of small animals moving around but he couldn''t see them. "I''m looking for something bigger anyway." Pushing deeper into the forest ,Lake stopped only when he found a small pond. He only stopped because there were people here.
Lake guessed these were people that lived in town because they had been the first cart through the gate today as well. Seeing all the old people fishing Lake marked the pond and moved on. He already spent enough time with old people he wasn''t looking to start a retirement home. But it wasn''t a bad idea; He doubted anyone in this world had thought of it yet. If he could make it corn based he would have another idea for Wace.
Stepping into a new part of the forest, Lake could tell it was much quieter than anywhere he had been before and wasn''t sure if that meant it was safer or more dangerous. Focusing on his ears, Lake could hear something but it was faint. Turning to look in the direction of the noise. Lake saw someone in a tree with a bow drawn in his direction.
It seemed he had unknowingly stepped into someone''s hunting area. Lake was at a disadvantage since they had a ranged weapon. "Leave, your scaring away all the prey in this area by stomping around." Lake had to agree, he didn''t try to move silently at all.
He was really just looking around right now. Without saying anything he backed away. He wasn''t really interested in ying any games with this person. Lake preferred to y long games much longer than how long it would take for the arrow to pierce his heart. And he was fine with leaving because he had marked this person. With this he had his first target, Lake smiled he couldn''t wait to steal everything this person owned.
Chapter 23: A Day of Work
Chapter 23: A Day of Work
Getting far enough away Lake watched as the Mark moved through the trees. Then he put it out of his mind right now wasn''t a good time to worry about them. Lake had brought extra stuff today and was nning to stay over night if the person he marked went to Feldon Lake would follow them home, and he would make up his mind on if it was worth breaking in to their house.
If it was crap it wasn''t worth his time and the chance of getting caught. Thinking about it made Lake excited, he had been waiting on someone to get on his nerves and pointing a weapon at him counted. If the person, Lake assumed it was a man from the voice but he really didn''t know, had fired a warning shot Lake would have gone for the kill.
He was happy that hadn''t happened though because Lake wasn''t sure how murder was treated in this world, he was sure people killed each other a lot more here than on earth so it was probably hard to police it.
Lake bet there was some dumb magic way of solving crimes like holding a s¨¦ance. He checked his location rtive to some of the marks he had left onndmarks and started heading deeper into the forest.
Half an hourter he heard something, focusing he located the source of the noise. He saw a boar like the one Dan and Jeff had killed yesterday. Lake was going to kill this pig but he wanted to try getting a headshot because if he seeded it would be X10 Exp.
Even if he missed and the Boar ran, Lake doubted it could outrun him. Getting his bow out Lake pulled back the arrow and before even shooting Lake could feel the difference. Lake didn''t know if it was from his stats, the archer job or both, but Lake felt he would hit this shot.
Releasing the arrow Lake didn''t watch but put his bow back and grabbed his spear if he missed he wanted to be ready to chase. Looking up Lake saw his arrow had hit into the side of the boar but it had not killed it.
Lake watched as the boar reared back and squealed than started to run. Lake left Archer because it had the same Exp multiplier as Thief on normal kills. Charging after the boar it didn''t take long to catch up because he had used burst. Lake stabbed down into the back of the Boars head with his spear, and watched as the monster crumpled and rolled along the ground. [Level up] [Level up]
This was the first time Lake had leveled up two times at once but it wasn''t surprising the first 2 levels only needed 15 Exp in total. Looking at his stat screen Lake saw some of his stats had almost doubled in one go, this was the power of specializing.
Race: Human Lv.1 ( 8/10 )
Job: Archer Lv.2(12 / 20)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 10
Stamina 10
Mana 10
Strength 6
Endurance 7
Agility 15
Dexterity 16
Perception 13
Intelligence 9
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 10
With this two more of his stats had gone over 10. Lake wondered if he would get another skill like burst, he could see his skill screen shing but Lake was going to wait. He was getting tired of cornbread and was looking forward to eating meat tonight. Reading his new skills would give him something to do while he ran back to the cart; which was pretty far.
Walking over to the boar Lake removed the core, feeling it his best guess was it was worth 3 gold. Putting it in his satchel Lake grabbed the Leg and started dragging it behind him. After a few steps Lake remembered he was nning on staying in the forest tonight. Thinking about what to do with the boar Lake decided to tell Kyle and Mary about it when he saw themter, he knew Kyle would take care of it. Opening his skill page Lake saw four new skills.
Pierce (U) Lv.1
Double the Pierce damage of an arrow.
Mana Vision (U) Lv.1
Allows you to see sources of mana through objects.
(Scales off of Perception)
Lake started with the skills archer had given him. Pierce was odd because the only thing in gold writing was the U so Lake guessed someone had erased something to make it better. Mana Vision was the opposite; it was fully golden which made him think it was an insider original. Moving on to the skills from his stats hitting 10.
Green Fingers Golden Hands (U) Lv.1
Increases work speed and hand control. Hand injuries heal much faster.
Allows the regrowing of fingers.(Scales off of Dexterity)
This skill made himugh; he couldn''t help but think one of his predecessors had been prone to losing fingers. This made him think of Laka. He had no evidence of this but he still thought it was funny to associate this with him.
The Sight (U) Lv.1
Increases the effects of Perception inbat.
Strengthens eyes and eardrums.
This was an interesting ability. It made Lake want to touch his eye but his hands had blood on them so he didn''t. It was funny that someone made it effect eardrums, and this made him wonder if in the future he would be able to change any skills he didn''t like.
Getting to the ce people left their carts Lake saw some people around. They were all doing things associated with meat preparation, but what he was most interested in was some people had started a fire and were cooking. Lake wanted to get in on this, so he dragged the boar over to the cart to see Stan was there doing the same with a deer.
When Stan saw Lake he Said, "Good work. Since you''re staying overnight I can take care of that for you." Lake was fine with this and said, " I was going to cook some of it real quick to eat, But you can take the rest just give some of it to Kyle and Mary." Stan smiled and said, "You good with a leg?"
Lake nodded his head and watched as Stan cut a leg off for him. Lake watched how Stan skinned it. It looked simple enough now he would be able to do it in the future. After He received the Leg from Stan, Lake said bye And walked over to the fire. "Hey, you guys fine with me cooking this?" The man took a rabbit from the fire and said, " You can as long as you bring some wood."
This sounded fair to Lake so he handed the leg to one of them. He watched as they started to cook it for him, then he went to grab some fallen branches from the forest. Lake smiled, this would be his first non corn meal since arriving in this world.
Chapter 24: Rank
Chapter 24: Rank
Lake had just finished eating, and while he hadn''t eaten it all he had stuffed himself. He had given the leftovers to one of the people near the fire after he decided not to put it in his satchel. He didn''t want the inside to be greasy. He would kill for some tin foil but he doubted it had been invented yet.
Checking the mark on Kyle and the one he left at the ce they showed him he saw they were there already, so it was time to go say hi. Picking up speed it wasn''t too long before he arrived. Lake could tell his agility had gone up; he felt like a race car.
Seeing Kyle, Lake said, "Hey Kyle I killed a boar, and told Stan to give you some of the meatter." Kyle stopped working and stood up, "Thank you, so how''s that Knife treating you?" Mary had alsoe over to speak with him and Lake could tell she was just about to say this but Kyle had beaten her to it.
"Real good. I used it earlier to take this core out." Lake showed the boar core to them. " Alright I''m gonna let you two get back to work, I just wanted to see if you needed anything." Lake could tell how much these two appreciated him checking on them.
"No, we''re fine, see youter." Lake waved goodbye, then crouched down and picked some whanto leaves for his water and left. Lake was heading towards where he had killed the bear he wanted to see if anything had eaten on the carcass, maybe something big hade and it was already gone.
Seeing the bears condition things had definitely been here to eat it, there were a few ces where the bone was showing but they had all left. The only thing still here was some gross bug. It was like a 2 foot cockroach; Lake decided this thing was too nasty to live.
Pulling his bowke was hoping to get a head shot this thing didn''t look too strong but with 10 times the Exp Lake bet it would give him around the same amount as the bear did.
Aiming carefully Lake got as close as he could and when he released, the arrow left his bow and entered the bug''s head. [Level up] [Level up] [Rank up] That was almost cheating. It had taken no skill but it had been worth it. He just saw something he hadn''t seen yet. "What''s Rank?"
Race: Human Lv.2 ( 0/10 )
Job: Archer Lv.4(42 / 80)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 1/5 )
Stats
Health 20
Stamina 20
Mana 20
Strength 6
Endurance 7
Agility 19
Dexterity 24
Perception 19
Intelligence 9
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 10
It didn''t take long for Lake to see what had changed; he was now a level 2 human and his health, stamina, and mana had doubled. He also saw his Dexterity had gone over 20 but he hadn''t received a new skill. Lake didn''t really understand Dexterity, it seemed to just make his hands better at moving his fingers.
Wiggling his fingers Lake could feel the power within them but so what, was he just supposed to smack the shit out of his enemies. "Actually that could work." Lake bet there was an unarmed job or something, and he had been worried about his spear breaking.
Deciding to test it out, Lake picked a not gross part of the bear carcass and punched it. His hands were like steel. He didn''t even feel the impact but he felt his strength wascking because it hadn''t left any form of injury.
Then he remembered he was punching a bear and he could probably kill stuff if it was smaller like a goblin. Thinking of a goblin Lake thought about all the goblins he had killed around here yesterday. "I bet there''s some living around here." Lake thought of a skill he had gotten earlier but not tried yet Mana Vision.
Activating it Lake saw dots appearing all over the ce. Looking closely Lake knew these were cores of small animals hiding around him. Taking the goblin core out of his satchelke studied it, all the cores he could see around him varied in color and size, but Lake would bet all goblins had simr looking cores.
Memorizing the core Lake started to head towards the goblin he hadn''t taken the core from yesterday this would confirm if he was right. Seeing the dead body Lake could see the core shining in its chest.
Lake frowned, it looked different, using his knife Lake pried out the core. Feeling it, it felt much stronger than the other goblin core he had. Lake shrugged, no point thinking about it he was just going to show it to Kyle real quick.
Appearing next to Kyle, Lake saw that he to had something glowing in his chest, Lake wasn''t to surprised that humans also had cores, so he put it aside and asked, "Hey Kyle why are these cores different?" Lake remembered Kyle telling him about rarity but he really didn''t understand it and he remembered that the goblin with the better core had given him less Exp.
"Let''s see." Kyle took the cores from Lake and a few secondster said, " This ones a stat point I''m not sure what though you''d have to take it to an appraiser. That''s pretty lucky it''s worth quite a bit, but I''d rmend you use it not sell it. So what did ite out of?"
Putting it back in his bag Lake said, "A goblin." Lake didn''t tell Kyle it was the goblin he told him to forget about yesterday. Lake didn''t want Kyle to think he was ming him. " Very lucky indeed. Do you know how to use it?" Lake shook his head no.
"It needs to be brewed into a potion. It''s simple, you just need to bring it to the alchemist guild and pay a few gold." Lake wondered if he could do it himself if he tried he was technically an Alchemist. Thanking Kyle, Lake went back to hunting. He wanted to find some goblins to punch.
Chapter 25: Targeted Extraction
Chapter 25: Targeted Extraction
After Leaving Lake realized how useful Mana Vision would be while hunting. If he could increase his Perception, the increased range would allow him to go after creatures with better cores. Right now Lake was pretty sure the range was close to 50ft but in a thick forest that was pretty good.
Stopping Lake saw a core that seemed to be strong enough for him to pay attention to. Sneaking closer Lake saw what he was looking for a goblin, but instead of killing it he marked it.
There were still a few more hours before the sun went down but Lake bet this goblin would head home when it did. Lake was going to leave it be for now ande back tonight if he had time. Goblins weren''t worth a lot of Exp but if he found a lot it would be worth it.
Lake continued to do this for a few hours until he was satisfied. He had marked 7 goblins spread out through arge portion of the forest. This would give him something to do if he wasn''t able to follow that person home.
Thinking about that hunter, Lake saw the mark he had ced on them was still deep in the forest. "It''s possible they n to stay in the forest overnight like me." If that was true Lake woulde and fight some goblins.
Lake felt a stirring in his chest, he stopped because it felt simr to irritation and made him wonder why he was doing all this nning around other people. It had only been 2 days since he got here and he was already tied down by the rtionships he had formed.
He was getting bored of running around a forest and hunting. It was cool and all but he was starting to feel he was wasting time. What was stopping him from going to town now? His mindset hadgged behind because of his explosive growth.
He should be spending the days in town looking for things to steal, and nights in the forest killing strong monsters. He knew where Feldon was; it wouldn''t take him much time to get there either, Lake was getting to the point where he might be able to win in a race against Stan''s horse.
He had been acting too much like he did in hisst life and he was being too nice. What the hell did someone need their jewelry for anyway? At least for him it was Exp. Lake was a kleptomaniac in hisst life, and his parents had made him go to therapy for it.
He now realized he was still in that mindset. The real Lake would''ve already stolen everything he could get his hands on; well without getting caught. That had been his problem in hisst life, he had been caught, and after that he had been watched to closely to do anything.
Leaving the forest Lake felt the feeling die down. Seeing the road to town he started running down it. Before too long he saw Feldon, It didn''t have a wall around it because it was inside the capital wall. The big wall they passed through every morning toe hunting, so he was able to just walk inside.
Before he started stealing, Lake wanted to finish the mission The Insider had given him, the only problem was he needed a Level 10 job. Lake smacked his forehead; he got caught up in the moment and hadn''t thought things through.
Walking up to a man in fancy clothes, Lake said. "Hello, are there any guilds that you don''t have to be level 10 to join?" Lake could see the disgust on this man''s face. Lake was about to mark him and ask someone else. "Some of the guilds that are looking for rarer jobs are morex on the rules, and will give you a guild card."
The only job Lake had that seemed rare was Alchemist, so he asked. "Is the Alchemist guild like that?" After he asked this, Lake could tell this man did not believe he had the Alchemist job but he still answered, "Yes they ept anyone with the job, they send them to a training program to level them up if their job is not level 10."
Lake had a question that he hadn''t beenfortable asking and this seemed like a good opportunity since this man just thought he was a homeless person, or something like that. "Is ten the level cap of every job?"
The way this man reacted made Lake grateful he hadn''t asked anyone this yet; he was looking at him like he was an idiot. "It depends on the person." Lake thought the man was going to follow this statement with more information but he never did.
Lake and the man stood there staring into each others eyes for a while, "Ok, I have somewhere to do." Lake felt a strange feeling as the man lied to him. Lake saw sweat form on the mans face as he realized he had messed up his lie, but he still walked away.
Ifke ever learned how to use the golden writing skill? He was going to write a beginners guide, getting people to answer what they considered dumb questions was almost impossible.
With his current knowledge Lake could probably learn something in a preschool. If they even had schools here, what Lake really needed was mind reading, then he wouldn''t need to ask anything.
Walking up to a new person whoke guessed was an adventure he asked " Do you know where the Alchemist guild is?" The man pointed at an alley between two buildings and said. "Go to the main street, all the guild buildings are there."
The man turned and went back to talking to the person he had been before Lake had asked him anything. Lake wasn''t done asking questions so this was slightly rude. When the man turned Lake saw a backpack on his back. Lake marked it, and started walking to the main street.
Arriving Lake was surprised at how many people were here and most of them were wearing armor and had weapons. The majority of them were standing in front of three buildings. Reading the signs Lake saw they were guild buildings for Adventures, Alchemists, and Fighters.
Lake wasn''t sure what the difference between Adventures and Fighters was, but Lake saw plenty of people leave one and enter the other so they didn''t seem to be inpetition with one another.
Looking around some more, Lake saw another building with a lot of people around it on the other side of the street, but it didn''t have a sign so he wasn''t able to tell what it was. Most of the people going inside had monk robes on, so Lake guessed it was some kind of church.
Walking up to the Alchemist guild Lake saw there was a bit of a line, so Lake asked the closest person. "If we''re here to join the Alchemist guild do we need to wait in line?" The person turned around and Lake could tell his appearance startled her.
Lake understood he was extremely gross. He was still in the clothes Wace had given him on his first day and they weren''t in good shape. Without warning the Woman raised her hand and said "Clean." And in an instant Lake was clean.
The woman looked proud as she said, "I have the healer job, Clean is a spell for disinfecting wounds but I used it on your whole body." Lake guessed this was an impressive feat because this woman''s nose was pointing towards the sky now.
"Cool, did you hear my question?" Lake could tell the woman was mad at his unimpressed attitude. "You can skip the Line." Lake felt he had been too rude so he said, "Thanks for washing my clothes." As he walked away.
Walking inside Lake saw three counters, only one not having a line. Walking up to the counter thedy behind it said, "For members only." Lake was convinced everyone in this city was going to be slightly rude to him at this point.
He didn''t take it to heart though because he knew it was just because of the way he looked. He was morefortable in this sort of environment anyway, this was how the city he grew up in had been.
He remembered how the people treated the homeless on earth, he had seen them get chased out of important buildings plenty of times. "I''m here to join the guild!"
Lake guessed he said this too loud because everyone turned to look at him. Maybe he was more mad than he thought. He had never been good at dealing with customer service, they really rubbed him the wrong way.
"You have the Alchemist job?" Lake shook his head yes. Thedy didn''t look convinced but said, "Head through that door and talk to the person in the orange robe. His name is Glen and he''ll be in charge of your test."
This felt more like she was passing the problem to Glen then taking him seriously, but he would take it. Before he left he marked the watch on her wrist. Lake bet she had multiple, and from now on whenever he saw her he would check if she had it on. If she ever didn''t have it on he would follow the mark to her house and straight to her jewelry. Lake chuckled; he loved being petty.
Going through the door, Lake saw what resembled ab. There were bottles everywhere and he saw a few people brewing liquids of various colors. He also saw an old man in an orange robe, he was sitting at a desk reading a book.
"Hello, are you Glen?" The man looked up from his book and said, "Yes. Do you need something?" "I was told to speak to you about a test to join the guild." Glen stood up and said, "Ok follow me, the test chamber is on the second floor."
Walking up the stairs Lake was not fully willing, he was scared this test would show he was a criminal, and his getaway was getting moreplicated. Hopefully this testing room had a window.
"It''s in here." Stepping inside Lake saw something that resembled a mirror hanging on the wall but It had a milky surface and didn''t reflect anything. Lake switched his job to Alchemist and waited for Glen to tell him what to do.
"Have you ever taken a test to join a guild before?" "No, this is my first time." Glen walked up to the Milk screen and said, "This is a job reader. It''s simr to a job changer but it just tells you details about your current job. Have you already changed your job to alchemist or do we need to postpone the test while you go and change it real quick?"
"No I already did." After Lake said that Glen stuck his hand into the milky substance Lake watched as it shed green then gray and finally blue. Glen took his hand out and said, "The first sh tells us if you have the Alchemist job that''s the green sh if it doesn''t sh green that means you failed. Then the rest tell us the rarity of the skills you''ve unlocked after leveling the job up. If you haven''t reached level ten you''ll have two skills like me, but if you are still level 0 the test will stop after the first sh." Glen said this very fast But Lake felt like he got everything. "Ok, go ahead."
Lake walked up and put his hand into the screen. He found it felt like his hand was in warm jelly; he couldn''t help but think of another use for this screen which made himugh. Looking over his shoulder he saw there was indeed a lock on the door.
This grossed him out and he was about to pull his hand out when he saw a green sh. "Congrattions, that means you passed. Now let''s see your skills." The screen shed gray. "That''s distill, everyone gets that skill at level one." Then the screen shed yellow. "Legendary!"
Glen stood there for a few seconds then said, "I must get my master. I''ll be right back." Glen ran out of the room . Lake took his hand out of the screen and wondered if he should run for it. This situation was getting out of hand. But he decided to stay because Glen''s reaction had seemed positive. When was Legendary a bad thing?
A minuteter Glen returned with an even older man who was wearing a red robe. "Young man, would you mind taking the test again? I need to confirm Glen''s im that you have a legendary skill."
Lake Didn''t really want to put his hand back into the jelly, but did so anyway his mission was more important. Once the screen shed yellow Lake pulled his hand out. Turning around he saw the old man was dancing.
Lake watched as Glen grabbed the old man, and shook. "Master Donovin, pull yourself together." The old man stopped dancing and said, "Sorry young man. You''re the first Alchemist to have a legendary skill in over 5 years, you''re also the first I''ve had the pleasure of initiating." Lake hadn''t been offended because his dancing was pretty good so he said, "It''s ok. What happens next? How do I be a member?"
Donovin was panting still as he said, "Usually we would put you into a training program to get you to level 10 to unlock your next two skills, then you would be ced based on your usefulness, But since you have a Legendary skill you already qualify for the guild in the capital. Let''s get the basic paperwork done and get you on a cart to the capital."
Lake was startled, this was moving too fast for him, he didn''t feel ready to go to the capital yet. "I would need to speak to the people I live with before I leave. They will think I died if I just vanished."
"We will send someone to do that for you." This was troublesome. Lake could tell this old man wasn''t willing to let him leave. "No, I would much rather do it myself." Lake tried to walk out of the room only for Donovan to block his path.
"The Guild would have me killed if I let you leave. It is no longer safe for you out there. We need to send you to the capital before word of you spreads. You see there are plenty of bad people that will kidnap you and make you work for them for the rest of your life. You will only be safe in the capital."
Lake gave up on convincing Donovan and just decided to run for it. He didn''t believe for a second that these two could stop him. Dashing towards the door, Lake was surprised to find neither Glen or Donovin tried to stop him.
Opening the door, Lake saw a massive man in full te armor. Trying to switch directions to head towards the window. Lake found the man''s hand was already mped around his arm. This shocked Lake. He hadn''t even seen him move.
Pulling his arm, Lake found this man''s grip was crazy. Lake felt short of ripping the skin of his own arm there was no way to get away. Lake gave up. It wasn''t like they were carting him off to jail. It would be crazy to start a fight over a promotion.
He also knew if he showed off too much it would just raise this man''s guard towards him, which would make it harder for him to slip awayter. "This is Joy, my personal guard but they will be going with you to the capitol to keep you safe. Alright, Joy take his weapons and bring him to my office. We''ll do the paperwork there."
Lake let Joy drag him into Donovin''s office. This had gone very bad and not in the way Lake was expecting, he was expecting to be chased from town after someone found out he was a thief. In a way he might have preferred it that, at least he would have retained his freedom.
Lake felt as Joy put him in a chair, and held his shoulders so he couldn''t get up. Then he watched as Donovin circled around the back of the desk and sat down and proceeded to pull a scroll and a pen out of the drawer. " Ok hold this scroll." Donovin ced the scroll on the desk in front of Lake. "What does it do?"
Lake wanted to know before he grabbed it, even though he knew there was no way not to do what Donovin said. "It''s your guild scroll. After you hold it your name will appear on it then you and I will sign it. From now on it will be how you identify yourself as a member of the guild you will also receive a badge like this once you get to the guild in the capital."
Donovin pointed at the gold badge on his chest. "This tells people your rank and what branch and guild office you belong to. So my badge says 3 or Master which is my rank in the guild then 73 that''s the number of the office we''re in right now Than D for distribution that''s the branch I work for in the guild. So 3 73 D. Yours will probably say something like 0 1 R. The 0 is your rank initiate, the 1 is the capital office, then the R stands for Research. Most people with Legendary skills are assigned to the Research branch. Once your job reaches level 10 you''ll be promoted to 1 1 R the first 1 will be your new rank apprentice."
Wanting Donovin to shut up, Lake grabbed the scroll, he watched as his name appeared on the scroll. "Alright hand it to me, I have to sign it first." Lake did as he was told and saw Donovin sign his name. "Now you sign it."
Lake once again did what he was told, printing his name Lake heard a ding he hadn''t heard since he said he didn''t like it.[Questplete: Reward Skill: Insider Information] Lake finallypleted the mission that had caused all this wanting to see what it didke pulled up his skill screen.
Insider information (U) Lv.1
Able to see the stats of people and items that belong to groups you''re a part of.
Lake was a little disappointed, how great it would have been if his reward helped him escape. He could see how this could help him find stuff to steal though. He was now a member of the Alchemist guild so this ability should work on the people in this room. Looking at Donovin Lake used his skill.
Name: Donovin Dance
Race: Human
Job: Alchemist
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 11
Endurance 5
Agility 8
Dexterity 27
Perception 14
Intelligence 53
Charisma 8
Free stat points: 0
Lake saw Donovin''s Stats appear on a screen in front of him. After a while Lake figured out that he wasn''t able to pull his skills up for some reason, but this allowed him to estimate peoplesbat strength. Looking over his shoulder Lake used his skill on Joy.
Name: Joy Borf
Race: Human
Job: Magic Knight
Stats
Health 70
Stamina 70
Mana 70
Strength 45
Endurance 58
Agility 76
Dexterity 34
Perception 25
Intelligence 31
Charisma 26
Free stat points: 0
Lake had been a fool to think it was safe toe to town; he thought he would be able to run if he was in danger. Lake would never guess Joy was an agility focused fighter Like him; not only that he madeke look like a baby who pooped his pants.
Lake added up Joy''s stats and was pretty sure they were much higher than a rank 7 human should have. After thinking for a while he remembered the Alchemist guild probably gave him potions to buff his stats.
Lake had walked into the hidden lion''s den. He thought they would be a bunch of nerds but even Donovin had more strength than him. Lake would smack his own face if he actually wanted to.
"Master the cart is ready." Glen walked into the room Lake hadn''t noticed he wasn''t here till just now. "Thank you Glen, we''re almost done. Listen Lake I''m sorry about the forcefulness we''ve shown you. Once you arrive at the capital you will see it was all for you and the guild. I hope you remember that once you be my boss."
Lake was a little confused by this statement, and it showed on his face because Donovin said, "With your skill you''ll quickly surpass me in the guild, and if you''re lucky with your next two skills I wouldn''t be surprised if you one day became the guild leader."
This sounded nice to Lake. Being in charge was usually the best thing to be. "Alright, is there anyone you want me to get in touch with for you. You''ll be able to do so yourself once you reach the capital but for now I will send one of my men to tell them not to worry."
The only person Lake knew that had anything to do with the Alchemist guild was Kyle, him and Mary were pickers for the guild. "My friend Kyle and his wife Mary, you might know them, they trade nts to the guild."
Donovin looked at Glen, who said, "Yes sir I know them, they are the ones who buy the high grade healing potion every week. They work for us for a discount." Donovin smiled and said, "From now on it''s free, with this I hope you''ll forgive us for being so rude to you."
This really didn''t help Lake in any way but he could see how hard Donovin was trying to please him so Lake said, "Thank you, I''ll go with peace." Lake could tell how happy this made Donovin as he said, "I''m Happy to hear this. Alright we must get you on the cart, every second your here your life is in danger. Joy make sure he arrives safely."
Lake felt as Joy lifted him then put an orange robe on him and pulled the hood over his head. "Lake for your own safety we''re going to pretend you''re Glen until you''re in the cart." Hearing Joy''s voice Lake was surprised, he had just assumed she was a man earlier because of how tall she was, but he found the name made more sense now. Except for the Borf part that was the worst name he had ever heard.
Lake watched as the badge on Glen''s chest was put on his. 1 73 D. This was starting to feel like prison again, strong guards, orange clothing, and his new name was a number. Sighingke followed Joy through the building he didn''t try to run even though she let go of him. Seeing her stats had broken his will to fight.
Getting into the cart Lake felt it start moving almost as soon as the door closed. This cart was much nicer than Stan''s; the seats were cushioned and Lake felt he could probably sleep on the bench if he wanted to. Looking across at Joy Lake asked, "How long is the trip to the capital?"
"That really depends on the cart." Nice sarcasm, this trip might end up being hell, and after the high expectations he had for it this was a real let down. "Ha ha ha ha, I''m just messing with you, If we''re able to go full speed we''ll be there in less than a day."
This girlyughing from Joy made Lake ufortable. It didn''t fit with the brutish armor that was covering her whole body. He was happy to see she was willing to talk though, Lake had thought she was the strong silent type when he first met her.
"Why do you work for the Alchemist guild?" He had been wondering why someone so strong wasn''t an adventurer or fighter. "They have the best benefits. The guild pays very well to keep strong fighters at every guild office."
"Why do they need to do that?" He could guess why, but he saw no reason not to ask. He might get some information on the people she was there to fight.
"Alchemist Guilds even the small ones have a fortune inside so they''re constantly targeted by the thieves guild. Even if they were only able to grab a few items from the vault the amount of money would be enough for them to retire. Lots of older thieves see it as thest big job of their career."
Finally one of his questions bore fruit; the thieves guild this was exactly what he wanted information on. "What''s the thieves guild? Is it an actual guild that people can join or is it just a bunch of criminals calling themselves a guild?" Lake tried to control himself so he wouldn''te off as to eager.
"It''s not an official guild but it has as much power as one. They have more guild offices than we do; you can find a representative in almost every town." This hadn''t really answered his question on how to join.
"If that''s true, why have I never heard of it before?" Once again Joy started to giggle. "Why are youughing?"
"You just reminded me of something my master said when I asked him a simr question. He said the best way to find the thieves guild is to follow people wearing leather armor." From now on Lake guessed this would be how he had to do it. Its not like he had a better option.
"If it''s so easy to find them, why don''t you wipe them out." Joy stoppedughing after he asked this. "The thieves guild always reciprocates, if someone orders the destruction of one of their guild halls, that person is usually found dead the next day. They have so much money they can pay any sum to the assassins guild. If they wanted they could probably have the king killed, so no one dares to do anything to them. At the end of the day it''s more like a tax everyone just assumes some of their profits will go to the thieves guild."
Lake was about to ask some more questions when he heard a thunk above him. Looking up he saw a ck tipped arrow sticking through the cart where he assumed the driver was sitting. Hearing the driver start to scream and the cart start to jerk around confirmed his guess.
"We were too slow, the Dark guild alliance found out about you." Too slow, Lake was pretty sure it had been less than an hour since he walked into the guild to join. After Joy said this, Lake heard the horse that had been pulling the cart scream and felt the cart go over arge bump.
He felt the cart start to flip and Joy grab onto him at the same time. A few seconds of bouncing around the cabin Later the cart hade to a stop, Joy released him and to his surprise they were bothpletely fine. They had easily been going over 100 mph when they flipped and Lake had felt a few big bumps, but Joy had taken all the force head on and she seemedpletely unfazed.
Lake watched as she kicked a hole into the roof of the cart. After the crash they hadnded on the side with the door so this was the only way out. Lake watched as Joy forced her way through what was left of the roof. If Lake didn''t feel like he might die soon this sight would have made himugh; she left a doorway in her shape for him to walk through.
"You! Why would you do this to the guild?" Lake heard a soap opera going on outside. Curious, he left the cart to see what was going on. "Hey Glen. What are you doing here?"
Lake already knew what was happening; he was just messing around, the way Glen was dressed left nothing to the imagination. He lookedpletely evil. Lake knew Glen had sold them out, and from the looks of it to himself.
"Joy, just hand him over, it''s not like we''re going to kill him or anything. All that will change is he''ll be forced to work for us instead of you all." This was apelling argument considering in thest few seconds 9 people dressed like Glen had walked out of the surrounding shade.
The new situation was 10 against 1 and while Joy''s strength had impressed Lake he wouldn''t put his money on her; if he had any that was. Lake used his skill to pull up Glen''s stats, he wanted to see if maybe Glen was weak enough for Joy to get revenge before she died.
Name: Nelg Johnson
Race: Human
Job: Dark Mage
Stats
Health 60
Stamina 60
Mana 140
Strength 20
Endurance 47
Agility 21
Dexterity 38
Perception 24
Intelligence 71
Charisma 17
Free stat points: 0
Nope if you went by total Glen, or Nelg could probably take Joy on his own. This was also the first time he saw someone have their Health, Stamina, and Mana be different. Trying to pull up the other peoples stats Lake found he couldn''t.
That confirmed these people didn''te from the alchemist guild at least. Lake decided to give up; he would just surrender; there was no point in fighting. "Alright I surrender."
"No Lake, you can''t! You''ll be a ve for the rest of your life." That did sound like it was going to suck but it wasn''t up to him. "You can''t sacrifice yourself to save me. It''s my job to protect you." That wasn''t what Lake was doing, it was just a side effect, and he felt they would still kill her to keep Glen''s secret.
Lake started to walk over to Nelg but Joy stopped him. "I''ll buy you time, run for it." That sounded like the worst n he had ever heard. He would probably only step a few feet before someone shot him in the leg with an arrow.
He whispered, "No, it''s okay I have a n." He didn''t have a n; this was just so Joy would let him surrender peacefully. "Oh, and what n is that?" Said one of the four people holding bows . Crap he forgot, these people all had really high perception.
There was no way he could whisper and they wouldn''t hear it. Wanting to smack himself but not doing it because it would hurt, Lake watched as all 10 of them raised their weapons. Lake wondered if they would believe he was lying to make it easier to kidnap him, well it was worth a shot. "I was lying to make it easier to kidnap me." All of them startedughing, and Nelg said, "Who would believe that." Damn.
Chapter 26: Nelg and Friends
Chapter 26: Nelg and Friends
Lake was trying to find a good way to convince them he wasn''t nning anything, when he thought "I should just n something, it''s worth a shot who cares if I fail."
And with that thought Lake''s n started, really putting his brain to work, Lake smirked. He just realized why they had sent so many people. It wasn''t Joy; he bet they went overboard because of him. "What do you think my skill does?"
Lake saw a few of them back up after he said this. This proved they were treating him like a bomb that could go off at any time. He was curious what Legendary skills made others capable of. How much of an advantage did they give you? "Shut up ande over here."
This was a vtile situation. Nelg didn''t seem like he was willing to mess around. Lake wondered if they really thought he could pose a threat to them. Opening his stats and skills Lake wondered if they were right; he hadn''t really spent much time with these skills; if you quizzed him on them he would probably fail. They were good but he wondered if they could close such a big gap.
Looking through his skills Lake couldn''t really think of a way to get out of this. The only thing he could do is bet on the skills he would unlock if he used his free points to boost stats to 10. If he got lucky maybe he would get another skill like burst.
Race: Human Lv.2 ( 0/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.1(3 / 10)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 2/5 )
Stats
Health 20
Stamina 20
Mana 20
Strength 6
Endurance 7
Agility 19
Dexterity 24
Perception 19
Intelligence 9
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 10
Lake decided to start with strength; this wasbat and Lake thought it had the best chance to be helpful. Using 4 points Lake felt the familiar feeling of receiving a new skill.
Crunch (U) Lv.1
Strength doubles for the next attack ignores the target''s endurance and armor.
(Cost: 5 Stamina)
This was the kind of stuff Lake was looking for. This skill had also been changed with gold writing, whoever did it had added the ignores the target''s endurance and armor part but had left the cost the same. Lake moved on to Endurance adding 3 points he looked at the new skill.
Refreshed (U) Lv.1
Halves the need for sleep, food, and water. Stamina refills twice as fast.
This was a good skill, just not too useful for this situation. Lake only had 3 points left so he wasn''t going to be able to buff Charisma to 10 so he put 1 point into Intelligence. This was thest chance to make this situation better. He was still not convinced he could win, maybe kill a few with crunch but they would still lose in the end.
Race: Human Lv.2 ( 0/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.1(3 / 10)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 2/5 )
Stats
Health 20
Stamina 20
Mana 20
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 24
Perception 19
Intelligence 10
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Comprehension (U) Lv.1
Grants the ability to understand and control mana.
Grants basic affinity for every element.
Lake found the name to be a little funny because he didn''t really understand how to use this skill at all. Whoever had changed this skill had decided to add/change one word, every. nothing else was golden, butke guessed this was a big change. Using this skill Lake felt a sensation simr to the feeling from holding cores but spread over his whole body. Once the sensation subsided Lake had gained nothing from the experience.
But this gave Lake an idea, there was a way for him to get information with some basic acting. Nelg and them were waiting for him to try something, so he could pretend to exin his n to them while fishing for information.
"Do you know the skill Comprehension?" After he said this a few of the people beside Nelg backed up a bit. "Do you mean the skill everyone gets when their Intelligence reaches 10?"
"Correct. Do you know what makes it special?" Nelg looked a little confused by this question but Lake could tell he had peaked his interest. "It''s one of the few skills with different effects based on the rarity while the name stays unchanged. Common grants one elemental affinity while legendary grants five. I don''t see how this is rted to your Legendary skill."
Neither did Lake but it was still nice to know. "Rx, I''m about to make my point. Do you know how Comprehension works?" Nelg looked furious at this question. "What do you mean, can you not tell I''m a mage? Of course I know."
Lake saw a weird distortion form around Nelg. It was like the area around Nelg wasn''t being lit anymore. Not understanding what he was seeing, Lake turned on his skill Mana Vision. This ended up being the right choice. Lake saw Nelg was somehow affecting the bnce of elements around him. It looked like he was pulling ck mana towards him, and pushing everything else away.
Lake remembered that Nelg was a Dark mage, so Lake assumed Nelg had an Affinity for the Dark Element? Seeing what Nelg was doing Lake tried to imitate him. Reactivating Comprehension Lake tried to single out a single element. Having a hard time he remembered there was already a ce where a single element was singled out.
Locking on to the ck mana around Nelg Lake felt a connection form. "What are you trying to do? I can feel you trying to wrestle my Mana away from me." Nelg dispersed his mana but it was already toote. A ck cloud a few inches thick had formed around Lake. It wasn''t as big as the one that had been around Nelg but it was enough for Lake to get a notification. [New job unlocked Dark Mage]
"Alright that''s enough you''re clearly wasting time in the hopes someonees to help you. Attack!" Lake switched to Dark Mage even though he didn''t have the time to look at its details. He was unarmed so he was hoping to use magic to fight.
Joy had taken his weapons earlier, and never given them back. After Nelg had said attack the five people who had been holding melee weapons and joy had disappeared from their spots. Lake wasn''t able to see what was happening but he could hear them fighting in between him and Nelg.
Suddenly Lake saw a sh move towards him he realized his skill The Sight had kicked in, he was now able to kind of tell what was going on. Lake saw the person who had gotten past Joy was now reaching towards him but wasn''t using their weapon. He saw as their hand touched the cloud of ck mana around him. Lake tried to exert control over the mana to attack but nothing really happened.
Switching to n B Lake activated burst and said "Crunch." Punching out Lake saw his stamina drop to 15 he also saw his fist rip through the man''s chest. Lake felt as his hand crunched through the man''s rib cage and stop when it hit something hard in the man''s chest. [Level up][Level up][Level up][Level up]
Lake looked at the dead man hanging from his hand and said, "Oops." He hadn''t been trying to kill this guy, but thinking about it Crunch had done exactly what it said, so this was on him. [New Quest: Acquire human core]
After he had killed this man the fight had stopped, and Lake could tell the ck cloud around him had gotten thicker. He also knew he had unlocked some new skills from hitting level 1 in Dark mage, but he didn''t dare look because the people holding bows had just released a salvo towards him.
Lake lifted the man still on his hand to use as a shield, but he didn''t stop there, he once again tried to control the mana in front of him this time trying to harden it. As he focused on the mana Lake heard something simr to a whispering from it, without thinking he repeated what it said. "Dark Shield."
Lake Watched as the arrows got stuck in the wall of darkness in front of him. "Stop firing. We can''t kill him, remember. All of you focus on Joy. I''ll take care of him." Lake grabbed the core his hand was touching and let the man''s body fall to the ground. [Questplete: Reward Skill: Impersonate] Lake saw a dark cloud start to form around Nelg again and could feel the mana around him being pulled towards Nelg. "You surprised me I wasn''t expecting you to be a Dark mage like me, but my control is much higher than yours so give it up."
Lake could tell this had turned into a tug of war and he was at a heavy disadvantage. He watched as his cloud of mana slowly shrunk and instead of fighting Nelg, Lake decided to support Joy. Lake used thest of the cloud to put up a shield to block the arrows they had shot at her and then used burst to rush behind one of the melee fighters she was still fighting. "Crunch."
Lake punched through the back of this man.[Level up] Lake smiled this time it had been on purpose. Before he let the body hit the ground he grabbed the short sword that was still in his hand. When Lake grabbed this sword he felt a feeling simr to the knife Mary had given him and he knew it was enchanted. "ck slice."
Lake felt the mana fluctuate and knew Nelg had fired a spell towards him. Not looking, He used Burst and jumped behind one of the people Joy was still fighting. He was nning to use them like a shield but it hadn''t been necessary.
Lake watched as the spell passed over the ce he had been standing. "Dark shackles." Lake felt something grab his wrists and ankles. Looking he saw ck chains had formed and grabbed onto him.
Pulling Lake found he wasn''t able to move his arms or legs from the spot the chains had formed. "Ha ha, I got you. Now that you''re in those you can''t get away. Just sit there and watch as I finish this bitch off." Lake guessed Nelg didn''t like Joy for some reason, they had been working together and it was prettymon for coworkers to not get along, but name calling wasn''t very nice.
Lake saw Nelg start to charge up for another spell; it looked like he nned to use a big one to finish Joy off in one hit. Not willing to sit here and watch, Lake also started to gather mana and as soon as it started to gather around him Lake saw the chains start to absorb it. "Oh shit." Lake stopped out of fear of making the chains stronger.
When he thought about it it made sense he was using the same element as Nelg; what he needed was the opposite. Thinking about it Lake bet Light was also an element so taking what he had learned earlier. He tried to gather Light mana out of the surroundings.
After failing his first attempt,ke heard Nelg say, "Dark sh." Lake knew Joy was surrounded on three sides so she wouldn''t be able to doge. "Magic resist." Lake saw a red barrier form around Joy.
When Nelg''s spell hit, the barrier broke and Joy was hit with the remaining power. Joy''s barrier seemed to negate some of the spell but Lake could tell she had been injured. Going back to trying to use Light to break his chains, Lake had a mild sess as he saw a few colors of mana sh for a millisecond before they reintegrated back into his surroundings.
That was fine because he had gotten a whiff of the scent he was after and was now able to feel it. Zeroing in on it, Lake started to gather white mana in a cloud around him. After it started Lake felt all eyes on him which wasn''t a surprise because he was glowing like a beacon.[New job unlocked Light Mage]
Switching to the new job Lake tried to think of a way to break his shackles. He could tell they didn''t like the Light mana because they were not absorbing it this time, but they didn''t seem like they were being damaged. That meant he needed to form an attack. Shaping the mana into a de, Lake heard something simr to when he had used Dark Shield for the first time. "Light de."
Repeating what the voice had said Lake saw a Light de smash into the shackle on his hand that was holding the sword he had taken. With a crack the shackle dissipated and Lake''s arm was free. "Dark sh."
Lake saw Nelg fire another spell at Joy and this time she didn''t use Magic resist. Lake saw her swing her sword towards the spell. "Repel." The spell was hit to the side and impacted into a tree blowing a chunk out of it; with a snapping noise the tree fell towards Joy and the three remaining melee fighters.
Lake saw they scattered out of the way but Joy dashed towards him. "Dismember." Lake didn''t like the sound of that. Was she going to free him by cutting his limbs off? Lake closed his eyes not wanting to look, but he didn''t feel any pain. He instead felt one of his legs be free.
Opening his eyes, Lake saw she had tried to cut through both chains but the one on his other leg had stopped her sword. "Dismember" Lake saw her cut the other Leg free. Seeing he had built up more Light Mana Lake used Light de and freed hisst arm. "Run, they aren''t fast enough to catch me."
Lake felt Joy grab his arm and start to pull him behind her. "Chase them." Getting his feet under him he started to run. "If they couldn''t catch us, why didn''t we run at the beginning?" Lake could hear footsteps behind them and knew they were starting to fall behind.
"The first guy you killed was from the assassins guild, his name was Jon Melon. If we had run he would have caught us and probably killed me with a sneak attack. I wouldn''t be able to sense his attacking and after I was dead he would have captured you."
Thinking how Jon had slipped past Joy at the beginning to grab him, Lake guessed he was faster than her. He had unknowingly killed a big shot and made it possible to escape. Then Lake remembered he had taken Jon''s core. Looking at it Lake wondered if human cores were used the same way as monster cores. He put it into his satchel so he wouldn''t drop it. "Stop gathering Light mana, you''re making it impossible for us to lose them."
"Oops, sorry." Lake didn''t let it just dissipate; he shot it behind them at the closest person, he missed, but it had made the person slow down to dodge so it hadn''t been a waste. After 20 minutes of running they had reached Feldon. Lake was expecting for Joy to run towards the Alchemist guild but she ran towards the unmarked building Lake had assumed was a church. "Come on, we can ask for shelter from the Light Temple."
Chapter 27: Light Temple
Chapter 27: Light Temple
Running up the steps Lake saw there were still plenty of people around even though it was getting dark. "Halt, no guild business. You know that Joy. Get off the temple steps." Joy came to a stop and said "This boy qualifies to enter the temple."
Joy crouched down to Lake and whispered, "Lake show them your Light magic. It''s the only way they will keep you safe." Doing as he was told, Lake gathered some Light mana around him. "Ok he can enter, but only him." After the man said this, Joy let Lake''s arm go and said, "Once you go inside, ask for protection and tell them what happened. I''lle and get you once I pay your bounty."
After she said this Joy walked down the stairs and towards the Alchemist guild. "You shoulde in if you want to see the temple head before tomorrow. She enters seclusion around this time. Also hand me your weapon, I''ll give it back when you leave."
Lake did want to see the temple head, so he walked up the stairs handed off his sword then went into the door. When he entered he saw the inside was onerge garden. Light was pouring down from the ceiling. Lake wasn''t sure where it wasing from but he knew it was magic, and by magic Lake meant pure light mana.
Walking into the garden Lake could feel the distinct vor he had felt when he used Light magic earlier. Seeing only one person in the garden, Lake walked up to her. "Protection granted."
"Thank you. I wasn''t sure if you were the right person." This had made Lake''s life a lot easier; he had been unsure who he should ask to be granted protection. "Um, do you know why I need protection?"
Lake wanted to know if she was already aware of what had happened. "Because you were attacked by the Dark Guild Alliance and during the fight you killed someone from the Assassins guild."
"I actually killed two people. Was the other not from the Assassins guild?"
"No, the other was from the Thieves guild, and they don''t avenge the lives of their members the way the Assassins guild does. When you kill a member of the Assassins guild they hunt you and all your friends and family until you run out of time and they kill you, or pay the Blood bounty. They do this because it makes most people too afraid to resist when theye for them. The Thieves guild just treats the death of their members as part of business."
Lake found this an interesting way for them to act. It was quite funny to not allow people to hurt your assassins. One of their rules was don''t defend yourself, or you get in trouble. "So how much is the bounty?"
"It depends on who you killed, you have to pay the amount that the Assassins guild spent on training them." Lake understood now the Assassins guild didn''t care about their members as people, they saw them as property, and if you break it you buy it. Now that Lake understood his situation, he wanted to know about the Light Temple and how it was different from a guild. "Why did Joy bring me here, instead of the Alchemist guild?"
"Because you''ll be safer here the assassins guild had a chance of getting to you there. Most guilds have lots of members that are also part of the Dark Guild Alliance."
"And what''s stopping them froming here?" The temple head smiled and said, "Me, It''s my job to keep the guilds out of the Temple. If they send someone here I''ll kill them. But they would never do so because it would start a war with the Light Temple" This made it sound like the Temple was stronger than the guilds.
"What exactly is the Light Temple?"
"The Light Temple was founded after the Demon lord killed the Light goddess during thest Cmity. We try to strengthen the light branch of Magic in this world by teaching it to as many people as possible, and building sanctuaries like this one in as many ces as possible. We hope this will allow the goddess to be reborn eventually. It''s a simr method the Demon worshipers used to use to allow the Demon Lord to reincarnate every generation."
"And the Demon Lord just allows this to happen?"
"No But he''s still weakened from the final fight between them. The current situation is just the opposite of how it was when the Goddess was alive, and the Demon Lord would reincarnate to fight her. We are just on the losing side at the moment." Lake thought this was dumb and they should just let both die and be done with it.
"So how does this affect Light Magic? I am still able to use it." The Temple head giggled a little. "Light magic wasn''t really affected, Holy magic was. The Goddesses name is misleading because she took the God of Lights surname after they were married. She was the Holy Goddess before the marriage."
This almost made Lake''s brain stop working, but as long as her followers were alright with it he guessed it was fine. "So Holy magic doesn''t work anymore?"
"No. It''s just a lot less likely for people to be given the attribute and even with it it takes more effort to use Holy spells, but as the Goddess gets closer to her rebirth it''s getting easier for them. That''s why people who have it are treasured by the Temple."
Lake was almost done asking questions, but he really wanted to know how the Demon Lord won this time even though he had lost so many times before; He bet it was something really dramatic. "Why did the Goddess lose this time instead of the Demon Lord?"
Lake saw the Temple Heads face be sour, as she said. "One of the Demigods in her army betrayed her during the final battle. He stabbed her in the back with a de cursed with Demon Blood Poison, and it weakened the goddess enough to let the Demon Lord win."
"Why did he stab her?"
"The betrayer made a deal with the Demon Lord for greater Unholy powers. After he stabbed her he left for a different world, but thankfully the oracles said the Light God killed him a few days ago. they stabbed him through the heart with the same knife he used on the Light goddess; it took almost 20 years for them to find him but with the goddesses life avenged, It won''t be long before the Light God goes for the Demon Lord."
One name came to mind as the Temple head said this; Laka. Lake would bet his life that the betrayer was Laka. Lake couldn''t help but think, "What a stupid bastard." "It''s time for me to enter seclusion. Let me show you where you''ll be sleeping tonight."
Chapter 28: The God of Light
Chapter 28: The God of Light
Lake got out of the Bed they had given himst night and looked at the sundial-like thing on the table beside him and saw it had only been a little over 3 hours since he had gone to bed. Lake was confused he had been so tired he had gone to bed as soon as he saw it. Why did he get up already? Then he remembered Refreshed. He had kind of written it off in his mind because it didn''t really help him fight, but now that he thought about it this could save him 4 hours on average a day.
Ready to get his day started, Lake hoped the Light temple got up early. He did have something he needed to do before he did anything though, switching to Dark Mage Lake looked at his stats.
Race: Human Lv.2 ( 5/10 )
Job: Dark Mage Lv.5 (136 / 160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 20
Stamina 20
Mana 20
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 24
Perception 19
Intelligence 30
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
"Nice now I can get some real thinking done." Lake thought it would be funny to say thest dumb thing he would in his life in celebration of bing a genius. Moving on to his new jobs, Lake felt like it had to be tampered with because 5 levels had given him so many stat points.
Dark Mage (R) Lv.5/10 (136/160)
On level up:
Intelligence 4
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X3 Dark Magic Kills
Skills from job:
Dark Control (R) Lv.1
Dark Destruction (E) Lv.1
"Oh Nice more letters other than U and C." Lake knew this meant rarity but he didn''t really know how many there were or what they meant. He felt this was one of those questions people would look down on him for asking, and with him being so smart he couldn''t abide being treated like he was dumb.
He had thought this job would synergize with Thief and therefor be tampered with, but oh well the ones before him probably had their reasons to leave this job alone. Moving on to the new skills Lake read them carefully because he had so much time.
Dark Control (R) Lv.1
Increases affinity for Dark to Low.
Dark Destruction (E) Lv.1
Makes it easier to Learn Dark attack spells.
"Seems pretty good." Lake then went to the job that allowed him to be here.
Light Mage (U) Lv.1
On level up:
Intelligence 4
Exp conditions:
Kills
Protecting Holy Magic Users
Bonus Exp conditions:
X3 Light Magic Kills
X3 Protecting Holy Magic Users
Skills from job:
Lake was kind of surprised to see a U that wasn''t golden. He assumed that anything with a U was from the Insider but he guessed it meant any job that had been tampered with because instead of gold it was a light blue. "Light." This was a weak association but it was the best answer he had.
The Protecting Holy Magic Users part was also in Light blue which increased the odds. If it had something to do with the God of Light he could probably ask the temple head. Lake had already seen Impersonate in the list but he hadn''t read it because he wanted to save it forst, because it was from the Insider and he bet it was going to be good.
Impersonate (U) Lv.1
steal targets identity and add it to your collection.
(Uses targets core.)
"Does it change my face?" Lake had always dreamed about killing everyone who was more handsome than him, and if this skill did what he thought it did he would make it a reality. He wasn''t bad looking, so anyone better was taking it too far. In the future he would make a grand collection. Getting lost in his fantasies, Lake didn''t notice someone was looking into his room.
"Hello." Lake looked up to see someone he didn''t know was looking into his room without knocking. "Sorry. I thought I heard someone speaking. I didn''t know another guest hade to stay here. I''ve been the only one using these rooms for thest few months, so I was surprised to hear someone down here.
Lake liked it when people apologized to him so he decided to let this slide; it wasn''t like he was changing. "Hey, do you know if they have any extra clothes I can change into?" Lake blew past whatever this person had said to him he was tired of wearing these rags and this person was wearing what seemed to be temple robes, and they said they were also a guest, so maybe they gave out free clothes. "Yeah there''s a supply closet for guests. Come with me, I''ll show you."
Standing up Lake could feel his pants dying; they were definitely on theirst legs. "My name''s Lake I''ll be here for the next few days so if you hear me talking, know it''s to myself not you." Lake didn''t want her poking her nose in his important business, because if she was here she was probably trouble.
"I''m Mimi. Sorry again about staring at you. I was just thinking you didn''t really look like a Holy Magic user." Lake had a bad feeling like he was about to be pulled into some dumb side story about this girls tragic fate. I mean just look at her name it was like the gods chose it to make him feel pity towards her. It wasn''t like he was unwilling; he just needed to be sure to gain benefits in some way if he was forced to help with something. Not to mention the boost his ego would get if everyone thought he was some hero.
"You''re right I''m not here because I''m a holy magic user. I''m just a light magic user but I made the Assassins guild mad." Mimi looked sad as she asked, "Have they gone after your family yet?" Lake giggled on the inside. This next line was going to make him seem like some tragic hero in the making, and in the future if he ever did something cool in front of her Mimi would think of this moment. He put aplicated look on his face and said, "I don''t have a family."
Lake almostughed when he saw his line shake Mimi''s heart. He could tell she wanted to ask about his past, and just like that he became a mysterious enigma she would spend her free time thinking about. "The robes are in here." Before Lake grabbed anything he asked, "When does the day start around here? I''m up kind of early and I''m not sure what I should do with my time."
"Most people here use all their free time to meditate. It''s a lot easier to get in touch with the Light element here, so if I was you I''d give it a try." This made Lake remember a question he wanted to askst night after he used a spell and it had not cost mana. "Last night was the first time I used magic. Why didn''t it use my mana?"
"It would have if you were in an environment where there wasn''t the element you needed. For example if you tried to use a dark spell in here it would affect your mana while a light spell wouldn''t and would actually get a power boost." So the environment yed a role inbat. He would need to remember this in the future so he didn''t idently use all his mana. Since he had all elemental affinities he could always match his spells to the environment and leave his mana to use his skills.
"Are there skills other than spells that use mana?" Lake felt It would make sense for Mage skills to use mana instead of stamina. "Those are called magic skills; they''re spells you can only get from leveling up. they can''t be learned through regr meditation like most spells."
Lake felt Mimi seemed pretty informed about the temple and magic so he asked, "Why does my Light Mage job have blue writing in it?" To his relief Mimi didn''t show a shocked reaction. He had been afraid it was going to be like the Alchemist guild all over again and they were going to beg him to join, or not let him leave.
"The Light God blessed his jobs to empower Light magic users. He was afraid the Demon worshipers would overpower the Temple while he was gone looking for the betrayer so he used one of his artifacts to give them a way to grow faster. Since the temple is protecting us." Mimi looked like she wasn''t supposed to admit she was a Holy magic user, and tried to cover up what she just said. "Since the Temple is protecting Holy Magic users Light Magic users gets a passive source of Exp as long as they''re members of the Temple." Lake pretended not to notice. He was pretty sure he could also use Holy Magic to if he tried, so it wasnt a big deal to him. He would try next time he was alone, because all this stuff had made him curious.
Lake was done asking questions, and wanted Mimi to go away so he said, "Alright I''m going to change now." Lake watched as Mimi walked away, and thought. "If it''s a secret they should make it less obvious." Lake could see slightly golden mana swirl around Mimi; he wondered if it was just him and others couldn''t see it so clearly, but ether way there wasn''t a reason for her to try and hide it.
Grabbing a robe, Lake started to change; he wasn''t too sure how to wear it so he just twirled it around himself. He also noticed there were no underwear so he just kept the ones he had been born in.
After changing Lake walked back to his room and started to meditate. "Man she wasn''t kidding." Lake watched as a massive amount of Light mana gathered around him. With this much Lake bet he could make some crazy spells but not wanting to destroy his room he decided to start with defense.
After a while Lake found trying to control this massive amount of Mana was almost impossible. "I wonder if it''s because I''m a Level zero Light Mage." Lake switched to trying to do something with less mana he probably got ahead of himself, this was a lot harder than he was expecting.
Chapter 29: Akal the Betrayer
Chapter 29: Akal the Betrayer
Around 2 hourster, Lake hadn''t really made any progress; he had thought he was about to get a bunch of new spells, but in the end he was only able to make a defense spell called Light screen. After a while he had given up on defense and moved on to attack spells, but no matter what he tried it always became Light de.
Deciding to give up until he leveled Light Mage up a few times, Lake looked around his room for something to do, but there really wasn''t much in the room other than the bed and the table that had the sundial on it.
Looking closely at the table Lake noticed it had a drawer in it. Sliding it open Lake saw a book that said Light goddess on the cover. Picking it up Lake opened it and looked through a few pages. Lake found that it told the history of the goddess up until the point where she was killed by the Demon Lord. Lake guessed this was here because these rooms were usually used by Holy Magic users, but seeing he had some time this was a great opportunity to get some more information on the history of this world.
Skipping to the end, Lake started looking for pictures, because any good book would have some. Not finding any Lake was disappointed and almost put it back in the drawer but stopped because one of the names in the book had caught his attention. "Akal."
"You mean the betrayer, no one calls him Akal anymore." Looking up Lake saw the Temple head was standing in the hallway, but she wasn''t looking into his room. This made him smile. He loved when people knew how to act. "I''m here to get you for breakfast, It''s about to be served." Lake stood up and walked into the hallway.
"It''s good to see you''ve taken an interest in the goddess." The fact she was here was an obvious sign that they nned to ask him for something before he left. Lake had been a little worried yesterday when he guessed Laka had been the betrayer, because The temple head had said they had an oracle that seemed to be in contact with the god of light.
If fate was real there was no way his wouldn''t be intertwined with the Light temple. It had not escaped his notice that the Temple head seemed to know about him before he even walked through the door, or the fact that they put him down here with Mimi even though they could have put him somewhere he would of never seen her, or found out about her secret.
It was starting to feel like he was intertwined in their grand n before he even walked through the door; or maybe his massive brain was overthinking things and this was all a coincidence. Either way they didn''t seem hostile so he was fine eating their breakfast.
Realizing he was beside the best person to ask about Light magic, Lake asked, " How do I learn more spells? I''ve only been able to Learn one defense and one attack and since then it always bes them no matter how I try to make something new."
"That''s how every branch of magic is. You can learn the two basic spells but to go any further you have to actually understand the element''s properties. Every branch has its strengths and weaknesses, if they all had the same exact spells there would be no point in there being more than one." This kind of made sense to Lake he didn''t really even understand what he was doing.
"So what makes Light special? Can you show me some of your spells, so I can see what I need to do?" He was hoping he could just copy what she did.
"I can show you but you won''t understand." The Temple head put her hand up and said "Bright sh" Lake saw the world turn white. 30 secondster the light faded andke saw they were still in the hallway. "What was that?"
"A low grade spell it''s one of the next ones you''ll learn if you decide to focus on Light magic." If Lake understood this correctly, low grade was the one after basic which was where he was. The amount of difference between them seemed quiterge. "You were right, I have no idea what you did." He did feel he would have been able to understand something if she hadn''t blinded him though. It seemed she was messing with him.
"Ok pick any seat that''s open." They had just arrived in a big open dining room. Lake kept being surprised at how big this ce was; it felt like it went on forever. Yesterday when he had first walked into the temple he thought it was some kind of greenhouse but there was a staircase that led underground. At this point he wouldn''t be surprised if the temple ran under the whole town.
Lake picked the seat at the head of the table as revenge for her messing with him earlier, but to his surprise the Temple head just smiled and sat at one of the normal chairs. After a while some more people showed up. Most of them were older, and came to sit near him at the head of the table, but he also saw Mimi and a few other people his age who all sat near the temple head.
He understood why she had smiled now he had unknowingly put himself in the middle of a graveyard. For some reason one of the older women was giving him the stink eye, and started to walk over to him. "Young man, why are you in the temple head''s seat?"
"She said I could sit anywhere, and this seemed to be the best seat."
"You know you should have asked before you sat down. Breakfast is when we go over Important temple business."
"You can still go and talk to her."
"No, that end of the table is for the younger members, and the guests. It''s disrespectful for the temple head to have to sit down there." Lake looked at the Temple head, and saw she was talking andughing with the people who had sat by her. She seemed to really be enjoying herself. He bet being away from the woman currently yelling at him was making her breakfast much better than usual.
If this woman had asked nicely this problem could have been solved but now it was toote. Lake knew how to deal with people like her. You couldn''t win in a normal way, you just had to make them mad with logic, and once they lost their cool they would yell for a while then storm off. That''s when the good part started everyone would have seen what had happened, and woulde up to you to secretly talk shit behind their back. This was a type of moral victory.
Right when he was about to ask about what rules he was breaking, he felt a tap on his shoulder. "Lake, it''s a good time for us to switch seats, our little joke should end now." The temple head hade up behind him and seemed to want her seat.
As Lake walked to the other end of the table he saw the older woman had started to give the temple head an ear full. Lake started to smirk his revenge had worked just in a way he didn''t expect.
Walking up to where the temple head had been sitting, Lake saw he was about to sit in the middle of a group of 5 people his age and foresaw that he was about to get to know each and every one if he didn''t do something about it. Thankfully, he already knew Mimi and she would''ve already prepped the introductions, so he could seamlessly integrate into the group with a small introduction. "Hello I''m Lake, I''ll be here for the next few days."
After Lake said this Mimi stepped up to the te, and said. "This is Lia, Maky, And Tims. They are members of the Temple. And this is Cas she''s like us, and only here for protection." Lake didn''t want to beat around the bush. The first three were boring, they just worked here, so he forgot about them. He wanted to know more about Cas, he bet she had an interesting story. "Why are you being protected?" She had taken the words out of his mouth, but at least after he answered she would reciprocate.
"The dark guild alliance attacked me after they discovered I had a legendary skill. I also killed a member of the Assassins guild during the fight, so I guess there''s more than one reason" All of them looked shocked when he said he killed someone from the Assassins guild. It must be a well known rule to just let them kill you.
"You don''t have to go into detail about the skill, but would you mind telling us what job it''s from."
"Alchemist, I got it at level one so I really didn''t know how big of a deal it was going to be, so I handled myself in a dumb way, I just walked into the guild. If I knew what I did now I would have traveled to the capital first."
"I bet they were going to use you for poison production." Said Lia. "You''re probably right." This was probably exactly what he would have been doing for the Dark Guild Alliance.
"I''m in a simr situation I received a Legendary skill for hunter and stupidly told someone what it did. The next day the temple came and got me before the Assassins guild could kidnap me, apparently the skill I got is well known for being one of the best for Assassins because it lets me erase my presence. They nned to force me into bing an assassin." Lake had to agree this skill would be helpful for Assassins. He could see why they wanted her. "So do you just have to stay here forever?"
"No, but since the Assassins guild has said that for them to leave me alone I''d have to pay what they will lose if I don''t work for them." This sounded crazy; it was like they could do whatever they wanted, and people just had to put up with it.
After being annoyed at the Assassins guild for a moment Lake started to feel weird. He felt like something in his core was saying if he joined the light temple he could not only destroy the Assassins guild, but also make arge profit in the process.
Lake felt it was maybe the natural instinct of The Insider to side with weaklings with no concern over right and wrong, and it was probably a simr choice that Laka had made when he had been in Lake''s position. Laka had also sided with the underdogs; it just happened to be the Dark guild alliance at the time, but he had made off like a bandit for doing so.
It was like the Insider had a nose for profit and it was showing him how to kill two birds with one stone. Lake guessed this was a result of its massive experience. There wasn''t much of a point not to target the stronger side they probably had better stuff to steal anyway.
Lake heard a bell ding, and saw that food was starting to be brought and ced onto the table. "We''ll talk moreter, enjoy your food." Lake saw that everyone had stopped talking to eat and wondered if this was something the Temple head used to make the woman next to her leave her alone during breakfast.
Chapter 30: Fruit Salad
Chapter 30: Fruit Sd
Lake had just finished his breakfast which had been the best meal he had eaten since arriving to this world. The only thing that could have made it better was if there was some meat. It seemed eating meat wasn''t verymon in a lot of people''s lives, he wondered if it had something to do with animals being hard to tame or kill. Animal farming wasn''t really a thing either. The only way to eat meat was to go and kill it, and hunting was a dangerous job so most people stuck to farming.
The reason he had enjoyed this meal so much was it had been vegetable soup that had actually been seasoned, and there was juice to drink. Lake wondered if they had tea If he was still here tomorrow he should ask, and if they didn''t he would show them how to make itter. It would fall in line with him being an Alchemist apparently, because that was how he unlocked the job to begin with.
As soon as the tes were removed Lake saw the olddy go back to nagging the Temple head, and knew it was alright to talk again. Lake turned to Cas and asked, "So what do we do for the rest of the day?"
"It''s more like what you do. You''re free to walk around and do nothing, or you can go to a ss, since you can use Light magic. The temple head usually holds a short ss every morning, but me and Mimi are going to work in one of the gardens."
"One of the gardens, there''s more than one?"
"There''s nine that I know of. I was lucky enough to find where they grow the fruitst week, so me and Mimi have been spending our days there." Lake guessed this was one of the benefits of controlling light you could build farms underground.
"So how big is this ce? It''s like a town down here." He had been wanting to know for most of the time he had been here.
"I''m not sure, every few days I look around for a while, but it seems new rooms appear every now and then, so I don''t think you could ever figure out how big it is."
"The light temples serve as a distraction for people like us that can''t go outside anymore. That''s why there''s gardens, and why there''s so many rooms with different things. It''s so we never run out of things to do." What Mimi said made Lake realize some people actually spent their whole lives here. He bet it wasn''t like this before the Demon Lord. Now the dark guilds seemed to reign supreme.
"Cas, how long have you been in the temple?" He wanted to see what might happen to him in a worse case scenario.
"Two years. None of my applications to guilds were epted so I have no way to pay off the Assassins guild." Two whole years, hopefully Mimi gave him a better answer. "What about you Mimi?"
"Just a couple of months when my intelligence reached 10 I was given Rare Comprehension and one of my three affinities was holy magic. When I told my mom she sent me to the temple for protection." This wasn''t to bad Lake could probably keep himself busy for a few months. He just wondered why Mimi''s mom sent her here right away. "Can the Dark guild alliance find people with holy affinity, or could you have kept it a secret?"
"No it''s pretty obvious. I''m not supposed to tell people, but a lot of people can tell just looking at me." Lake had also been able to tell almost right away there was a strange mana gathering around her that seemed really weak. Lake decided to get off such a heavy topic. "So what are holy spells like?"
"They are able to do lots of things simr to Light and Healing magic but its main use is fighting against Unholy and corrupt magics Like necromancy and curses. Normal healing magic can do nothing against curses or undead." It was starting to seem this world was a lot more dangerous than he would ever have thought when he first got here. He had been pretty safe in the corn vige, so he assumed this world wasid back.
"You should get going if you''re going to ss." Get going to where? He had no idea where he even was in the temple right now. Seeing his nk look, Cas said. "Come with me I''ll show you."
A few minutester, they had arrived in a heavily lit room with people sitting on mats. There were a lot of people that had not been at breakfast here, and he wondered if they were people from town for the ss, or if the temple had mutable ces for people to eat.
The temple head saw him as he walked in with Cas and motioned for him toe to her, so Lake said bye to Cas and walked over to her. "There''s not much point in you taking this ss, you''re too new to magic. You''d be better off going to the library to read a book for beginners." There was no way that was true, he had kicked assst night.
"I was told this ss is short. I can go to the libraryter, it''s not like I have much to do." After he said this he saw a look on her face like he was going to regret not taking her advice. "Ok, find an empty mat, ss will start in a few seconds." Lake was wondering if he should leave, his prank senses were going off because of what the Temple head said, but decided to stay because he would have to wait till after the ss to go to the library anyway because he didn''t know where it was. Lake sat on a mat near the front of the ss.
"Ok everyone get ready." Lake saw the Temple head raise her hand, and then nothing for an hour. After it was over it took his eyes a while to start working again. "What was that? I saw nothing. How is this a ss?" He had gotten mad when the first thing he saw after his eyes had started working again was the Temple head smirking at him. "It''s not that you saw nothing but that you saw too much. You need to learn how to focus your senses better or you''ll never get any further in the Light branch of magic. With your current state I would say you would be good at earth magic though."
"That sounded like an insult. Are you calling me a rock head or something?" The Temple head covered her mouth, he guessed to keep herself fromughing at him. "No Earth magic is based on the physical things that you can see and touch. Light magic is much more esoteric, so it can be hard for beginners like you."
"Fine, will you show me to the library. I want to read a book." He didn''t say what book, but she knew anyway. "Our library has many books for beginners like you, so be careful when you pick one. There are many different approaches to magic so if you don''t like one move on to the next one till something feels right. Also no practicing in the library."
As they were walking, Lake asked a question that had formed during breakfast. "How rare is it to get a legendary skill?" His scale was probably off since he didn''t even know howmon amon skill was.
"The rarer your job, the more likely that it happens. it''s prettymon for a person to get at least one throughout their life but since you''re so young your guild will see you as someone with potential to get multiple. The amount of money you''ll make for your guild is crazy as long as those skills are any good."
"I don''t think it''s too useful for making potions to be honest." Lake didn''t know why he said that. "You should keep that to yourself. If the alchemist guild heard that they wouldn''t pay your bounty, and you''d be stuck here for the rest of your life." After a few seconds of silence The temple head asked, "Would you mind telling me what it does? Maybe I can clear up your doubts about it."
Lake wasn''t sure it was a good idea but he went for it. "It reverses the effects of poisons on me." The Temple head stopped walking and asked, "Are you serious?" Lake nodded his head. "Then you have nothing to worry about. It''ll take some time but you''ll be able to make it work for you, and your guild. They are hard to make and you''ll have to dabble in curse magic but there are permanent poisons that act like curses, but on you they''ll be blessings. As an added bonus you''ll never go hungry again since you can probably eat any kind of nt next time you see a nt you should try it out."
Lake had never thought about that. He bet she was right, from now on he could buff himself while getting full by eating random nts. "Thank you, your advice has been very helpful." As he was saying this a new question formed in his head. "Wait, is it easier to make poison? Why can''t I just make a good permanent potion? Why does it have to be bad?"
"Much easier, at the start most ingredients are poisonous. That''s part of an alchemist''s job, making good things out of a bunch of bad things. The way you make permanent potions is by enchanting them but it''s way easier to curse things especially these days. You see enchanting needs materials like powerful cores and such, curses just need negative energy which is abundant; you can just pull it out of the air."
"Oh, so what jobs do I need to be able to do what you said?" To be honest Lake thought curses sounded cool, he would probably do more than dabble if he was able to unlock the job.
"There are a bunch of jobs that allow you to curse things. Since the Demon Lord won the battle the amount of Unholy mana has risen almost to the level of the God of Light. The amount of jobs that deal with Dark forces has increased as well, so you should have no problem unlocking a few."
Lake felt it was weird she was encouraging this behavior, he thought she would try to dissuade him from using dark magic and he voiced his surprise. "I''m surprised you''re saying these things."
"The God of Light has always said it''s how you do something that matters, not that you''re doing it."
"What about why you do something? What does he say about that?"
"Intentions don''t always affect the results." Lake found it funny to hear this, in hisst life people always said bad intentions made everything you did bad. The God of Light was saying intentions don''t affect results so you had to act responsibly. It didn''t matter that your knife was poisoned if you never waved it around. It only mattered once it cut someone, or you.
They had just arrived at the library. The temple head pointed at a shelf, and said. "Those are the books you should start with. Have a nice time reading, if you need me ask the librarian how to get to the lobby." and she left him there to figure it out.
Chapter 31: Book Learning
Chapter 31: Book Learning
Lake grabbed 3 books to start with. He felt there was no way he would understand much from them though, he didn''t even understand one of the titles, "Mass coalescence?" If this was for beginners what was he?
Lake decided to start with the book called, Magic for doers. He considered himself to be a doer so he bet this was the right one for him. "Gather the element then filter it through your senses. This will allow you to split it into its principles and express it in different ways. Stripping some and adding others is the essence of spell crafting."
Lake started to blow a raspberry, but stopped when some spit hit the book; he could tell it was hand written and he didn''t want to get in trouble. Moving on to a book called Grasp Light Lake was hoping topare the information in the two, so he could figure out what the hell any of these words meant in this situation.
"To grasp light already goes against its principles, so you added this quality to make your first spell." This made some sense to Lake. He felt he knew what it was saying, you had to make it do something it shouldn''t be able to usually, and this made it possible to make something like light into a solid wall. He had added something that would usually be found in something solid like earth.
"Is this what the temple head meant when she said I would be good at Earth magic? I have already started to grasp what it takes to make something solid." Lake thought back to when he had casted his first spell he had been trying to make a shield out of darkness, something that didn''t really even exist; it was just the absence of light, but at the same time it was an element.
Thinking about this made his head start to spin. He bet this was a good time to open Mass Coalescence. "The elements are in a bnced state when you find them, and naturally cancel each other out. When you gather mana you pull the elements out of bnce, and use the chaos to shape your spells. The gods do this on a much grander scale; the absence of one affects more than we can evenprehend; it changes the bnce of the reality we are subjected to." Lake guessed this was talking about the mixture he pulled light and dark mana out of when he had been fighting Nelg, and how there was less holy mana now that the goddess was dead.
Lake was done with these three books He hadn''t read thempletely he just looked through them for stuff he could understand and it had still taken a few hours. Lake nned to take a break for a while ande backter to read a few new books. Getting up to put the books away he saw books with titles he was interested. He hadn''t understood them earlier, but now he was tempted to go ahead and look through them. What was a few more hours? It''s not like he actually had something to do.
"Flipped principles of Darkness and Light." This big book looked like it might answer some of his questions about darkness. "What makes Dark different from other elements with a flipped principle like cold fire is that someone was able to rise to godhood while championing it. When a God or Goddess rises a new element orw is introduced to the natural mana found in the world. Before The Goddess of darkness rose to power Darkness was called dark light it was nothing but light magic with its Brightness principle flipped, but now that there''s a Dark Goddess it''s its own element with spells and jobs of its own. The same can be done with other elements like fire or water. The goddess of ice is a prime example; before her rise there was no distinction between ice and water magic."
Lake found this interesting; he wondered if the Demon Lord was like the Goddess of ice and was ascending to godhood, or maybe he already had, and that was why Unholy mana was being spread throughout the world. "So the Brightness principle is all that separates Light and Dark from one another." Thinking back to when he had used them they had acted almost exactly the same, the only difference was the color, even their two spells were almost exactly the same.
"So is it the god that makes the jobs and spells?" Flipping through the book Lake wasn''t able to find the answer he needed so he stood up, and looked through the books to find one about the gods or jobs. He ended up finding something different. "Advanced Light applications: Dark Light."
It wasn''t in the beginners section, but he wanted to see if this book talked about the rise of the Dark Goddess any or if Dark light was still a thing after her rise. Or better yet why not ask The temple head it would probably be faster than trying to read through this book. Thest one had taken almost two hours and it had been in the beginners section. Putting the book back Lake walked over to the Librarian and asked how to get to the lobby.
Finding his way to the staircase he had walked down on his first day, Lake was back to the garden he saw when he first got here. He saw the temple head standing in almost the same spot. Walking over to her he asked, "Is dark light exactly the same as the Dark element?"
The temple head shook her head. "No, the dark element was born from Dark light, this is dark light." The temple head lifted her hand and Lake saw a gray light in her hand. It looked almost the same as Dark mana but it gave him a different feel. dark light still felt like light mana while dark felt like the opposite of light mana. "The difference is the god the mana came from with dark light you take Light mana from the God of Light and change it slightly to cast certain spells. Dark manaes from the Dark goddess, so you don''t have to change anything and it has its own spells."
"So, is the Demon Lord a God?"
"He''s as strong as one but the gods are keeping him from ascending. He sees this world as a prison. As long as he''s held here the only world he affects is this one. When or if he ascends he''ll be the Unholy god, and his influence will start to spread to other worlds." So Gods have ess to different worlds. "Are the gods the same in every world or are there different ones?"
"The God of Light says he''s not the only one, he isn''t even the strongest God of Light, just the one that rules over this world. Most worlds have their own pantheons and different gods and elements reign supreme." Lake thought it was weird for a god to tell his own believers he wasn''t the strongest maybe it wasn''t something he could keep secret. Maybe people from other worlds coulde here easily. "How many worlds are there, is it possible to go to them?"
"You can, but you have to be a demigod first. Once you be a demigod you can travel to a world to ascend to godhood or stay here and champion a new element." Lake guessed this was what Laka had been doing when the God of Light found him. "Are the gods the ones that make the jobs and spells for their element?"
"Yes, it''s the power of the divines but I don''t know how they do it. All I know is to make something strong they have to sacrifice something. Like the god of light did when he changed his jobs to get Exp for protecting Holy Magic users, he sacrificed one of his artifacts." Lake was starting to think maybe artifact was another word for world item, Mimi had mentioned artifacts as well. "What are artifacts? Are they the same as world items?"
"I''ve never heard the term world items but artifacts are usually something the gods used or made before they ascended. They are powerful items that let you use some of their divine power. It''s also how most people be demigods. The items give them some of the gods power."
"What do you mean most? You don''t need to use an artifact to be a demigod?"
"No, you can steal divinity, it''s just very hard that''s how the Demon Lord did it. He stole Divinity from the Dark goddess then using his divinity he corrupted one of the Holy goddesses Artifacts to create the Unholy element. Originally the Dark element wasn''t considered evil, but now it''s tied in with the unholy element created by the Demon Lord."
"How did he steal from a god? Was he just a regr human?" This was something Lake was all about, if he could copy the Demon Lord his path to Demigod was set. "Let me ask you something, what''s your lowest stat?" Lake didn''t understand why she had changed the subject but he was willing to y along.
"It''s Charisma." She had clearly asked because she already knew the answer, because she said. "That''s how it is for most people, there are a lot of people who never hit 10 in their whole life. It''s very umon for there to be someone who''s highest stat is Charisma, but that''s how the Demon Lord was before he became a demigod by stealing divinity from the Dark Goddess. His Charisma was over 100, and he had been blessed with two different Legendary skills from that stat."
Lake could kind of see where this was going if Charisma did what he assumed. "No one knows exactly what the skills do, but they seem to allow him to charm anyone with lower Charisma than him. We don''t know how he did it to the Dark Goddess; her stats should have been way higher than his at the time." It seemed he was king unknowingly; he hadn''t even considered Charisma to be worth his time. If he focused on it in the future he could just tell people to give him their stuff and they wouldply.
"Is she still under his control?" The Temple head shrugged, "No one has seen her, the only reason we still think she''s alive is that the power of darkness has stayed the same. The only time it dipped was when he first took some of her divinity. My personal theory is the Demon Lord saw her as a threat or maybe the charm wasn''t permanent so he sealed her away."
Lake heard the door open, looking Lake saw the man he had seen guarding the door when he first got here. He walked over to them, and handed the temple head a letter. "Temple head, the Alchemist guild just delivered this letter to the steps." The temple head ripped it open and read it. "The Alchemist guild paid your bounty. You''re free to leave whenever you want. They have a cart waiting outside for you."
"Alright goodbye, thanks for the breakfast." Lake was happy to know he was free to go he didn''t want to spend too much time here. When he was about to walk through the door he felt a reluctance to leave he could tell it wasn''t actually him, it was the same as the feeling he had felt at breakfast when he had been talking to Mimi and Cas. It wasn''t even just a feeling It was simr to intrusive thoughts, It was telling him what he was supposed to do with his time in this world how he could be the man at the top, and have everything if he would just help the Light Temple.
But Lake didn''t like being told what to do, so he tried to leave again only to feel like someone was twisting his arm. "Ow. Are you serious?" Lake hadn''t realized The Insider was able to actually affect him in any way, because up till now it seemed content on just watching this was only the third time he had felt something from it in any way. "Ok fine, I was going to do it anyway."
Lake turned around and said, "I''ll be back in a few years after I''ve gotten stronger." Lake wanted to cringe, but the temple head seemed happy and so did The Insider. Lake guessed The Insider would make him keep his promise. Lake walked outside grabbed his sword the guard had taken from him, and got into the cart to see around 6 guards that were all wearing the same armor that Joy did. "Um, Joy are you here."
Lake saw one of them raise their hand. "I''m right here. Sorry the guild really needs to give us badges. Here,e sit right here next to me." Lake saw her try to make some room on the bench but in the end one of the other guards had to move down onto the floor. Lake stepped over the guy on the floor and sat down.
Chapter 32: Road Trip
Chapter 32: Road Trip
Squeezing into his seat, Lake didn''t really have anywhere to put his feet. "It''s ok sir, you can put them on me I wont feel it." The guard knocked his fist against his chest to emphasize his point. "Ok, thank you." Lake used the guardying on the ground like a leg rest, and he couldn''t help but think this was how royalty was treated. The only way it could be better was if the cart was also being pulled by big strong men.
Stopping himself before his thoughts got any crazier, Lake asked Joy. "Why all the guards, I thought I was good with the Assassins guild?" After he asked this, Lake felt the cart start to move, and was surprised at how fast they were going in town.
Bracing herself from the sudden increase of speed, Joy said. "You are, but our deal is only with them another guild might try and snatch you this time. Technically Last time was the Alliance but Glen turned out to be working for the Assassins guild and they were also the ones that wanted you. I doubt the others would risk any of their teams for you; they only tried itst time because Glen told them I was the only one with you." Lake felt the cart speed up again this was easily twice as fast as thest cart that had been ambushedst time. "Looks like we''re out of town at this speed it should only be 10 hours or so to the capital."
"So how much did the guild pay for me and am I responsible for paying it back?"
"We actually traded them a tree whose sap is poisonous, so it ys the same role you would have."
"That''s really all it took?"
"It''s not a regr tree, it was from the guild leader''s personal collection easily worth over 500,000 gold. He also said you don''t have to worry about the debt."
"Wow, they really undervalued me." Lake didn''t know if this was true, maybe that was a huge fortune.
"That''s good to hear, some people weren''t sure if you would end up being worth it."
"Why didn''t you just ask me what my skill was before paying?"
"While everyone wants to know, it''s against guild policy to ask the only person you have to tell is the guild leader so he can assign you to a branch. You''re lucky our guild leader is a smart man, he''ll find something for you to do even if your skill seems bad on the surface, that''s why he didn''t bother asking. It also helps it not spread the information around, the less people who know the better."
"I told the Temple head."
"I wouldn''t worry about that. These kinds of situations happen pretty often; she probably knows more people''s secrets than some of the gods. So what did she say about it?" Lake giggled a little. This was a roundabout way of asking him about his skill; it seemed people really wanted to know.
"Skirting the rules a little there."
"Sorry, I didn''t mean to say that." Lake felt like he had embarrassed Joy on ident by pointing this out. He was really just joking around though, he didn''t even mind telling her what the skill did if she asked Lake saw no reason in keeping it a secret. If he told the guild they would probably provide all the things he needed to get started.
"I was just messing around, I don''t mind telling you. It r." Lake felt a hand go over his mouth. Looking over he saw the guard on the other side of him had stopped him from saying anything. "While I would love to know it''s not worth being killed over. The guild might silence us depending on what you were going to tell us just now."
Lake pulled the hand off his mouth, and said. "In that case I''ll keep it vague. It''s good, it will just take time. To be honest I''m more worried about what my next two skills are going to be." From what Lake had learned so far, you got two skills at level 1 and two more at level 10. The rarer the job the rarer the skills, the only exception was with skills everyone got those were alwaysmon, but the rest were random.
Lake had noticed how his jobs with U as their rarity unlocked skills with a U as theirs, but he didn''t know if there was enough U skills In his Alchemist job for the next two skills. He might just get regr skills, he was pretty sure Alchemist was a rare job so the skills would be rare as well, but if U was above Legendary maybe the skills would default to Legendary instead of Rare.
"Hey Joy What rarity is U? I got the light mage job, and I''ve been wondering."
"It stands for Unique. You don''t see it very often; it''s usually the result of divine intervention. There''s another one very simr called Special but no one even knows if it''s real. The only reason I mention it is because most people bring it up whenever someone starts to talk about Unique stuff."
"Special, how''s it different from Unique?"
"Like I said I don''t think it actually exists. It''s just from old stories where people are born with one of a kind skills. Any time someone''s actually born with a skill, it''s always Unique or legendary so no one believes it and if they are real it''s probably just stuff from another world. That happens every now and then when something from another world like a book or a person shows up and spreads knowledge from their world."
Lake was surprised it seemed like other worlds weremon knowledge here. Lake couldn''t help wondering how the people of earth would have reacted if they found out about other worlds, and for some reason Lake felt they would be pissed, that was usually their reaction to most things.
"I wonder what other worlds are like?" For some reason the guy on the floor felt this was a good time to talk and it kind of killed the conversation because no one was willing to answer this question even if they could.
Half an hour Later Lake was starting to get hungry. He hadn''t eaten since breakfast but because of his skill Refreshed he hadn''t needed to eat again. "Hey Joy are we going to stop, or are we going to keep going till we get there."
"While I would love to go straight there, we are going to stop to switch carts about half way. The horse could probably make it all the way there, but it would slow us down when it started to get tired."
"Well I''m kind of hungry. Do you have anything I can eat?" Joy started to rummage around in her pouch and pulled out a piece of fruit. "Here this is the only food I have, Also these are yours." Joy handed him the scroll he had signed the other day, he was pretty sure Donovin had called it his guild scroll.
Lake had forgotten about it and his knife Mary had given him. "I didn''t bring your spear because it was kind of old, and I didn''t think it would fit too well inside the cart. Master Donovin said he would keep it if you ever want to have it sent to you, just send a letter."
Lake didn''t really care about the spear; he had only used it for two days ,and it wasn''t very good, he had almost broken it a couple of times on his first day. "No, he can throw it away, it''s trash." Lake put the scroll into his satchel, and started to use the knife to cut his fruit. "Do you guys know any games? this is going to suck if we just sit here in silence the whole ride." It had only been an hour and he already wanted to be there, but they still had 9 hours or so to go.
"If you''d like you can have this sleep potion, it will let you sleep until we get there." One of the guards across from him said. Lake thought this sounded awesome; it was like he was skipping the bad part of this day. "Alright, let me have it." Lake grabbed the potion, pulled the top off and downed it. "How long does it take to kick in?"
After Lake said this, he felt a rumble in his stomach, and his leg started to kick. He felt like he needed to get up and move, but there wasn''t enough room. "What was in that potion?"
"I don''t know, it''s something they give us in case we have to sleep in our armor." Lake hadn''t thought about it before drinking it because he had called it a sleep potion but it was probably actually a really weak poison that put people to sleep. "Oh man, I gotta get out of here!" He was starting to freak out, and there wasn''t enough room for him to get up and do jumping jacks or something.
"Hey, can we stop for a second? I have to go to the bathroom." He felt this was his best bet to get them to stop. If he could just move for a few seconds he would probably feel better because right now he felt like he was about to explode. "No, sorry Lake our orders are not to stop for anything. If you''d like you can go out the door." Lake was willing to say anything so they would stop at this point. "Please I have to poop, and I''m not wearing underwear."
Lake could tell what he said had shocked them so much that they stopped thinking rationally. "I can hold you, so you can put your butt out of the door." Lake couldn''t believe Joy would rather do this than stop for a few seconds. "Please, my dignity."
"We can''t stop, we couldn''t even stop if we wanted to. The driver has his own orders, so it''s this or nothing." He gave up on getting them to stop, and just tried to run out of the door. He knew they were going close to 200 mph but he didn''t care. Feeling multiple hands grab on to him, Lake said, "Let me out please just for a few seconds." Please Please Please Please Please. "No we cant."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Let me out AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" No one understood how he was even still awake at this point let alone acting like this. "What the hell is wrong with him? Did you give him something?" They had all started to suspect the guy that had given him the potion. "You all saw it, it was just the sleep potion the guild gives us."
"Let me go Let Me goooooooooooo AhHhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhh!"
Chapter 33: Five Hours Later
Chapter 33: Five Hours Later
The cart had juste to a stop in front of the Alchemist guild in Mondis, the town where they were going to switch carts. The door jerked open, and the driver said "What the hell is going on back here?!" Then he saw what was happening, and his anger was reced with fear. "What''s wrong with him?"
"We don''t know, go get the Master, and tell him we need an antidote." The driver ran into the guild, and a few minutester he and a man wearing a red robe came out. "What did he ingest? How was he poisoned?" The master was panicking a little. This was originally supposed to be an easy operation, and he was afraid of what would happen to him if Lake died while he was at his guild office.
"We gave him a sleep potion, and ever since he''s been freaking out."
"A regr sleep potion, are you sure it wasn''t tampered with?" The master did not want to risk anything if he got it wrong he could make the situation worse. "Yes sir I''ve had it in my kit for over a year, and unless it was tampered with before the guild gave it to me it should have been fine." In situations like these you had to use the right antidote, and guessing the type of poison could be very difficult.
Gulping the master took a red vial out of his bag and said, "Hold his mouth still we need to make sure to get most of this in his mouth." Joy let go of Lake''s shoulder and held his head still; she wasn''t too worried about his mouth staying open because he had been screaming for thest few hours. The master poured the red liquid into Lake''s mouth. "Let me go Ahhh! ah, ah, ah." It worked almost instantly, and as soon as Lake stopped screaming he passed out. "Looks like it worked, but bring him inside so I can do an examination."
"Alright but try to make it fast, our orders are to get him there as fast as possible, but his safety takes precedent."
"You can take him as soon as I make sure he''s stable."
Five hours Later the cart went over a bump, and Lake opened his eyes and tried to say something but no sound came out. "He''s up!" He heard Joy shout. "Here Lake, Master Fred told us to give you this after you woke up." Joy handed Lake a green potion to Lake.
Lake inspected the potion a little, and he was pretty sure it was glowing a little, but was reluctant to drink it because of what had happened earlier. "Don''t worry Master Fred gave us this in case you react badly." Joy held up a purple vial that Lake guessed counteracted the green potion. "He said to take a sip and it should heal your throat but if it doesn''t sip this purple one."
Lake would rather not risk it. If this potion did the opposite of healing his throat he didn''t even want to think of what would happen, but he knew a way he could test it without melting himself. Lake grabbed his knife and cut his finger then dipped it into the potion a little. "Master Fred gave us an enchanted potion so it''s going to heal you with magic so it should be safe even for you." She was right. Lake''s finger wound closed almost as soon as it touched it.
This was good enough for Lake, he tipped the potion a little and let a small amount of it into his mouth. After a few seconds of relief Lake tested his voice. "Hello." He was happy to find that his voice was working again; talking was one of his favorite things. "Was I asleep for long? How much more time till we get there?" Sitting up Lake realized why he had been able toy down one of the guards was gone and now two were squished onto the floor so he could have a whole bench to himself.
"You were asleep for about 5 hours. We''ll be arriving in less than an hour, around the same time the sunes up."
"What happened to the other guard?" Lake was wondering if they had left them because they weren''t able to get three to fit on the floor. "He was put into custody until we can confirm what happened was an ident." Lake didn''t really care what happened to that guy but this had been caused by his own carelessness so he said, "I won''t get into what happened exactly, but he wasn''t responsible."
All the guards seemed to rx a little after they heard this. Maybe they were friends with that other guard, and they had been worried he actually tried to kill Lake. "Good, we were scared the Dark Guild Alliance had somehow made Chuck try to kill you. Once you exin what happened to the guild leader he''ll will be released." Said one of the guards on the ground.
The cart started toe to a stop. Lake was a little worried at first but Joy said, "Looks like we''re lining up to enter the capital. This won''t take long since we''re in a guild cart. They''ll wave us through soon."
Lake was relieved that they were almost there this had been one of the worst moments of his life, the only thing that he could think of that had been worse was when he was on fire in hisst life, but he couldn''t really remember that to well. He could remember the 5 hours he had been freaking out, he doubted he would ever forget it.
The only good thing was this was a valuable lesson that he needed to still be careful of what he ate and drank, before this he had been under the assumption he was fine no matter what when it came to poison. Whatever crazy effects he had to put up with was still better than dying, but he had been in no danger from the sleep potion, but his skill still flipped the effect.
The cart started to move again. "We''ll be at the capital guild office in less than 20 minutes. You should be ready to see the guild leader as soon as we get there." Lake was fine with that, he was hoping this would go well and he would get all the stuff he needed to make those permanent poisons. "Oh crap, I don''t know how alchemy works." Lake just remembered that alchemy might be really hard and he was going to have to put a lot of effort into this.
"Hey Joy, how hard is alchemy? Like how long is it going to take for me to get to level 10?"
"You''re not going to have a normal experience. The guild Leader will pull out all the stops for you, I wouldn''t be surprised if it only took you a few months, but if you factor in the other jobs that help with alchemy a few years."
"What kind of jobs help with alchemy?"
"Enchanter and Appraiser are the main two everyone tries to learn. Of course those jobs are both Epics so the chances of getting them isn''t too good but even one makes you much better at the job, and then all the Mage jobs you can get to buff your intelligence."
"If Enchanter and Appraiser are better jobs, why isn''t the guild named after them?"
"The jobs are too rare their guild wouldn''t have the manpower, so most Enchanters and Appraisers are split between us and the cksmiths guild." Lake didn''t understand why there were so many different guilds it seemed stupid. "Why not justbine everything into a mage guild?"
"The cksmiths guild predates ours so I would doubt they would join, but there used to be a Mage guild until recently, there was a schism over Unholy Magic being allowed. All the different magic guilds used to be part of the Mage guild. The Alchemist guild was the most profitable part of the Mage guild so most of the rarer jobs stayed with the Alchemist guild. We also kept the Mage guild headquarters which is where we''re going now. You''re going to love it, it''s almost the size of the rest of the capitol all by itself."
This did sound cool; it was almost like he was about to be a prince. "What''s it going to be like for me there?" He wanted to see, before he got his hopes up to much. "You''ll be living in Legend spire with the rest of the Legendary skill holders so your life from now on will be luxury. You''ll even have servants who will take care of everything for you so you can focus on your studies."
This sounded pretty good to Lake. There was just one thing he was worried about, "Will I be able to leave the guild to look around the capital?" After he asked this he understood this was something they weren''t supposed to talk to him about. "It might take a while but eventually, once you''re stronger you''ll be able to do whatever you want."
Lake had never been treated like royalty before, hopefully he enjoyed it and he was fine staying inside for a few years. Lake felt the cart stop, and realized they were there. "Don''t get out, they will just move the whole cart inside; they just have to detach the horse first."
"Oh, okay." all this for him. the amount of effort, and money they had spent on him was crazy. Lake felt the cart start to move again. "Only a few more minutes and you''ll meet the leader."
Chapter 34: Spire
Chapter 34: Spire
Lake saw the door of the cart open, but instead of the cart driver it was an older man. "Hello Lake, I''m guild master Lucas. Come on, we''ll talk on the way up." Lake hopped out of the cart and followed Lucas to what looked like an elevator. Seeing Lucas get inside Lake get inside and stood beside him. "I heard there was an incident on the way here, and one of the guards is in custody. What happened?"
Lake liked that Lucas got straight to the point but he wasn''t sure if he was supposed to tell him about his skill now or just be vague. "Is it ok for me to go into detail, or should I wait tillter?"
"Just tell me if what happened was caused by you, or you think the guard was trying to kill you. I don''t want him to be in jail for longer than necessary if he''s innocent."
"He''s innocent."
"Good, that''s what I thought. We sent some of our best to bring you here, and I was surprised when something happened." Lake saw Lucas pull out a mirror and say, "Release him, he is innocent." Lake guessed this was some sort ofmunication device. He wondered how widespread they were; maybe he would have one to soon.
"When we get to my office we''ll talk about your skill. My office is in Legend spire which is where you''ll be living from now on. I''ll also be the one handling your training so just call me Master or Master Lucas from now on." Just like Lake thought Master Lucas was a no nonsense kind of guy.
"How many people live in Legend spire?" Lake was hoping it was going to be more people than just him and Master Lucas because he didn''t think he could withstand spending all his time with someone like Lucas. "There are technically 46 residents, but at the moment if you count me and you there are 15 people in the spire." Lake just hoped a few of them weren''t old.
"You said some of the residents aren''t there, where are they?" Lake was happy people were able to leave. He was scared that he was going to be trapped here, and was going to have to attempt a prison break. "They''re out on research assignments, most of them are looking for rare nts they need to make special potions."
"What do these special potions do?" Lake guessed they had to be pretty special if the guild was willing to let their most important people go out and look for things. "Most are researching ways to grant themselves new affinities most people are only granted one so they''re kind of handy capped after they max out their one mage job."
This made Lake wonder if he should tell Master Lucas about his Uniqueprehension. He felt like he would find out eventually, it was going to be pretty obvious when he used more than 5 different types of magic. "Master Lucas, should I tell you all my skills or just the legendary skill from my Alchemist job?"
"If you think it pertains to Alchemy." So he should tell him now he just wanted to know how rare it was to have a unique skill. Maybe this was going to be a big deal. He couldn''t just say it was legendary like had happened with Poison Taster because there was already a legendary form ofprehension.
"Alright we''re here, this is my office it''s also the bottom floor of the spire so the door is always open feel free toe in at any time. Alright let''s get down to business, have a seat, we''re going to go through the Legend of Legends to see if your skill has already been recorded, or if this is the first time it''s ever been seen."
This was fine with him whoever changed Poison Taster had changed the name so he wasn''t worried about it being a unique skill being discovered. Sitting down Lake saw Lucas walk over to a shelf and take out a golden book. He set it in front of Lake and held his hand over it and said, "Unseal." Lake saw the book sh. "Now put your hand over it and say the name of your skill."
Not wanting to waste time, Lake did as he was told. "Poison Taster." The book didn''t react and Lake could tell this made Lucas excited because this was the first time he saw his face move since he met him. "That means it''s not recorded. This makes this a little moreplicated because we have to add it to the book now."
Lake saw Lucas pull out a pen and some ink and open the book to a nk page. "Alright, Poison Taster was the name right?" Lake nodded his head and watched as Lucas wrote the name at the top of the page. "What does its description say?"
"All poisons have the opposite effect on you." Lucas was halfway through writing this when he stopped, "Are you serious?" Lake remembered this was what the Temple Head said when he told her. Lake nodded his head. "Well that exins what happened in the cart."
After Lucas got done writing the description down he walked over to a shelf and pulled out a blue book setting it down on the desk he held his hand over it and said, "Poison immune. This is the closest skill I can think of to yours. Yours seems to be a Legendary version of this Rare skill. Looking at the book Lake read, "All poisons have no effect on you."
Lake guessed this was what his skill had been before one of the previous holders changed it with the gold writing. This made him feel the next two skills he was going to get were probably going to be Unique as well. He was going to have to deal with themotion when that happened. Maybe it would be best for him not to be here when it happened. they would probably never let him leave if they thought he had 3 different Legendary skills.
"We''re done here I''ll show you to your room and you''ll have an hour to situate yourself then your training will begin. No point in wasting time."
"Actually Master there''s one more skill I think you should know about." Lake still wasn''t sure about this but he felt this was a good time to learn more about Unique skills. "Ok what job is it from?"
"It''s actually not from a job, it''s my Comprehension skill." Lake saw Lucas''s face bloom into a smile. "Is your Comprehension Legendary?"
"No Master, it''s Unique." Lake was expecting Master Lucas to jump in joy or something but instead he walked over to the bookshelf and grabbed an old leather book bringing it over. He handed it to Lake and said, "Read this once you get to your room then decide what you should do."
"Alright let''s get you to your room. I need to get the things for your training session ready." Lake followed Lucas into a spiral stairwell in the center of the room. "This staircase is the only way through the whole spire so I hope you like walking, but if you don''t you can always have your servants go and get the things you need."
"Why not build an elevator like the one we took earlier?"
"Well when this was the Mage Guild we used teleporters and that was the only way in and out of the spire so once the teleporters went done we had to install this staircase. We might upgrade to an elevator in the future; this was more of a quick fix."
"What happened to the teleporters?"
"There aren''t enough people to keep them charged anymore, so we only use them during emergencies."
After a while of climbing the stairs Lake was starting to think maybe this was a joke. "Master, how much longer until we get there?"
"We''re almost there." Lake had just seen a sign that said 24 and he assumed that meant the 24th floor of the spire. "Master how many floors are there in the spire."
"There are 100 but the top 10 are off limits to you until you reach master. That''s where all the really important research takes ce so you''d be in the way." 100 floors it had taken 25 minutes to get here that meant it would take 2 hours to go from the bottom to the top and 2 more toe back down.
"What floor is my room on?" This was his main concern the higher it was the more time he would spend on these stairs everyday. "32, it''s where the younger people like yourself live because it''s right above the library you''ll be spending your study time in and right below the beginnerb where you''ll be practicing alchemy. It saves a lot of time since you don''t have to walk all over the ce. If you''re lucky you''ll only spend 10 to 20 minutes on the stairs a day.
Lake was happy to hear they had moved everything he needed close together but couldn''t they put everything closer to the bottom. "Why isn''t everything closer to the bottom?"
"The first 30 floors are used for storage and growing rare nts. The gardens used to be higher up but we couldn''t get all the fertilizers and such up the stairs so we had to move them where the elevator could do all the heavy lifting."
Lake saw the 32 up above them and guessed it was only five minutes away and thought about if he had to do this while carrying bags of dirt and agreed they made the right decision. "So when is the elevator being added?"
"You''ll get used to it, also you see this open space in the middle, if you learn how to fly you can make this trip much shorter."
"How do I fly? Is it magic?"
"That''s right, the easiest way is wind magic. Fly is a medium ranked spell." Lake just made up his mind to learn wind magic as soon as possible "Alright this is your floor there are 3 others that live here so you shouldn''t get too lonely. Go in and they will show you to your room. I will see you in an hour."
Chapter 35: To Serve
Chapter 35: To Serve
Walking through the doorke was expecting to see three people but instead he saw one. It was a boy probably 2 or 3 years younger than Lake. "Hello I''m Solomon, I live in the room next to yours so I''m here to show you where yours is." Solomon was waving his hand around while he said that Lake wasn''t sure why he was so excited but it was kind of funny so Lake hoped he did this all the time. "I''m Lake." Lake reached out with his hand for a hand shake.
Solomon grabbed his hand and shook it like crazy. "It''s nice to meet you. They told us yesterday that you''d be here. Let me tell you it''s so nice to finally have another person to talk to; well that I don''t have to walk 30 minutes to see at the least." Lake didn''t like the way Solomon held onto his hand after he was done shaking it so he said, "Can you show me my room? I have to do something before Master Lucases to get me."
"Sure thing, follow me." Lake was happy to see Solomon was willing to save their new friendship forter because Lake needed to read this book and he wasn''t sure how long it was going to take. "Hey Solomon, where are the other two people that live here? Master Lucas told me there were three."
"They''re in the library. This is normally our study time but I stayed to show you to your room." Lake wondered if Study time was an enforced rule or just the schedule that was rmended. "Ok here''s your room, the one across the hall is mine, so if you need anything ask one of your servants or knock on my door." Lake wasn''t sure what Solomon meant by his servants because he had yet to be given any.
Opening the ornate door that led to his room Lake wasn''t sure what to expect so far the rooms he had walked through hadn''t been too fancy but the door kind of gave away what was going to be behind it. Looking into the room Lake saw what he had expected; it looked like a pce; he could also see stairs that led upwards. "That exins why It took so long to walk up to the 32nd floor." Every floor seemed to epass multiple subfloors or maybe some of them just have really high ceilings.
"Hello Sir." There were also 3 people dressed in fancy clothes bowing next to the door. Lake guessed these were the servants he had been hearing about. "Hello I''m Lake."
"We know Sir, they told us to expect your arrival today."
"Ok well, I need to get to work, where''s my desk?" Lake just assumed he''d have a desk since this ce was so big. "Right this way Sir, follow me, it''s right at the top of these stairs." Lake wasn''t sure how he felt about there being stairs inside his room after all the stairs he had just gone up but he guessed he would just have to get used to it.
"This is your desk and this is your bookshelf." Lake could have guessed this since they were both in his room but there was no reason to be rude to the people he got to tell what to do for the rest of his life. "Ok thank you, will you track down some new clothes for me? I''m not a big fan of this robe."
"Right away sir we will do proper introductionster when you have more time."
"Ok bye bye." Lake needed to read this book If master Lucas specifically gave him this book after he brought up Unique skills It had to be a good read. Unassuming looks or not. Inspecting the old leather cover Lake was looking for a name not finding one Lake just opened the front cover to find a handwritten name, "Amanda Watson."
Moving on to the first page Lake quickly realized it was a journal written by a two year old child. "Today my arm became strong enough to hold a pen, it''s been just over two years since I was reborn into a new body. I n to write as much as I can remember in case me having my memories was a mistake. I''ve been scared that my memories will just disappear one day and I''ll just be a normal baby."
Lake realized this was a journal that belonged to someone like him who hade from another world. He wasn''t sure how else it could pertain to him he could already see the point Master Lucas was trying to make that people that had unique skills always hadplicated backgrounds but just to make sure he started to read the rest of the journal.
"Today I witnessed someone use Magic or at least what I assume to be Magic. I saw my father light a fire using his hand. Up until this point I was under the impression that I was on earth still but it seems I might be somewherepletely different." Lake was surprised to see Amanda mention Earth; he realized that it could be a coincidence and it was a different ce with the same name but this could also mean lots of people from earth were sent here one way or another.
It seemed Amanda was born as a baby while Lake got a new body that seemed to be exactly the same as his old one. Thinking about it, Lake was happy he hadn''t had to be a baby again becausest time made him cry. "Sir, I brought you your new clothes. Would you like me to change you, or just leave them here?"
Looking at the older gentleman, Lake decided he would rather do it himself. "No, you can just leave them there. I''m going to change after I get done reading this."
"Yes Sir. Just call if you need help." Lake wasn''t sure what he was implying, but he felt like he would be able to put his own clothes on. Getting back to his book Lake only had a few more pages, Unique skills hadn''t been mentioned yet but he was still happy Lucas had made him read this book. It had been an eyeopener. He had already heard there were others from different worlds but this was making him think maybe it wasn''t that rare.
Getting to thest page Lake was disappointed to find it was just a regr entry about Amanda''s divorce in herst life. This journal had been 60 pages of things that had happened to Amanda in her own world and Lake had to say it sounded like she had lived on the same Earth he had.
Thinking about what he had just read, Lake understood Lucas was telling him that his Unique skill gave the fact that he was reincarnated away and he should probably just keep it to himself. Maybe no one had a way to tell so his secret was safe as long as he didn''t say anything.
Putting the book down, Lake started to look through his clothes they had brought him. This was the first time since he got here he actually got to pick from multiple outfits. Lake picked out some ck pants and shirt and a white robe that looked like the robe every member of The Alchemist guild wore just with no color.
After putting everything on Lake looked into the small mirror on his desk he looked more like an Alchemist now that he had everything on. "Sir the Guild Leader is ready for you, he''s in the Lab right above us."
"Alright, will you carry me up there." Lake was just messing around but he wanted to see if this guy would do it. "Right away sir."
"Wo wo, I was just messing around." This guy hadn''t even taken a second before he went to pick Lake up. Thinking about it, if this guy was fine with it, so was Lake. "You know what, go ahead. I don''t think my legs got it in them." Lake let the guy pick him up and just like Lake expected this guy had no problem lifting him. "Alright, grab that book, I want to take it with me."
After getting the book The man started carrying Lake to theb that Lucas was waiting in and Lake had to say this dude was a stair master he was going so fast it was like they were going downhill. "This was the right choice. I hope you''re enjoying this as much as I am because I''m gonna have you do this every day." Studying His servants face as he said this Lake saw no dissatisfaction and could only conclude he really didn''t mind so this just became a good way to save time.
Lake would probably use this time saving method until he learned how to fly. "Alright we are here sir do you want me to bring you inside or do you want to go in alone."
"I''ll take it from here. Thank you for your hard work." After the guy put Lake down he bowed and left, Lake guessed he was heading back to the room. So far Lake had to say he was very satisfied with his servants, just one was already so helpful and he had three. He was definitely going to learn that guy''s nameter so he could brag about him to the others.
Turning around, Lake walked into theb to see Lucas standing next to a table filled with what seemed to be Alchemy equipment, lots of bottles and cups filled with powders and liquids. "That was quite fast. I was expecting it to take you a few more minutes to get here. Alrighte over here so I can see if you know anything or if I need to start at the beginning."
Chapter 36: Alchemy
Chapter 36: Alchemy
Before Lake got started with Alchemy he wanted to ask a few questions about the journal Lucas had given him. "I read this like you told me to." Lake handed the journal back to Lucas. "Did you realize why I asked you to read it?"
"Yes Master, I was wondering if you had any more?"
"We used to, they belonged to a former member of the Mage guild, but most of them were stolen during the copse of the guild."
"Do you know who took them?" Getting them back so he could read the rest of them might be something for Lake to doter.
"The Demon worshipers took most of them, but some are spread around with other people who only have a few. At this point there''s no way that they''ll ever be aplete set ever again."
"Were they all written by the same person?"
"Yes the person who owned them in the past was also the author, Amanda was the Mage guild leader before she ascended. Her Journals were treated as an artifact even though they didn''t grant any power like artifacts do, but during the copse people took anything they could get their hands on. The only reason we still have that one is because I had it in my office at the time."
"Were you the guild leader during the copse?"
"Kind of, that was one of the problems the mage guild had. It was too big so no one could ever agree on who to listen to, unless there was someone strong enough to unite everyone which only happened a few times in the guilds existence. Amanda was thest true leader the Mage guild ever had because no one was ever able to rece her after she left."
While Lucas said this Lake could feel the Insider showing him Lucas had more than one reason to give him that book. He was also saying if he got strong enough maybe he could revive the mage guild and lead it to dominate the world. Lucas giving him such a weird book made more sense to Lake now that the Insider had shown him that it was a roundabout way of telling Lake how much potential people with Unique skills had. He had said Amanda ascended eventually which meant she had be a god or maybe a demigodke wasn''t too sure how it worked. He was pretty sure ascending meant when someone became a god. Lake realized he could just ask Lucas.
"Lucas, you said she ascended, is she a god?" After he asked this Lucas seemed to not want to talk about this anymore but he still answered. "Yeah she''s the Dark Goddess." Lake understood now why he didn''t want to talk about it. The Dark Goddess was missing after the Demon king had somehow stolen some of her divinity.ke wasn''t sure what the timeline looked like but it seemed all this stuff happened pretty recently.
"Alright that''s enough of that, let''s start the lesson. What level is your alchemist job? I know it''s at least level 1 since you unlocked two skills already."
"Level 1."
"Ok so you''ve brewed something before so you already know how this works."
"No Master, I''ve never brewed anything before."
"How''d you level up your job if you didn''t brew anything?"
"Exp."
"How''d you earn the Exp?" Lake realized he had used Intangible Loot to level Alchemist up to level one but the only way to level alchemist up normally was crafting potions. So he just shrugged his shoulders and it seemed Lucas was fine not getting an answer because he moved on.
"Alrighte over here I''ll show you how it works for most people starting out." Lucas grabbed a cup and three powders. "So this cup has water in it. Water is a level 0 catalyst. Catalyst is what people call the stuff you put the ingredients in and it''s usually a liquid. These are three random ingredients I know what they are but pretend I''m new and have no way to know what they do. Three ingredients is the minimum to make an actual potion. If you use two you get a mixture and if you use one it''s an extract. Ok watch this." Lake watched as Lucas dumped the three powders into the water and stirred after a few seconds Lake saw the potion turn a dark purple.
Showing it to Lake Lucas said, "This is what happens to most people the first time they try to make a potion. It''s called sludge and it''s what happens when you fail to control the reaction. This still grants you a few Exp so after a few failures you can reach level 1 and unlock Distill by doing this." Lake wondered if you could make it to level 10 making nothing but sludge. It was probably possible since it gave Exp just a huge waste of time.
"Alright Let''s move on to what happens once you unlock Distill. Have you tried to use Distill before?" Lake shook his head no. "Ok watch me you''ll be able to see the difference right away." Lucas did the same thing he had done earlier to make the sludge but this time Lake could see that something new was happening around the same time the first one had turned to sludge Dark red smoke started to rise out of the mixture. Lake saw Lucas start to do a fanning motion with the hand that wasn''t stirring. The smoke moved towards a crystal that was on a stand in the middle of the table. "This smoke that''sing out is all the stuff that made the potion unstable the first time in this case it''s a poison one of the ingredients has that causes people to go blind for a few hours. There''s two ways to fix this problem what I''m doing right now or to add an extra ingredient that mixes with the stuff I''m removing to make it a stable effect, if I had added this." Lucas pointed at a ck powder. "I could have made this potion buff strength and cause blindness, but I''m sure you can see why no one would want that so I removed the effect using Distill. In your case I guess you could make a potion that buffed strength and caused blindness and it would be just fine for you to drink because instead of blindness your eyesight would get better."
After a while of the smoke leaving the liquid it stopped and all that was left was a light blue potion. "So that''s what Distill allows you to do, remove stuff you don''t want in your potion. This is a potion of strength it grants 21 strength for around 8 hours. The way this happened was this and this." Lucas pointed at a green powder and a yellow powder. "These are Level ten ingredients that have buff strength as their first effect so at level 10 they grant 10 points of strength and this ingredient." Lucas pointed at a red powder. "This is the one that made the potion have a blindness effect. Blindness is its first effect and it doesn''t unlock buff strength until level 10 so it only grants 1 point to the final product."
Lake stopped him at this point and asked, "Why not just leave it out? The potion would still grant 20 points of strength and you wouldn''t need to Distill it."
"Very good question So if I only added 2 ingredients there would be no potion it would be a mixture. Mixtures have less stability and that causes lots of different problems, the main two being short shelf time and weaker effects; it wouldn''t be strange for a mixture of these two ingredients to only grant 10 points of strength when you would expect 20, and instead of 8 hours the effect would barelyst one."
Lake was satisfied with this exnation but now had a new question. "You said this ingredient unlocked a new effect at level ten. What about these two you didn''t mention what their other effects were, and you didn''t remove anything other than the blindness right."
"Very good Lake, you''re really paying attention. So lots of ingredients have empty effect slots, some even have empty first slots with the most famous being Whanto leaf. Whanto leaf doesn''t do anything until it reaches Level ten where it gains the effect of restoring health so we use it as a third and stable ingredient in cheap health potions."
Lake thought back to when he ate Whanto leaf, and was happy to hear his description of its taste had been spot on. "Alright get over here it''s your turn." Lake was surprised to hear he was about to try to brew a potion so he asked. "Am I ready?"
"What ready, get over here failing is how this works." Lake saw he had no choice so he went to where Lucas had been standing, and waited for Lucas to tell him what to do.
Chapter 37: It’s Not That Hard
Chapter 37: It''s Not That Hard
Lake watched as Lucas Grabbed 3 new powders. Two were the same color as the others but one was different. "These are level one ingredients your going to make a strength potion like I did. I reced the red powder with this orange one because all three of these have exactly the same effect so this first try will be as easy as possible. You don''t even have to worry about using distill all you have to do is stir."
Seeing he was about to start Lake made sure his job was set to Alchemist. "Alright pick these up and pour them in one at a time. As soon as the first ones in use your other hand to stir, and make sure to keep it at a steady pace." Lake grabbed the first one and started to pour it in carefully. "You don''t have to pour so slowly you can just dump it all in."
Hearing this, Lake picked up his pace and poured it all in. "Alright go ahead with the next one." Lake grabbed it and poured it in like thest one after a few seconds of stirring Lucas said, "Alright thest one." Lake grabbed it and as he dumped it in, Lucas said, "Alright stir this until it starts to turn blue. Once you see blue you can stop, it will finish itself." 20 or so secondster Lake saw the mixture turn from brown to blue, so he took his hand off the spoon he was using to stir.
Watching it slowly turn more and more blue, Lake asked, "Why did the one you make turn blue so much faster?" It had been almost an instant transformation earlier. "The ingredients I was using were much stronger, the ones you''re using barley have magic properties since they''re all level one, so the reaction is slower."
After a few more seconds of waiting, Lake heard a ding.[Level up] Lake smiled and took a brief look at his stats.
Race: Human Lv.2 ( 6/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.2 (2 / 20)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 20
Stamina 20
Mana 20
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 26
Perception 20
Intelligence 33
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Lake wasn''t too sure but he thought this potion had given him 9 Exp, so if it had been poison it would have been 72 Exp. Lake felt he should probably ask Lucas to make poison; it would make this much faster. "Master, can I try to make a poison?"
"Yeah, here in a minute. I just need to set the equipment up real quick." Lake watched as Lucas grabbed a slightlyrger cup and filled it with water. "Alright I know this looks like the same type of water we used earlier, but this is pure water made through magic so its a level 1 catalyst you need a better catalyst when you use more or stronger ingredients. In this case we''re using low level ingredients so we would of been fine but this will make it easier for you. This is likest time you wont need to remove anything using distill. You just have to keep the two reactions stable at the same time."
Lake wondered what the odds of him seeding was. "Alright get ready to watch." Lucas took the potion fromst time out of the way, and set the new cup where it had been. "I''m going to use these four powders. This time we''re going to make what''s called a split potion. They aren''t verymon but they''re good practice. it''s really just making two different mixtures into a stable potion by bncing the two effects. Alright I''m starting."
Lake watched as Lucas grabbed two powders and added them at the same time, and started to stir slowly. "This is the stronger of the two effects this potion will have. That''s why I started with it. You always have to start with the strongest. This makes the mixture more stable during the next reaction since the other effect is weaker it can''t overpower the first one."
Lake wasn''t too sure what Lucas was talking about but he understood the start with the strongest part so it was probably fine. "Alright I''m about to add the next ingredient." Lake watched as Lucas put the next powder in but noticed nothing happened it all just sunk to the bottom. "This means this ingredient does not react with anything that''s already in there but when I add thest one there will be a violent reaction, and the potion will try to turn to sludge if you don''t control it properly so get ready to use Distill."
After Lucas said this he put thest powder in and just like he said the liquid reacted like it was boiling. "You see how one powders at the top and the others at the bottom. What''s happening right now is they are slowly mixing in the center of the already formed mixture. That''s why you start with the strong one, because the other way around the strong reaction would just blow the weak mixture apart, and all this would turn to sludge because all the mismatching effects would try tobine." After a while Lake saw the potion calm down and it started to turn a yellowish color. It kind of looked like mustard.
"The best way to finish potions like these is to add an ingredient that has both the effects of the two mixtures. It holds them together and strengthens both effects but you can also stop here, this is a method to make potions when you don''t have 3 ingredients with the same effect. Instead of just using a mixture you can make a slightly better potion, and if you can find two effects that synergize this is a way to keep them in the same bottle. This potion gives 4 endurance and 2 agility for 6 hours. If you would have made 2 mixtures and drank both the effects would be about the same but it would onlyst an hour at most."
This made Lake wonder if he could just mix two mixtures that had already been made into a potion "Master, can you use mixtures that have already been made to do this?"
"That''s a pretty difficult question to answer because it depends. Mixtures can be used as ingredients, but you need the ingredients to make a potion. You remember earlier when I said you could finish this potion by adding an ingredient that had both effects, If you started with two separate mixtures you would have to add an ingredient like that to turn two separate mixtures into an actual potion." This sounded reasonable to Lake. It was like building a bridge between two inds to let the people meet each other for the first time.
"You can also use three Mixtures to make a potion with three effects but that''s much too difficult for you to even attempt; you also need special equipment for the process to work."
"What do you mean it''s too difficult?" So far Lake felt Alchemy was pretty easy, so he was interested to hear about some of the more difficult parts of Alchemy. "Your Intelligence is too low for your Distill skill wouldn''t be able to handle it." Lake new Lucas didn''t mean he was stupid he meant the stat Intelligence. "I''ll be right back."
Lake could feel this meant it was his turn, so he rolled his sleeves up a little and stepped over to where Lucas had been standing. Lucas had just gone to bring another cup of water for Lake to use. "Alright don''t feel bad if this fails. This is your first time actually doing anything during the stirring process other than stirring." Lucas was right about this, the first potion he had made could almost make itself.
Lake watched as Lucas pulled out new powders he hadn''t seen before but instead of four there were five. "What''s the new one for?"
"It''s the ingredient used to finish the potion like I mentioned earlier. If you seed we''ll use it so you get more Exp. Ok go ahead, the ingredients are in the order you need to add them." Just to make sure Lake pointed at the first two and said, "These two first right?"
"That''s right." Lake grabbed them and poured them in at the same time like Lucas had done, and he started to stir. "Those were both level two ingredients with damage health, so this mixture would deal 4 damage every second to someone''s health. Alright you''re ready for the next powder, remember to let it all fall to the bottom before you add the next one." Lake poured the powder in and stirred it to let the powder fall to the bottom once he saw there was no more on the top he looked at Lucas to see him nod. "Get ready to use Distill."
Chapter 38: Mastering Alchemy
Chapter 38: Mastering Alchemy
Picking up thest powder Lake poured it into the cup and activated Distill. "You don''t have the appraiser job, so this will be a little difficult for you. I didn''t tell you what all the ingredients did on purpose to simte what people call blind brewing, so you''re gonna have to try and feel what''s going on using Distill."
Lake was already in this process; he could feel something like a pressure pushing outwards from the cup. "What''s this forceing from the cup? it''s all I can feel from Distill."
That''s the reaction that''s happening between the powder on the top and the bottom. The only thing that''s keeping it from exploding is the already formed mixture. You can think of it like a womb, a safe ce for the potion to form."
"Why didn''t the first mixture react like this? It just formed peacefully."
"That was a mixture. This is a split potion when you form a mixture inside of another one the first ingredient is the first mixture the second ingredient is the powder on the bottom the third is the powder on the top. Alchemy is just the process of turning 3 things into 1. This potion is."
Lake saw Lucas pull out a peace of paper an write 1+1=1+1+1=1+1=1. "Thest 1+1 is a little wrong, because thest ingredient reacts with the split potion in two different ways so it''s like there are 3 separate ingredients." Lake actually found this way of thinking about Alchemy much easier, the first two ingredients made a mixture, and that mixture was actually the first ingredient of the potion.
The resulting potion was two different mixtures with two effects, so it had the potential to be two ingredients since nothing was actually binding them, so when you added thest ingredient that had the same two effects it fulfilled the potential and the 1+1 became 1+1+1 and it refined the potion even further, it still had 2 effects but thest ingredient bonded everything together and Lake guessed the better it was bonded the longer the effectsted.
Lake had been stirring this whole time and he could feel the potion was starting to form because it was calming down. "If you keep it steady for a few more seconds we can add thest ingredient." Finishing up Lucas said. "You can go ahead and add it, make sure Distill is still active."
Pouring thest powder in Lake felt the opposite of what he felt earlier instead of pushing out it started pulling in. "When you feel that it means the potion will finish itself. This only happens when the ingredients fully match. You remember earlier when we made the strength potion how it turned blue even though you weren''t stirring it anymore; this is the same situation."
Understanding what Lucas meant, Lake pulled the spoon out and watched as the potion turned a deep red.[Level up] [Level up] [Level up] "Alright it''s done. Go ahead and drink it. It''s poison so I want you to tell me what it does to you."
Grabbing the cup Lake lifted it to his nose and sniffed it. Lake thought it had a bit of a metallic smell but tasting it Lake found it really didn''t have much of a taste. "Most poisons don''t have a vor so it can be hard to tell when someone adds it to your food or drink."
Downing it, Lake didn''t feel anything happen and after a few seconds of waiting Lucas asked "Did anything happen?"
"I don''t think so." Opening his stats, Lake took a good look.
Race: Human Lv.2 ( 9/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.5 (38 / 160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 20
Stamina 20
Mana 20
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 42
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
He couldn''t see anything that seemed weird. "I don''t think it did anything."
"That''s because your health and stamina were already full. If a normal person drank that they would have taken damage to their health and stamina."
"How much damage?"
"Well normally you''d take 14 to your health and 3 to your stamina every few seconds until the duration of the effect ran out. We need to get you the Appraiser job so you can see item details. How close Is your Intelligence to 50?" Lake wondered if he could use Insider Information to simte Appraiser but he could worry about thatter.
"42."
"That''s two levels in any mage job Let''s end this for today you''ve pretty much learned the basics I would rather get you to 50 Intelligence so we can get you Appraiser. Let''s go to the dungeon and level you up a few times."
"What''s the dungeon?"
"It''s under the guild. It''s catbs but there''s a lot of monsters there so we use it to level up jobs that only get Exp frombat." Lake was happy to hear there was somewhere to fight; he had been afraid he would have to sneak out to fight. "Ok lets go." After he said this, Lake realized he was about to go down stairs andter after they were done he would have toe back up the stairs. He was looking at an hour of stairs if he added them together, but Lake felt it was worth it if he got a new job out of it.
"Alright I don''t want to waste too much time on these stairs so let''s go as fast as we can, you go first, and I''ll keep up with you." Lake wasn''t surprised that Lucas was confident about keeping up with him; the Guild was responsible for stat potions. Lucas was probably one of the strongest people in the world. Lake smacked his forehead he could just look there was no guessing necessary. Lake looked at Lucas and activated Insider Information.
Lake''s hand shot over his eye and he almost cried out in pain. "Did you just try to look at my details?" Crap not only did it not work, Lucas knew. "Yes." Lake knew better than to lie in this situation. There was some form of magic at work here. "You should be careful to not do that, most people get mad."
Lake could understand that he wouldn''t like it either. "Why didn''t it work?" Lake''s eye had stopped hurting so he looked at Lucas to see him holding a ne up. "This is an Anti-scrying device that keeps people from looking at my stats. It''s a big advantage inbat if people can''t see what they''re up against. I don''t know what skill you used but it depleted its charge by 40%. That''s the most I''ve ever seen and let me tell you a lot of people Have tried to find out how strong I am."
"Does that mean if I did it multiple times, it would work?" Lucas looked at Lake''s eye and said. "Maybe for you but most people would''ve been blinded by the counter spell from my ne." Lake wondered why his eye had been able to survive and remembered one of his skills strengthened his eyes he would have to lookter because he couldn''t remember which one.
"I''ve never seen someone with strong eyes before. It''s a weird ability but I wouldn''t call it useless, because if not for it we''d be rushing to the infirmary to regrow your eyes." Lake was just gonna take that as apliment, and not think about the fact Lucas was probably catching on to the fact that he might have multiple Unique skills.
"Alright let''s get going, and you don''t need to worry about me being left behind. Go full speed." Lake didn''t need to be told twice he was actually a little curious how fast he could go down stairs even if it was a little dangerous. After a few steps Lake activated burst he hadn''t done it right away just to make sure he could control himself at half speed.
A few minutester they arrived at Lucas''s office. "That wasn''t too bad, am I allowed to go that speed all time?" Lucas thought about it for a few seconds and said. "No." Lake hadn''t been expecting that and was about to ask why when Lucas said. "Go about half that speed that will probably be fine and don''t do it in the mornings there are a lot of people on the stairs around then."
Lake thought this sounded fine, he would just sleep in. "Ok, we can take the elevator the rest of the way." Nice, Lake wondered if he should invent esctors. Maybe if he ever saw Wace again he would tell him. "Once we get there I''m just gonna send a guard in with you. The time I set aside for you today is almost over. I need to get back to work."
Lake wasn''t surprised to hear this, Lucas was probably a very busy person. "Will I still get lessons from you or is it self study from now on?"
"That''s up to you, you''re free toe and see me and you can also ask one of your servants to help you. One of them is also a teacher."
"Which one?"
"You should ask them."
Chapter 39: Dungeon Time
Chapter 39: Dungeon Time
The elevator had juste to a stop. Looking forward, Lake saw an iron gate with a small group of guards standing by it. "Alright get off, I gotta go." Lake felt Lucas was being a little rude by just kicking him off the elevator but it wasn''t that big of a deal. Walking over to the gate Lake asked. "Is this the Dungeon?"
"Hello Lake It''s us." Lake realized these were the guards from the cart. "Sorry, you guy''s look exactly like all the other guards." Lake had seen guards a few times since he got here and they all wore the same exact armor that covered their face. It was a bit of a safety concern in his opinion but he was sure there was a reason he was wrong.
"Are you ready to go into the dungeon Lake?" Lake was happy Joy was taking him and not some random He had seen her fight against tough odds and win by outwitting her opponents so he had more confidence in his safety with her. "Yeah let''s go Joy. Is there anything I need to know before we go in?" Lake felt like this was going to be a strange ce being under an ancient building and all. "Yes there is. The amount of unholy mana in the world has turned ces like these into undead nightmares. Do you know how to fight undead?"
Lake had never seen one before except in movies from hisst life so he guessed. "Aim for the head." This was a rule everyone on earth knew. "No, that might slow them down but the best way is magic, the best being Holy magic but the rest of us have to get by using whatever we can." Lake didn''t have his weapons right now so he was happy that he wouldn''t need them. He needed to get in the habit of carrying them, but he wasn''t expecting to fight.
"Alright open the gate, Lake stay behind me until we get to a lit area." Lake didn''t need to ask about what Joy said because he could see the other side of the gate and it was pitch ck of course Lake could see in the dark so he didn''t care and he wasn''t gonna brag about his eyes.
"Please keep me safe, Joy." Lake wasn''t kidding around; he had no idea how dangerous this was going to be and was fine using Joy as a shield. Watching the guards push the gate open Lake tried to get a better look into the tunnel but after a few feet Lake couldn''t see anymore. "Why is it so dark?" Lake had been sure he was going to be able to see just fine. "This is the birthce of Dark Mana. We aren''t exactly sure what Guild Leader Amanda did down here but it''s been like this since she became a Demigod."
Lake was starting to realize his skills weren''t omnipotent; they all seemed to have situations where they didn''t work how he would expect. But it mostly seemed to happen around people who were stronger than him so once again his solution was to get stronger.
"Lake, you ready?" Lake realized he had just been staring down the tunnel this whole time he had been thinking. He bet they thought he was getting cold feet. "Yep, lead the way." Lake started to walk behind Joy as she entered the tunnel once he entered Lake found he could probably only see a few feet in front of Joy.
Lake jumped as he heard them start to close the gate behind them. Pretending he hadn''t been scared, Lake asked Joy. "How far can you see in front of you?"
"Around ten feet, but don''t worry the first torch is pretty close; we''ll be there in less than a minute." Lake wondered why they couldn''t have taken a light source with them if there were some but he didn''t say anything since it seemed to be a straight one way tunnel to where they were going.
"Alright we''re here, can you see it yet?" Lake looked past Joy to see a small light piercing through the darkness and it was growing brighter as they were getting closer. "Yes I can." A few seconds they were standing in a small chamber with three different paths in front of them.
"Alright Lake go ahead and pick one." Lake looked down all three tunnels in front of them and decided there was no difference so he pointed at the middle one. "Let''s go down this one." Joy started down the tunnel and said. "The deeper we go the more undead we''ll run into so just be ready from now on go ahead and start gathering mana."
Lake did as she said and tried to gather light mana and found it to be extremely hard. "Joy, why can''t I gather Light mana?" Lake already knew but he wanted more information about elemental bnce. "Dark and Unholy mana are so strong here that it destroys the natural Light and Holy mana so if you want to use light spells you''ll need to use your own mana."
Lake wasn''t too happy to hear that he was hoping to raise Light mage by a few levels to unlock two new skills but he would worry about thatter. Switching over to Dark mana Lake found Joy was right with almost no effort he was able to gather a huge amount. Lake thought this might be a good chance to unlock the Unholy mage job or whatever it was called but he wanted to ask if there was any stigma associated with using Unholy magic.
"Joy, is it ok for people to use Unholy magic, or is it illegal or something?" Joy didn''t turn around or stop when she said. "You can''t really control what affinitiesprehension gives you when you unlock it so you''d be handicapping yourself if you didn''t use one of the elements you got. The only thing you have to worry about is the Demon Lord might try and recruit you if you show talent for it, and you have to remember if you say no he''ll just charm you."
Lake didn''t want that to happen so he decided to postpone learning Unholy magic but he still felt like this might be a good time to get some more magic jobs so he asked. "Is there a type of magic that''s good against undead other than Holy magic?"
"There are a few that work slightly better than others but it''s a pretty small difference. The one most people use is fire because it''s usually the best for attack spells anyway." Lake thought that sounded good, the only problem was he had never seen anyone use Fire magic so he wasn''t sure what the mana looked or felt like but that was the same for when he had used Light magic for the first time.
After a few seconds of focusing on the surrounding mana Lake was able to pull what he assumed was Fire mana out of the surroundings and after gathering it for a few seconds he got a new job.[New job unlocked Fire Mage] Switching over to it, Lake went ahead and shaped the mana into an attack hearing the name of the spell he threw it behind them. "Fire bolt." He wanted to be ready for when they ran into a monster.
"I can see the next torch up ahead." A few secondster they were standing in a room that looked almost exactly the same as thest one. The only difference was Lake was pretty sure the bricks that made up the wall were slightly darker than earlier. "Joy, are the bricks getting cker?"
"Yeah they get darker the deeper you go in, it''s one of the few ways you can tell where you are down here." Lake found this interesting; he wondered if it was caused by the amount of Dark mana down here. It would make sense that Mana could affect the environment because the environment could affect what Mana was around. That didn''t exin the Unholy mana though.
"Hey Joy, Why is there so much Unholy mana down here? You only told me why the Dark mana was down here." After Lake asked this he heard somethinge from one of the tunnels. It sounded like someone was dragging something. He could also hear a few footsteps every now and then. Looking at Joy Lake saw she had also heard the noise. "That''s what we''re down here for, I hope you''re ready to fight."
"Would you mind answering my question real quick before we go?" Lake was more interested in knowing this than fighting some dumb skeleton or whatever it was. "Oh ok, For whatever reason Unholy mana shows up wherever Dark mana is it has something to do with whatever the Demon Lord did to the Dark Goddess."
Lake was surprised to hear that it was almost like the Demon Lord controlled both elements or he had somehow tied them together. "Alright let''s go, do you want to go first this time, or do you think you can shoot your spells past me without hitting me." Lake didn''t think that was possible Joy took up most of the tunnels they had walked through. "No, I''ll go first."
Chapter 40: Undead Are Ugly
Chapter 40: Undead Are Ugly
Stepping into the new tunnel, Lake still couldn''t see what was causing the noise. "Lake, if you need me to step in just crouch down and I''ll dive in front of you." Lake heard her but he didn''t respond because he thought he could finally see what was making all the noise. It looked like a sack that was moving around on the floor.
"Joy, what is that?" Joy stuck her head over Lake''s shoulder and said. "That''s an undead that hasn''t gotten back on its feet yet." Lake stepped closer to get a better look, and saw that it wasn''t any form of sack now that he was closer he saw it was an old dried body sitting on its knees it was slowly moving its arms around on the ground and that was what was making all the noise.
Lake was grossed out by how it looked. It needed some clothes or something to cover up its gross body. "Lake, go ahead and kill it. This is as good as it gets." Joy was right there was no reason to look at this. "Fire bolt." Watching the bolt m into the undead''s back he wanted a few seconds and when he didn''t receive any Exp he shot again. "Fire bolt." [Level up] [Rank up] [Level up] [Level up]
The second Fire bolt had detached the undead''s upper body from the rest of it so he wasn''t surprised that it had died. Lake went ahead and opened his stats, he also wanted to know what his two new skills were.
Race: Human Lv.3 ( 2/10 )
Job: Fire Mage Lv.3 (16 / 40)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 30
Stamina 30
Mana 30
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 54
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Lake saw he had made the minimum to unlock the Appraiser job and was happy but he quickly moved on to his new skills.
Fire Control (R) Lv.1
Increases affinity for Fire to Low.
Immte (R) Lv.1
Kills using fire magic have a 5% chance to refill mana.
Now that he had seen his new skills Lake wanted to ask for more information on undead. "What was up with that? You said it was yet to get back on its feet. What does that mean?" He understood it was literally not standing on its feet but he wanted to know why.
"Natural undead get stronger the longer they spend soaking in Unholy mana but during the first few days they don''t have enough strength to get up so they just wiggle around on the floor. As we go deeper we''ll run into older and older undead." Lake hoped they started to get less gross as they got stronger, maybe their skin would rehydrate.
"What do you mean by natural undead?" The name implied that there were man made undead and Lake wanted to hear the details on how it was done. "There''s a new job Unholy magic users can unlock that lets them make and control undead but those undead don''t get stronger their strength is locked at whatever it is when they are made."
"What''s the job called?" Lake could see a few ways he could use a job like this so he wanted to know the name so he could find more info on itter. "I don''t know. It''s brand new and we''ve only just started to investigate. Ok lets keep going this isn''t the best time for questions."
She was right, Lake had kind of forgotten they were in the middle of a dungeon. Lake started to walk down the tunnel again and a few minutester he was hearing something. "Stop for a second. I want to tell you something about fighting undead down here." Stopping Lake turned to listen to what Joy had to say.
"This wasn''t important until we saw the newly born undead. If we get up here and it looks like a person it''s still an undead." Lake was happy she told him that he might have hesitated, not. Lake didn''t care who he killed. As soon as he saw something he was gonna st.
A few secondster Lake saw some half gremlin looking guy. "Fire Bolt, Fire st." Lake was startled when he cast a different spell then he had been trying to. The name had juste to him in the middle of casting his spell and it seemed to be a stronger version of Fire Bolt. Lake guessed he had met the requirements so it had been upgraded to the next tier.
The new spell had blown a hole into the undead''s torso and it had fallen to the ground but it was still alive. Waiting for his mana to recharge enough for him to cast Fire st again Lake watched as the undead struggled to get back up it seemed to be having trouble getting its torso off the ground and a few secondsterke said. "Fire st."
Lake had aimed for the undead''s neck and it seemed magic had a 100% uracy because it popped the undead''s head right off. [Level up] Lake hoped this stayed this easy because at this rate he would max this job out in a few hours. "Hey Joy, is 10 really the highest a job can go?" Lake had asked this question before but the person he had asked had blown him off.
"No, there are a bunch of ways to raise the level cap of jobs. It usually involves making a pact with the god that is associated with the job." Lake guessed the gods got something out of it too, so he wasn''t sure how he felt about having to do that. He might end up as some sort of servant to them.
Lake moved on and soon he could see another light source up ahead stepping into the chamber. Lake saw that this was some sort of tomb with coffins built into the walls. "What''s this room?" Lake didn''t realize this dungeon was actually used to bury people in the past. "This is one of the tombs the Mage guild used to bury members in the past; there''s over 1000 of these down here."
"1000, how big is this dungeon?" They had been down here for a while already and he had a hard time believing it was even traversable if it had so many rooms. "It''s too big, now that the teleporters are down, especially with the darkness and undead. It''s actually against the rules to go too deep unless you have permission because the undead start to get too strong for us guards to kill."
"Is there a cap to how strong the undead can get down here?" Lake wanted to leave if there was a chance they could run into something that could kill them. "Don''t worry about running into something dangerous, we have wards to keep them in the tunnel they were born in." Lake found this kind of funny, the tunnels were only a few hundred feet each.
"Are undead intelligent, or are they like animals?" He wanted to know if they started to be like people and could be reasoned with. "The stronger they are the smarter but they''re always aggressive so they''re only good for Exp." This was what Lake wanted to hear, he didn''t want them to try and talk to him while he was killing them.
"Let''s go down this tunnel. It leads to a big junction with lots of tunnels where we can check for undead." Lake wondered if Joy had spent a lot of time down here or if she had some way of knowing where they were. "Joy, are there ways to know where you''re going or do you just know from experience?"
"If you look closely at some of the doorways leading into tunnels there will be directions to good ces to level up." Lake walked closer to the ce Joy was pointing at and saw someone had marked the doorway with an x. "Ok lets go." Lake was hoping she was right about there being lots of undead for him to kill; he wanted to see what would happen when he maxed out a job.
Getting to the next room Lake Looked around to count all the different tunnel entrances. "17, that''s quite a few. I can already hear stuff moving around in some of them." Joy''s statement was spot on there was in fact 17 new tunnels they could go down. "Alright let''s get started with that one."
Lake just chose the closest one tunnel he was going to check them all before he moved on. Maybe he would find one on the floor again. Lake moved a little faster than he had been down the first tunnel and sadly found nothing. Returning to the main junction Lake went down the next one and after a few feet he saw one of them crouched down on the floor this one seemed to be stronger than any of the ones he saw earlier because this one looked indistinguishable from a human.
Chapter 41: Blastin
Chapter 41: stin
Lake took aim at the undead''s lower back, because the way it was crouching was keeping him from seeing its head, and he was hoping to make it lose its capability to walk after the first attack. "Fire st." Before the spellnded on the undead''s back it took off running down the tunnel on all fours and Lake spell sshed harmlessly on to the ground.
Lake had lost sight of it after only a few steps so he hadn''t had a chance to attack again. "Joy, do you think we should go after it?" Lake wasn''t really worried about his safety but the low light levels did make this moreplicated. "Yeah, just take it slow. This is simr to cornering an animal, so once the fight starts it will probably just charge right towards you."
Lake had been thinking the same thing. This had been another situation where he should have used Marks of Interest, the darkness wouldn''t have mattered anymore. Lake could probably shoot the undead from here. Lake slowly crept forward using his ears to try and predict when the undead was going to attack.
Hearing a shuffling up ahead Lake got the spell ready. "It''s going to attack any second now." Joy was spot on right after she got done saying that Lake saw a pale streaking towards him. "Fire st, Fire st." Lake just went ahead and fired both his shots because he felt like he had a good chance of missing at least once.
Only one of his shotsnded and it hit the undead on its shoulder. The spell packed enough punch to stop the undead''s charge and to blow one of its arms off. Lake watched the arm spin into the air andnd next to his feet. Lake took a few steps away from it just in case it could still move. Lake realized this was stupid, but he didn''t want it to grab onto his ankle.
"Let''s trade ces while you charge your mana back up." Hearing this, Lake crouched down and let Joy dive in front of him. Lake felt safe but he wasn''t going to stop Joy from doing her Job. Lake watched the undead get back up and look at him and Joy. He could tell it didn''t want to fight any more but it knew it didn''t have a choice but it still decided to go on the defense.
Instead of attacking it got into a defensive stance and waited for an attack toe. Lake knew it made the right choice because if it had charged Joy it would have been cut in half. After a few seconds of recharging his mana Lake said. "Duck, so I can fire over your head." Joy crouched just enough to Let Lake aim at the undead.
Lake took aim at the undead''s neck but did not fire until he marked it. "Fire Bolt." Lake used a cheaper spell because he knew the undead was going to dodge and he wanted to save enough mana to use Fire st once he thought he couldnd a hit. Lake saw the undead drop to the ground to get out of the way.
Lake thought this was good enough so he took aim at its torso and fired. "Fire st." Lake''s spellnded on the undead''s ribcage and blew a chunk out of its chest; this would probably be a fatal wound for a person but Lake doubted undead could bleed to death. After the undead recovered from the blow it turned and ran further down the tunnel.
"We have to be getting close to the end of the tunnel, there''s no way it went far." Joy was right, Lake was currently watching the mark he had ced on the undead and it seemed to have already run out of room to move. "Joy let me get back in the front, we''ll go after it once my mana is back." Joy squeezed against the wall so Lake could get by but it was still a tight squeeze.
Less than 30 secondster Lake and Joy were moving towards where the undead had gone. Lake stopped before he got eyes on it because he felt they were close enough for his spell to hit and maybe it wouldn''t be expecting it to happen. "Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt." Lake used half his mana in the hopes of overwhelming the undead.
After his mana recharged he did it again. "Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt." Lake knew he was wasting time but this was working he wasn''t sure how many of these spells werending but he could tell some were by watching the mark jerk around. Lake saw the mark was now on the floor so he took aim and said. "Fire st." [Level up]
Lake guessed he hit something important, maybe its head or something. Lake walked over to see if maybe the Intangible Loot drought had ended seeing the body wasn''t glowing he turned to Joy and said. "Earlier when you said magic was the best way to kill undead, what''s the advantage over melee weapons?"
"To kill undead you have to destroy the Unholy mana in their body keeping them alive and it''s much harder to do with a sword." Lake had been wondering why you couldn''t just cut them in half. "Do enchanted weapons work as well as magic?" Lake bet it worked the same as casting a spell. "It depends on the enchantment, but my sword would work."
So magic in any form worked, it wasn''t just spells. This also made Lake realize why Holy magic was so good at killing undead. Holy and Unholy were opposite so it would instantly cause both to be destroyed. "Can you enchant weapons with elements?" Lake wanted to know if Holy magic could be used to make enchanted weapons to kill undead with.
"Yes, but the enchanter has to be able to use the element." Lake understood how rare holy weapons had to be if you factored in the odds of someone having the Holy affinity and the Enchanter job. Lake guessed he really didn''t need one anyway so it didn''t matter how rare they were.
"Alright let''s go to the next tunnel." Lake was ready to keep leveling up; he didn''t know how much longer he had down here, so he wanted to make as much progress as he could. Getting back to the junction Lake went into the next tunnel and a few minutester he and Joy were back to the Junction.
Lake had run down that tunnel because he didn''t hear anythinging from it. He was nning to do the same thing again in the next one because it was also quiet. Running down the tunnel Lake stopped there was an undead on the ground not moving. Lake wasn''t sure if it was dead or it had just been born or whatever.
Lake switched on his mana vision to see if he could tell by the amount of mana in its body. Seeing some mana Lake said. "Fire st." Lake felt the feeling of Exp but he didn''t earn enough to level up. Wanting to know how close he was, Lake pulled his stats up.
Race: Human Lv.3 ( 4/10 )
Job: Fire Mage Lv.5 (130 / 160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 30
Stamina 30
Mana 30
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 62
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
He was happy to know he didn''t need too much more to level up again. "Hey Joy, do undead have cores?" When he was using mana vision he hadn''t seen a core like he usually did with monsters or people. "They do, it gets bigger as they get stronger. These ones we''re killing aren''t worth harvesting even if we could find their core.
Lake wasn''t sure about what Joy had said because he had been able to see cores in even really small creatures when he had been in the forest. Lake thought it was possible maybe undead didn''t have cores when they first came back to life depending on if the body had a core or not. This made sense to him that they would have to grow a new one.
Lake and Joy went back to hunting for more undead, and after checking a few more tunnels they finally found another undead. Lake turned on his mana vision again, he wanted to see if this undead had a core or not because this one looked like a normal human. Staring at the undead he saw a small dot of light in its chest.
It seemed that once they looked human their core started to grow back. Lake found this interesting and it caused him to want to know more about theter stages of undead, maybe they started to be like they were when they were still alive. Getting back to what he was doing, Lake said. "Fire st."
Chapter 42: The Wind
Chapter 42: The Wind
Lake and Joy had just killed thest undead in thest tunnel and it hadn''t even been a hard fight and that meant he didn''t earn a lot of Exp. "Joy, how much longer can we be down here?" He wanted to max out his job before he had to go back to doing alchemy. "They didn''t set a time limit. We can be down here until you''re ready to go."
Lake didn''t know how long it would take to hit level 10 on his fire mage job and he didn''t feel like doing the math but he wanted to push for it. "Joy can we go a little deeper." Lake wanted to find stronger enemies and he guessed there would probably be more of them as well. "Yeah but do you think you can handle it? you''re still using low level spells."
Lake had kind of forgotten that there was a lot of effort that went into learning new spells, and that he had gotten lucky when he unlocked Fire st. The fact that he needed to use Fire magic to get the Exp multiplier kind of made him wonder if he would be able to handle the amount of enemies they would be fighting.
Lake had noticed as his Intelligence increased he was able to gather more mana around him. Right now he could use Fire st 3 times in a row but he didn''t think that would be enough. Lake could only see one way around this, and that was to level up a few other mage jobs to get his intelligence higher so he could spam Fire st.
But first Lake wanted to know where his intelligence was.
Race: Human Lv.3 ( 6/10 )
Job: Fire Mage Lv.7 (248 / 640)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 30
Stamina 30
Mana 30
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 70
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Lake was starting to realize how busted his Unique Comprehension skill was; he could see why normal people were capped at a few mage jobs, his Intelligence was already racing towards 100 and he hadn''t even put that much time into learning magic. His n would result in his Intelligence being higher than all his other statsbined.
Now that he wasmitted to this n Lake thought about what type of magic he should use next. "Hey Joy, what types of magic can you use?" Lake didn''t know if it was taboo to ask this, but he felt Joy wouldn''t mind telling him. "I can only use anti magic. It''s something you can get if you getmonprehension; it''s treated as a rare element."
Lake found this answer unhelpful so he switched how he asked what he should use next. "If you could use magic, what would you want to use?" Lake thought this was a good way to find out about the best elements to fight with. "I would probably want to use wind so I could fly." Lake had forgotten about the usefulness of wind magic.
Lake made up his mind and a few secondsterke started to build up wind mana. [New job unlocked Wind Mage] Lake switched over to his new job and then he formed the mana into a de listening for the voice Lake repeated what it said. "Wind de." Now that Lake was ready he and Joy went back to the junction.
"Let''s go down this one it leads deeper." Joy and him had been to the end of this tunnel earlier and it had led to another junction like this one. Arriving Lake looked around to count the number of tunnels that were in this junction. There were only 10 but since they were deeper he was sure he would earn more Exp than he had in thest one.
"Joy, let''s do the same thing as Last time." Lake turned on his Mana vision and started to run down the first tunnel. Since Lake had realized only the strong undead had cores he had started to do this so he and Joy didn''t have to go slow anymore. He would be alerted if an undead strong enough to be dangerous was up ahead.
Seeing a dot of light appear, Lake slowed down. There was no reason to get any closer, Lake started to cast spells. "Wind de, Wind de, Wind de, Wind de, Wind de, Wind de." Lake stopped here because he felt the spell wascking power, and he wanted to see what was going to happen before he sent more spells.
Lake moved forward until he could see the undead his spells had hit. Lake inspected the damage he had caused and he confirmed that the damage was indeedcking. There were a few thin cuts on its body and that was it. Lake knew to kill this undead with this he would probably need tond 3 attacks on its neck.
The good thing about Wind de was it was a long attack so the undead wasn''t really able to dodge. The undead finally saw Lake and had started to charge at them, so Lake took aim at the undead''s ankles and started to fire. After 13 times Lake had detached the undead''s legs. Recharging his mana Lake walked over and fired directly into its neck. [Level up] [Level up][Level up] [Level up] [Rank up] [Level up]
Lake went ahead and opened his stats.
Race: Human Lv.4 ( 1/10 )
Job: Wind Mage Lv.5 (19/160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 90
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Lake also saw his skills shing so he opened it.
Wind Control (E) Lv.1
Increases affinity for Wind to Medium.
Gale Force (R) Lv.1
Doubles the speed of Wind spells.
Lake saw that he had gotten a better version of Wind Control and wanted to see what the difference was. "Joy, what are the levels of elemental affinity?" After he asked Lake dispersed his mana then started to build his mana back up to see if it was faster. "The order goes Basic, Low, Medium, then High."
Lake guessed if he had gotten the Legendary version of Wind Control he would have High wind affinity. Lake had just gotten done timing how long it took and found it was around 12 seconds. Lake wanted to see the difference so he dispersed it again and started to build up Fire mana. Lake found it took almost 30 seconds.
After he was done Lake cast Fire st as many times as he could after 4 times he didn''t have enough to cast it again. Lake switched back to wind because he wanted to test the power of Wind de now that he had Gale Force he wanted to know if it would do more damage now that it was moving faster.
Getting to the next tunnel Lake rushed to the undead he could hear flopping around. When Lake saw it was still on the weaker side he knew his spell was going to do more damage anyway since this undead was so much weaker. He thought maybe he would be able to cut this undead in half with one spell. "Wind de."
Lake had been right the spell decapitated the undead but this hadn''t been a real test. Lake went on to do this a few more times, [Level up] and found that the spell was definitely a lot stronger now that it was faster, and it made Lake wonder if he could increase the speed even more. Maybe this was the path to the next tier of spells for the Wind element.
Of course Lake had no idea how to make his spells faster. He remembered the principles thing from the books he read, but how was he supposed to change the principles of the elements? This was a good thing for him to studyter. Lake had switched his focus from Fire to Wind; he felt it was a better choice now to level Wind to 10 so he could maybe learn how to fly.
But not today he was done for the day he was starting to get tired and he still needed to walk back up the stairs. "Joy, I''m ready to go back." Lake hoped this wouldn''t be thest time he got toe down here. He had found undead to be easy Exp, but next time he came down he wanted to bring a list of elements with him so he could get all the mage jobs.
Getting back to the gate, Lake asked Joy. "Are you going to stay here or are you like my personal guard?" Lake didn''t know if she had been waiting for him here, or if guarding this gate was her new job. "This is my new post, but I''ve been told to go with you whenever you go through the gate."
"Ok well I''ll try ande back tomorrow. Bye." Lake thought he and Joy had be a pretty good team, so he was happy he wasn''t going to have to do this all over again with a new guard every time he came down here. Looking at the elevator Lake wasn''t really sure how it worked so he said. "Joy, will you show me how to work the elevator?"
Chapter 43: Elevate
Chapter 43: Elevate
Lake watched as the elevator came down to where they were. Lake got on and just wanted Joy to tell him but she got on next to him and soon the elevator started moving. "The way the elevator works is you ce your foot on the floor symbol you want to go to." Lake looked down to see there were a few different symbols carved near the edge of the tform.
Joy had her foot on the one he assumed meant the top. "How do you call the elevator to you so you can get on?" Lake hadn''t seen Joy do anything before the elevator came down to get them. "If you stand near the entrance the elevator wille." So Lake had already been calling the elevator before Joy came over.
Now that Lake knew it was so simple he wondered why Joy had gotten on the elevator and not just told him how to do it. Lake could only think of one reason she was trying to get a promotion. He bet after he asked her if she was his personnel guard she had realized that she could get a raise if she yed up their friendship.
Lake remembered when he had first met Joy he asked her why she worked for the Alchemist guild and she said she was only here for the money. Lake wasn''t against Joy getting a raise but he didn''t like when people tried to get close to him for nefarious purposes. Lake decided to let it slide because he knew Joy was trustworthy enough because they had fought together.
Getting to the top floor of the elevator, Lake saw Lucas sitting at his desk writing in a book. Lake wanted to know if he was done for the day or if Lucas was going to show him how to unlock the Appraiser job Which was the reason why he had been told to go down to the dungeon. "Master Lucas, I got my Intelligence to 50 like you told me to."
"Come back here tomorrow and I''ll show you the best way to unlock Appraiser if you aren''t able to do it yourself tonight." After Lucas said this he pulled a core out of his desk and handed it to Lake. "Spend some time focusing on this tonight, and try to figure out what it does." After Lucas said this he went back to work.
Lake could tell Lucas was really busy so he went and started to walk up to his room. When he turned around he saw Joy had already left. Lake thought this was weird because if he was trying to get a raise or promotion he would have made sure that Lucas had seen him being friendly with an important person like Lake.
Getting to his floor, Lake went in to see the guy who had shown him to his room earlier being kind of weird and standing in the corner of the lobby. Lake had forgotten this guy''s name so he decided not to ask him about it. Walking past him, Lake could hear snoring. Lake realized that he was sleeping standing up.
Lake found this odd enough to stop and tap him on his shoulder. "Huh, what." Lake saw the guy''s eyes focus on him. "You''re finally back." Lake guessed this guy was waiting for him for whatever reason, and Lake took so long toe back that he fell asleep. "Did you need something?" Lake doubted it was something important because Lucas would have said something.
"I just wanted to see if you wanted me to get you for practice in the morning." Lake wasn''t sure what his schedule was supposed to be like so he found letting someone else take care of it to be a good idea. "Yeah sure, I''ll see you in the morning." Lake walked away before the fact he didn''t remember his name came to light.
Getting to his room Lake saw his three were standing in wait for him. "Sir." All three of them greeted him at the same time. Lake remembered he still hadn''t asked them their names so he went ahead and asked. "Let''s do an introduction. I know you all know my name but I''ll do one anyway, I''m Lake."
Lake pointed at the guy that had carried him up the stairs. "I''m Jason." Lake was expecting more information but he liked that Jason did not burden him with his backstory. Moving his finger to the next person. "Le." Niceke was happy to see they all got what he wanted from them. Pointing at thest one. "Edgar."
With the three of them out of the way Lake asked them about his neighbor. "Do you know what my neighbors name is?" Lake was starting to get overwhelmed. He wasn''t good with names so he was going to write them downter. "Do you mean Sir Soloman?" This sounded right to Lake, so he would test it out tomorrow.
"Ok thank you. Jason, will you show me to my bed?" Lake didn''t say bedroom because he was pretty sure he was already in his bedroom; it was just really big. "It''s right behind this wall." Lake saw there was a partitioning wall and his bed was behind it. "Ok goodnight see you tomorrow." Lake wasn''t sure what these three did when he wasn''t around, but he didn''t want them around while he was sleeping.
Getting into his bed Lake started to think about what he wanted to do tomorrow. He didn''t really care too much about alchemy and he was much more interested in magic. Lake knew this was the old Mage guild so he bet he would be able to find plenty of books about magic if he looked around some.
Lake realized he hadn''t tried to unlock the Appraiser job yet and after a few seconds of deliberation Lake reached over and grabbed the core out of the pocket of hisb coat. Once it was in his hand Lake started to focus on it. Lake''s n was to do this for a few minutes and if it didn''t work he was going to go to bed.
Trying to feel what the core could do Lake thought he was starting to feel something and he was pretty sure whatever it was was better than just Exp. Ruling out Exp Lake tried to see if it was maybe stats. Lake didn''t feel like that was it, this core had to do something else. Lake didn''t know everything a core could do, but he remembered Kyle had said they could grant skills.
With the assumption that this core gave a skill Lake was at a loss at how he was supposed to possibly guess what the skill was. Lake thought this was the wrong approach. He needed to find a way to pull up the details of this item like he could with people. Lake decided to just do what he would to pull up someone''s stats without using Insider Information. "Details." [New job unlocked Appraiser]
Dragon Core (L)
Grants skill Golden Vision.
Lake was happy this had worked so well, because now he could go to bed shutting his eyes. Lake remembered he had wanted to write all the names down so he could remember them tomorrow but Lake wasn''t willing to get up and find a pen and paper, so he made a mental note to make a note tomorrow.
.....
Opening his eyes Lake looked around to see if he had something that could tell him what time it was. Seeing it was still the middle of the night, Lake sighed. What was he supposed to do for the next few hours until everyone got up. Lake wondered if his servants were up yet they had been awake when he got back and if they were normal they would sleep twice as long as him.
Getting out of his bed Lake wandered into the main part of his room. With all his free time Lake decided to get to know his room better. It was pretty big and he wanted to know what all was in here. Moving to look behind another partitioning wall Lake saw there was a small kitchen area and Lake realized he hadn''t eaten in a while.
Going and opening all the cabs Lake found there was almost every type of food. Grabbing some bread and some type of meat, Lake sat down and started to eat. Lake found it kind of annoying that the bread wasn''t sliced but he knew how to do it. He grabbed his knife, and started to cut the bread and meat into slices so he could make a sandwich.
Lake had checked to see if there was any cheese but Lake guessed the fact that cows weren''t domesticated no one had found how to make cheese. Lake sat down with hispleted sandwich and tried to find a way to make this sandwichst for a few hours.
Chapter 44: Self Study
Chapter 44: Self Study
Lake had just gotten done looking at thest part of his room; it was a set of doors Lake guessed these led to where his servants slept. But all this and he had only killed an hour, not wanting to waste anymore time, Lake dressed himselfpletely. He was going to go to the library that was supposedly the next floor down.
Lake guessed this was going to be his mornings from now on, maybe he could use this time everyday to study. Next time he saw Joy he would ask if he could go into the dungeon for a few hours but he was sure she was asleep right now so he would have to ask her to switch up her schedule.
Stepping into the hallway, Lake started to go towards the staircase. Lake saw some disheveled person going the opposite direction. Lake guessed she had been up all night and was just nowing home to go to sleep. Lake figured this was one of his three neighbors. Lake decided to not bother her because she looked tired, so he just nodded at her.
"Are you the new person? What was your name again, um?" Lake guessed she was still fine enough for a conversation. "I''m Lake." After he said this Lake saw the confusion leave her face. "That''s right. I''m Nia. Where are you going?" Lake hadn''t been expecting her to ask him this so he answered right away without thinking.
"To the library. I don''t sleep very much so I figured I''d go and look around at what kind of books there are." Lake felt this was a good way to kill a few hours because thest time he read a book it had taken over an hour. "You''ve already slept?" Lake nodded. "Ok, I''ll see you tomorrow." Nia waved bye so Lake followed suit.
Getting to the stairs, Lake started to head down and a few minutester he pushed the door of the library open. Looking in Lake was blown away at how many books there were and if Lake recalled what Lucas had said this was just the beginner library. Lake bet he couldn''t read all these books even if he tried.
Walking over to the closest bookshelf Lake started to read the titles. Quickly scanning them all Lake found they all had names pertaining to alchemy, and while some of them sounded interesting Lake wanted to know more about magic. Lake continued to do this moving shelf by shelf until finally he found a section that held books about elements.
It wasn''t exactly what Lake wanted but it was close enough. Grabbing a book that seemed to be about all the elements. Lake walked to a table and sat down flipping through the book, Lake found as many different elements as he could. He wanted aplete list so he could pick the ones he wanted to focus on.
Getting to the back of the book Lake got to a sectionbeled New Elements. This part of the book was much shorter than the rest and Lake wondered if it was even up to date, did someonee and add to every book when there was a new god? Lake went past the page that was about darkness because he was already a Dark mage.
"Metal is considered an Extreme element because it is just an upgraded version of earth with all the same principles just pushed to the Extreme." This was what Lake wanted to see; earlier he had seen Earth in the normal part of the book, and had just gone right past it but Metal sounded way better to him.
What Lake wanted to know was if it still had the same unlock conditions could he just gather Metal mana out of the air like he could with most elements or did he have to pull it from the ground. He would have to try itter because he assumed he wasn''t allowed to practice in the library. It seemed to be amon rule in most libraries that you had to be quiet.
Moving to the next element Lake saw it was Ice. He had actually heard of Ice before the Temple Head had mentioned it to him when she was telling how new elements came about. Lake wasn''t too interested in Ice so he went ahead and skipped it. "Life Magic is an offshoot of the Holy element that keeps most of Holy Magic''s healing abilities but loses its ability to be used to negate curses."
Lake wondered why someone would weaken an element then use it to ascend wouldn''t you want to make it stronger. Lake got up and went looking for a book about Life Magic. He was hoping there was some reason someone would do this. Finding a book that went into detail about the Life element Lake quickly read a few passages.
He found that it wasn''t necessarily a weakness because while curses were weak to holy magic the opposite was also true. Life magic didn''t have a weakness when it was first created since it didn''t react with curse magic it was able to heal the body around the curse. This all changed though when death magic was created by the Demon Lord.
Reading more about death magic Lake found it wasnt its own element just an application of Unholy magic death magic was rted to Unholy magic the way Life and Holy were. The only difference was death didn''t have its own god; they were just spells Unholy mages could learn to counter Life magic.
Lake had to say the more he learned about the Demon Lord the more he found him kind of amazing. It was almost like he was single handedly fighting every god and somehow it seemed he was slowly winning. Lake wondered what the Demon Lord''s backstory was; he seemed to really hate some of the gods.
This made Lake kind of want to meet him. Lake just wanted to know what kind of guy he was. Lake felt like he had to be some cult leader that would also match with what he knew about him having really high Charisma. That was what people always said about cult leaders back on earth that they were able to hypnotize people by just talking to them. The only difference was it was true in this case.
This was making Lake want to learn Unholy magic again but instead of making up his mind right away Lake got up and grabbed a book on Unholy Magic. Lake was starting to think Unholy Magic seemed to be the strongest. The Demon Lord had already killed the Holy Goddess, so its only weakness was already dealt with.
The Demon Lord had also taken control of the Dark element so Lake bet there were probablybination jobs that needed both elements. This was fully a guess, but if it was right Lake would be able to take advantage of this. Lake wondered if this was what the job Joy mentioned that could control undead was.
Opening the book Lake found the first page was just a warning about how it was dangerous to specialize in Unholy Magic and how if you became too good at it the Demon Lord woulde and try to recruit you. Lake skipped this; he was already aware of all this. The main reason Lake was reading this book was because Lake wanted to see if curses were Unholy magic.
He found it hard to believe that curses weren''t around before the Demon Lord. Getting to a section about curses, Lake read it. "Unholy Curses are particrly ruthless, without the intervention of Holy magic the lethality is the highest of any magic. That sadly is not the only thing you have to worry about when ites to Unholy Curses, control Curses have be more and more prevalent."
The fact that this specified Unholy Curses made Lake think he was right about curses being around before the Demon Lord. Lake also found this book was probably written by someone who did not like Unholy magic; this book was filled with criticism and back handedpliments. Lake found this funny; he bet this was written during the Mage guilds copse.
Unholy Magic was one of the causes of the copse and you could feel the hate the author held towards the Demon Lord. Lake could picture what this ce had been like during the copse. On earth scientists used research papers to debate, but Lake bet it would be much more violent if those same scientists could use magic.
"There you are." Lake looked up to see Solomon had juste into the library. "I came to get you for morning study but your servants said you weren''t there." Lake hadpletely forgotten about Solomoning to get him. "Sorry about that, I woke up kind of early, and didn''t want to waste too much time waiting for everyone else."
Lake could tell Solomon wasn''t actually mad so he didn''t put too much effort into his apology. "That''s fine I''m just surprised to see you already here. I was actually expecting to find you in Master Lucas''s office. I just looked in here to be sure, before I walked all the way down there." Lake bet Solomon would have been more mad if he had to walk all the way to Lucas''s office to find him.
Chapter 45: Eye Opening
Chapter 45: Eye Opening
Now that Solomon was here Lake wanted to see what a normal day for him was going to be like. Lake still hadn''t made his mind up if he was going to stay here yet. Depending on how this went, Lake might leave, or to be more specific escape. "So what are you going to do today?" Lake was nning to just shadow Solomon today.
"Well I''ve been studying an advanced application of Alchemy called obscured brewing. I wouldn''t rmend you trying to learn this until you have more experience." This one sentence had kind of ruined Lakes'' n. "Ok, what would you rmend for me to read?" Lake knew Solomon was probably much further into Alchemy than he might ever be.
"I would rmend this recipe book. You should look through it for a good recipe that you can brew over and over again, so you can unlock your next two skills." Lake guessed Solomon was right. Lake still didn''t even know how good he was going to be at Alchemy. "Alright, is there a section in this book about poison?"
Lake needed to make poison for the bonus Exp. "Yeah, are you nning to focus on poison?" Lake was nning to focus on poison so he nodded. "It''s pretty rare for someone to pick their career path this early, Does your skill have something to do with poison?" Lake guessed his question had given it away.
For some reason Lake felt like he had made a mistake revealing this to Solomon up until just now Lake hadn''t felt anything threatening from Solomon he had just seemed like a nice kid but now Lake felt he was being looked at like he was food. Lake had been fooled by Solomon''s acting and if his senses weren''t so good he would probably have continued to be.
After Lake thought this he felt Solomon go back to normal almost like nothing happened. "Sorry for prying, it''s always interesting when someone with a new Legendary skilles to the guild." Lake also pretended like he hadn''t noticed Solomon''s shift, and said. "It''s fine, maybe once we know each other better we can share what our skills do."
Lake felt this was the best way to handle this. Lake bet the fact that people always said, keep your enemies close, there was some truth to it. "After I find a recipe what should I do?" Lake found this to be more important than whatever dumb games Solomon was trying to y with him. "Bring it to your servants."
Lake remembered Lucas had told him something simr yesterday. "Should I practice in the Lab, or is there a better ce?" This was a dumb question Lake was just messing with Solomon. "No, the Lab is the best ce." It was also the only ce; Lake nned to say dumb stuff in front of Solomon from now on, maybe he would underestimate Lake if he ever tried something.
After Solomon answered his question Lake saw him go and grab a book off a shelf. Without thinking Lake marked it he would be interested to see what Solomon was readingter after he was done with it this would probably lead to nothing but Lake could still fact check what Solomon had said earlier.
If the book wasn''t about obscured brewing Lake would know to never believe anything Solomon said. Lake had no idea why Solomon would lie about this but it was still fun to be nosy. After justifying himself Lake opened his book and flipped to the section about poison. Finding a simple recipe that was said to be very cheap and effective, Lake wrote it down on some paper.
Leaving the library after putting the book back where he thought it went, Lake Walked to his room where he left his servants. Stepping inside Lake saw all three standing where they always were. "Sir." Lake wondered if they always stood there, or if they had a way of knowing he wasing so they could get into position.
"Would one of you go and get these ingredients for me? Bring them to the Lab please." Lake handed them the list and closed the door and walked to the Lab and waited for them to bring the ingredients. "Here sir. You didn''t tell us how much to bring, so we brought as much as we could carry."
Lake hadn''t even thought about specifying amounts, but he was pretty sure this was enough for him to reach level ten. "Ok thank you. Master Lucas said one of you is an Alchemist, which one is it?" Lake was going to have whoever it was get the station ready between rounds. "We''re all technically Alchemist''s sir."
"Ok in that case you set up the station for me." Lake just pointed to the guy who had carried him up the stairs yesterday. Lake racked his brain for a second and said. "Jason." Lake had identally called Jason you, like he didn''t remember his name or something which made him seem rude.
"Sir, we can all set up stations so you can have three potions brewing at a time." This was a good idea, Lake had picked an easy recipe so the setup was probably going to take longer than brewing the potion. With this he would be able to go from station to station and just pour in the ingredients, stir it for a few seconds and move on.
"Ok let''s do that." Lake wondered how much Exp he was going to get from each potion, so he pulled up his current progress in the Alchemist job.
Race: Human Lv.4 ( 2/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.5 (38 / 160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 94
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Seeing his Exp was currently at 38 Lake would be able to tell how much each potion was going to give him. "Ok sir, we''re ready." Lake walked forward and dumped the ingredients in then stirred for a few seconds. Feeling the sensation Lucas had told him meant the potion could finish itself, Lake stopped stirring and stepped back.
Feeling he had gained Exp Lake opened his stats again.
Race: Human Lv.4 ( 2/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.5 (158 / 160)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 32
Perception 23
Intelligence 94
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
"So close." This potion had given him 120 Exp, so 15 before the X8 multiplier. Lake wanted tough because all his Unique jobs were so easy to level up. Lake was pretty sure this was going to take him less than an hour to get all the way to level 10. "Alright, let''s do this as fast as we can."
After he said this Lake started doing a loop. [Level up] [Level up] After three potions Lake had already leveled up twice. And he felt something weird when this happened. Lake stopped and opened his stats.
Race: Human Lv.4 ( 4/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.7 (38 / 640)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 36
Perception 25
Intelligence 100 [Max]
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Lake saw that his Intelligence had just hit 100 and now it said it was at the max. Lake didn''t like this and it made him want to go see Lucas right away but he saw his skills page was shing which meant he had a new skill. Lake calmed himself and opened it.
Spell Weaver (U) Lv.1
Grants greater control of every principle, and allows for the creation of custom spells.
This Skill seemed really good and made Lake feel better even if this was thest thing he ever got from his Intelligence stat this would probably help him master magic. Stepping back from the alchemy station Lake said. "This is it for now I have to go see Master Lucas." Lake didn''t tell them what the problem was because he didn''t know how big of a problem this was.
Getting to the staircase, Lake ran down to Master Lucas''s office. Lake really needed to ask about that mirror thing he had seen Lucas use to talk to people. Maybe he had one Lake could use, but Lake was pretty sure it was something kind of rare or hard to use because no one else seemed to have one.
Getting to Master Lucas''s office, Lake was happy to see him sitting at his desk. As soon as Lake walked in Lucas looked up and put away whatever he had been working on. "So Lake were you able to unlock Appraiser?" Lake had forgotten about this assignment Lucas had given him yesterday because he had gone to sleep right after he finished it.
"Yes sir, I did it right before I went to bed." This wasn''t what Lake wanted to talk about. "Did you figure out what I meant by the easiest way to unlock Appraiser?" Lake didn''t even know what Lucas was talking about.
Chapter 46: Climbing the Spire
Chapter 46: Climbing the Spire
Lake thought back to what had happened yesterday; drawing a nk Lake just answered honestly. "No, Master Lucas." Lake just wanted to get this out of the way, so he could ask about his Intelligence being maxed out. "Did you see what skill the core held?" Lake did remember it was called Golden Vision or something.
Lake nodded his head yes. "If you had failed I would have brewed the core into a skill potion and having that skill gives you a 100% chance of unlocking Appraiser." Lake took the core out of his pocket and handed it back to Lucas. "These are pretty rare, so I''m happy we didn''t need to use it."
Lucas had made Lake want to know more about Appraiser. Lake hadn''t even looked at the details of the job after he unlocked it. Lake opened his stats and then looked at the details of the job.
Appraiser (E) Lv.1
On level up:
Perception 5
Exp conditions:
Revealing details of items.
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Revealing hidden details of items.
Skills from job:
Lake was starting to think he was never going to find another Unique job ever again. Lake guessed Appraiser had nothing to do with being a thief really. Lake thought maybe since you could use it to see how valuable something was, but he guessed it was able to do this without it being upgraded.
"So have you leveled it up yet?" Lake needed to cut in or Lucas was just gonna keep talking about this. "Master Lucas I actually came to talk about something else. I was leveling up Alchemist earlier and my Intelligence hit 100, and now it says it''s maxed." After Lake said this Lucas just nkly stared for a few seconds before he asked.
"What Level is your Alchemist job?" Lake looked real quick and said. "It''s level 7." Lucas looked a little troubled after Lake said this. "Ok well, we need to go to the top of the spire so lets talk on the way up." This wasn''t what Lake wanted to hear, surely there was something they could do without having to go all the way to the top.
Sighing Lake lined up behind Lucas to follow him up the stairs. "Can we go full speed?" Lake bet Lucas didn''t want to spend all this time going up either. "After we get done talking we can speed up. You know you''re the youngest person I''ve ever met to max out a stat. That being said Intelligence is usually the fastest to max out because of all the mage jobs."
"So what does maxing a stat do? Like if I leveled up a job that gave me Intelligence what would happen?" This was what Lake was most worried about. He was scared he was going to lose all the points he earned from now on. "That''s not how it works, you won''t be able to level any jobs that give you Intelligence until you raise the max."
"And how do I do that?" Lake was happy to hear there was something he could do about it, and his excitement got the better of him. He was pretty sure Lucas would have told him if he hadn''t cut him off. "There Are a few different ways, the best known being bing a demigod. That''s not what we''re going to do for you though."
Lake was surprised to hear he was already getting to the level where he could be a demigod. "So you already have a way to fix it? How are we going to do it?"
"We''re going to give you an elixir that will allow you to artificially break the limit before you should be able to. It''s prettymon for people in big guilds to use these elixirs on their talented people." Lake guessed this was one of the ways the guild made its money. "So will this elixir allow me to go past 100 in every stat?"
"Yes, you''ll be able to get all your stats to 200 before you have to worry about it again." This gave Lake more room to mess around with different jobs, Lake had thought he would have to be more picky from now on, so he wouldn''t identally max his stats and not be able to level up any jobs he needed in the future.
"So what happens after I reach 200, will I have to find a way to be a Demigod?" This would make sense to Lake unless there was another potion they could give him that would let him increase the limit even further. "That would be the dream, but bing a demigod has never been harder. Anyone with even a shred of divinity is in constant danger."
Lake didn''t even need to ask why it was so dangerous at this point, Lake understood the Demon Lord was like the boogieman to people in this world. Lake guessed he woulde and steal any divinity you had umted. He already had a history of stealing divinity because he had done so to the Dark Goddess.
Lake was out of questions; he just wanted to get to the top of the spire, so he asked Lucas. "Is there anything I need to know about the top of the spire, or can we go faster?" Lucas shook his head and said. "Nope, let''s go. You should get in front of me." It was just likest time Lake went as fast as he could and Lucas kept up with him.
...
30 minutes of runningter Lucas told Lake to stop. "Ok we''re here. I need to let us in so watch out." After Lucas said this he moved past Lake, walked a few steps up and waved his hand. "Ok we can go through now." Lake hadn''t seen what Lucas had said, or what he had done to open it so Lake just assumed it was some form of magic.
Walking up the few steps that separated them Lake passed where Lucas had waved his hand and felt like he was walking through some sort of membrane. "What''s that I''m feeling?" Even now that he had moved a little deeper, Lake could still feel it. "There''s a formation that changes the environment to be more dense in mana. It''s one of the few grand formations of the former Mage guild that''s still in use, just at a lower setting it used to cover the whole spire."
"What are the benefits of denser mana?" Lake could guess that casting spells was one of the benefits but he bet it went deeper than that. "The elixir that you''re about to drink is one of them that couldn''t have been made in a normal environment." Lake didn''t understand the finer details of alchemy yet, so he was just going to have to take Lucas''s word for it.
Lake knew the top of the spire epassed the ten top floors so he asked. "What floor are we going to?" Now that he was here he was hoping to go all the way. He would be a little bummed if they only went to the 91st floor. "All the way to the top I''m using this as an excuse to introduce you to some of the most important people in the guild. They don''t really ever leave the top of the spire so this might be yourst chance to meet them for a while. You''re not really supposed to be up here, but this is where we keep the best elixirs. The increased mana helps keep them stable while they wait to be used."
"Is the vault up here?" This is something a criminal would ask so Lake felt he had to. "One of them is but it''s also the hardest to get into so it''s never targeted; the thieves guild always goes for the other ones."
"But all the best stuff is kept here?" Lake just wanted to make sure in case he was ever in the position to rob them. "That''s right most of it is stuff made here anyway and the rest of it is equipment used by the guild masters so there isn''t a reason to ever move it." Lake knew there were more advanced forms of alchemy that needed special equipment so he wasn''t surprised to hear there was a lot of good stuff kept up here.
"When we get up here, don''t talk to anyone who doesn''t say something to you first. That means they''re busy and if you distract them you''ll get an earful." This fell in line with how Lake would expect people called Guild Masters to act but he was fine with it; he didn''t want to talk to a bunch of people anyway.
Lake could feel the mana slowly getting stronger and assumed that meant they were about to reach the top; they had passed a few doors but the floors weren''t marked with numbers anymore. Seeing a really fancy door and the staircase ending Lucas said. "This is it. Remember to keep your voice down, even if you see something crazy happening there''s no danger." This made Lake think this trip was definitely going to be worth all the effort.
Chapter 47: The Master Lab
Chapter 47: The Master Lab
Lake watched as Lucas walked up and touched a symbol that was carved into the door. "It''s unlikely that you''ll evere here by yourself but this rune right here is how you open the door." Lake felt Like he was just being handed the keys to the vault and he wasn''t the only one excited by this development. Lake could tell the insider really wanted to steal something.
Up until this point the only thing Lake had ever stolen was corn. If he somehow was killed he would go down in history as the worst thief of all time. When Lake finally left for greener pastures he would make sure to take as much of their stuff as possible. Just to set the record straight if nothing else.
Lake saw the door start to open and even through the small crack he could see all sorts of shing lights. Every color like a strobe light Lake wondered how anyone could focus in an environment like this. Strangely enough there didn''t seem to be any noise and that was all Lucas had warned him against, so it seemed they were all fine with any visual stimulus.
With the door finallypletely open Lake could finally see what was causing all the shing vats of varying fluids with old people all around them throwing giant bales of ingredients in and with every ingredient a sh would be released. Lucas crouched down and whispered in his ear. "You remember when I showed you how to remove impurities and it came out as smoke. Those shes are simr, just a more advanced technique that removes them faster. It just destroys them without polluting the air. You see if impurities build up in the air it can affect whatever you''re brewing."
Lake thought back to how Lucas had fed the smoke into a crystal, he guessed that was to keep it from dispersing into the air. Lake nodded to tell Lucas he had understood what he had said and felt Lucas guide him forward with his hand on his shoulder. After they passed the giant vats, Lake saw something even weirder. It was a massive monster that looked like a gori. It was strapped down and struggling to get free from the table it was on.
Looking closely at the man next to the monster Lake could see the man was injecting it with a massive syringe. Lake wanted to ask questions but he guessed that it would have to wait forter, because Lucas kept guiding him forward. Lake watched the gori start to go crazy after a few seconds and its skin started to turn green.
Lake saw the man next to it grab another syringe and inject it into the monster''s arm. Lake was expecting it to counteract the effects of whatever the first one had done, but instead Lake saw the gori start to dissolve from its arm towards the rest of its body. Lake saw the man quickly grab arge bucket from next to the bench and pour it onto the monster.
This seemed to stop whatever was happening because the monkey stopped dissolving, and a small amount of steam rose from the stump that used to be its arm. Lake saw the man grab a notepad and start to write a few things down before he raised his hand. Lake saw a sh of white light and the monkey''s arm started to regrow.
Then he saw the man grab a new syringe and start the process all over again. Lake looked away at this point, he found this interesting but something new had grabbed his attention. A metal door that had been blocked from his view before had just been revealed and he and Lucas were headed right for it.
Once he and Lucas were standing next to it Lake saw Lucas do a series of different things including inserting his ring into a small groove in the door, and after all of that the door disappeared, it didn''t open it just vanished. This made Lake rethink ever trying to break into this vault. Not only would he have to take Lucas''s ring, the door was in in view of all these people who Lake guessed doubled as guards.
It all of a sudden became much easier to be the guild leader which was way more effort than Lake was willing to put in for stuff that would just make him better at alchemy, something he really didn''t even really care about. Lake saw Lucas wave for him to follow him inside the vault.
Even though the door had disappeared, Lake still wasn''t able to see what was inside. It was just a pitch ck doorway but Lake saw Lucas walk though so Lake followed him inside because it seemed safe enough. As Lake walked through the doorway he felt like he was on a rollercoaster and had been flipped upside down.
Regaining the ability to see the feeling of being upside down didn''t go away. Looking around Lake could see they had appeared in the center of a warehouse. "Why do I feel like I''m upside down?" This was one of the strangest things Lake had ever felt. It was making him feel like he couldn''t move.
"This is a pocket dimension. You''ll start to feel normal in a few seconds." Lake wondered what Lucas meant about pocket dimension because earlier he said the increased mana helped keep the elixirs stable. "How separate is this space?"
"It''s still in the spire if that''s what you''re asking." Lake thought maybe Lucas got what he was getting at. Starting to feel better, Lake stood up. "Alright let''s go down this way the elixir section is down here." Lake slowly followed behind Lucas looking around at how big this ce was, Lake found it interesting enough to put a mark on the floor.
Later after he left he would see if he could find where this pocket space was by seeing where the mark was. Lake saw Lucas stop in front of a shelf. "Alright let''s see." Lake saw Lucas start to go through the bottles one by one. "Ok this is it, the highest tier elixir we can make. Go ahead and see if you can appraise it."
Lucas handed the elixir to Lake looking at the vial Lake could tell it held something extraordinary every magic item he had held up until this point was blown out of the water by the strength of the elixir. Switching his job to Appraiser Lake said. "Details."
Skill elixir.
effects.
False Divinity (L) Lv.1
Grants the effect of a tenth of a point of divinity.
[Level up] [Level up] [Level up] "Were you able to see the effect of the elixir?" Lake nodded his head and pulled up his stats.
Race: Human Lv.4 ( 7/10 )
Job: Appraiser Lv.3 (24 /40)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 36
Perception 40
Intelligence 100 [Max]
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
"Ok well you can drink the elixir whenever you''re ready there''s no reason to wait." Hearing this, Lake smacked the cap off and drank it. After he downed the whole thing Lake looked back to his stats.
Race: Human Lv.4 ( 7/10 )
Job: Appraiser Lv.3 (24 /40)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 40
Stamina 40
Mana 40
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 36
Perception 40
Intelligence 100
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Seeing the max had gone away, Lake turned to Lucas and said. "It worked." After he said this he opened his skills to see what his new skills were.
False Divinity (L) Lv.1
Grants the effect of a tenth of a point of divinity.
The first one he saw was the one the elixir had given him but he also had the two from Appraiser hitting level 1 to look at.
Appraise (E) Lv.1
Increases the amount of physical details you are able to see.
(Scales off of Perception)
Increases the amount of magic details you are able to see.
(Scales off of Intelligence)
Critical Eye (E) Lv.1
Grants the ability to see ws.
These two skills definitely would help with seeing how good an item was but Lake wanted to know if these were the skills everyone got and if so why weren''t either of themmon like Distill was. "Are the skills for Appraiser random?" Lake thought the skills fit to well to for them to be random.
"Yes, but most of them do very simr things." This seemed kind of dumb to Lake, but he wasn''t the one who made the job so he wasn''t the one who wasted his time. "We''re done here technically but would you like to look around this is a good ce to max Appraiser. Lake thought this sounded like a good idea so he said. "Ok."
Chapter 48: The Master
Chapter 48: The Master
Lake watched as Lucas walked over to a pile of various cores. "Come over here and appraise all of these. This should be enough to get you to level ten." Doing what Lucas had said Lake spent the next few hours appraising the different cores. He found that most of the cores here held skills but only two held Legendary skills.
"Are you almost done?" Lucas had spent this time organizing things Lake didn''t really understand. Lake guessed they were all things that had very specific uses when it came to alchemy. "Yes I''m half way through level 9. Lake was excited this was going to be his first job that hit 10, and he had been curious what would happen for a while.
He had also noticed as he increased his perception the amount of details he could see was slowly increasing. When he first started he could only see what the name of the core was now he could see what level the monster that had dropped it had been and even its exact weight.
Lake wasn''t sure why he needed to know the monster''s weight but he wouldn''t say no to more information. Getting back to trying to max out his job it wasn''t too long before he picked up thest core he was going to need to inspect to max out his job. [Level max] Seeing that Lake pulled up his stats, and his two new skills.
Race: Human Lv.5 ( 4/10 )
Job: Appraiser Lv.10 (Max)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 50
Stamina 50
Mana 50
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 36
Perception 75
Intelligence 100
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Skills
Decrypt (L) Lv.1
Spend mana to reveal the effects of any magic attached to an item.
(The stronger the effect the more mana it costs. Can result in failure.)
Verify (E) Lv.1
Reveal facts about the items past and origins.
"Hey I just got another Legendary skill, how high are the odds for epic jobs?" Lake wanted to know if this was considered beating the odds or the fact he only got one out of four was bad. "As far as I know the odds are about 20% for epic jobs. That numberes from a few different sources so it''s not just a guess either."
With the odds being 20% he was about as normal as it could get but this made him think of a new question. "What about Legendary jobs, are the odds 100%?" This would make sense to Lake He would feel kind of bummed if this wasn''t the case. "For randomized skills but most Legendary jobs have a few skills that aren''t random."
"And how rare are Legendary jobs?" Up until this point Lake had yet to hear anyone mention any so he was guessing they were much rarer than Legendary skills. "Most of the time they are directly given to someone that a god has chosen as their champion, or someone they want to help ascend. Most of the time theye with some divinity attached, so the person in question instantly bes a Demigod."
Lake could see why they were so rare now. He bet most gods didn''t go around handing out divinity for nothing; it sounded like it was a gamble and therefore wouldn''t happen very often. "Are they treated like rewards for devoted followers?" Lake could see them using it like an incentive to make people work harder for them.
"It depends on which god you''re asking about." Lake could hear a small amount of annoyance in Lucas''s voice when he said this, and it made Lake wonder if Lucas happened to be a devout man. Maybe Lake had just struck a nerve in some way; he hadn''t even thought what god might be behind the Alchemist job because it didn''t really corrte with an element.
Not wanting to spoil his rtionship with Lucas, Lake said. "Sorry, I didn''t mean to offend you." This was a sweet apology and Lake knew Lucas would appreciate it. "Don''t worry I wasn''t offended by what you said, because you hit the nail on the head." Lake thought back to what else could have caused the annoyance in Lucas''s voice.
The only thing Lake could think of was Lake''s question had made Lucas think of a bad memory and that had caused the anger. Trying to guess what it could be, Lake remembered he had thought it seemed like Lucas had known the Dark Goddess when she had still been Amanda, maybe they had been friends, and Lucas had assumed he was going to get some handouts and they never came.
Lake guessed Lucas was bitter that he never received a Legendary job from the Dark Goddess. That was about the best he could do on assumptions. For a better theory he would probably have to know what he was talking about, but Lake knew better than to ask. "Ok, now that we''re done with this I would like to get back downstairs."
Lake sort of implied that he was going back to work with this statement but the truth was he was hungry. "Ok let''s go then You should get back to practicing anyway. Once you reach Level ten you shoulde and see me so I can show you how to unlock Enchanter. You''ll only be qualified once you max out a production job and Alchemist counts."
"So is it possible to fail to unlock a job or do you just have requirements you have to meet?" Lake was starting to think the rarity in jobs just told you how good they were. "It is possible for people to fail to unlock a job they meet the requirements for and it gets more likely the rarer the job."
"Do you know what causes it?" Lake knew it probably had something to do with gods; he had noticed that rules seemed to be broken whenever divinity got involved. It made sense, why would you have to follow rules when you were the one making them. "Some people just don''t make the cut it seems, but the mostmon cause is during wars that involve gods, sometimes the god''s cut off the other side from using their jobs."
"Tactical spite huh." Lucas chuckled after Lake said this. "That''s a good way to put it. Alright, that''s enough talking, let''s go." After Lucas said this, Lake looked around for a door. They had arrived in the middle of the room so he wasn''t sure how they were supposed to leave. About to ask, Lake looked back to see Lucas was already gone from where he had been standing.
Lake guessed the way to leave had nothing to do with a door so he tried to think how this should work. The only information he had was it seemed to be possible to leave no matter where you were standing, and it was probably magic. So far Lake had noticed most magic was voice activated so he just said. "Exit."
Lake felt himself start to flip again so he knew he had solved the puzzle. Landing Lake saw he was standing inside the Master Lab. He also noticed that unlike when he had entered the vault this time he wasn''t disoriented in any way he was able to walk just fine. Lake guessed it had something to do with this not being an artificial space like the vault was.
"I was starting to think I needed to go back in to get you." Lake couldn''t tell if this was Lucas''s way of saying he had done this on purpose like it was some sort of test or something, but it didn''t really matter because he had passed if it was. "Sorry about that I didn''t see you disappear so I looked around for a second."
If Lake had seen Lucas leave he would have been a lot faster in getting out of the vault. "Alright no more talking, we''re in theb." Lake saw Lucas motion for him to follow him but they weren''t going the way the door to the staircase was. Lake guessed this was the meeting part Lucas had mentioned earlier.
Lake had thought he had gotten out of meeting anyone the first time they had walked through and no one said anything, but maybe they had been waiting for him in a different room the whole time. Seeing there was a part of the room that traded the vats for bookshelves, Lake guessed whoever he was meeting was more hands off when it came to actually brewing potions.
A few bookshelves in Lake finally saw someone, she was sitting at a desk writing inside a book. Lake guessed she was probably a little younger than Lucas and she was also the youngest person he had seen since he had entered the Master Lab. "Master Donna, this is Lake, the newest resident of Legend spire."
Lake thought she looked like a Donna, so it almost made himugh when Lucas said her name. "Why are you smiling like that?" Lake wasn''t too sure if telling the truth would count as an insult so he came up with a lie. "I''m not smiling." It wasn''t actually a lie when he said it because he had already stopped.
Lake felt Lucas elbow him a little but this didn''t really give him an idea on what to say because he really didn''t even know why he was meeting her. Lucas had already told her his name and that was the only thing that would have made sense for him to say, but not seeing another option he just went for it and resaid it. "Hello I''m Lake. It''s nice to meet you."
Chapter 49: The Truth
Chapter 49: The Truth
As soon as Lake said this he felt Lucas''s eyes start to burn holes in the side of his head. Lake felt a little confused; it wasn''t like Lucas had told him what he was supposed to say or anything. The only thing he could think he could do was ask a question. "Why are we meeting?" This might be a little rude but Lake bet it would clear up the problem.
Lucas grabbed his shoulder and dragged him away from the desk. "Did you not read the note I sent to youst night?" Lake shook his head, the only thing Lucas had given himst night was the core so he could unlock Appraiser. "You didn''t give me a note." Lake instantly won whatever argument they were having with this line.
"You''re right, I never directly handed it to you, I didn''t remember to tell you you might end up meeting Master Donna in the next few daysst night when you were in my office because I was busy, so I sent a message to your room, I was told you received it. It had all the info you needed on how you should act when you met her."
Lake didn''t understand why Lucas was being such a baby, Lucas was the guild leader not Master Donna so he asked. "What''s so important about this meeting? What did the note say?" Lake felt like Lucas should have made sure before this ever happened and therefore it wasn''t his fault. "You were supposed to ask for the resources you needed to use your skill. Donna''s in charge of the resource department and she''s the only one who can green light the level of ingredients you need to make cursed potions. We keep everything that dangerous locked up and she has the key."
Lake was starting to see why this had been so important but now he just wanted to know who had kept him from receiving the message. The only person Lake had felt any ill will from was Solomon but how could he have possibly done this, Lake was sure whoever Lucas had sent to deliver the message was trustworthy.
"Now that we know what''s wrong we can fix it. You just need to ask for permission to ess the ck Vault in a few months once you''re ready." This sounded all good to Lake but he wasn''t sure why Lucas couldn''t give him permission. "Why do I have to ask her when you''re clearly fine with it."
"This is one of those things that''s the result of the Mage guild copsing. One of the major problems was that lots of us saw that the Demon Lord was silently taking over by spreading his influence, so tobat this some of us that were yet to be won over or controlled got together and locked everything that had to do with Unholy magic inside a vault. We figured this would at least buy us time to evacuate some of the Holy Magic capable members because they kept turning up dead. It was originally supposed to be temporary, but we put Donna in charge because we knew she was the most trustworthy and none of us have a way to make her open the vault if she doesn''t want to."
"Why Is she the most trustworthy?" It sounded like she was just the most stubborn to Lake. He could see how the two could be confused though they had a lot of the same qualities, the main one being they couldn''t be won over. "This was around the time The Dark Goddess went missing, and Donna Is Amanda''s daughter. I''m sure you can see why she wouldn''t want to help the Demon Worshipers."
They had made the right decision, there is no way she would ever let any of the stuff in the vault out. "Is there anything in particr I need to ask for, or do I need to just ask for ess?" Lake was going to have to write it down if Lucas was too specific. "First we need to prove you aren''t working for the Demon Lord. That was what this first meeting was about. I wanted you to have enough time to win her over."
Lake wasn''t sure how he was supposed to do that. He wasn''t, but he had no problems with it to be honest as long as he wasn''t controlled like a puppet. Lake didn''t really care who he worked for. "Alright, you ready?" Lake felt Lucas was moving too fast but he thought maybe Donna wasn''t too hard to win over if Lucas thought it would be ok.
"Yes. Let''s go talk to her." Lake just hoped she couldn''t tell he was lying if she asked him how much he disliked Unholy magic. "Sorry about earlier Master Donna, Lake apparently didn''t get a note I sent telling him about this meeting." After Lucas said this, he stepped back to let Lake do the talking.
"Master Donna, I''m here to ask if I may have ess to the ck Vault in a few months when I''m ready." Lake could tell right away that it had been a mistake to think this wasn''t going to be very difficult. He would be lucky if this didn''t take all day. Master Donna Had a really sour look on her face like she was looking at a pile of dung.
"Why would you need anything that''s in there?" Lake looked back at Lucas to see if it was ok to tell Donna why he would need to do something she would consider evil. "She''s not someone that would spread it around. You can tell her anything you want." Lake thought it was funny Lucas still trusted her so much even though he clearly thought she was a pain in the ass.
"My skill reverses the effects of poisons on me. We n to brew cursed poison so the effects will be permanent." Lake saw no reason Donna would care if he poisoned himself so he felt she would agree once she heard this. "And you think it''s worth it to bring those things out of the vault just so you can make you stronger. What about everyone else? Do you think no one will try and take advantage of the things you take out of the vault? It''s not like we''ve wiped out the Demon Worshipers here, there''s still a few hiding in the guild and as soon as we open it they''ll take back everything we''ve managed to keep safe."
She had just won Lake over with her impassioned speech. "No you''re right, it isn''t worth it." Lake bet anything that was in the vault had already been reced by the Demon Worshipers, so it wasn''t like this was the only ce he could get what he needed; this just gave him something to ask for when the Demon Lord came to recruit him.
Lake could tell she knew just how unsafe it was to ever open the vault ever again and that she would never do it. "Wait, you''re just giving up?" asked Lucas. "Yeah, I didn''t realize that the vault had never been opened. If it needs to be kept shut that''s how it should stay, It''s better for the guild." Lake was just hamming it up to be dramatic.
Lake didn''t really think this was that big of a deal, but to Donna she probably saw this as her keeping her mom safe in some twisted form of logic. Lake knew the crazier the person was about something the less likely you would ever be able to convince them. "We do open it. It''s just been a few years because we noticed increased activity from the Demon Worshipers."
"Not we you no one else has noticed any Demon Worshipers." Said Lucas. "That''s because you''re asking Demon Worshipers." Lake could see this was heading towards an argument so he said. "It''s fine either way I don''t want to get into the vault." He was hungry enough that watching a fight wasn''t worth the wait.
Lake motioned his head to signal he was ready to go, and as soon as he and Lucas started to walk away Donna stopped them. "Wait, Do you really think we should keep the vault closed, why?" LAke didn''t really have a reason other than he thought she was a waste of time so he just pulled some crap out of thin air. "Our intentions don''t matter because either way if we''re reckless bad things will happen."
This was a subtle way of saying if she let him in he had pure intentions but he couldn''t say the same for the people around him. "The God of Light. Are you a member of the temple?" She was right this hade from the Temple Head when he had asked about the God of Light. "No but I promised to fight with them once I''m strong enough to make a difference."
Lake felt like he just pulled a magic trick because as soon as he said this the way Donna was looking at him had switched and it made sense because so far The Temple was the only organization Lake knew of that opposed the Demon Lord openly and Lake could tell that was Donna''s stance as well.
"I''ll open it when you''re ready." It seemed he had won her over. Lake wouldugh if he wasn''t afraid it would make him look evil. "Thank you Master Donna, I''ll try to get ready as fast as possible."
Chapter 50: Back to Work
Chapter 50: Back to Work
Leaving the Master Lab Lucas turned to him and said. "I wasn''t expecting you to win her over in such a manner, Is it true you''re going to help the Temple fight the Demon Lord?" Lake was being forced technically but that didn''t change the answer. "Yes, I promised the Temple Head before I left."
"So what?" This was a good point if Lake was a normal person who could blow off his promises. For whatever reason The Insider wanted him to work with the Light Temple and he was just going to do it because he didn''t care what side he was on. "I have other reasons to fight." Nice and dramatic the only problem was Lake didn''t think Lucas would let him out of the spire now.
If Lucas let him run off to join a war he wouldn''t be doing what was best for the guild and with his title of Guild Leader that was probably his number one priority. "Don''t worry I have no intentions of doing it any time soon only if the world is at stake." Lake wouldn''t mind saving the world if he didn''t have a way of leaving it.
It seemed he was stuck here, so he hoped the Demon Lord didn''t try to end the world as a big F.U. to the gods. "That''s good to hear because I doubt the Demon Lord will end the world while he''s still stuck on it." That was a rational expectation but Lake wondered just how long the Demon Lord would stay rational especially now that the God of Light wasing back from his manhunt.
Lake bet it was about to get very chaotic. He wasn''t here for thest big war so he didn''t know what it had actually been like. "What was it like during the Battle between the gods and the Demon Lord?" Lake felt like this information would help him be ready for whatever happened. "Very hectic. The situation changed on a daily basis. At the beginning we all thought it was going to end like every time before, then he had his first win. He attacked the dark domain Amanda was newly ascended but we all thought she would be able to at least hold him off until the other gods were able to provide backup but we were wrong a few hours after the attack we felt the Dark element drop in power slightly, a telltale sign that a god has lost some of their divinity."
Lake loved this kind of stuff; it was like he had been transported into a movie. His life on earth had always been a little boring and it seemed he was going to have the opposite problem now. "Not to say what you told me wasn''t interesting, but I was more asking if the fighting gets down to our level. Like am I going to be fighting the Demon Lords minions soon."
"I n to keep the Guild out of the fighting this time so you shouldn''t HAVE to do anything." This wasn''t what Lake was expecting. Lucas seemed hung up on what happened to Amanda so Lake just assumed he would want to get revenge on the Demon Lord. "We picked sidesst time, and it caused the Demon Lord to focus some of his efforts on us. We thought as the Mage guild we would be able to help fight him without suffering too much damage but he used an underhanded method to beat us. He saw how divided we already were and just offered more power to one side."
Lake could see Lucas had learned his lesson and knew the same thing could happen to the Alchemist guild so he was hoping by staging out of it the Demon Lord wouldn''t pay them any attention. It wasn''t Like they were a big hitter any more, as far as Lake could tell they only had a fraction of the power they used to.
They had just stepped out of the enhanced mana portion of the spire and Lake could tell his body wasn''t happy. "What''s this feeling?" Lucas seemed to know what this vague question was referring to because he said. "Most people call it mana withdrawal. Anyone who can use magic naturally gets used to the amount of mana in their environment and your body likes it as high as possible. It''s why we still keep the top of the spire like that and why all the Masters never leave. They''re so used to it if I tried to turn it off they would all gang up on me and overthrow my position. Let me tell you the amount of resources we use to keep the gathering formation running makes me cry every time I see it."
Lake was starting to wonder how much power Lucas actually had in the guild; it was starting to seem he was just buying his position by giving everyone what they wanted and this was a very unstable solution because eventually someone came along that was willing to give them more. That had actually already happened, that was how the Demon Lord destroyed the Mage guild.
Lake bet Lucas could see this as well, maybe it was what gave him his n to take power in the first ce. Lots of sessful people just imitated each other anyway so this was a good strategy. "Alright now that we''re out of the formation let''s get moving." For whatever reason Lucas didn''t seem to want to run while they were inside the formation. Maybe he was just maximizing the amount of time he got to spend in the mana.
"You don''t have toe all the way to the bottom with me, you can just stop when we get to your floor." Lake felt a little bad for Lucas; he wondered why he couldn''t stay closer to the top of the spire. Maybe at top speed the trip didn''t take him very long and he was just slowing down for Lake''s benefit.
...
20 something minutester, Lake was walking the hallway towards his room. He was about to eat lunch and he bet his servants were better cooks than he was. "Long time no see." Lake turned to see the girl Nia he had seenst night on the way to the library had just walked in behind him. "I''m pretty sure it''s been less than 8 hours since we met."
After Lake said this he realized she had probably been being sarcastic, and he was stupid. "Are you about to eat?" Lake was about to eat or at least he hoped so. "Yeah I was about to have lunch." Lake wondered if Nia was going to end up like Solomon. She was clearly about to invite him to lunch but he wondered what her intentions truly were.
"I eat Lunch with Millie around this time every day, and I was wondering if you had met her yet." Lake didn''t know who this was so he shook his head no. "Well, do you want toe?" Lake wanted to flip a coin because he felt both options sucked so he just went with the more polite one. "Sure, is it right, right now, or do I need to wait for a while?"
Lake was hoping he could go home for a while to change because he had sweated from all the running he had done. "It''s right right now." Lake shrugged in his mind, it wasn''t a big deal if he smelled bad, at least not for him. They might not like it while they are trying to eat. "Lead the way I only know where me and Solomon''s rooms are."
Lake noticed when he mentioned Solomon''s name Nia''s demeanor changed slightly and this made Lake more excited about the lunch he was about to have. Maybe this was a shit on Solomon party, and he was the guest of honor. Starting to walk down the opposite hallway to the one he would take to his room, Lake could tell Nia wanted to say something but was holding back until they were in a private ce.
"This Is millie''s room, mine is the one across from her, so if you ever need anything just knock on her door. She stays in her room most of the time so you have a good chance of her being avable." After she said this Nia knocked on the door and a few secondster someone Lake guessed wasn''t Millie opened the door.
"Come right in Madam Millie is just about to finish the food." The older man that Lake assumed was one of Millie''s servants guided Lake and Nia to a table. "Millie makes the food, not the servants?" Nia looked at him like he had caught on to something that was meant to be a surprise. "Just wait and see, there''s no reason to ruin the surprise." This was starting to seem like Lake had made the right choice ining here.
Chapter 51: Dinner Party
Chapter 51: Dinner Party
Lake could vaguely hear someone cooking behind the partitioning wall that separated where they were sitting from the kitchen. Lake was hoping she was almost done because he could have already eaten if he had gone to his room. Thinking it was best to take his mind off his stomach, Lake turned to Nia and asked.
"You said Millie doesn''t really leave her room, how does she practice Alchemy?" When Lake had looked around his room he had noticed a distinctck of a Lab. He had thought it weird but he was sure they had their reasons. "Millie decided to focus on another aspect of Alchemy, so she doesn''t need to leave her room. She has everything she needs right here."
Lake thought back to when he had been talking to Solomon that morning and he said it was rare for people to pick what they nned to focus on this early but it had also made him guess that Lake''s skill had something to do with poison, so using this logic Lake could probably guess what Millie''s skill helped with.
Just to make sure Lake asked. "So Millie''s using Alchemy to make better food." Lake thought this was brilliant. In his experience food was one of the few things that made life better, no matter who you were, a good meal was always nice. "Something like that." Lake saw now why Nia always came here for lunch; this might be the best thing he''d ever eat.
"Is the guild ok with this, or is it a contentious topic?" Lake thought that might have been the first andst time he would ever say contentious, he wasn''t even sure he used it right. "The guild always supports whatever you choose to research, even if the benefits are hard to see you might stumble on a new way to do something."
This was a far-sighted approach and Lake thought it was the right way to do it considering you would have to force people to do something they didn''t want to. It was always best to y into people''s passion especially if you had the resources not to worry about a few of them missing. "Is what we''re eating part of the surprise as well, or do you even know?"
"It''s usually random but if you like anything tell her and she''ll make it whenever youe, you just have to let her know the day before." This kind of made it sound like Millie was a grandmother type. Lake usually got along with really nice people so maybe she would end up being his new best friend.
Nia pointed towards the kitchen. "The food''s ready." Lake looked over to see two different people carrying a tter of food. Seeing the goods Lake was happy with the amount he had been a little worried there was only going to be enough for two. It seemed she knew he wasing, or maybe she always made more than necessary.
Lake was just looking for any way this could be a scheme. He had promised himself not to trust anyone just because they seemed nice after he realized Solomon was nning something nefarious. After the tters were down on the table Lake was expecting an introduction, but the one he assumed was Millie went back into the kitchen.
"Was that Millie?" Lake just wanted to make sure, maybe that had just been one of the servants and Millie was still in the kitchen. "No, Millie has white hair you''ll know when you see her." White hair, Lake wondered how old she was, maybe she was actually a grandma. Lucas had said this floor was for people around his age but he wondered what the specific age group was, maybe that meant 40 and under.
"There she is." Lake looked up to see the person who he originally thought was Millie was helping the real Millie carry a long tter with a roasted animal on it. It didn''t seem too heavy but the length of the animal made it impossible for one person to carry it. Lakeughed a little. This full animal roast was almost as long as the table they were sitting at and now that it was down on the table Lake realized it was some sort of lizard.
What kind of chef would make someone eat a lizard why not a pig or cow? It took a few seconds for Lake to remember what was normal on earth had very little to do with where he was in this world; people would eat anything they could kill and cook. Meat was considered a luxury and most people were forced to be vegetarians here.
"Millie, this is Lake. He''s the new guy I told you about two days ago. He arrived yesterday." Lake saw Millie wipe her hands on her apron and reach out for a handshake. Lake wondered if she was wiping away sweat or grease from the food. If it was sweat it was possible she was nervous to meet him and nervous people were usually pushovers.
Lake had no ns of using this to his advantage, but it was still good to know he shouldn''t put too much faith in her if they ever became friends. Reaching out his hand to shake hers, Lake said. "Nice to meet you, and thank you for inviting me to lunch." Aske held her hand he could feel how mmy they were which kind of proved he had been right about her being nervous.
What it didn''t prove was it was about him; she could just be nervous about something else like how the food came out. "I didn''t invite you. Wh whwh What I mean is I didn''t know you wereing. You are wee for lunch any time." Lake giggled a little; he loved how nervous people also seemed to be the ones who said stuff that came off as an insult or a slight.
It was like no matter how worried they were about it they would still end up offending someone. Another thing was if Millie''s stance was anyone could be here for lunch why was Solomon not here. This put more evidence in the Solomon sucks column. With the introduction over Millie started to walk them through what all she had cooked.
"This is soup. I haven''t decided on what kind of soup though because it has over 20 ingredients so for now I''m just gonna call it soup. This is fermented bread. I''m not too sure on what to call it either so let''s just go with bread." Lake wondered if she had just invented sourdough, or this was something new he had never heard of.
With the first tter down Millie moved on to the second and what Lake assumed was for dessert. "Nia, do you remember that custard I made Last week? Well, I tried freezing it to see what would happen and I think it made it better." Lake had been wondering why there was a block of ice on the tter. It was keeping what Lake guessed resembled ice cream frozen.
Lake felt blessed to be able to witness the birth of ice cream in this world but it made him think about the fact that there had been no cheese this morning when he had made a sandwich so where did she get the milk. He decided he would bring this up during the meal; it would be rude to stop her in the middle of her description, especially now that she was moving on to the lizard.
"This is a Nenomor lizard, a prettymon monster in areas with water. The only problem is they are poisonous. I used the same method you would use to remove poison from a potion to make it edible. This is really just for me, because I always thought it was a shame we couldn''t eat them whenever my dad would kill one when I was growing up."
Lake thought the image of a child wanting to eat this was funny, because if someone tried to force him to eat this when he was little he would have run away from home. This made Lake think they had been starving at the time. Maybe no one had known how to grow corn or maybe the Scarerat was going to be a revolution for the farming industry.
It was possible there were ces where rats ate everything people tried to grow and it caused people to starve. Lake needed to get back in touch with Wace soon to see if he was rich yet. Lake didn''t want to miss out on payday. "Go ahead and sit back down. I''ll have my servants make our tes." She didn''t actually have to say any more than this because they instantly got to work making the tes.
Once they were down in front of them Millie said. "You three can go and eat in your rooms." Lake thought it was funny Millie wasn''t nervous to tell her servants what to do. That made him think she had been here for a while even though now that he got a good look at her she didn''t seem much older than him he wondered if her hair had always been white.
Chapter 52: Gossip
Chapter 52: Gossip
Once the servants left for their rooms Nia said. "I told you toe here so we could tell you something." Lake cut her off and said. "Is it about Solomon?" They both looked shocked after he said this, especially Millie. "How do you know already? It took us years to find out about him." Lake could understand why it had taken them so long, Solomon was good at acting, it just so happened Lake was better at reading people.
"He just gave me a bad vibe, so what''s up with him?" Lake didn''t know the specifics other than he seemed untrustworthy, but maybe he had already done something to one of these two. "Up until a year ago he was sitting where you are now. Neither of us had ever thought anything bad about him; it just changed one day. The night after I picked my specialty of food I woke up and heard something in my room digging around in the kitchen. They were being quiet but it made me paranoid enough that I had the servants throw everything I had in the kitchen at the time away and bring new stuff."
Millie stopped talking after she said this and Lake wasn''t sure why she hadn''t given any evidence that said it was Solomon. "What made you think it was Solomon?" Lake actually thought they were right even if they didn''t have evidence, because Solomon had given himself away when Lake had implied what his skill did which matched with what had happened to Millie. Solomon might just be really into other people''s skills for some reason.
"He never came for lunch again after that like he had lost interest in our friendship." Millie seemed upset when she said that. Lake wondered how long they had known each other before all this happened. "What about you Nia, did he do anything to you?" If Lake had been doing what Solomon was doing he would have continued to eat lunch here so he could stay friends with Nia.
That seemed to be his n to get close enough to people that they reveal what their skill does and even if he thought he blew it with Millie there was still Nia. "No, for whatever reason me and him were never close, he only seemed interested in Millie so I thought he had a crush on her. Some guys are like that, only pay attention to the girl they like."
"He was being weird with me as well." As he said this Lake tried to think of a reason why Solomon would ignore Nia but not either of them. "Nia, are you an Alchemist?" This was the only thing he could think of, maybe she didn''t have what she wanted. "Yes, but I don''t have a Legendary skill in it."
This meant that people the guild thought were valuable still lived here even if they didn''t meet the exact definition of Legend. "Do you have a Legendary skill from another Job?" Lake always felt weird when he asked questions like these; he never knew if it was ok. "Yeah, a few actually." It seemed she was fine with it though.
"It seems you came to the same conclusion I did." It looked like part of the reason she answered was so she could see if he thought the same thing he did. "He''s only interested in Legendary Alchemy skills." After he said this Nia gave Millie a I told you look and in response Millie looked at the ground.
Lake wondered if Nia maybe got it backwards when she thought Solomon had a crush on Millie. By the way Millie was acting Lake bet she would still forgive Solomon if he came back and confessed to everything. She might even buy him denying everything because she didn''t want it to be true.
This made him look down on Solomon for failing to manipte her when it had been so easy. If Lake had been in his shoes, he would have just asked her out first then done whatever he was trying to do. Added bonus of not needing to break into her house, which was what got him caught in the first ce.
"So are the two of you doing anything about this?" This was what really mattered how they handled it. "We brought it to Lucas, but there was no evidence." Lake felt there had to be plenty of ways to gather evidence, so either Solomon was extremely careful which Lake doubted considering he got caught, or Lucas killed the investigation for some reason.
After Lake thought this he looked up at the two of them and realized just because he didn''t trust Solomon that didn''t mean these two were good. The food helped, but he still needed to stay on his toes. Lake decided this was deep enough for him there was no point in him getting more involved with this unless Solomon tried something on him, especially when there was this much food to eat.
Grabbing a piece of bread on his te, Lake took a bite. He decided to start with the bread because it was probably going to be the most nd part of the meal, and he wanted to see if it was just sourdough. "Holy Crap." This was a crude thing to say at the table but it had been involuntary. He still apologized though. "Sorry."
Surprisingly neither of them seemed upset by his outburst, but instead they were both smiling. Lake could see why they thought Solomon noting anymore was such damning evidence, it was. Just a bite of bread had blown Lake''s socks off; he didn''t even understand what was happening in his mouth.
It didn''t taste like anything but bread but it was still better. It was like his brain was experiencing eating a thousand pieces of bread at once, and he was able to get the satisfaction from it. Lake wanted to know if this was the only trick her food had or if it could do other stuff to him. He wouldn''t be disappointed if this was it, he just wanted to know.
Picking up his spoon he got some of the soup he tried to get as many of the different things he could see so he would get the full experience. Lake slowed down when he put it into his mouth. This was a simr feeling he had gotten from the bread only much slower. It was like Millie knew it would be too much if it happened all at once and she had found a way to slow down the pleasure.
It wasn''t to the point where he could tell all 20 vors separately, but the vors were better together so that would detract from the overall vor. This made Lake think Millie had a few different things she could do to your mind to make you experience her food in an enhanced manner.
All this made Lake willing to put the lizard meat into his mouth. He was sure it would be worth it but he decided to inspect it using his skills first just to be safe. Millie had said it was naturally poisonous and Lake didn''t want what had happened in the cart to happen again. Lake read through the various facts that came up and nowhere did it say anything about it still being poisonous though it did tell him who had cooked it, Millie.
He took a bite, this was truly all the info he needed. Lake was not as blown away as he had been with thest two things but the fact it was the best piece of meat he ever ate told you how much of a miracle Millie had pulled off. "Millie Do you want to know what I think yet, or do you want me to wait till after the cold custard?"
Lake looked at Nia after she said this because he hated the way cold custard sounded. His main problem being it was good enough to stick, people loved alliteration. As someone from Earth Lake would never get used to calling it that. Really thinking about it, Lake decided not to say anything because ice cream might not be custard. He wasn''t a chef.
"I already know what you''re thinking, the lizard''sking." This was a spot on analysis in Lake''s opinion, but he was still going to finish it. "You can wait for the detailed review till after the dessert." After Millie said this she smacked the table and a few secondster her servants all came running into the room.
"Serve the dessert, and you can stay here to eat it we''re done with talking business." Lake was actually a little jealous of her servants; they just did what she said in exchange for food and they got to eat it every day. Thinking of his servants, Lake bet they would give anything to switch ces with Millie''s.
He should think of a way to make sure they were loyal. He assumed the guild had its own way but how much could he trust the guild. There were plenty of reasons for the guild to nt unreliable servants in his room; they could turn on him at any time, but Lake bet Millie wouldn''t have the same problem.
If he was her servant someone would have to kill him, and control his dead body to get him to abandon her food. Lake wondered if just bringing them some leftovers would be enough. It would show he cared, but it might have the effect of them preferring Millie over him and he still wasn''t sure if he could trust her.
Lake hated this kind of stuff; it was why he never schemed even though he was capable. He would much rather eat his ice cream and enjoy it than think how he could screw over the person who made it. Which was what Solomon had done. Scooping the top of the ice cream a little, Lake thought the consistency was a little off but he doubted that could make it not the best cold thing he had ever eaten.
Putting it into his mouth he experienced something new. It still had the amplification effect like everything else had but this was somehow different. Lake would have been satisfied with one bite of the bread or soup. But this, he was having a hard time not breaking his own jaw so he could shove it in his mouth faster. He couldn''t get enough but as soon as he took thest bite the feeling faded. It was like he had justpleted an impossible task, the most satisfying feeling he had ever felt washed over him.
Lake looked over to see he hadn''t been the only one to freak out. Everyone but Millie was already done with it. After a few minutes Nia was the first to recover enough to say. "Millie, I think this might be a little far."
Chapter 53: A Future For Cheese
Chapter 53: A Future For Cheese
Lake didn''t know how he felt about what Nia had said because he had enjoyed the experience but he could see how not being able to control yourself was a problem. If Millie wanted she could have made them stay like that,pletely under her control, and willing to do anything for more of her food.
This also made Lake realize there were other bad things alchemy could do to you other than poison and it seemed he had no defense against it. Millie''s food was directly messing with his head somehow, and while it was enjoyable Lake felt he was a little foolish for just letting it happen.
The careful approach would have been to excuse himself after the first bite. It would have been obvious he didn''t trust her but why should he. Instead he had gotten so caught up in the food that he had eaten it all. Most of the time when someone who made something was also eating it it meant it was safe, but Millie had shown she could control herself when eating her own food and that made her more dangerous.
The only question was did she know it. This could have been an honest effort to make the best dessert possible, or it could have been a warning of things toe. Lake bet he wasn''t the only one to think this about Millie. With how good her food was there should be more people here, but the only one here was Nia and they were friends.
Lake bet Millie was secretly feared for the potential her food had and it was a funny coincidence that she was probably one of the nicest people here. Lake thought this because he trusted in his people reading skills, and so far neither of them had given him anything to worry about. The odds that both of them were masters of deception were low.
This kind of made Lake feel it was ok to continue toe here every so often as long as it was random and she didn''t know he wasing. On the off chance she was nning something he would be able to read her reaction when he showed up. This also made him think it might be a good idea to be more serious about alchemy.
He wanted to know how all this worked because so far he felt Alchemy was the most dangerous thing he had run into. If someone asked him if he wanted to fight a random monster, or drink a random potion he would pick the monster. That decision was even factoring in that poison couldn''t kill him.
"Millie, I think it''s fine as long as you tell people first." This was Lake''s honest opinion. He understood that Millie probably enjoyed surprising people with her food, but at a certain point a surprise became an attack. "So you think my food shoulde with a warning?" Lake could see why Millie didn''t like this idea; it was a little insulting to her work.
"Only in extreme cases. I mean over the years how many people only ate your food once and never came back? I can tell you it wasn''t because your food isn''t good." Lake was talking out of his ass he didn''t actually know if loads of people had been here or not. "What are you trying to say?"
"I''m saying people are afraid of you." Lake could tell this came as a surprise to Millie and Nia. Lake guessed Nia had known Millie so long she was incapable of seeing her as a threat. "Why would they be afraid of me? All I do is make them food." Lake didn''t want to put any ideas into her head but he told her anyway.
"They''re afraid you could take control of them, which you probably already did." As Lake said this he pointed at the now empty bowl. "The effect wears off after a few seconds." Lake had been right in assuming neither of them saw it. "But does it have to? You see they''re scared because they don''t understand you wouldn''t do something when they would."
Lake could tell his statement really made them think. Lake had known for a long time everyone assumed other people were the same as them so when they were trying to figure out others they usually based it on themselves. Lake knew better, with all his time in therapy on earth while they were trying to help him with his kleptomania he realized no one was exactly the same.
That being said you could usually typecast them, and that usually helped with predicting their behavior. That was why in all his therapy sessions his therapist just wanted him to talk and would only ask questions when she needed rification. She was trying to see the exact type of freak he was.
"Do you really think people are scared of me?" In this case Lake could be counted in the people part of the question, so he could answer with certainty. "I am. If you wanted you could have already taken control of me and I didn''t even think of that till after the food." Lake thought this statement was enough to win Millie over to the warnings on her food.
She was the type of person that didn''t want anyone to hate her, so she would rather acknowledge the fact that it was dangerous than to continue to scare people just so she could see their reaction to the first time they ate it. "What do you think I should do to convince people my food is safe?"
It took a few seconds for Lake to think of a solution. He wasn''t usually the one to fix problems even if he knew what they were. "Checks and bnces are the only way for people to ever trust something they don''t understand. You see the problem is you''re the only one who understands your food and that means you can do whatever you want to it. If you want to make your food more popr you have to make it more essible. I would rmend spreading some recipes."
If other people were able to make it with their own hands they woulde to trust it. How could someone not trust something their own mother made for them growing up. "The only problem with that is you have to be an Alchemist to make my recipes and it still isn''t easy." This problem was actually good for the guild so Lake smiled.
"I would rmend talking to Lucas about getting some apprentices. You see if you train them to cook your food the Guild can start to spread them around to open restaurants. Think about the amount of money the guild will earn if our food is the only one worth eating." Lake didn''t actually care about the guild.
This was actually about the fact that Lucas seemed to prefer Solomon over Millie that was why he had killed the investigation. If Lake made Millie just as important Lake would be able to get rid of Solomon more easily if he ever tried anything. You could never beat someone your bosses thought was more important than you.
"I never wanted only rich people to eat my food." Lake hadn''t ounted for her past when he made this n a few seconds ago. He had already figured out that she was probably starving during most of her childhood, and Lake had heard starving was one of the traumas most people never got over.
Lake had a solution to this as well. "Who said you could only open one restaurant in every town just send some of the less talented Apprentices to open less expensive restaurants. They aren''t good enough to handle expensive ingredients anyway." Lake knew he had hit the ball out of the park with this one. Now it was time for cheese.
"Will youe with us to talk to Lucas tomorrow? This was your idea and I don''t want to take credit for it." It seemed Millie wasn''t ready to move on yet. "Sure." Lake agreed because this idea was good enough for a reward and he wanted it. "Ok, Now that we are done talking about that I have a question. Is this made with milk?"
As soon as he asked this Millie''s face turned red and she looked at the floor. "Yes, how did you know?"
"Uw, Gross, Millie!." It seemed Nia had no idea that there had been milk in the dessert. "Why would you put that stuff in there, it''s for babies?" Lake guessed this was a normal reaction for someone who thought this way about milk, but Lake knew its potential. "It has a lot of fat in it, and stuff with fat tastes better."
Lake was happy to see Millie defend milk to Nia, a person who seemed to love it. "Have you thought of another way to use it yet?" Lake thought it was possible that Millie had already discovered cheese, and was yet to share it. "It''s hard to work with, it keeps spoiling before I can make anything out of it. That''s how I came up with freezing it."
Lake was pretty sure that it spoiling was part of the cheese making process, so in a way she was close to making cheese. "Next time that happens try to make something out of it before you throw it away." This seemed to make Millie think of something. "You mean like the bread, how I let it ferment to make it taste better?"
Lake nodded this was as much as he knew about making cheese and he wasn''t even sure this was right. "Just answer one question Millie, is it from a human?" Lakeughed, it seemed Nia was really hung up on this.
Chapter 54: Actually Going Back To Work
Chapter 54: Actually Going Back To Work
After getting her to understand the concept of cheese, Lake thought it was time to go. "Alright, I''ll see you two next time." Lake could tell he had made a strong enough impression that he was going to be invited back. Once he was out the door Lake realized he had forgotten to grab any food for his servants but he decided it didn''t matter, because if his n worked soon everyone would be eating it.
The thought of eating it for every meal made Lake happy enough that he decided to follow through on his thoughts of workingter. Usually when he said he would do somethingter it never got done. Lake went towards his room and since it was so close he was there. Opening the door, Lake saw his servants. "Sir."
"Sorry to do this to you, but would you mind setting the Lab up again? I can get back to work now." When it had first happened Lake thought this was going to be a serious problem. He wasn''t expecting to just drink one potion and be able to get back to work. If he did, he would have told them to keep the Lab ready.
"It''s no problem sir, we''ll have it ready soon. We kept the ingredients on the Lab floor so we could get back to work when you were ready." Lake appreciated them being proactive so he told them. "Good work, let''s go." Lake just wanted to max out Alchemist to see what his next two skills were so he could decide if he was going to get serious about Alchemy.
If his next two skills were just normal Rare skills and not Unique he might just set aside Alchemist as an auxiliary skill holder. Entering the Lab Lake said. "Get the stations set up." Lake didn''t say any more because he realized they weren''t alone in the Lab. Solomon was over in the corner looking through some of the discarded potions they had left here earlier.
Lake thought it was weird that Solomon wasn''t even hiding his snooping. Lake guessed he was going to y it off once the conversation started. Maybe he thought it would have looked suspicious if he stopped after Lake had seen him doing it; this would make it seem like he was fine with Lake seeing him.
Lake put on his nice and stupid face, he didn''t want Solomon to know that he had already caught on. "Hey Lake, did you make these? What is it, an Intelligence poison?" Lake had no idea he hadn''t really chosen it for its effect. He had picked it because its description said it was really easy. "I don''t know, I already forgot."
Lake could feel Solomon secretly getting mad. Maybe that question had been more important than Lake realized. Solomon probably thought the effects of the potion would help him figure out Lake''s skill. "Why don''t you taste a little and see." Lake turned around to see Nia had just walked in and she didn''t seem like she was going to y along with Lake''s acting.
She was openly hostile towards Solomon. This made him think there were more things than just him breaking into Millie''s room going on. This was bad for Lake. He was hoping to y both sides a little until he felt it was safe to pick one. His only option was to be subtle. He looked at Nia, and told her with his eyes to go away.
She seemed to get the idea because she turned and walked over to one of the empty stations. "Is this when peoplee to the Lab every day?" Lake found it odd that both Solomon and Nia were here at the same time and it made him think there was a reason. "Yeah, the Lab''s always open, but this is the time that some of the older residents of the spire set for lessons, so there''s always a chance one of them wille to teach us something."
Lake noticed ack of Millie which made him wonder how bad was the tension between them that she would rather miss the lesson then see Solomon. Lake also found it weird that Solomon hadn''t tried to turn Lake onto his side yet. He had to know Millie and Nia would warn him about him.
"What''s up with Nia, why is she so hostile towards you?" Lake had to ask this or Solomon would find it weird. Lake had pretended to have decorum by waiting till Nia wasn''t around to ask. "They think I broke into Millie''s room. It happened about a year ago and Nia''s been like that ever since."
Lake saw Solomon''s angle now, by not bringing it up first he could act all sad when Lake asked about it. It was a good move instead of trying to get Lake onto his side Solomon was acting like there were no sides. It made him look innocent and it made Nia and Millie look wrong. "Why''d they me you?"
Solomon would see this as a very important question, so Lake was expecting a very thought out answer. "I don''t know. The day after it happened I didn''t know about it yet so I went to lunch like normal but I saw Millie''s servants carrying everything out of Millie''s kitchen so I thought she was too busy to make lunch so I ate by myself. The next day Master Lucas told me Nia had used me of breaking into Millie''s room."
This was starting to feel like a high school drama. Maybe Solomon hadn''t been the one to break into Millie''s room and the bad vibes Lake had felt from him was just him being a little weird. He hadn''t felt like Solomon lied either, and one of his skills could tell apparently. Lake decided this was no longer worth his time. Nia had juste back anyway, so Lake was going to start to Level up now.
"Will you three set up three stations like we did earlier?" There were plenty so him hogging three wasn''t a big deal. 40 minutes and 30 something potionster, Lake had finished leveling Alchemist. Both Nia and Solomon were still here so he decided that he would wait tillter to look at what he unlocked.
He didn''t want to make either of them think he had already maxed out Alchemist, because the guild might make him take another test to see what rarity his new skills were. Pretending like he needed a break Lake asked. "How much longer do I need to stick around for the lesson?" Solomon waved his hand a little and said. "It doesn''t look like anyone''sing today, you''re good to go."
"In that case I''ll see you two tomorrow. Let''s go back to the room you three." Lake wasn''t actually going to stay in his room for the rest of the day, he was just going to see what his new skills were then head down to see Lucas. Lake wanted to know if he could go back into the dungeon at any time he wanted, or only when he received permission.
Walking back to his room, Lake was really getting amped up. He couldn''t wait to see what his next two skills were. He was hoping at least one of them was Unique. The handwriting that changed Alchemist seemed to be from one person so far so he didn''t know if they had been able to change multiple skills, or just the one because they hadn''t touched Distill.
Lake wondered if skills everyone got like Distill were somehow harder to change, or maybe whoever had changed it just thought it wasn''t worth it since it was already perfect for the job. If that was what they had done Lake bet at least one more of his skills would be Unique. The person who did it seemed to like poison so Lake was expecting another skill that had to do with poison.
Lake honestly would like a skill that kept him from being mind controlled, or some other negative effects. He would miss out on the ice cream, but it would keep the Demon Lord out of his head. He was getting more paranoid now that he knew Poison only referred to Poison and not all negative effects. Lake wondered what would have happened if his skill had triggered on the ice cream earlier. It probably would have just made him not want to eat it. Lake bet Millie''s feelings would have been hurt if he had spit the ice cream out.
Opening the door to his room Lake sat down at the table next to the kitchen. Then he pulled up his stats, and skill pages.
Race: Human Lv.5 ( 7/10 )
Job: Alchemist Lv.10 (Max)
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 50
Stamina 50
Mana 50
Strength 10
Endurance 10
Agility 19
Dexterity 42
Perception 78
Intelligence 109
Charisma 6
Free stat points: 2
Skills
Poison Control (U) Lv.1
Grants the ability to control poison.
Concentrate (L) Lv.1
On activation, increases the effect of targeted potion by decreasing volume and stability.
Today was Lake''s lucky day apparently, another Legendary skill. That either meant he beat the odds or Unique Jobs defaulted to Legendary skills once they ran out of Unique ones. "Ok I''ll see you guyster I''m gonna go see Guild Leader Lucas." Lake grabbed his sword, and walked out the door.
Chapter 55: Two Days Later
Chapter 55: Two Days Later
Lake could hear an undead in the next tunnel over. "Joy after the next one we can head back up. The other day after he maxed out Alchemist he realized he had been neglecting to level up thief and he had spent as much time down here as he could ever since. It seemed that it took a lot more time to level upbat jobs than production jobs because you actually had to find stuff to kill.
Lake realized this was notpletely urate since he was in the Alchemist guild and they just gave him everything he needed. For most people they would have had to pick things to brew into potions so it would take longer for them. With the amount of changes that had been made to Thief Lake was expecting two more Unique skills.
He wanted to go ahead and get them now so he could go ahead and start nning his escape. Lake had noticed a sinister undertone here in the guild, and he didn''t want to stick around to experience what he was expecting to happen. He needed to start his career as a criminal soon anyway.
He was in the capital and as soon as he escaped the guild he would be in the crime capital if you caught his drift. Earlier Lake had read a book that told him Thief wasn''t the only criminal job, so he had lots to look forward to in theing days. The Intangible Loot drought had also ended finally but nothing special had happened. Lake was pretty sure he had just been getting unlucky up until now. Another interesting thing was Lucas had almost promoted him straight to master after the three of them had told him their idea for earning the guild more money.
Lake chuckled a little remembering the reason no one had thought of it before was because restaurants didn''t really exist. There were only a few ces that sold cooked food other than bars and they were usually carts set up on the street, so Millie wasn''t really even going to have anypetition she was going to have to beat.
She would have done so easily, but this sped up the process. Speaking of Millie she had told him toe by for lunch today which was something he already nned to do but he guessed it was because the cheese was up and running. "Hey Joy, do you want toe by and have lunch with us today?"
Joy had been very helpful the whole time he had known her but he had yet to see her face. Lake wasn''t usually the type to care about other people but the mystery was killing him. The only way he could think of that would make her take her helmet off was if she was eating. "I can only leave my post if you order me."
Lake caught on to what she meant. She was telling him she wanted to but he had to tell her to do it or she would get into trouble. "Joy,e eat lunch with me today." Lake liked it when people used rules to their advantage instead of just breaking them. It showed intelligence which wasn''t surprising considering Joy''s was pretty high for someone who swung a sword.
Getting to the undead he had heard earlier Lake raised his sword this kill should be enough for him to hit level ten in Thief, and if it wasn''t he would just take a different path back to the exit. Either way he was about to receive two new skills for his main ss. Lake rushed forward and said. "Imbue Fire."
The undead fell to the ground split in two with fire spreading to cover it. This was his favorite thing that he had learned here. Lake had told Lucas he was about to max Alchemist the other day and asked how he could unlock Enchanter, and Lucas had told him the best way was to cover your weapon with magic until it worked.
It also had the added bonus of allowing Lake to kill undead with a sword. After a few seconds of the undead burning it finally died and Lake got the [Level up] he had been waiting for. It wasn''t the level max because he could get all the way to level 100 on Thief for whatever reason.
...
"Alright, are you going toe with me now, oreter when it''s lunch time?" Lake had just stepped onto the elevator and wanted to ask before he started to go up. "It''s better not to push it, I''ll see youter." He gave her a thumbs up, and told the elevator to go towards Lucas''s office.
With cheese on the brain Lake tried to just head straight up stairs. He wanted to change and see what his new skills did but Lucas stopped him. "I need to talk to you about something." Lake stopped to see he wasn''t the only person in Lucas''s office. "Lake, this is a royal messenger. The king just sent me a letter saying he was willing to ok the restaurants if we show him what we''ll be serving. I want you to tell Millie toe and talk to meter. We need to n a party."
"Ok I''ll tell her. Oh and I invited a guard up here so if you see onee up the elevator let them through." Lucas had already started to treat him better since the restaurant idea. It was a simr situation to what had happened with Wace in corn town. "One more thing, your badge is ready, it will be here tomorrow."
Lake was starting to wonder why he hadn''t gotten one yet. Everyone in the guild wore one so he was starting to wonder if Lucas had just forgotten to give him one. Maybe they were more than a piece of metal and that''s why it had taken so long for it to be ready. "Thank you, Also you shoulde to lunch today, Millie made something new and I want your opinion on it."
Lake made it sound like something serious but he was really just trying to get people to eat cheese. Nia''s reaction to milk the other day had been very funny, so Lake was hoping he could see it again. Lake knew the only way to get Lucas toe to lunch was to make it seem important like she had made a breakthrough. Lucas would think they were about to make loads of money, and woulde running for lunch.
...
Lake stepped into his room and sat at his table. He didn''t even need to say anything to his servants; they instantly got to work cleaning him and his gear. "Sir, would you like us toy out some new outfits?" Lake looked down and nodded. He had been wearing this for a while so it was probably about time to change.
It didn''t slip past him that this was the point Jason had been making when he asked. Lake decided this was a good time to see the new skills.
Race: Human Lv.6 ( 2/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.10 ( 12/5120 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 60
Stamina 60
Mana 60
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 24
Dexterity 47
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 17
Before Lake even checked his skills he saw that his Charisma had broken 10 without him realizing it. This meant he actually had three new skills. This made up for the fact that to level up Thief again he was going to have to earn over 5000 Exp.
He also saw that if he wanted to he could use his free points to make his Perception hit 100. Lake didn''t do it though Perception would hit 100 on its own eventually. He was more worried about his lower stats than his high ones.
Treasured (U) Lv.1
Able to identify and locate someone''s most valued item, person, and ce.
Trespasser (U) Lv.1
Magic can''t be used to locate, or sense you.
Lake didn''t think Treasured was that useful but Trespasser was top grade. Lake had always been afraid of getting caught after he stole something because of magic. The only thing was they might be able to track the item he stole still, so in the future he needed to sell anything he stole fast, or hide it for awhile before he used it.
If it was still there when he came back that meant it couldn''t be tracked. Lake also thought he might be able to tell if something was being tracked using some of his skills from Appraiser. Lake just needed to be careful and not forget to check anything he took. After thinking about these two Lake moved on to the skill he got from Charisma reaching 10.
Spill Your Guts (U) Lv.1
Inflict a truth curse that causes your target to answer your questions.
If they lie or don''t answer a third of their health is lost.
(Can be resisted if the target''s Charisma is higher than yours.)
This skill made Lake think of two people. The Demon Lord and the person who had told him about the Demon Lord. The Temple Head had said the Demon Lord focused on Charisma. Lake bet he had done so not because he wanted to but because he had gotten a really good skill that let him control people as long as his Charisma was higher.
The Temple Head had told Lake no one really ever used Charisma, so it was pretty easy to have a higher Charisma. Even if yours was only 20 you had a good chance of out ssing someone. That being said, Lake had no interest in using this skill; he liked to just read people the old fashioned way, and making them just tell you stuff was boring.
He was also pretty sure cursing someone was an attack so not something he could just go around doing to people. Lake also had another reason not to use it: the U wasn''t golden, it was Blood red and Lake could only think of one god that would make a skill like this. Well technically not a god yet but Lake knew it was possible to get jobs made by the demon Lord, so why not Skills?
Lake didn''t know why it was Unique though, He hoped it wasn''t special just for him because that would mean the Demon Lord was already watching him. "Sir, here are the new clothes we got you. We tried to get more stuff you would like." Lake turned around to see they had done a good job because he would wear all the new clothes they had brought.
Chapter 56: Everybody’s Best Friend
Chapter 56: Everybody''s Best Friend
Getting to Millie''s door, Lake saw it was already open. He still knocked though. "You cane in." Lake heard Millie yelling from the kitchen so he knew the food wasn''t ready just yet. Lake walked in to see Nia and Solomon sitting in silence. Nia was giving Solomon the stink eye and he was just looking at the ground.
Both of these things stopped once Lake walked into the room. Lake had told Nia and Millie He didn''t think Solomon had been the one to break into Millie''s room. Then Millie had gone and invited him back to lunch and that was what caused the current situation. It was clear Nia still thought it was him, and Lake wasn''t willing to prove he could tell when someone lied so it was just going to stay this way for a while.
Lake hoped Nia would get over it eventually because it made lunch a little ufortable. The only person who couldn''t tell was Millie. Lake was 99% sure Millie had a crush on Solomon, so him being back made her too happy to notice. Lake was pretty sure it had made her food better though so in the end it was worth it.
Millie probably subconsciously thought if her food was good enough Solomon would fall in love with her. Lake just hoped she didn''t get any strange ideas like making Solomon fall in love with her. "Solomon I''m surprised you were early, Nia''s always here first and I would think you would want to minimize the amount of time you two were alone."
This joke was at both of their expenses and it clearly stated he wasn''t going to pick sides if one of them wanted to start an argument like had happened yesterday. Millie hadn''t told Nia Solomon wasing yesterday like it was good news and wanted to surprise her, and it had led to Nia yelling at Solomon and him refusing to defend himself.
Lake found Solomon''s behavior very odd and almost impossible to read, so if he was actually hiding something it was the right choice. It also fit with the behavior Lake had seen from him two days ago when he pretended that nothing was wrong until Lake asked about it. Lake realized he was doing it again, trying to analyze Solomon was impossible so he needed to stop.
The only thing he had on him was the one time he felt a dangerous vibee off of him for a split second. If Solomon was actually dangerous Lake should have felt something simr when Nia was yelling at him yesterday. "Millie, I invited a few people today!" Lake had asked if it was ok yesterday and she had said it was fine, but it was still polite to tell her so she wasn''t surprised when she came out of the kitchen.
"Who''d you invite?" Lake wasn''t sure if Nia only cared so she could know who she would be yelling at but he still told her, and he said it loud enough that Millie would be able to hear. "I invited a guard I''m friends with named Joy and Guild Leader Lucas." Nia didn''t seem to have a problem with either of these because she didn''t say anything.
Lake could tell Millie wasing out of the kitchen though and he guessed she had something to say. Lake wondered what the odds were on it being about Joy and not Lucas. "Master Lucas has tried my food before, why is heing?" That was not what Lake had said. "I didn''t say he wasing, I said I invited him."
This seemed to be enough for Millie because she went back to the kitchen. Lake had also noticed that the real reason she hade out here was to look at Solomon and with this action Lake changed the 99% to 100%. If Millie did a good job on the cheese today he might just make her dreame true.
In Lake''s experience it was pretty easy to get a guy to date a girl, it was only hard the other way. All Lake would have to do is make Millie look good and then throw her at Solomon. One of the things Lake had noticed about this world was everyone seemed to be attractive, even the older people were still looking good. Lake didn''t know why, but it probably had something to do with magic.
"Knock knock." Lake heard someone say knock knock with their mouth and turned around to see Joy was here, or at least who he thought was joy there was no way to tell because she was still wearing her armor. "Joy, I was expecting you to change." Lake guessed she was just going to take the helmet off long enough to eat.
"I did change." Lake could see joy was yet to try and walk into the room because no one had said she coulde in so he said. "You cane in." After she came in Joy stood at attention like she was at a guard post. Lake rolled his eyes and said. "Joy, I order you to act like you''re not at work until the meal is over."
After Lake said this Joy reached up and popped her helmet off and said. "You know if you said something like that earlier I could have worn normal clothes." Lake was pleasantly surprised when he saw her face. He was starting to think she might be disfigured or something, and that was why she never took her helmet off.
He had seen a few guards that didn''t even wear their helmet so it seemed to be up to the person, but Joy always had hers on. "Sorry, I thought ordering you to lunch was already pushing it. Oh I should mention Guild Leader Lucas mighte today." This seemed to make Joy a little ufortable, and Lake understood he might not want to sit at the same table as his boss either if he was as far down the totem pole as Joy was.
"If he says anything I''ll vouch for you." Lake just went ahead and reassured her it was an easy way to make sure she ate the cheese. Thest thing Lake wanted to see was her get up and leave now. If Lucas did end uping he would get to tell three people that they had just eaten milk and not just milk, rotten milk.
With three at once there was a good chance someone might barf. This wasn''t actually mean because cheese was good, so this was just a harmless prank. "Master Lucas." Lake heard one of Millie''s servants greet Lucas so he knew he had just arrived. Everyone else stood up out of respect. Lake hadn''t been ready so he missed the cue.
"What, you think you''re too good to show me respect?" Lake could tell from the tone Lucas was actually making fun of everyone that had stood up. "That''s right, it won''t be long till I''m the guild leader." Lucasughed after Lake said this, and everyone that had stood up sat back down except for Joy.
"Joy it''s fine, you can sit down." Lake said this to make it clear they were friends, and she wasn''t just a guard right now. "Joy huh, You were the guard with Lake when he got attacked." Lake was happy Lucas remembered this because it would make it much easier for Joy if they were able to have a conversion to break the ice.
"Yes, but we only won because Lake punched through two people with his bare hand." Joy looked at him as she said this, and they both startedughing. This was a bit of an inside joke because Joy had asked him why he needed a sword yesterday which had led to a funny conversation about the fight with Nelg.
Lake had asked why Nelg seemed to hate her and she had told him that while Nelg had been hiding in the Alchemist guild he had asked her out and she had rejected him because she thought he was a creep. Lake had said that was what caused him to turn on the guild which was clearly not true because Nelg had used a false name to register, but it was still funny to picture Nelg crying while running to the Assassins guild for revenge.
Seeing Joy was nowfortable sitting next to Lucas, Lake moved on to Solomon. He was clearly never going to talk if he wasn''t forced. "So Solomon, what do you n to do in the future?" This was a perfect time to ask Solomon about what he nned to specialize on. With Lucas right here, and the fact that Millie was the new golden child, Solomon would try to make himself seem important even if he had to reveal some of his secrets.
"That''s the problem, I still can''t decide." Lake felt some negative emotion in Solomon''s voice; this was the only time since the first that Lake had gotten anything from Solomon and it was about the same subject specialties. Lake bet Solomon had just been jealous the other day, and that was the threat Lake had felt.
A better way to put it was Solomon had seen Lake as a threat which had made him feel like he was going to be left behind by the new guy. With this mystery solved Lake looked around at all the people at the table and thought, if it wasn''t for the fact that the Demon Lord controlled half of them he would probably stay here in the guild indefinitely.
Of course Lake didn''t know that for a fact but it had been like that when the Mage guild had copsed and Lake could feel another such urrence brewing. Lake saw the potential pun in that thought, but decided not to say it out loud because it would be weird and from nowhere. "Foods ready." Lake heard Millie call out from the kitchen, and put his eating mouth on.
Chapter 57: Big Lunch
Chapter 57: Big Lunch
After Millie and her servants hadid everything out onto the table Lake saw a distinctck of cheese, but there were metal cloches covering two of the dishes so it was probably under one of them. Lake had noticed Millie liked to surprise people with things, so she was probably going to make the cheese into a show.
Lake was fine with that because if people saw it as something special they were more likely to eat it. "These are some of the recipes I will be teaching to the apprentices as soon as they get here so I thought it would be a good idea to get some opinions on them." Lake was already eyeing some of the things and he would say everything passed the visual test, everything looked good.
The meat wasn''t in the form of a giant lizard today, and all the other dishes he could see had vibrant colors and were garnished. "I won''t go into too much detail since you all can see what everything is and we can talk after the meal. You three make tes for everyone then go eat in your rooms."
A minuteter Lake was looking at his te of food then to the metal cloche that none of the servants had touched. There were two but Lake was sure this one had the cheese in it, because the other one was the one Millie used for dessert. Lake just started eating, he was in Millie''s house so he was going to have to wait till the end to eat the cheese.
Lake started with the fish, as someone who loved meat it was hard for him not to. Lake had been eating Millie''s food for the past few days and at this point it was the only thing he was eating. His skill Refreshed made him need less food so he was able to stretch this one meal. Lake was grateful that this food would be everywhere soon, because if it wasn''t he might not be able to make himself leave.
Now that he had his two new skills in thief Lake was going to use tonight to start to n the escape. He didn''t think it was going to be that hard to just walk out the front door with his ess to the elevator. Lucas seemed to think no one would try to run away from being treated like a king, but Lake didn''t care about that.
Even if he did miss it he could juste back. "So Lake, I know the restaurants were your idea, but what do you n to do to make the guild money?" Lake was happy Solomon wanted to know even if it was putting him on the spot a little because he had just done the same to Solomon. "I''m waiting till I get my next two skills to decide."
This was technically a lie but Lake hadn''t told anyone he had maxed Alchemist because he didn''t want to deal with their reaction to his amazing luck. Lake knew he could tell Lucas with no repercussions because Lucas already knew Lake had an Unique skill. Lake was pretty sure Lucas wanted Lake to be the Guild Leader in the future.
Lake met both of the requirements strength and Business acumen. This was the first time since the Mage guild copsed that the Alchemist guild had hope of surpassing them. Once the restaurants started to open the guild would be everywhere. The money was secondary, the main benefit was everyone would be addicted to something only they could make.
There were problems with this n though, and right now was a good time to tell Lucas and Millie at the same time. "Lucas, I think we should talk about the message from the king." Lucas was probably going to do this before he got engrossed in his food so Lake just said this to snap him out of the trance.
"Right Millie The king said he would approve any of our requests if he could see what we will be selling, so I told him we would be holding a feast in his honor, I need to know what you need to make this possible." This news seemed to hit Millie hard like she didn''t think she was ready for this. "When is it?"
This was definitely the most important question Millie could have asked. "We have exactly a week but don''t worry he wouldn''t dare to give us a hard time." What Lucas said didn''t seem to make Millie feel any better. "The biggest problem I''ll be facing is the amount of food I''ll be responsible for cooking. If I had apprentices it might be possible but we''ll have to keep the party small if we''re only going to be serving my food."
Lake saw a way to speed up this conversation so he said. "Millie, how long did it take you to cook what we are eating right now?" Lake had caught on to the amount of work Millie put into just making food for a small lunch; He was pretty sure it was why she never left her room if she didn''t have to, she had no free time.
It could have been the situation with Solomon keeping her in her room, but the past two days proved that it wasn''t, at least not anymore. "I''ve been working since yesterday''s lunch." This meant unless they wanted to serve old food at the party they could only make enough food for about 20 people.
Lake looked over at Joy. This conversation was about to go to a ce she couldn''t hear. "Joy, would you step out for a minute? I don''t want Lucas to have to silence you." This was said as a joke, but Lake said this mainly to keep Lucas from trying. Joy made his days much better, especially the time he spent in the dungeon. It was boring as hell down there.
"Yeah, I''ll be in the hallway." Joy stood up and snapped her helmet back on. As she was leaving the room Lake saw Solomon was watching her kind of close. This was not a good thing if giant women were Solomon''s type, Lake might have just created a dumb love triangle. Millie''s feelings were kind of important to the current situation, so he needed to make sure this didn''t get out of control.
Lake knew how to fix this before it got out of hand; he was just going to have to y with some feelings. Getting back to the conversation, Lake saw a chance to test Solomon. "Is there anyone else who would like to step out? I''m about to bring up Millie''s specialty." If Solomon stayed it would be a point in the he was the one who broke into Millie''s room, but if he left it would be a point in he was interested in Joy column.
"Yeah, me and Solomon don''t need to be here." Nia kind of messed up Lake''s test with this but it fit her character of protecting Millie from Solomon. This was her trying to keep Solomon from getting what he hade for when he broke into Millie''s room. The fact that she didn''t just tell Solomon to get out made Lake think Nia knew Millie liked him.
If she kept being mean to him in front of Millie, Millie might stop talking to her if they ever started dating. This made Lake wonder why Nia cared so much about Millie it couldn''t just be about her food there had to be something else going on. Lake had a sudden realization that there might have already been a love triangle here.
Lake wanted to smack Lucas, didn''t he know what happened when you put a bunch of young people together. With the fact that the three of them had been alone on this floor for years this was the only oue that could have happened. With those two now out of the room Lake started. "Does the amount of time you spend on something help with the effect?"
"Yes, to make the food at the current level I have to spend a few hours processing the ingredients." Lake was happy Millie didn''t try and dodge the question. He bet she was hoping he was about to fix their problem. "So the answer is obvious, reduce the effect for the feast." Anyone of them could have rmended this but Lake was the only one who saw it as a good thing.
"Isn''t the food kind of important? If the food isn''t that much better than normal, the king might not help as much." Lake knew this was how Millie would think but Lake thought the opposite. "I''m not sure how much power the king actually has over us, but I think scaring him with your full power food would have the wrong effect. It''s a much better n to make him think it just tastes good and that''s it. If you y with his head he''ll tell every person he knows it''s dangerous, and we''ll never get a grasp on the upper echelon."
Lake wondered why it was him and not Lucas saying this, surely Lucas was smart enough to identify this problem. "I think we should do a slow roll out, start with good food and do all the crazy stuffter after people are already hooked. Added benefit is we can open the restaurants before your apprentices are done with their training."
Lake was having fun, it was like he was nning world domination over dinner. Lake could tell Millie didn''t like everything he was saying, but she was alreadymitted so she kept it hush. "Millie does that work?" Lucas seemed to be fine with this n because he was eyeing the food as he asked her opinion.
Chapter 58: The New Big Cheese
Chapter 58: The New Big Cheese
Millie nodded and said. "If I make the food weak I can probably make enough for 100 people, but I''ll still need a bigger kitchen." Lake thought that was enough but just to make sure he said. "We can serve fake food to the people from the guild, and just tell them to pretend it''s Millie''s. None of the king''s people should notice anything while eating Millie''s food."
This freed up more of the good stuff for whoever the king brought with him. "Good idea, I was still thinking the amount was too low. Millie I''ll get one of the abandoned kitchens back up and running for you to use. It will be big enough considering it used to feed thousands everyday when the Mage guild still existed."
Lake could tell that was the end of the conversation, so he said. "Millie get your servants to serve dessert. I''ll get the people in the hallway." Lake stood up and walked to the door. He really just wanted to see what the situation in the hallway was like. Opening the door, Lake saw they were standing in silence. Solomon was looking at the ground but in the direction of Joy''s boots.
This was enough for Lake to think he was right, and Solomon was attracted to Joy. Which meant Lake was going to have to do something he was hoping to avoid at the end of the meal. Lake''s mood dropped Solomon was more trouble than he was worth. If Lake thought he could get away with it he would kick him off one of the balconies.
"You three cane back in now, we''re done." Lake stepped to the side and let the two of them back in and just like Lake thought Joy waited to best. Before she could go back in, Lake closed the door and said. "I need you to y along with what I say at the end of the meal." Lake didn''t order her because this was more of a personal request and he knew she wouldply.
With that done Lake and Joy walked back into the room. Lake could see his n to make Solomon lose interest in Joy had already started. A few people thought Lake closing the door so he could talk to Joy was weird. Lake sat down to see the servants had already cut what seemed to be cake andid it in front of everyone.
Lake wondered if this had eggs in it. Eggs were kind of a weird concept for food, so he could see her not thinking of it yet. On earth getting eggs was very easy but here birds were more like dragons so he bet getting some wasn''t worth it just to make breakfast. If Millie''s cake needed eggs, Lake would let her know about them.
Eating the cake Lake wondered if the jelly was a choice of if frosting didn''t exist yet. Lake had never liked frosting, he thought it was too rich, so he hoped the jelly thing was permanent. The cake part was a little crumbly though which made him think eggs were not used. This dish was very simr to strawberry shortcake just without the whipped cream.
"Millie, do you know what eggs are?" Lake was joking with this question, but he needed to start the conversation somewhere. "Of course, why?" Lakeughed at how curt her answer was. "Have you ever eaten one before?" He could have also asked if the cake had any in it, but that would give away what he wanted her to figure out once he introduced eggs to her.
"Do you mean have I ever drunk the goop?" Lake was really enjoying being so early in the history of the culinary arts, Millie didn''t even know eggs turned solid if you cooked them. Lake just decided to say something close to the truth and stop talking about it. "Did you know that goop turned to meat if you cooked it?"
Lake sort of lied, but he knew she would now look into it. This statement made Millie zone out for a while but as soon as thest person finished their cake she made her servants hand out the cheese. "Thisst item is something new that Lake asked me to make. He kind of told me how as well, so I can''t take credit for it. I think it''s good, but it''s very different to anything I''ve ever had before, so if you don''t like it my feelings won''t be hurt."
Lake hadn''t been able to wait for her to get done with her speech; he had already taken a bite. It seemed Millie hadn''t made this cheese magic in any way and he could understand her thinking behind it. If someone had taken a bite of enhanced cheese and not liked it it would have been brutal for them.
Other than that it was creamy with good vor, she had done a good job. "Good job Millie, now I can finally have a good sandwich." Sandwich was really the only thing Lake had ever made himself in hisst life, so cheese was very important if he was ever going to make himself food on the road.
"Sandwich, is that what cheese is used for?" Where Lake had grown up cheese was used for everything but sandwich and pizza were the main two. "Cheese is good for most dishes that have bread in them." After he said this he saw curiosity win over a few of them, and they ate it. No strong reactions which is what he was expecting.
The strong reactions would start once he said it was milk. At this point the only one who hadn''t eaten it was Nia but that was because she had been here for the conversation on how to make it. That was fine with Lake. He had already seen her freak out over milk the other day. "So Millie did you run into any problems while you were making it?"
"Not really, I tried a few times because I couldn''t get the vor to be something I thought people would like but it was all edible. In my opinion the only way you can fail with food is by making something toxic, and that''s always possible when you age or ferment something." Lake agreed with this, but he could tell what Millie had said made people wonder what they were eating.
At this point Nia closed her eyes and put it in her mouth. Lake could see her lips quivering, but she kept it inside. This was funny in its own way but it was a very muted reaction. "So Millie, what kind of milk did you use to make it?" Lake dropped the news like it was normal because he wanted to see who would react first.
Lucas didn''t show any reaction at all. Lake guessed his hard life had toughened him up to bad news. Joy just silently put her helmet back on. Lake could tell she was distressed but didn''t want to embarrass herself in front of everyone. Solomon on the other hand reacted exactly how Lake wanted. "!"
Both Lake and Nia started tough at Solomon''s tiny barf. Him thinking milk was gross and only for babies had made him spit up like one. "Solomon what have you done?" Lake made it a big deal because it was the meanest thing he could think to do, and this would increase the amount of embarrassment Solomon would be in. This would make him feel like he had blown it with Joy and Millie could slide right in.
If he was right she should be able tofort Solomon about this, and about the next thing Lake was gonna do. "Joy, I''m ready to go, are youing over?" This was a devastating blow to Solomon not only did he barf in front of her, Joy was dating Lake, or at least that was what he would think.
Lake was giving Millie a chance to make a move on Solomon. This would probably upset Solomon enough that Millie would notice, and try tofort him which might lead to them being alone together or something. With Solomon''s broken heart Millie should be able to get something to happen. Lake didn''t have too much hope in her pulling it off because she would be too nervous, but he had tried and that was all he could do.
Joy still had her helmet on but he could tell she really hadn''t been expecting him to proposition her like this, and in front of all these people. If he hadn''t told her to y along she would have probably smacked him, but instead she said. "Yeah let''s go, I''m getting tired anyway." It was still kind of early to go to bed, but Joy was a guard which meant she did a lot of physical activity. This might result in her being tired this early, but looking around at peoples faces, Lake doubted anyone at the table was thinking they were about to go to bed for sleep though.
"Ok we''ll see you all at tomorrow''s lunch." Him and Joy walked out the door after all the goodbys were uttered. Lake took one more look at Solomon on the way out and confirmed he was devastated. Once the door was closed Joy smacked his shoulder. "What the hell, Lake? What are you trying to do to my career?"
Lake thought there was no way that hadn''t been good for her career but she would probably think that was insulting so he said. "I''ll exin once we get to my room."
Chapter 59: The Need To Leave
Chapter 59: The Need To Leave
Lake held the door open for Joy. "Sir." Seeing his three servants, Lake said. "You three are dismissed till tomorrow." Watching the three of them head to their rooms, Lake wondered if they had anything to do in there, or if they were just going to stare at the wall until tomorrow. To be honest the servants were one of the main reasons Lake wanted to leave.
He was pretty sure something had been done to them to insure loyalty, and Lake didn''t like the implications of the guild being able to do that to people. He was actually starting to wonder if Joy was the same; it was one of the reasons he had had here to lunch. He had noticed she had moments of rigidity that reminded him of his servants, but she also seemed to have a sense of humor which his servants did not.
"Joy, do you know what''s up with my servants? They seem more like the undead we kill than regr people." The way they just stood around and waited for him was exactly the same. Lake had actually checked their stats to see if they were human, because he had thought they might have been trained undead.
After he had seen they were human Lake came to his new conclusion they were brainwashed or cursed or something. "I wouldn''t spend too much time worrying about them if I was you. It wears off when they aren''t on the clock." Lake would have never seen thising, maybe sending them to their rooms was a mercy.
"Is it some kind of magic that makes sure they do a good job?" Joy took off her helmet and said. "Something like that. People who take the loyalty get paid more, and depending on what level you take the more you get. Your servants make ten times what I make." what Joy said gave him more questions than answers.
"What''s the loyalty?" This was the biggest concern he had about the guild other than the fact that a lot of internal strife was present. "It''s a curse one of the former members of the Mage guild made, and I''m sure you can guess what I mean when I say former member." Joy was saying the guild was still using something made by a Demon worshiper. He just hoped they had bothered changing it.
"So did you take it?" If Joy said yes to this question, Lake could never trust her to do something he needed that might be bad for the guild, for example asking her to help him run away. "Yep, all the guards have to take the first level when we get hired. It just keeps us from cking off while we''re wearing our armor though, doesn''t really make us do anything we don''t want."
"What are its exact effects?" Joy was being too vague for him to know exactly what she could and couldn''t do. "Whenever I lose focus it snaps me back to reality, and makes it impossible for me to sleep in my armor, that''s why we get those sleep potions in our kits." So it just made her not suck at her job.
This made him think it was possible to ask her to help him break out and not have her instantly turn him in. Lake knew there was a problem though she might not know all the effects some were bound to be hidden. Lake would have to actually inspect the curse to make sure. With a couple of Lakes'' skills it would be possible for him to see more about the curse.
Lake thought it would be stupid to start with Joy though. He needed to start with other curses to see if the action of inspecting a curse was dangerous. It could trigger a defense mechanism or something. "You said you would tell me why you did that once we got to your room. Did you lie just to get me toe here?"
"Nope, I lied for a different reason. Millie likes Solomon, and while we were over there I noticed he seemed to be interested in you. I made it seem like we were a couple so he wouldn''t ask you out in front of Millie." Joy seemed to notpletely buy what he was saying, because she asked. "You sure there''s no other reason?"
Lake could tell Joy was just messing with him as revenge for embarrassing her in front of everyone. Lake wasn''t the type to start stuttering and freak out when a woman hit on him, especially when he could tell it was a joke. "What, you mad I stopped him?" Lake knew the only way to get out of this without making Joy more mad at him was to make it funny.
If he just told her he wasn''t attracted to her she could take it as an insult even though she was clearly not into him either. "No, if what you said is true you just saved me a lot of trouble. Just getting Glen to leave me alone was hard enough, there''s no way I could''ve refused if he was as important as Solomon."
Lake found it funny so many spindly nerds from the Alchemist guild were attracted to Joy''s massive frame. She was a good two feet taller than Solomon and Glen. If she wanted she could already be some Masters trophy wife. "Joy, do you need to get back to work, or can you just do whatever I say? like can I just order you to guard me from now on."
Lake wanted to keep her around, because the closer they were the more likely it would be that she would help him escape if he ever asked. "I doubt my superiors would allow me to just do nothing and continue to pay me. A few days into my apparent desertion they would figure I eloped with you and I would be fired. The guild doesn''t pay people''s wives unless they actually do something."
"In that case I''ll see youter. I don''t n to go into the dungeon tomorrow, so I order you toe to lunch from now on if you want." Lakeughed at his order because it was ridiculous. "That''s not much of an order, so I''ll be saying you made me if anyone asks." Joy left after she said this and Lake looked at the time.
He still had a few hours before it was time to go to bed so he had plenty of time to start his n to run away. There were only a few things Lake needed to know first so he left his room and started to go towards the elevator. Lake wanted to see how the guards would react to him just wandering around.
If no one said anything, Lake could probably just hop out a window or something. Passing through Lucas''s office, Lake didn''t see him. Lake wondered if Lucas was setting up the kitchen Millie needed already or if he was just still upstairs. Stepping onto the elevator, Lake told it to go to a floor he had never been to before, the second floor.
If he wasn''t stopped he would be using this floor to escape the only problem was the size of the guild building. It was going to take him a while to find a good route to take to get through all the buildings and walls. When he had first stepped out onto a balcony and saw the scale of the guild he thought it was cool, now he saw it as a pain in the ass.
He was going to have to find a way to get through two separate walls that were guarded all day every day. Thinking of all the effort he was going to put into this n just for it to possibly fail, Lake couldn''t help but think it might not be worth it. It would be worth a shot to just ask Lucas to let him see the city.
Lake had shown himself to be a devoted member of the guild, so there was a good chance Lucas might let him outside. Plus Lake had already run into a guard post and could go no further into the second floor without dealing with them, and that could lead to news about him snooping around getting to Lucas.
Going back to the elevator, Lake moved up to the third floor. Lake thought this was probably the highest floor he could jump from and not end up dead, so this would be thest one he would check. Lake didn''t even bother getting off the elevator at the third floor because it was where the guards lived and he had seen about fifty the moment the door opened.
Now that he knew there wasn''t an easy way for him to get out of the building on his own, Lake saw no other choice but to ask Lucas. Ifke had to put odds on this working he would say about 30% which was pretty good. The only problem being if Lucas said no he would have to wait months before he could ask again to make sure he didn''t seem too eager to leave. Lake needed to make sure he came off as nonchnt as possible when he asked.
Chapter 60: Excursion
Chapter 60: Excursion
Getting back to Lucas''s office Lake saw he was still not back so Lake sat down in the chair in front of Lucas''s desk. Lake had never had the nerve to mark Lucas after what had happened when he tried to see his stats, so Lake could only wait for him to get back. This wasn''t the first time Lake had to wait for something, so he didn''t mind.
He knew Lucas was busy so the amount of time he was in his office was already impressive. Lake also had nothing to do really. He was holding off on leveling any more jobs because he didn''t want to hit the max one day, and not be able to use any Unique jobs he mighte across.
The only Unique job he had that hadn''t hit ten was Archer but he didn''t have a bow anymore so he would have to ask for one. Thinking about asking for a bow, Lake realized it would be stupid to leave without asking for a bunch of stuff. Lake was really going to need some armor eventually so he might as well see if he could have some.
He could just make up some story about needing it for the dungeon, and Lucas would probably say yes. Lake needed to take advantage of his position while he still could because once he left he was going to have to work for anything he got. Lake was looking forward to it though, because the work he would be doing also happened to be what he liked to do, steal.
Lake had been on best behavior sinceing to the guild because there was really nothing worth stealing around that he couldn''t just ask for. The only time he had seen anything worth taking was when he had been in the vault. Thinking of the vault, Lake remembered the mark he had ced to see what would happen if he checked it once he was out.
Looking up towards the top of the spire, Lake could see the mark was visible now that he thought about it. All he could tell right now though was it was somewhere above him and it was moving. It was some sort of pocket space so he wondered why it would need to move, couldn''t it just stay still, was the moving some sort of security measure?
If that was the case it made him think it might be possible for people to enter if they knew where it was which he did. If he was able to map out the route could he just wait for it to pass and break in using magic. That would be a lot easier than going though the Master Lab which was the reason he had decided to give up on robbing the vault in the first ce.
"Hello Lake, what are you here for, your date not go well?" Lake could tell this sarcastic voice belonged to Lucas. "Me and Joy aren''t really dating, I was just helping Millie out." By now Lucas was no longer behind Lake, so Lake was able to see Lucas''s face which was confused. "What are you talking about?"
Lake could see how Lucas could have a hard time connecting the dots so he said. "Millie likes Solomon and Solomon was eyeing Joy so I made it seem Joy was off the table. Don''t want anything upsetting Millie." Lake was starting to think he was telling too many people Millie''s secret, he had told everyone he spoke to.
"Man you really did a number on Solomon tonight in that case. I thought the barfing was bad enough." Lake justughed, there was nothing to say to an usation like this. "So are you here for something, or are you just gathering your energy for the stairs?" Lake was happy Lucas had asked, because he had multiple things to say.
"I was here to ask if I could get some armor. I would like to go deeper into the dungeon but I feel it''s too dangerous with my current equipment." Lucas looked at him like he couldn''t believe that was all he wanted to say. "Yeah no problem, but you should ask your servants to get stuff for you, not me."
If this had been all Lake had to say he would feel stupid right now but that was just the opener. Right when Lake was about to ask if he could go into the city he saw the journal Lucas had let him read was still on his desk, and it looked Like Lucas had been reading it because it was open. "Lucas, do you spend a lot of time reading this?"
Lucas looked down and saw Lake was asking about the journal. "Yeah if I could change anything it would be these journals getting stolen. The amount of otherworldly knowledge in them made them an amazing read." What Lucas said made Lake think of a skill he had written off almost instantly, Treasured.
If this skill worked the way he thought it would, he had a way to make Lucas let him out. When Lake had first read Treasured the only use he could think of was ckmail or ransoming back whatever he stole, but now he saw he could help people find things they lost because there was a good chance their most Treasured thing was something they missed.
"Lucas I would need your cooperation, but I think one of my skills would allow us to find them all." Lake was going to make it seem like he was just doing Lucas a favor, because asskissing would make sense from someone in Lake''s position. "What would you need me to do?" Lake could tell this possibility had made Lucas excited.
"That amulet you wear, I would need you to take it off. After what happenedst time I don''t think trying to use my skills on you while you wear it is a good idea." Lucas reached up and held the amulet for a few seconds while he thought about his requests. "I agree but we should go somewhere more secure first. I wouldn''t be surprised if there is a spy in this very room."
After Lucas said this Lake looked around, he thought maybe that was a paranoid thing to say unless people could turn invisible. If there was a job that gave skills like that, Lake needed to find out what it was. His guess was an Epic criminal job, so he bet it had been tampered with by one of the past Insiders.
Thief was amon job originally, so it was most people''s first criminal job. Even people who didn''t try to unlock it ended up with it one way or another. It was pretty easy to steal one thing so most people unlocked it as children, or at least that had been what the book Lake read aboutmon jobs had said.
There was also anothermon criminal job called Pickpocket which Lake nned to get as soon as he was free. The way to unlock it was more difficult so it was lessmon and most people who had it were actually criminals. It apparently had a lot of sleight of hand skills that Lake would find useful when he started ripping people off.
"This is my bedroom, so the odds are no one but us is here." Lake looked around and saw Lucas''s room was almost the same as his just a few extra pieces of equipment Lake assumed were for alchemy. "This is the first time I have used this skill, so I don''t know what will happen so bear with me."
After Lake said this Lucas took the amulet off and said. "I''ll know if you look at my stats so be warned." Lake had been nning on looking and he guessed Lucas had been able to see the glint in his eye. Lake knew the only way to y off him being caught was to act like a spoiled kid so he said. "Fine." in a pouty voice.
This made it seem like he was just curious, and had no bad intentions. "My stats are probably less impressive than you''re thinking anyway." Lake didn''t really know what Lucas would gain from saying that but it did make Lake less curious and maybe that was all Lucas wanted.
Activating Treasured Lake started looking around for the results, and seeing hundreds of dots he knew it had seeded. "Lucas it worked but you''re going to have to give me a minute to make sense of the results." After a few seconds of trying to count how many dots he was seeing Lake gave up and just focused on a few that seemed close.
The closest was the one in Lucas''s office obviously but there were a few others Lake would bet were close enough to be in the city as well as one below them that Lake assumed was in the dungeon for some reason. Lake decided to not mention that one because his whole reason for doing this was to leave the guild.
"There are two in the city I think. Do you know the exact number because they''re all over the ce and I''m having a hard time counting them. There are clusters that are too close together for me to differentiate as well. I''m guessing that those are ex-members of the Mage guilds new headquarters."
"This is a hell of a skill you''re using right now." Lucas was looking around like Lake was. Lake wasn''t sure why but he doubted Lucas was somehow tapping into the feed. Maybe Lucas could just feel the power the skill was giving off. Lake wouldn''t be surprised if that was possible. "Hey Lucas, do you want to go get one of the journals? I want to see how urate this skill is, and I should be safe if I''m with you."
Chapter 61: The Great Escape
Chapter 61: The Great Escape
Lake could see that Lucas knew it was a bad idea and it would be best to keep Lake in the guild for a few more years. Which had been his n from the start but getting Amanda''s journals back was one of his life''s ambitions and his want for them was much higher than his worry for Lake''s safety.
"How close is it?" Lake didn''t think he would be able to tell if it wasn''t for how high he was right now even the bottom floor of the spire was able to give him a birds eye of the surrounding area. "Does your room have a balcony?" Lake wanted to see if he could see the exact building if he was outside.
Lucas nodded and led Lake outside. Once they were outside Lake could tell he had been right that some of the journals were in the capital; the only thing was the closest was actually in the royal pce. "The closest is in the pce, but there is another in the city in that direction." Lake pointed at a nicer section of buildings that were pretty close to the guild.
"It''s probably in the hands of one of the former guild members. My guess is they went their own way after the copse, and just grabbed anything they could on the way out. It would exin why they only have one." Lake could see a few other ways someone might get one but Lucas seemed fired up, and Lake didn''t want to interrupt that just so he could look smart.
With Lucas like this there was a good chance they would be heading out into the city. "I''ll have one of the carts readied. We''ll drive around until we get close and after we locate it I''ll send someone from the Thieves guild to retrieve it." Lake was surprised to hear Lucas say he was going to have the Thieves guild do something for him.
"Why don''t we just do it ourselves? The journal belongs to us anyway." Lake needed to actually get out of the cart to escape. "Because we don''t specialize in stealth, if we go it will just lead to a fight. It isn''t a good look for me to act like a thug, especially when I can send one." Lake thought this was a cool line, and he might steal it one day if he could.
Lake guessed he was just going to need to build more trust with Lucas. This was just going to be the first of many trips he and Lucas would be making to get all of the journals back, so eventually he would be able to get Lucas to get out of the cart. That was really all he needed one time and he would be gone.
Lake already had a n for the fact that Lucas was much faster than him; he was going to use the core he had ripped out of that assassin to change his face. Lake had yet to test this skill because he hadn''t felt he was actually alone since he had unlocked it, and he didn''t think showing off the one skill that made him more stealthy was a good idea.
"How are you going to get the one in the pce?" Lake wanted to know if the thieves guild was about to make a killing or not. The amount of man hours it would take to blind search the royal pce for a book was crazy. Lucas seemed to catch on to what Lake was getting at because he said. "I''ll take you with me the next time I see the king. With the feast it will happen in the next few days, so be ready."
"The more I can narrow down the location the less work the thief will have to do." Lake bet escaping the pce would be a lot easier considering it was much smaller. If Lucas took his eyes off Lake for even a second he would be gone. Seeing Lucas was about to put the amulet back on Lake had an idea and marked it.
Lucas wore it all the time so it was the same as marking him. Now Lake would be able to see where Lucas was at all the times, including when he was escaping. Lucas didn''t seem to notice the mark because he didn''t react and just finished putting the amulet under his shirt. After he was done Lake saw Lucas take out the mirror thing he had spoken into the first day he was here.
"I need a cart ready as soon as possible, also ready 10 guards and have them ced in the market district." Once Lucas got done giving orders Lake asked. "Can I have one of those as well?" He didn''t understand it, but it seemed really useful. "Sorry, one of a kind. It''s something one of the past guild leaders made, Mage guild I mean, and it''s been passed down since. It lets me speak directly into peoples'' heads. well as long as there''s nothing protecting them from it."
"Can you speak to anyone, or are there conditions?" If Lucas could just speak to anyone he wanted this thing was definitely worth stealing. "As long as I''ve spoken to them in person before it works. The only problem is they can''t speak back so I have no way to know if they''ve received my message or not. It makes you feel like you''re screaming into the void."
"Can you use it on me? I want to see what it''s like." Lucas shrugged and put it up to his mouth and said. "I''ve been told it''s kind of loud." Lake held his head, Lucas was right it was thunderingly loud. "Maybe you don''t need to hold it so close to your mouth." Lake felt bad for whatever servant Lucas had just been speaking to, Lucas had said two whole sentences to them.
Lucas put the mirror down and said. "I''ve tried, even whispering doesn''t help. Let''s get downstairs. I need to tell a few people I''m leaving, and they''ll get mad if I use this on them." Lake guessed Lucas only used the mirror on people he didn''t care about. If Lake had it he would wait till someone was going to bed, and scare the shit out of them.
He would do that to everyone he knew, and when they got mad he would know it was an awesome prank. Getting back in Lucas''s office, Lake saw him pick up the journal and ce it back on the shelf. After he was done they got on the elevator, and rode it down to the ground floor.
"Stand here for a second. I''ll be right back." Lucas had Lake step off the elevator and rode it back up. Lake wondered where Lucas was going that he didn''t want to bring him then remembered he didn''t have to guess. Lake used the mark he had ced on the amulet to watch Lucas ride all the way up to what seemed to be Lucas''s office.
Lake had no idea why Lucas would do this since they had just been in his office but then Lake saw the mark disappear from where it had been and reappear much higher up. Lake realized Lucas had just gone all the way up to the top spire in less than a second and wondered if he had teleported or if he was actually that fast all on his own.
If Lucas could actually move that fast, Lake needed more of a n than just run away. Thinking about it, Lake realized the run away n was fine, he just needed to be faster than Lucas. With his burst skill there was a good chance he could outrun Lucas when his Agility reached 101. When Lucas had said his stats were less impressive than Lake would expect that probably meant Lucas had the same cap Lake did 200.
Lucas was older so there was a good chance he had maxed a few stats, and from what Lake had just seen Agility could be one of them. 100 was the max for a normal human so hitting 200 in a stat must have some odd effects like the ability to move fast enough to make it seem like you teleported. Lake pulled up his stats to see what his Agility was.
Race: Human Lv.6 ( 2/10 )
Job: Thief Lv.10 ( 12/5120 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 60
Stamina 60
Mana 60
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 24
Dexterity 47
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 17
Lake considered using his free points to increase it but stopped himself because it still wasn''t enough to matter. What he really needed to do was find a job that gave a lot of agility points naturally and max it out in the dungeon. Which should be easy enough to do in the libraryter they had plenty of books about jobbinations, and synergies. While that wasn''t what Lake needed it still would still have the info he wanted.
Lake saw Lucas reappear in his office and get back on the elevator a few minutester the doors opened and Lucas said. "You ready?" Lake nodded, he wanted to get back before it was toote and he was tired, so he could spend some time in the library. Lake knew the guilds carts were fast so this should be quick.
Chapter 62: Cart Ride Through Town
Chapter 62: Cart Ride Through Town
A little while after the cart started moving, Lucas said. "We just entered the area you pointed to, tell me when we get close." Lake nodded he already knew they were almost there because he could see the dot that represented the journal getting closer the whole time. Lake had to admit he had been wrong about this skill; it was good its uses were just limited.
Watching the dot get closer and closer, Lake said. "It seems to be under whatever road we''re on right now. We just went right over it." Lucas looked out the window, and said. "That makes this a little moreplicated. I needed to know what building it was in to tell the guild where to send their guy."
Lake didn''t see this as too big a deal. "Just send someone to every surrounding building; it has to be one of their basements." From the smell Lake didn''t think this city had a sewer, so it was unlikely that the book was being kept in one. "You''re right there''s no reason to skimp on something like this. This will still be much cheaper than the job in the pce."
"Lucas, do you know what the two buildings we just passed were? If you did, we might be able to guess which was more likely to be an offshoot of the Mage guild." Lucas seemed to like his suggestion because he had the driver turn around and drive past again. "I guess the bookstore is the best guess. The journals don''t give off any special magic to show how precious they are or anything, so I could see it ending up for sale here by ident. I bet they don''t even know what it is."
Lake thought differently, the fact it was in the basement might mean it was in someone''s private collection and not for sale. "Lucas, would it cost more to have them take more than one thing? Because I bet it''s in someone''s collection, so whatever it''s with would probably be worth taking. Most of it was probably stolen from the guild anyway."
"The guild charges more depending on how much they''re stealing. They charge per bag so we can probably get them to take 10 books without the cost going up." Lake thought that seemed reasonable, he wondered if they charged for weight as well, but then he remembered the strength stat made it so every person was superhuman, and weight didn''t matter really.
If it could fit in a bag there was a good chance they could carry it. "Are we headed straight back to the guild now that we''re done?" Lake was using the fact he had a date with the library to make it sound like he wanted to go back to the guild. "Yeah, unless there are anymore journals close by."
Lake shook his head, there were very few not in big clusters so the fact that there were two stand alone in this city was pretty good. "You never told me how many there were." Lucas seemed to realize that Lake was right, because he said. "It''s because I don''t know. I always felt a few were missing even before they got split up by the copse."
"What made you think there were some missing?" Lucas''s eyes zed over and Lake knew that meant he was remembering something. "Amanda kept them a secret until she ascended. None of us even knew she was from another world until we found the journals in a secret shelf in her room. When someone ascends there''s always a mad dash to find their belongings because there''s a chance of them being artifacts. I was there when the guild searched her room and found the shelf that held the journals and I was one of the first to read from them but I don''t think we were the first to find them. The shelf had three spaces empty when we found it. The Last space was one of the three spaces empty so it''s possible that it was never filled but the other two spaces were wide so it was obvious someone had taken some from the middle. I would estimate 20 to 30 were missing."
"Why would someone only take some of them? Don''t you think it''s more likely Amanda hid some of them somewhere else." Lake would bet money on her being the one to put the one in the dungeon down there so he could see her hiding some of the more interesting ones as well. "I''ve thought that as well but she didn''t leave any hints for us to track them down so either she didn''t want us to find them which means we won''t because she destroyed them or someone took them which would mean they still exist and I would rather believe the second theory."
"Maybe you just never found the hint." Lake was hinting that there was a journal in the dungeon but there was no way Lucas could know this. "I looked everywhere I could think of. I even went through the entire dungeon which took over a year because the teleporters down there stopped working after Amanda did whatever caused the dungeon to be the way it is."
"You mean the darkness not the undead right?" Lucas nodded and said. "The undead came muchter. I''m just happy I searched down there before they showed up because It''s much more dangerous now. When I looked it was just dark and confusing." Lake guessed Lucas had missed whatever puzzle led to the journal hidden down there, and if that was the case it must be hard to find.
Lake knew Lucas must have been very thorough because he was obsessed with the journals. The fact he spent a year in darkness proved that. "Lucas, can you use dark magic?" Lucas looked a little aggrieved as he said. "No, it didn''t exist when I was born." Lake bet him not being able to use the dark element was what caused him to miss the journal.
It was so obvious that Lake bet Lucas had thought of the possibility every time he went into the dungeon and found nothing. It was probably something he had thought over and over again while he searched, until he was finally forced to ept it and gave up. Lake almost felt bad enough to tell him there was something down there and he could lead him to it.
"So how many had there been when you found them." Lake wanted to know how many they were going to need to get to finish the set the guild had had. "315. The fact that there were so many made me think I had no chance of ever regathering them no matter what, so I never even tried. I was just happy I had the first one. She put all her favorite memories in it because she was afraid she would lose them at any second. Theter volumes are about her life before her death and they are in order so a lot of the stuff is mundane and kind of hard to read."
"Is there a noticeable gap when you''re reading them, like a big portion is missing?" Lucas made a face like he was getting tired of all the questions and said. "That''s enough, I would rather talk about how often you would be willing to help me retrieve journals." Lake just shrugged and said. "Whenever''s fine with me, some are really far though so the amount of time we will spend in this cart will probably drive you crazy. I really like asking questions."
Lucas looked at him like he just stated the most obvious thing in the world. "I''ve noticed you''re very curious about almost everything. You should focus more on alchemy, or you''ll never make it past journeyman." Lucas would say that considering he was the head of the alchemy guild, but Lake liked to take advice from non biased sources.
...
Lake had just finished the delightful run up the stairs and into the library. He didn''t want to spend too much time here so he just grabbed the first book that seemed to have anything to do with jobs and started to look through it. A few minutester Lake had a list of jobs that gave agility on level up and was out the door and on his way to his bed.
Today had been ridiculous in the amount of things that had happened and he was ready for bed. He was also a little hungry, but not wanting to disturb Millie just to get a snack, Lake decided he would just wait for tomorrow''s lunch. Getting to his hallway, Lake saw Solomon''s door and thought it would be a good idea to apologize for what had happened at lunch.
The barfing part, not the Joy thing. Solomon needed to continue to think he and Joy were dating or at least until he left and none of the stuff going on here could affect him anymore. Knocking Lake was greeted by one of Solomon''s servants and that was enough for Lake. "Will you tell Solomon I said sorry." After that was done Lake turned around and went to his bedroom to sleep.
Chapter 63: The Palace
Chapter 63: The Pce
Lake had just decapitated an undead but was still short of leveling Rogue, the first job he had gotten to increase his agility to 101. It was a Good job that gave three agility per level so once he maxed it he would have 30 more agility. "Hey, Joy I need to be done for the day I''m going with Lucas to the pce."
Rogue was taking forever because it only had Exp bonuses for knife kills and it was only X2. He was on his way to level 8 but Lake was thinking maybe thest two levels weren''t worth it. He should probably just move on to another job. He had only started with Rogue because he thought it sounded like something that one of the past insiders might have tampered with, but he was wrong.
Race: Human Lv.6 ( 9/10 )
Job: Rogue Lv.7 ( 356/640 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 60
Stamina 60
Mana 60
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 45
Dexterity 47
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 17
Rouge (G) Lv.7 ( 356/640 )
On level up:
Agility 3
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Knife Kills
Skills from job:
Quick Knife (G) Lv.1
Increases speed by 7% while wielding a knife.
Knife Throw (G) Lv.1
Increases uracy of thrown knives.
"I''ll see youter, Joy. I''m not going to lunch today, so I would rmend you skip it as well." Lake was upset by the fact that he was going to miss Millie''s food today but it wouldn''t be thest time he got to eat it. He was no longer nning on using this trip to the pce to escape, because Lucas would catch him in a matter of seconds.
Lake had moved the escape back a few weeks to give himself time to level up some of the jobs on the list. Stepping into Lucas''s office, Lake saw a new bookshelf had been ced next to his desk and Lake didn''t even need to ask what it was for. "Hey Lucas, I''m ready to go now." The trip to the pce wasn''t very long, so he wasn''t sure why Lucas looked like he was moving house.
Lucas was filling multiple bags with various items. "Lake, the thieves guild brought the journalst night, which means your skill works the way you thought." Lake was surprised the guild moved so fast, it had only been three days since they had gone out into town in the cart. "Where''s the journal?"
"I haven''t paid them yet, so they still have it." Lucas didn''t look up when he said this just continued to pack the bags. "Is that what the bags are for?" Lake could see this being the case with how fervently Lucas was putting things into the bags almost like he couldn''t do it fast enough. "The thief found something while they were looking for the journal and asked if I wanted to buy it, and since I said yes the price for the job went up."
Lake wondered what they had found, and it made him wonder if he had been right about the journal being in a collection. Lucas had also very obviously not said what the item was and this made Lake think maybe it was something he wanted to keep secret. Lake was still going to ask though. "What''s the item?"
Lake really wanted to know because it had to be really good. "It''s not just one thing. You were right about it being a collection which the thief took all of, and if it wasn''t for the fact they won''t tell me everything they got I would probably just buy the bag with the journal in it." Lake could see why the thieves guild would use this strategy.
Lake knew how exciting it could be to open loot boxes, and Lake found it funny the thieves guild had found this way of selling more stuff than people originally wanted. The fact these were actually loot boxes made it slightly funnier. "How many bags worth of stuff did they get?" From the looks of it Lucas was getting ready to buy quite a bit of stuff.
"23 bags. The person handing the payment for the journal hinted there might be something I don''t want being sold to someone else in one of them, but wouldn''t tell me which." Lake could tell Lucas didn''t really care how much he had to spend. He would probably only get angry if it turned out the thief was lying just to make more money.
"Are we still going to the pce today, or are you too busy?" Lake was more just asking this so Lucas would tell him the n, he didn''t actually think the trip was off. "We''ll leave right after I get the journal. I''ll look through the bagster. It isn''t too important to know what''s in them after we have them. I just want to make sure no one else gets them."
...
Lake had just seen Lucas hand off the bags to someone and a few secondster the same person brought 23 bags filled with books in. "This is the one with the journal, the rest can be moved to storage. I''ll handle itter. Lucas told one of the guards that were over seeing the transaction what he wanted done, and then waved to Lake to get on the elevator.
"Once we get inside the pce don''t get too far from me. My warding spells will keep you safe from any prying eyes as long as you''re close enough." Looked like Lake would have failed if he had tried to use this trip to escape anyway. If he wasn''t able to take more than a couple of steps away from Lucas before he noticed, there was no way he would be able to escape.
Lake had already given up on this n so it didn''t really matter. It just made him wonder who Lucas was worried about him being exposed to. "Who are you guarding me from?" Lucas looked at Lake and said. "Who knows, the royal pce is infested with spies from every organization. The king doesn''t really care because it keeps him relevant. The only thing he has that''s worth anything is the information constantly circted through his court."
Lake had kind of wondered why there was a king at all when the guilds clearly had more power. If the king was some sort of information broker it made more sense. Anytime one of the guilds needed to know something they probably went straight to him and in exchange for a few crumbs of power the king told them everything he knew.
Of course this was all hinged on the fact the king had the best information. If there ever came a day someone knew more the kingdom would crumble, or at least for the king it would. Whoever the new king that reced him was would just pick up where he left off. Lake bet the king''s children would be the best candidates if you wanted to know something the king didn''t.
That''s how power struggles usually went on tv at least. He would know if he was right if they ended up meeting any of the king''s children. If they did, and Lake was right about the king''s children fighting for power they would probably receive a secret offer from whichever child they met for more information that might interest them.
...
The cart had just stopped in the pce''s courtyard. Lake had done his best not to harass Lucas on the way over, because he didn''t want Lucas to make this thest trip they took together, and it seemed to work because Lucas seemed to be in a good mood. "You''ll be introduced to like a thousand people as soon as we step out of the cart. They will think you being with me means you''re a big shot in the guild and they will use this opportunity to try and get closer with you. The only ones you need to be worried about are the ones that aren''t alone. The bigger the group with them the more powerful they are here."
This was the type of advice only someone who had been ying this game for a while could tell you. The fact Lucas had made a little rule to follow in these situations really showed how many times he had done this. "I''m bad with names. Will that be a problem?" If it was, it would be best for Lake to pretend to be a servant or something.
Lucas didn''t seem to think that was the case at all though because he said. "You''re more important than anyone you''re about to meet. Even the king himself has no real power over you, so them telling you their names is rude to begin with, so feel free to forget it." Lake liked this way of thinking about the people he was about to meet, because it really took the pressure off him.
Chapter 64: A King
Chapter 64: A King
Lucas had been right about the number of people who tried to introduce themselves. Lake was just happy Lucas didn''t mind beating them back with a stick. Lucas had insulted almost every person who had run up shouting their name and trying to shake his hand. Though there were a few Lucas actually spoke words with, and like Lucas had said every person worth their time had an entourage.
Now that they were inside it had calmed down. There were still loads of people around but they were all speaking quietly to one another, and only spared a few nces towards them. There didn''t seem to be any rule actually forbidding talking at full volume so he asked. "Why did wee here exactly?"
Lake was here for a reason and at the moment all they would be able to tell the thieves guild was left. The left side of the castle was huge so Lake needed to get closer to the dot to figure out where it was. "We are here to meet the king, but we have plenty of time. Would you like to walk around the pce? It has a nice garden in one of the interior courtyards."
Lake had asked a question he already knew the answer to to tell Lucas they weren''t close to the journal, this was a system they had agreed on beforeing to the pce. They were here casing the joint, so they were trying to do so without making it obvious. "That would be nice." From now until the meeting with the king they would try to get as close as possible to the journal.
...
"What''s that doorway lead to?" Lake pointed at a fancy red door that also seemed to be where the journal was being kept. "If I''m not mistaken that''s one of the prince''s rooms." Lucas knew Lake was telling him this was where the journal was, and that they now had their answer and where to tell the thieves guild to look. "It''s about time for us to meet the king, let''s go."
A few minutester they walked into the most gaudy room Lake had ever seen. Every inch was covered in gold and jewels including the floor they were walking on. Lake didn''t even need to ask Lucas which person was the king because even though every seat in this room looked like a throne the biggest was obviously holding the king.
Lake wondered why there were so many different fancy people on thrones but then he realized this was probably the king''s entourage. It was kind of smallpared to some of the ones they had seen earlier but sometimes quality was better than quantity. Lake bet the king''s entourage had their own entourages and maybe it kept going.
Then Lake realized he was describing a pyramid scheme. The king had made it so every piece of information led to him. Where Lake had lived in hisst life pyramid schemes had been illegal, because the people at the top were the only ones who really benefited, and not only did they scam the customers but most of the people who were a part of it.
"Hello King Leogerald." Lucas didn''t really bow, but it was close. it was more of a head nod. Lake guessed this to be the most respectful thing Lucas could do without looking like he served the king. "Hello Guild Leader Lucas. I was surprised when you told me you would being today, with our feast in a few days there must be something important for you toe all this way."
Leogerald was obviously saying no one ever came to see him without wanting something from him, and Lake wondered if Lucas did want something. Lucas had made it seem like he only came to hash out the ns of the feast, and so Lake could tell him where the journal was, but why not have a third reason to do something.
"I''vee to ask you the number of people you n to bring with you. The person making the food is wondering how many portions she should make." Lake could tell Leogerald didn''t like the question because he started to scowl. "Not much of a feast if there isn''t extra food." This was an excellent point but Lake could tell Leogerald was just unting his power.
Earlier Lucas had said the king didn''t have real power but if that was the case why was Lucas doing anything the king wanted. Why were they even throwing a feast in the first ce? Lake only had one guess, and that was disinformation. Lake wondered if Lucas was afraid the king would spread lies to destroy the restaurants before they even opened.
It made sense to Lake that the person who controlled information could spread lies like they were truth. Lake realized people probably just gave the king what he wanted because it was easier than dealing with the repercussions. It was almost like how parents dealt with their spoiled children. They just kept saying yes even though it made the problem worse.
Lake wondered what was keeping them from just killing the king. If all the guilds and other equivalent organizations teamed up it wouldn''t be hard to just get rid of the king. There had to be something actually keeping him power other than the information. "Sorry with there only being one chef who can make the food, there is a limit."
"If only one chef can make it, how are you going to open so many businesses?" Lake had really been expecting this king guy to be an idiot but maybe this world being so dangerous anyone with any power had to be prettypetent. He was clearly just doing exactly what Lake did, he was fishing for information under the guise of a conversation.
Lake was sure Lucas knew this as well but he still answered. "The chef is in the process of training apprentices that will be the ones to open the restaurants." Lake didn''t like how simple his n sounded in one sentence but the king seemed to find it very interesting. "If the skills are teachable, how are you going to keep it under your control? It won''t take long for the Dark Guild Alliance to kidnap one of the apprentices and make them teach their own chefs to do the same."
Lake hadn''t even thought of this and it had almost happened to him. "We were going to make them take the loyalty." Lake could tell Leogerald wasn''t impressed with this solution. "All it would take is one curse master to undo that. If you drop the prices of your restaurants and give free meals to areas experiencing famine, I''ll make sure you know before someone can nab one of your chefs."
This one sentence made Lake realize why no one dared to kill the king, he was beloved. Instead of making a deal that would benefit him like a cut of the profit, he asked for something the people needed, and no matter if his intentions were actually pure, if anyone hurt him the people of the kingdom would make sure they paid.
"I can''t drop the prices in the restaurants, but I agree to the free meals." Leogerald smiled like he was going to agree, and said. "Ok then I''ll tell you 50% of the time someone is going to take one of your chefs." Lake couldn''t help but smile when the king said this. It was clear Leogerald had the advantage in this negotiation.
Lake understood now what Lucas had meant when he said the king had no real power over him. If Lucas wanted he didn''t even have to agree to any of the king''s demands. Technically the king was on the sidelines just watching the guilds fighting and wasn''t making anything happen. He just watched until he saw something he could use to his advantage.
Once he had a juicy piece of information he just yed both sides until he got a yes. If Lucas said no the King would let the Dark Guild Alliance take one of the chefs, and then ask them to do what Lucas had said no to. The king had no power to make anything happen, he just knew that it did.
"I''ll drop the prices in the cheaper restaurants, but we need the upscale restaurants to stay expensive if you want us to be able to feed all the starving people in the kingdom." Lucas had clearly phrased this in a way the king liked because he said. "It''s a deal, once I see if the food is safe I''ll sell you thend you need for the restaurants."
It seemed the king was also the king in a traditional sense, but owning mass amounts ofnd was actually the least impressive thing about him. "I know you can''t take my word for it, but as someone who eats it I can say it''s safe." This sounded like the end of the discussion to Lake, so he waited for Lucas to give him the let''s go look.
"It was your idea originally correct?" Lake looked up to see the king was looking at him. "Yes king Leogerald." Lake wasn''t sure how he was supposed to address Leogerald. Lucas was the Guild Leader so it made sense he was equivalent or greater than the king, but Lake was just a member so he was probably supposed to show more respect.
"How''d youe up with it? It''s a very good money making idea, and the fact someone of your age would be the source is very odd." Lake thought back and remembered he had thought of this n to screw over Solomon because he thought Solomon was untouchable because he was Lucas''s favorite which he thought meant Solomon made the guild a lot of money.
Lake had been wrong, the real reason Lucas protected Solomon was he was innocent Lucas didn''t seem to really y favorites. "My n was to make someone else as important as my enemy so when I killed them no one would care." Lake didn''t want to risk lying so he just told the truth. The truth didn''t matter anymore, Solomon was innocent and Lucas already knew Lake was a conniving bastard.
"Babababahahahbabahahaha. Good ideas usually are the result of something stupid like that." It seemed Lake had made the right choice Leogerald loved what he had said. "How would you like to marry one of my daughters? I''ll give you the pretty one. We can always use smart people in the family. If you do a good job one of your children might be the next king."
"Just because you call her the pretty one doesn''t mean she''s good looking, it just means she''s better than the others." Lucas grabbed Lake and started dragging him away. "Goodbye King Leogerald I''ll be expecting your list of people you''ll be bringing by tomorrow."
"No need to send a messenger. I''ll be bringing 70 people but I would like if you ced that boy at the same table as my daughters. He can see for himself if she''s the pretty one." Lake could hear Lucas grit his teeth as he said. "That''s no problem." Lake didn''t see what the big deal was, it wasn''t like Lucas had any daughters he had asked Lake to marry.
Chapter 65: Opening Loot Boxes
Chapter 65: Opening Loot Boxes
After the meeting with the king Lucas had drug Lake all the way back to the cart without a word. Lake guessed Lucas didn''t want to say what was so important in front of all these people who were literally all spies. Lake thought him being dragged was telling enough for them to figure most of what happened even without Lucas saying it.
Them being in the cart now Lake thought Lucas would say whatever had been in his mind on the way to the cart but instead they were now just sitting in silence. Lake was too curious about what the rush to get out of there had been about so he asked. "Should I have been less funny?" Lucas had reacted badly to Lake being charming in front of the king.
"I''m not too worried about you, it''s just the king has really high Charisma so the fact you were about to engage in a negotiation with him was bad." Lake always forgot he needed to be careful about people with higher Charisma being able to take advantage of him. Lucas was right, Lake had been on the fence about the king''s daughter when normally he would have instantly refused. "Man, I didn''t even realize it was happening."
"Charisma''s effects are unnoticeable. You just have to be ready for them." If everyone was so worried about Charisma why did no one ever try to increase it? The Temple Head had told him it wasn''t unusual for someone to have less than 10 in Charisma for most of their life. It made him wonder if they were actively avoiding it.
There was also another possibility. "Are jobs that give Charisma umon?" It was also possible most people thought they would be fine as long as they had enough points in theirbat rted stats but Lake thought it was more likely to be a scarcity rted reason. "Yeah it''s actually easier to level jobs that give free points and use those to increase your Charisma than to try and unlock the jobs that give Charisma. The only people this isn''t true for are shopkeepers, merchants, and tamers."
This made Lake remember he had the Tamer job and just never even bothered to check it. At the time it was because all the monsters that had been around grossed Lake out and it seemed the only way to level it up would have been to tame them. Lake could just imagine the army of goblins he would have now if he had done so.
"Are those themon jobs that give Charisma?" Lucas shook his head and said. "Yes and even they can be hard to max. You can''t earn Exp frombat with most jobs that give Charisma so it''s hard to predict how long it will take you to earn enough Exp to level up. Though it does get easier as your Charisma increases, For example Shopkeepers get more Exp if they make a good deal which gets easier as their Charisma increases."
"If you were to rank each stat by how important you think it was, where would you ce Charisma?" Lake had expected Lucas to already have a list in his head considering his age. With so much time he would have expected Lucas to have had this thought before, but he guessed not. It took most of the ride back to the guild for Lucas to answer.
"I don''t think the question has an answer because it depends on someone''s personality. If someone is timid their stats won''t really change that, so all their points in strength are wasted. They should have put their points in Agility so they could run away faster." This was a really well thought out non answer.
Lake was pretty sure Lucas did have this answer already, he was just waiting till they were about to get to the guild so Lake couldn''t keep asking questions. In the time it had taken Lucas to answer, Lake could have squeezed in ten more. "You know if you want me to shut up you can just tell me, I''m perfectly capable of answering my own questions most of the time anyway."
Lucas smiled when Lake said this. "I actually have some questions I''d like to ask you if that''s ok." Lake was actually fine with Lucas asking anything because Lucas already knew some of Lake''s biggest secrets. If it was someone else Lake would probably lie about anything they asked him about. "Go ahead."
"Were you really nning on killing Solomon?" This was not what Lake was expecting Lucas to ask about. "At the time I thought Solomon was targeting me for some reason, so if I needed to I would have killed him. Now I''m pretty sure I was just being paranoid, and it waspounded by the fact Nia doesn''t like him."
"Ok one more, Are you really ok with marrying the king''s daughter, because if he''s serious about it he will find a way to make it happen or at least find a way to make you really consider it." This question was much more difficult for Lake, because he still hadn''t seen or met her. Lake did like women, he was just very picky.
It seemed in this world being attractive was guaranteed, but Lake was looking for other things as well. The main thing was that they weren''t annoying, and sometimes it seemed he was already asking for too much. Lake was able to fake getting along with almost anyone, but the truth was he disliked almost everyone as soon as he met them.
Even all the nice people he had met so far in this world annoyed him a little. The best so far was Joy, she reminded him of one of his friends from school. They had also been too tall and good at keeping a conversation going, but he didn''t see himself marrying her, he would leave that to one of the freaky Alchemists.
"I don''t really care either way, tell me what you think." Lake was sure Lucas had at least seen her before even if they had never spoken. "You could do worse. The only problem would be your inws." Lucas was saying getting closer to the king would outweigh any benefits he would get from the marriage.
Lake had been able to tell the pce was a cesspool while they were there, but the king had actually impressed Lake quite a bit. If Lake had to pick between a tv show about Lucas or the king, Lake would pick the king. What was going on around the king was much more hectic and therefore more entertaining.
The fact the king was able to handle everything going on around him was more respectable than then the reason Lake thought Lucas ran the Alchemist guild. Lake was pretty sure Lucas just knew how to move money around. For apany that had fallen apart like the Mage guild had, Lucas was the best bet to get the bleeding to stop, but that didn''t make him amazing.
He was just good at conserving what little they retained. He was probably also the reason the Alchemist guild had kept the Mage guilds building which was what solidified him as the leader. The building itself was the most impressive, and thergest asset the Mage guild had at the time, so him providing it to the guild was a good way to make everyone believe he was the one for the job.
In reality his feat was probably much less impressive than it seemed. Lucas had probably been in charge of the Alchemist branch of the Mage guild which was apparently the most profitable part of the guild, so during the copse Lucas had been able to buy favors from the other powerful people.
He might have just been able to cut people off depending if their department made money or not, and after a while every other group was beaten in a battle of attrition, and they had to move on. Lucas had literally just ousted everyone else, he didn''t really have anything to do with the fact they had the most money.
...
"Grab that bag and, get people to bring the others." Lucas and him were about to see which journal they had gotten from the book store. It didn''t really matter but Lake wanted to know if it ended up being the second one Lake would think that was pretty funny. "Are you ok with me sticking around for all the bags?"
He was also interested in what else they had ended up buying. "Yeah, even if something incriminating or secret is in one of the books there''s no way you''ll be able to read it before I hide it." Lucas was referring to what the thief had hinted towards and the reason Lucas had bought all this. Apparently something the guild would want was in one of these bags, and Lake was looking forward to seeing what it was.
Chapter 66: Just Books
Chapter 66: Just Books
Lake was flipping through the journal they had just unpacked from the bag and was wondering why Lucas didn''t seem to want to hold it. It was almost like he didn''t care about it at all but Lake knew that wasn''t true because these journals were the thing Lucas cared about the most. "Here, you wanna see it?" Lake tried to hand it to Lucas but he just set it on the bookshelf he had brought here to hold them.
Lucas had set it in the second slot because amazingly they had in fact beaten the odds and recovered the second journal. It had always been possible, just unlikely. Lake decided to decide if it was weird or not till after they got the next one. If it ended up being the third, Lake would really start to suspect something was going on.
"Would you like to open the first bag?" It seemed Lucas could tell Lake was treating this as some sort of game but Lake was actually more curious why Lucas didn''t even spare a nce at the journal. "Is the second journal one of the boring ones you told me about?" Lake had been nning to read itter but if Lucas thought it was bad Lake would skip it.
"Only a few of them are worth reading more than once. The second journal has Amanda''s earliest memories from both lives, so nothing exciting really happens." So it was just about her being a baby, Lake could see how that could be boring. "Is it worth reading?" Lake bet Lucas had read them loads of times looking for clues, so he should almost have it memorized.
Lucas shook his head. "Only if you''re interested in information from her original world." Lake got what Lucas meant by this. Lucas knew Lake was most likely also from another world and if it was the same one there was no reason Lake would care about any of the stuff he could learn from the journal.
When he had read the first one he had noticed Amanda was either from earth or somewhere so simr he wouldn''t be able to tell the difference. Lake saw Lucas was about to unpack the rest of the book that had been in the bag with the journal and focused up. These books had most likely been right next to the journal in the collection.
If the person who put it there was arranging based on value these might be pretty good. The first book Lucas pulled out had a pitch ck cover and no title but Lucas didn''t take the time to see what it was he just handed it off to Lake. Looking through the first few pages, Lake saw the person had been arranging based on topic.
This book was about the Dark element and it detailed someone''s personal experiences mastering the elements principles. Lake wanted to read this book in detailter, but he set it down to receive the next book. Seeing it was another hand written book on the Dark element Lake wondered if every book in the collection was one of a kind.
After seeing the first two books weren''t that valuable Lucas started going through them faster which left Lake less time to look at each one. Finished with the first bag Lucas looked back at Lake and said. "I was expecting most of this to be worthless, because it''s the only reason the thieves guild would push me into buying it. Once the thief got back to their guild, and realized most of this stuff would never sell, they used the few items with value to sell all of it."
Lake could tell Lucas was trying to teach Lake a lesson on how the thieves guild did business in case he ever had to hire them in the future, but Lake had already understood what they had done to move more merchandise. "This stuff isn''t useless. My guess is all these were handwritten by important people, and most of them are one of a kind."
Lucas didn''t seem to care about this fact because he said. "There are plenty of books with the same info in the libraries. I''ll only be impressed if there''s something I haven''t seen before in one of these bags." Lake realized Lucas was probably appraising everything he took out before he handed it to Lake, and that was why he didn''t care about any of the books.
It was probably the same thing the thieves guild had done before selling it all off in bulk. This was most likely the way almost everyone told the value of something if they had ess to the Appraiser job, but not everyone valued something based on how much money it was worth. Lake wondered why the person responsible for this collection had cared for powerful people''s handwritten books.
Really putting his brain to work Lake thought of the only reason there could be other than they just liked them. It was like the lottery, if one of the people who wrote these books ascended it was possible one of these books would be an artifact. Lake wasn''t sure how the items that became artifacts was decided, but if it was random each of these books was a chance at bing a demigod.
The fact that all these books belonged to people who were masters of elements was more evidence he was right. They were the most likely to ascend based on what Lake knew about gods. "Lucas, how are gods'' artifacts decided? Is it random?" Lake wanted to see if he could be right about this collection, before he spent this whole time thinking about it.
"No idea, there seems to be connections between how important something is to them, but sometimes it''s just something they barely had any connection to." This sounded like random to Lake, and he wondered why Lucas hadn''t just said yes. It was also impossible to know how important something had been to someone just based on what you knew about them.
Lake realized this might be another use for Treasured. He might be able to tell what was going to be an artifact when everyone else had to just assume it was random, because they couldn''t tell what had actually been someone''s favorite thing. Now Lake just had to meet some people who had a good chance of ascending, and steal everything they loved.
Lake snuck a nce at Lucas and shook his head. Lake really doubted He had it in him to be a god. If all you needed was money, and resources there would be way more gods than there were. Lucas had also told Lake the Demon Lord stole divinity from most people that made it to demigod hood in recent years.
This made Lake think Lucas didn''t even want to try. The fact Lucas didn''t want the guild to help fight the Demon Lord just showed how scared he was. "We''ve got a winner." Lake focused on the book Lucas wass holding and could tell it was giving off an aura. They had gone through a few bags already but this one seemed to hold things about the Fire element.
Lake had heard this was a very popr element, so he bet a few of the bags would hold books with Fire as the topic. "This holds information on a divergent element. Which means whoever wrote it was ready to ascend. My guess is the Demon Lord put a stop to that." Lake had actually heard of a divergent element of fire before, cold fire. Lake wondered if that was what this book was about.
After a few seconds of flipping through it Lucas said. "Don''t read this, it''s dangerous. It has a demigod''s thoughts in it and you''re not ready for this kind of mental attack." Looked Like Lake wasn''t going to get to know what the book was about but what did Lucas mean by attack. "Is the book enchanted to protect itself in some way?"
Lucas shook his head and said. "No. If you read this book the power of the demigod would affect your mind and make you think fire was supposed to act differently than it does. In this case fire doesn''t spread, it converges. One of Fire''s principles is that it spreads, but the demigod responsible for this, made a version of fire that gathers itself in one ce and increases its temperature to burn as hot as it possibly can, and every time you target the same spot it just adds to the already burning point until it grows hot enough to melt whatever you were targeting."
This seemed like a good way to give people a way to defeat something much stronger than them to Lake. He could imagine an army all casting these spells into one tiny dot of fire to burn through a city''s wall. "If I read the book would my Fire spells actually act like that?"
Lucas put the book in a separate pile and said. "It depends on how much the book affected you or actually infected you. If it really hypnotized you into believing that was how Fire was, you would subconsciously change the principles of your spells to match what this book describes. If the demigod was sessful in their ascension, there would be an element called Focaries right now."
Lake was happy Lucas sated his curiosity because he would have been tempted to read it even though he knew it was dangerous. Seeing Lucas was going back to opening bags, Lake counted how many more bags there were to estimate how much more time this would take.
Lake had thought this was going to be fun, but so far both the books they had found worth anything he wasn''t going to read for one reason or another, and with the book Lucas had bought all this for most likely holding secret information, there was a chance he wasn''t going to get to see what it was about either.
Chapter 67: Intermission
Chapter 67: Intermission
Lucas had just left the room to do what he called business. Lake was pretty sure he was going to contact the thieves guild again but Lake hadn''t asked. Lake knew the job of breaking into the pce was on another level, so Lucas might be going to talk to someone more powerful than the little thief he had seen earlier.
They still had a few more bags to go through and Lake had said he was going to stay till Lucas returned so they could finish. Lake had nothing better to do because he had been holding off on leveling any jobs that didn''t give Agility, because he was scared he would hit the max of 200 in a stat, and not be able to level an amazing job he had unlocked.
He had lifted the ban on Agility because he needed it to run away from Lucas who seemed to have hit the max already. This left him with practicing Alchemy and Lake had done this a few times in thest week but he found it really boring. He knew there was cool stuff he could do once he got better, but all the knowledge he needed to gain first was a real pain.
That just left looking at some of the books they had just unpacked Lake had put off getting better at magic after he learned how closely intertwined elements were with their god. You couldn''t really avoid meeting the god if you wanted to master their element. It was how they found people to recruit.
Lake knew if he was to max one of his mage jobs he would probably end up catching the eye of the god in charge of that element, and he was scared they would be able to see the Insider, or at least some of the things it had done to him. Lake knew the reason he was so limited in the things he could do was he was technically a prisoner.
It was hard to tell because he spent so much time around the warden, and they seemed like friends, but him being here was keeping him from doing any crimes, or exploring what the Insider could do. If Lake had been out on the street he would have already been able to hit level one with the Insider which was probably when its real abilities woulde out.
Lake had yet to get the next mission from the insider but he knew it was because he was in such a peaceful atmosphere. If he was doing all sorts of things it would have happened already. He was pretty sure he would get it as soon as he used thest skill he had gotten from a mission, Impersonate but he had been too scared to use something that would change his appearance, because he was pretty sure he was being monitored in some way at all times.
With his skill Trespasser he didn''t need to worry as much, but he was pretty sure people were able to be invisible using magic, so someone could have eyes on him at all times. This thought almost made him sigh at some point he was just going to be forced to ept there was no way to make a perfect n to escape.
There were just too many uncertainties for him to be able to ount for everything. Him just relying on himself was one of his main problems. Maybe marrying the king''s daughter was a good idea. It would force Lucas to let him out of the spire alone to see his wife. It would be extremely rude to the king if Lucas got in the way of Lake making the next king.
Lake would actually just run away using the time that excuse bought him but he bet it would work. "Lake, do you know where master Lucas is?" Lake looked up from the book he had yet to start reading to see Nia had just walked down the stairs into the office. Instead of answering that he could know where Lucas was, Lake said. "Nia, will youfort my wife when I''m gone?"
This was targeted nonsense, and it showed on Nia''s face. A mixture of confusion, and worry. "Why would I do that? You''re not even married right?" The order those two questions were in said a lot about Nia. Lake hadn''t had a good way to ask her if she liked Millie the way he thought she did, and even if he did there was a good chance she would deny it if it was her big secret.
Another reason was there was no reason to make her mad just because he was nosy. This wasn''t going to be a part of his big n or anything he just wanted to know before Millie and Solomon got together because Nia would probably react badly towards him if he had anything to do with it.
After a while of him just looking at her, Nia realized he was just messing around, and calmed down and reasked her original question. "Where''s Lucas?" Lake used the mark he had ced on Lucas''s amulet to see where he was. The dot was just somewhere in town so Lake pointed and said. "He''s that way."
Nia looked at him like he was an idiot and said. "Are you saying he''s in town?" Lake nodded. "Then why not just say that?" Lake shrugged. "Alright, I''lle backter." Lake startedughing, and said. "Man that Solomon has it too easy." Lake wanted to use Nia to waste as much time as possible, and he knew this would get her going.
Lake had also chosen what he said carefully because it could mean multiple things and still allow them to have a conversation. Nia would be thinking how Millie liked Solomon for no apparent reason and Lake could mean anything else and they would still be able to meet in the middle. "Yeah, I can''t believe how easily he was able to get Millie to forgive him."
This was a ssic way to see the actions of the person you liked. You would make up anything to make it not their fault. The reality was Solomon did nothing, and Millie had asked him toe back all on her own, but since Nia had made Solomon the viin she would me everything on him. "I got him good with that cheese though."
Nia smiled as she recalled Solomon barfing out the food the other night. Lake bet she had missed what had made him think it was so funny so he said. "The manner in which he barfed was akin to a baby in both amount and substance." He also used a fancy voice because it made what he said more elegant, and barf talk needed that.
Nia didn''t really react to what he had said which made it a little awkward. It was always rough when a joke fell t but then he realized what had happened Nia was about to cry and him being a clown wasn''t going to stop that. Lake realized this was about to get ugly, and it might result in her pouring her heart out to him, and he didn''t think he was going to be asforting as she thought.
Lake knew he was a cold calcting bastard, but tears actually still got to him. He guessed the part of someone that reacted to others'' misery was more ingrained than a conscience. He was pretty sure he didn''t react like others though, people crying just made him super ufortable, and it was a super buzz kill, no more jokes until they were done.
"Nia, are you sure you want to do this in such an open ce? Lucas could be back at any moment." Lake was pretty sure he could still stop it if he said the right thing. He decided to try and use the fact Nia would probably not want to look weak in front of Lucas to get her to control herself.
Seeing the first tear well up Lake knew he had failed. It was going to happen, but after watching her cry in silence for a while, Lake realized as far as someone crying went he had hit the jackpot. She wasn''t the type that tried to talk while crying so this experience would be less gross. People got spit everywhere when they said something particrly upsetting to them.
It was like pressure had built up all of a sudden and it caused them to gush every now and then. Lake knew how to make Nia feel better, just say something she was too stubborn to ept and then she would get angry and stop crying. "Nia, Millie doesn''t know you like her, and you can never tell her because she will stop talking to you."
Lake didn''t think this was actually true. Millie was nice and also pretty easy to control so Nia actually had a good shot even if Millie didn''t swing that way, of course Nia wouldn''t force Millie into a rtionship but she could. He had just said this to make her get mad, he had chosen this line because it would be what Nia was afraid of.
Her anger towards him might lead to her dealing with her problems out of spite. Just to prove him wrong would be a good enough reason for her to say anything to Millie she felt she needed to. Seeing her face get slightly more red, Lake knew it had worked. He had forgotten she might be able to just beat him up depending on her stats so he got ready to block.
If she decided to kick his ass his n would still work though, so either way was fine, but she just gave him a look he couldn''t really read and walked up the stairs. With the number he had done to both her and Solomon, he bet one of them was bound to affect Millie in some way, so he bet lunch was going to be interesting tomorrow.
Chapter 68: Guild Secrets
Chapter 68: Guild Secrets
With Nia gone, Lake sat down again and thought about the odds Millie would end up with Nia instead of Solomon. He also had to factor in that neither could happen, and Millie would never get up the courage to ask Solomon out, and would just act like Nia just meant they were good friends.
Lake stopped thinking about this, it was only interesting if he got to see it happen. Millie didn''t know how to hide her emotions, so he would know exactly what she was thinking. "I''m surprised you actually waited." Lake looked up to see Lucas was back from his business and said. "I''m a man of my word."
"No you''re not." Lakeughed because both might be true, he really didn''t know. It didn''t really matter because Lucas was clearly joking. You didn''t say things like this to someone you nned to spend a few hours with unless it was a joke. "Did they say how long it would take?" Lake wasn''t too specific but Lucas got what he was talking about.
"They said no, so I wouldn''t be expecting it any time soon." Lake didn''t think they would ever say no, just ask for money. Lake wondered if the person who said no was actually Lucas, maybe he thought they were asking for too much. It was possible the thieves guild was more careful than Lake thought and this had been unlikely to work in the first ce.
"Is there another way to get it? Are we going to be forced to just ask for it?" Lucas got back to pulling books out and said. "Just because some of them said no doesn''t mean there isn''t someone willing to do it. Just have to wait till someone takes the job." This made it sound like the thieves guild didn''t have higher ups, but instead was just a collection of free agents.
It was why they had to wait because the people Lucas had just gone to speak to had most likely been on the upper end of people you could hire and with them saying no that meant Lucas had to wait for some less skilled thief to take the job. It wasn''t worth Lucas''s time to talk to every person in town that might be willing, not when they had so many books to look through.
"The next closest is probably a few hours away. Would you like to go for a rideter?" The next closest journal was just out of town as far as Lake could tell. "It depends on what this book we''re looking for has in it, most likely it will be nothing, but if it''s something that needs my attention we''ll have to hold off on leaving."
This was fine with Lake because he wasn''t ready to run away yet anyway, so really he was just trying to get Lucas in the habit of going out to get journals with him, because eventually they will have to go on a multiple day trip, and that would be when Lake would try his luck.
...
They only had two bags left and with nothing really worth mentioning Lake was starting to wonder if they had missed the thing the thief had been hinting at or maybe it was less of a big deal than the thief thought it was. Maybe when Lucas had seen it he hadn''t actually cared about it.
Lake really doubted the thief had the nerve to lie to Lucas, especially when the thieves guild didn''t guarantee their members safety the way the Assassins guild did. "Here it is." Lake looked up to see a tan leather book in Lucas''s hand. The fact he didn''t instantly try and hide it made Lake guess it wouldn''t be bringing about the destruction of the guild.
"So, what is it?" This had been built up in his mind over thest hour and a half they had been looking though one uninteresting book after another. "It belongs to one of the guild members, it has the location of a few of the people outside the guild written in it. Overall its a mild breach of security not that big of a deal unless it fell into a very specific group of peoples hands. If I had said no to buying all these books the same deal would have been made to them and we would have been dealing with a few of our members going missing in the next few days."
It seemed like Lucas was thinking this had been worth it in the end but Lake had found this to be a huge waste of time. At least this meant they would be going on another cart ride. Lake was hoping the journal was somewhere they didn''t need to send a thief and they would just get it themselves.
Lake had be mildly interested in what would happen after they had all the journals. The fact that one was down in the dungeon obviously hidden by someone who became a god meant they were definitely important and something interesting would happen when they finished with this process.
Lake would continue to gather them after he escaped and in the future he woulde and help finish the set. For himself that was Lake bet he wasn''t the only one who thought this was the road to an artifact. It might also be why Lucas cared so much, Lake didn''t think Lucas wanted to use the artifact to be a demigod.
He was pretty sure Lucas just wanted to know what it was, and make sure it hadn''t gotten destroyed or stolen by the Demon Lord like the rest of Amanda had been. Lake wondered what Lucas''s rtionship with Amanda had been. He was clearly obsessed with her, and Lake wanted to know if they had actually been close, or Lucas was just a fan.
"Let''s go in the morning. I really need to actually get some guild work done, so juste down in the morning and we''ll leave." Lake wanted to know if Lucas would be fine if he brought Joy with them. She would keep Lake from getting on Lucas''s nerves as much, since he would have someone else to talk to.
"Would you be fine with Joying? She actually likes to talk to me unlike you." Lake knew putting it this way would most likely result in an instant yes, and he was right. Lucas nodded his head as he finished pulling thest of the books out. "Yeah that''s fine we need guards anyway." With Joy joining them this time Lake hoped he could make it a guaranteed thing in the future.
Lake was nning on having Joy help in some way if he thought it was necessary, and for that she needed to be around. "Alright I''ll see you when I walk back through." Lake had to go downstairs to tell Joy she would being with them, and that would mean he would walk though Lucas''s office on the way to his room after he was done.
"I probably won''t be here, I have a meeting with the author of this journal." Lake wondered if someone was about to get into trouble, or if Lucas just wanted to know how the journal had gotten out of the guild. Lake was sure it was the second Lucas wasn''t really the hard ass type of boss he would need to be to yell at one of the masters.
Either way Lake was going to kill some time in the dungeon. There was no reason not to with him heading all the way down there. He could probably get Rogue to level 8 by the time it was time for bed. "Ok." Lake stepped onto the elevator and rode it all the way down to the dungeon.
Lake used the Mark he had ced on Joy to see which guard she was, he was still unable to tell because they all looked the same. "Hey Joy, I''m here to hunt some more." Lake looked directly at her to mess with her, he knew she would be thinking how was he able to tell. "Ok lets go." As they stepped into the dungeon Lake felt his stomach start to ache and realized he had yet to eat today.
It wasn''t a big deal, just mildly annoying. "Joy, you got any food?" Lake knew Joy usually had food in her bag because he had eaten it before. "Yeah I have a piece of fruit. I''ll give you it once we reach the first lit room." This would give Lake a chance to tell Joy she would being with them in the morning.
Getting into the first chamber Lake leaned against a wall and received the fruit. Before he bit into it he said. "Joy, me and Lucas are going out tomorrow, and I asked if you coulde." Seeing she didn''t say she didn''t want to, Lake said. "I order you toe with us out of the guild tomorrow." And with that the preparations were done.
Chapter 69: Beautiful Morning
Chapter 69: Beautiful Morning
Stepping into Lucas''s office, Lake saw that Lucas had clearly been waiting on him. Lake hadn''te straight down after he had woken up, instead he had had some breakfast first. There was a chance this could take long enough that he would miss lunch, and with the fact that all he ate yesterday was a piece of fruit, Lake felt he would be pushing it to skip breakfast, even with Refreshed.
Lake had stayed uptest night to level Rogue to eight and so he wouldn''t get up too early and have to wait on Lucas. Lake preferred it to be the other way around and with the fact he only slept like three hours a day, he and joy had stayed in the dungeon almost all night.
Lake gave Lucas a thumbs up to show he was ready to go and they both walked into the elevator. "I sent some guards outst night to see if the roads were safe for our trip today, and they told me there was increased trafficst night." Lake wasn''t sure why Lucas had said this, was it some kind of important event that a lot of people came to the capitalst night.
Before Lake could say any of this out loud Lucas continued. "I have people out investigating what happened, but they haven''t sent word yet, so I think we should cancel the trip until they do." If they weren''t going to get a journal where were they headed. Lucas had waited to tell him until after they were already on the elevator, so it could be anything.
"Are we going somewhere else?" Lucas looked at Lake and said. "There''s a chance the Light temple might be evacuating small towns, and if that''s the case we need to start hiding important people in various safe houses, so if we get attacked they won''t wipe us out." Lake didn''t react the way most people would to news that a war between gods might be about to start.
"Why wouldn''t the Light temple just tell you if that was what''s happening?" Lake could guess it was because the Alchemist guild was neutral in the war, so the Temple hadn''t bothered telling them but he just wanted to make sure. "The Temple doesn''t speak with any of the guilds, and we''re not exactly on good terms with them anyway considering Light mages were part of the Mage guild until recently."
Lake knew half the old Mage guild members were on one side and the other half were on the other, so they both probably disliked the Alchemist guild for not choosing. "If we''re neutral, who''s going to attack us?" It defeated the whole point of being neutral if they were going to be attacked by both sides on the first day.
"They won''t be attacking us to kill us just to take the guild building, it''s the strongest defensive position on the continent, so whichever side takes it will probably win the ground battle." Why hadn''t they chosen a side if this was what the situation was going to be. "Are you nning to just hand the building over?"
Lucas didn''t answer, just smirked like he was happy they were about to be killed. Seeing Lucas didn''t n to answer, Lake moved on. "Am I being sent somewhere as well?" Lucas shook his head. "Not right away, there''s no point in doing anything except preparing the carts until we''re sure."
Lake had a feeling like it was definitely going to be what Lucas suspected, because while he had been at the Temple he had been told the God of Light was on his way back, and the fighting was going to start again soon. "If it is what you think, where am I going?"
"I''ll be sending you to live in one of the hidden guild branches, so I won''t be telling you the exact location." This was all Lake needed to hear to realize this was his chance to escape. Lucas wasn''t going with him so all he needed to do was out run his guards. Lake had full confidence in being able to do that without even using Burst.
Lake opened his stats to see what they were exactly, he needed to know if he was going topare them to his guardster.
Race: Human Lv.7
Job: Rouge Lv.8 ( 24/1280 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 70
Stamina 70
Mana 70
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 47
Dexterity 47
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 17
There was no way a normal guard could catch him if he used Burst. When he used it his Agility would effectively be 94 and if he held a dagger he would move 7% faster so he would be moving as if he had 100. Since that was the human limit even if for some reason one of his guards had max Agility they could only keep pace.
Lake also had thest resort of his free points which would let him move as though he had broken the human limit. "Is Joy being sent with me if I have to evacuate?" Lake actually was hoping Lucas said no because it would make her look bad for no reason. He was fine if she helped him escape and she got into trouble but that wasn''t the situation she would be in this time.
He was just going to run and there was no way she wouldn''t be med even though she didn''t have anything to do with his escape. They would probably say she had let him run on purpose. He doubted she would be killed, probably just fired and depending on how the loyalty thing worked she might be just fine.
It was possible they would know she had nothing to do with it because of the curse, but Joy hadn''t said it controlled her actions in any way, just made her follow orders which he could give her, maybe he could just give her an order that made her stand down, then it would be the curses fault not hers.
He could probably get her toe with him by making it seem like the other guards had betrayed them, and them killing the guards before running was their best option. This was probably partially true anyway, considering the Demon Lord liked to corrupt peoples minds, and then leave them for when he needed them.
Lake had been nning to leave because of this fact alone, so in his eyes anyone who tried to stop him might as well be working for the Demon Lord. He also only had to kill the ones who could catch him so it was unlikely it would happen at all unless Joy was involved and he needed to run while dragging her with him.
He was just going to wait and see to flesh out his n. "No, all the guards are staying here to do their jobs, you''ll be with one of the masters." Looked like Lake got ahead of himself but now he was worried about Joy for a different reason. There was a chance she would be killed if she stayed here to fight whatever battle Lucas seemed content to fight.
"Would you mind letting here with me? One less guard doesn''t really matter all that much." Lucas looked at him like he was being annoying again, and said. "I''ll send orders." Lake didn''t think that would be necessary. He was pretty sure she would be waiting for them once they got to the carts because of his order he had given her yesterday toe with them.
Once the elevator stopped Lake saw there were quite a few people that had been waiting for it. He guessed with this being a potential emergency there were a bunch of people that needed to get around the Guild as fast as possible. Once they stepped off all the people that had been waiting stepped on except for a few.
"Guild Leader, some of the scouts have returned." When Lake heard Scout it made him think of one of the jobs he was going to level for Agility, but that wasn''t important so he focused. "Bring me to them." Lake wasn''t sure if he was supposed toe as well, but he did. He was curious and as long as Lucas didn''t tell him to go away he was going to listen.
Lake followed them into a small room near where the carts were stored when they weren''t being used. He saw there were three people with different suits of armor than the guards wore but he could still tell they worked for the guild because they wore the same colors. "Report your findings."
Lake hoped these scouts knew not to waste time with every little detail because he didn''t want to hear everything they had done since they left. "The towns were told to evacuate by the Temple, but we weren''t able to verify the reason. The rest of the scouts are still looking for more information."
Lake looked at Lucas to see if this was enough information for him to start the evacuation. He could tell Lucas was weighing the options in his head and after a few seconds Lucas grabbed his mirror and said. "Send the first group." Lake guessed he wasn''t part of the first group, and he wondered if they were more or less important than him.
After Lucas said this he turned and left the room. Lake followed after him and said. "Does this mean I''m going to be evacuated? If so, I would like to know when." Lake wanted to know if he had time to go and get all the stuff he had left in his room ever since he had learned he could ask for pretty much anything he had been abusing this privilege.
He had almost every kind of weapon in his room and while he doubted he could carry them all he still wanted his bow. Archer was one of his Unique jobs and he needed a bow to level it up. "You''re in the third group, so you won''t be evacuated until the scouts confirm the war." This hadn''t told Lake how much time he had so he asked. "Can I go get my bow and armor?"
"I''ll just tell your servants to bring them." Lucas used his mirror to do just that, and continued towards the carts. Once they arrived at all the carts Lake saw almost every person he knew in the guild was here including master Donna. This made Lake feel like he was going to be with master Donna when he left.
Looking around using the mark he had ced on Joy Lake saw one of the guards loading carts was her. Walking over to her, Lake said. "Joy, Lucas said you can go with me, do you want to?" Joy set the box she had been carrying down. "Why?"
Lake had asked a yes or no question, so he thought the fact she had follow ups meant she was leaning towards no. If she did want to go she would have said yes right away. "I thought you would be less likely to die if you came with me." The fear of death could usually get someone to do almost anything, but Joy didn''t seem to react.
"I have to get back to work." This was one of those times when Lake thought the curse affected Joy more than she thought. He wondered if they were able to increase the strength in times like these when the guild was in danger.
Seeing her get back to work, Lake walked back over to Lucas and said. "That guard over there is Joy." Lake leaned in to say the rest. "Is there something wrong with her?" Lucas seemed to understand what he was asking because he said. "I''ll take care of it, for now just let her do her job."
Lake nodded this was a confirmation to his suspicions that the curse was being used to control people, and the victims weren''t really aware of it. He couldn''t really me the guild for doing this because if they didn''t someone else would. Lake bet almost every group used curses like this to get things done when it really mattered.
...
"Guild Leader Lucas, the rest of the scouts just returned." Lake saw Lucas leave the room but didn''t follow him. He didn''t need to be in the room to know what they said. If Lucas gave the order to send the next group he would know the war was on. Lake looked around to find Millie, Lake had seen her earlier, but his mind had been too preupied to read into her expression.
Seeing her and Nia weren''t in the same ce told him everything he needed to know. He guessed Nia had told herst night and it had freaked Millie out. Lake felt a little sorry for Nia, he liked her more than Solomon, so he had been hoping she would beat the odds. Lake actually saw it as a best case scenario because Nia and Millie would be happy and Solomon wouldn''t care because he had never liked Millie to begin with.
If Millie had ended up asking Solomon out Nia would have been upset, so it was actually the worst of the two options. Thinking this would be thest time he would see Millie or her food, Lake walked over to say his goodbyes, and wish her luck in opening her restaurants during the war.
That would be his only way to eat her food once he left, so he really did hope they could pull it off. Millie didn''t react even after a few seconds of him standing next to her so he said. "Millie." He wanted to make sure she was paying attention before he started talking. Lake didn''t like repeating himself. "What."
Lake guessed this was the best he was going to get from her right now. He understood she was probably also nervous about the war, and it wasn''t just the thing with Nia on her mind. "I just wanted to say bye, and ask if you still n on opening the restaurants if you''re evacuated?" It took Millie a second before she said. "It''s up to the guild."
Lake guessed it was and so it would probably happen. It would probably affect the rollout, but there was no reason topletely cancel something bound to be sessful. "I''m surprised you aren''t talking to Nia. This might be thest time you''ll see her for a while." Lake was pretending he didn''t know what was going on to make Millie feel bad, so she would go talk to Nia.
It was a dirty trick, but he liked to mess with people like this to waste time. If he got them to talk before the order to evacuate he might see something heartwarming. Nia and Millie had been friends for years, so he bet Millie would give her a hug, and Nia would spend the whole time they were separated reading into it, debating what it meant.
Done talking to Millie, Lake walked over to Nia. He could tell she didn''t want to talk to him but she didn''t walk away and that was all Lake needed. "Nia, I only said that to make you tell Millie. I don''t actually think Millie hates you now." Lake could tell Nia was just confused now and she didn''t even have anything to say to him so he said. "Good luck." And walked away.
That should be enough to get something to happen if it was going to. If he did any more the two of them would involve him in any problems they had in the future, so he needed to stay a bystander for the rest. Done with that, Lake looked around for Solomon. He had to be around here somewhere.
Not seeing him, Lake wondered if Solomon had been in the first group and he had missed him. "Sir, I brought your things." Lake looked behind him to see Jason was holding his bow and had his armor in a bag. "Thank you Jason. Oh, and sorry for that time I made you carry me up the stairs. I didn''t realize you couldn''t say no at the time."
Lake didn''t need some old man tracking him down in the future over some dumb grudge and he knew this was the best way to keep that from happening. Lake knew his servants would probably be freed from the effects of the Loyalty curse after he was gone, so it was possible Jason was actually mad at him, and the curse was keeping him from showing it.
Grabbing all his stuff from Jason, Lake waved bye to him. Lake found a ce to wait and started looking at Millie and Nia. This was the only form of entertainment he had right now so he wanted to make sure he didn''t miss it. "Second wave depart." Lake looked to the man who had yelled this and could tell Lucas had just used his mirror to tell him to say that.
This confirmed the war was on. Lake took a deep breath, the rest of this day would probably be really hectic and he needed to be ready for that. It seemed he wasn''t the only person who was affected by this news. Lake saw Millie walk over to Nia and start to talk to her. Lake could actually hear them but what they were saying was just small talk so it wasn''t worth perceiving.
After a while of them talking, Lake could tell the awkward air around them lessened. This was the effect of them knowing each other for so long. The longer people knew each other the more likely it was they would continue being friends even when problems popped up. Lake had to take his eyes off them because Lucas had juste back.
Lucas wasn''t really doing anything, so Lake looked back in time to see Millie hug Nia right before Nia got on a cart with one of the masters that was standing around. A few secondster it was driving away, and Lake could tell Millie was upset. He really couldn''t do anything about this though, so he started to walk over to Lucas.
Lake wanted to know when the third wave was being sent and maybe figure out if he was actually going to be going with Master Donna, but before Lake could say anything Lucas said. "Do you n to stay with the guild, or are you going to defect to the light temple?" Lake was taken aback because Lucas wasn''t asking so he could keep him here. Lake was pretty sure he was offering to let him leave.
"I don''t really know enough yet to make up my mind." Lake was honest because he didn''t n to choose either option but a third one. "Ok, Most of the carts we''re sending aren''t making it to their destinations not because of attacks, but because there are a lot of members that are using this as an opportunity to join the side they''ve been a part of this whole time."
Lake could see why Lucas was asking him now. Lucas didn''t want anyone who wasn''t loyal around for this war so he was letting anyone who wanted to leave now before the fighting started. This kind of made it seem like Lake could just tell Lucas what he wanted to do, and Lucas would ok it.
"Lucas I would be ok with staying with the guild for now if you let me leave the building whenever I wanted." Lucas had just given him two options, one was stay with the guild and hide it out, the second was leave the guild and possibly die, but Lake had asked for a third, stay with the guild and possibly die, so it was slightly better for Lucas than if he left.
"Do you want to stay here or at one of the branch offices?" This sounded like a yes to Lake so he said. "Here''s fine, but I''m going into the city for a few days, will the guards still stop me, or am I good?" Lucas took a ring off his finger and handed it to Lake, then he touched Lake''s badge and the R switched to a F.
"You''re a field agent now you''ll be able toe and go as you like, but when you get back we will have to check you for curses and such. This ring is one of my spares. It works like the amulet, just less effective. It should keep you from getting cursed or anything, so make sure it''s fully charged."
Lake looked at the ring in his hand, and inspected it with his various skills.
Ward Ring
Blocks Magic from everything but the user when triggered.
Triggered by killing intent, or dangerous magic entering a 2 foot radius from the wearer.
Can hold 120 mana when fully charged.
Drains 1 mana every 5 seconds when activated.
Drains mana to regenerate the ward any time it takes damage.
Less effective against water magic.
These were all the important facts Lake was able to pull up but he thought it was enough. He did have one question though. "How do I charge it?" One of the facts about the item told him it was currently uncharged so he needed to know.
"Just put it on. I had to keep it uncharged because having multiple wards activated at once can actually have the opposite effect, unless they were made to ovep." Lucas continued to talk as Lake slid the ring on his finger, and he could tell right away why Lucas hadn''t exined in more detail after the initial instruction.
Lake could feel the ring clearly wanted mana and he just had to open the tap to let it take it. There was one problem, Lake only had 70 mana so trying to refill this ring might take all of his and leave him in a depleted state. Lake had never used his mana for anything really, so he wasn''t sure what this would do to him.
He was able to guess what running out of Health and Stamina would do to him, but Mana wasn''t really something he even understood. It would probably make him feel weak but in a manner different to running out of Stamina. Being able to cast really big spells made you feel really powerful, so once you ran out of mana, and could no longer do so you would feel weak.
Lake let his Mana start to fill the ring and noticed his mana was almost like a new appendage he had never used before. This was not something he expected, because he wasn''t really able to feel anything from the mana he gathered from the environment. This meant his mana was different and in a very strange way.
Lake could feel it twisting through the ring into some strange shape Lake guessed was the shape of the enchantment or whatever gave the ring the ability to make a ward. Getting caught up in the feeling Lake didn''t stop the flow before he was fully drained but it didn''t really make him feel any different.
The fact he could still feel the mana in his ring made him wonder if maybe he hadn''t really spent it yet it had just left his body for a different container, and he would only feel something once he used it. Lake turned to listen to Lucas who was still talking about the ring, because what had just happened with the ring interested him.
"Items that can serve as mana vessels are effectively part of the body once you start to charge them with your mana, and will function simrly to a skill granted from a job or stat." This line made Lake think back to the fight with Nelg and how when he inspected him he had seen Nelg had more mana than health and stamina.
At the time Lake had thought it was the effect of a skill, and maybe it was but it was also possible Nelg had some item that let him store extra mana. Lake knew a way he could check he pulled up his stat page to see if it had affected how much mana he had.
Race: Human Lv.7
Job: Rouge Lv.8 ( 24/1280 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 70
Stamina 70
Mana (70 /190)
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 47
Dexterity 47
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 17
Seeing he could have a total of 190 mana Lake was pretty sure an item like this was why Nelg had more mana than he was supposed to. Now all Lake needed to do was figure out how long it was going to take to regen all his mana naturally. The rate probably had something to do with your stats in some way so Lake guessed it was based on his Intelligence.
That was the stat that seemed to control how good you were at magic so it made the most sense to Lake. Less than 30 secondster Lake saw his mana increase to 71 so he just rounded to 2.5 a minute than asked Lucas. "Is there a ce where I can get supplies for the field?"
"Go ask Joy to bring you. I''m about to send the third wave and don''t have time." Lake did just that. "Joy, will you bring me to the supply room for field agents?" Lake wasn''t sure if there was more than one supply room but he felt this would get him to where he needed to go. "Follow me sir."
On the way to the supply room Lake thought about how everything had worked out in the end. He hadn''t needed to go through with his impossible escape and it was for the best because he really hadn''t had very much confidence. His best shot would have been to get married to the king''s daughter, but that would have been a lot of work.
He had a lot of ns in motion, and he was just going to take the first chance he could get but now none of that was necessary. This was a good thing because it allowed him to keep his ess to resources that his position in the guild gave him.
He wasn''t sure how good it actually was because it had only happened because of a war between gods, but that was going to happen anyway, so he guessed it was nice he actually got something from it. "This is the storage room most people get their supplies from."
Lake saw each of the eight shelves had multiple of one item on it and he guessed people just grabbed one of each and they were ready to go. He didn''t n to do that, he wanted to see what each thing was, then he would take what he wanted.
Unsurprisingly the first three shelves had potions that restored 40 of health, stamina, and mana. Lake grabbed a mana potion and started to drink it. He thought it would be an efficient use of his time if he drank potions while looking at the next five shelves.
Lake needed to put in more effort for the next shelf. It held a potion with less obvious effects, it seemed to weaken poisons but notpletely heal them for whatever reason. Lake guessed there was more than one type of poison, and there was no way to know what you would be hit by, so this potion would give you time to return to the guild for actual treatment.
This was definitely more practical than lugging around every type of antidote especially when you weren''t trained in how to use them. Lake didn''t take one because there was no need he couldn''t die from poison, and there was no way people would know how to take advantage of his skill unless they knew what it was.
The next shelf had what seemed to be those sleep potions that all the guards had. They had dust on them, so Lake guessed they weren''t very popr. It was probably actually that there had been no big battles recently, so the guards had no reason to need to sleep inbat situations, which was what Lake thought they were for.
Lake moved on to the next thing He wasn''t sure what it was. It was just a little t thing that seemed to have a core in it. Picking it up, Lake inspected it to find it was just a really weak version of the ring Lucas had given him, and it seemed to be a one time use item.
Lake guessed it was an expense thing, it was probably much cheaper to get a new guard than to give them all expensive items. Lake didn''t bother with this either, he had the ring so he doubted it would be useful enough to justify taking.
The next thing was actually kind of useful. It was a medicated bandage that helped close wounds, they were very light so Lake grabbed three. He was yet to be injured during a fight but it was definitely possible, especially since he nned to track down both the Thieves guild and the Assassins guild once he was out in the city.
Well eventually he did. He doubted that he would do that until he was done unlocking every job he could. Lake wanted to find at least a few more Unique jobs before he lifted the ban on leveling up and he would still only get them to level one to unlock his first two skills, it was much more efficient to do it this way.
Thest thing was nothing worth taking. They were rations and by the looks of it no one used them because they were caked in dust. This was also backed up by the fact he had asked for food from Joy twice, and she didn''t have one of these either time.
Lake thought this might be something to tell Lucas he doubted he knew the rations were not being used and if it was a problem with taste Lake knew someone who could fix this problem with very little effort. All Millie would need to do is train an apprentice to make rations and the guards would eat them for every meal.
"Hey Joy, will you take me to the front door?" Lake didn''t know the way out because the guild had taken the whole cart he had arrived in to the elevator room that seemed to be the lobby but Lake knew they were actually in the center of a massiveplex that had multiple buildings. He was sure he would have a terrible time finding the way out on his own.
Chapter 70: Minor Annoyance
Chapter 70: Minor Annoyance
Lake didn''t need to take a cart out of the guild because the guild was in the center of the city next to the pce so as soon as he walked out of the guild''s gate he would be in the nicer part of the city. This was the perfect ce to unlock Pickpocket. All Lake needed to do is grab something off one of the people passing by.
"This is the door people go through to exit or enter." Joy had led him to a small door. Lake guessed it didn''t make sense to open a huge gate every time a person needed to leave. "I''ll see youter Joy." Lake needed to be alone for what he was going to be doing, so even though he knew Joy could get into trouble if she stayed here, he couldn''t take her with him just because he enjoyed herpany.
The odds of the guild being attacked and her dying were pretty low so it would be ridiculous for him to lug her around with him. Stepping out of the door Lake saw he was on a small staircase that led to the street below. On the street he saw a crowd of people had gathered to gawk at the Alchemist guild.
Lake wondered if it was always like this. He hadn''t been able to see this street from his balcony because the wall blocked it from him seeing it. Lake walked down the stairs to see none of the people were actually close enough to touch the guild. They had not entered onto the side of the street the guild was on.
Lake could see the people closest to the guild had their hands up, and were acting like mimes touching the air in front of them like it was a wall. Lake was smart enough to know that they weren''t miming, there was probably some kind of wall he was just unable to see it yet. It probably acted like a one way mirror or something, and waspletely clear from this side.
Getting to the point where to go any further he would have to push his way into the crowd. Lake stuck his finger out to see if he was able to even pass through the barrier. Lake''s finger passed through like there was nothing there, so he shoved his way through. Once the people on the other side realized what was happening they all backed away.
Lake had expected this to happen, because if he was unable to see what was pushing him out of the way, Lake would also give it some space. Lake smiled at all the people looking in his direction but none of them were able to tell because he had put his armor on on the way to the guilds exit. He had had his armor with him in a bag so it would have been stupid to carry it instead of wearing it.
After looking at all the people for a while Lake disappeared or at least that would be what it would look like to them. All he had actually done was jump to the roof of the closest building. There was no reason to push his way through a mob when all he needed to do was take one step to reach here.
Landing on the roof Lake turned to look towards the guild Lake saw from this side it looked like the guild had been swallowed by a huge cloud. He guessed this wasn''t normal and that was why all these people came to investigate. If Lake had lived here and saw this he would have taken the hint and hid or ran away but he guessed all these people weren''t able to tell this was a bad thing.
Once he was done looking at the guild, Lake looked back into the crowd to see if any of the gathered people were able to follow him with their eyes. Lake saw multiple people looking at him on top of the building and marked them. Lake knew some of the people in the crowd were sent here to find information.
The people who were able to see him move that fast were more likely to be spies with high Perception and they were likely to follow him once he started moving away from the guild. Lake knew there were others around he was unable to see because they were hiding, but there wasn''t much he could do about that.
Lake started hopping from rooftop to rooftop while trying his best not to make it obvious he was watching his back. It didn''t take long to see some of the marks he had ced were following behind him just down below on the ground. A few of them had also grouped up which meant he was probably dealing with organizations with a lot of manpower.
Lake wasn''t against using these people to level up but he knew it would be stupid to just try and kill them all, because the stronger ones would just use the opportunity to sneak up on him, and he would just be trapped in a different guild. Lake decided his best bet would be to try and outrun them.
Even if it didn''t work on all of them it would still lessen the number of people he would have to fight. Picking up his pace a little, Lake started to head around the guild. Lake thought it would be stupid to run away from the one ce he would be safe if the situation got out of hand. Lake was just going to do ap around the huge barrier that was surrounding the huge guild.
He figured this would give whoever nned to attack him plenty of time to do so. Then Lake would ess and run if he thought he had no chance of winning. With Burst he should be able to at least surprise whoever it was and make it to the barrier. After a while of running Lake saw most of the marks had either fallen behind or given up, and he was just dealing with 5 that were still on his trail.
Seeing it was so easy to get these people to lose interest made Lake think if he was to go back into the guild after thep, and do this againter it would make the people following him think he was just someone the guild had told to keep an eye on the situation outside. If he made it seem like he was a nobody the guild didn''t care about he would be able to do anything.
The fact that he was out here already made it seem like at best he was some messenger who might know something, but he should be able to demote himself in their minds by wasting some time. Then the only thing that would make them pay attention to him was his armor that was very obviously not a guards armor.
His armor wasn''t really that noteworthy though so it didn''t make him seem important, his armor wasn''t even enchanted, just durable. Anything better would have taken much longer to get to him, so he had settled for something he could get in a few days. He had chosen this because he wanted something in case he was able to escape before schedule.
He had figured something was better than nothing but now that he was going to stay with the guild he had time to order something better. He also wouldn''t mind if it looked like a guards armor because it would make it easier to blend in whenever he left the guild. Of course the best thing would be if he didn''t need to go through any of this and he could just walk outside and blend in with the crowd.
With the fact that anyone who came through the barrier would draw a massive amount of attention, wanting to blend in wasn''t really realistic. Lake just needed to get all eyes off him, because his skill Trespasser would take care of the rest. This actually made Lake remember he had another skill from Thief that was being used right now.
It was also the reason he knew there were so many people paying attention to him. His skill A Thief''s Sense made him aware of the amount of attention he was drawing. Lake had had it for so long he had forgotten that this wasn''t normal. Using this skill he would be able to tell when he was fine to head into the city with no one following him.
...
Lake had just stepped out of the barrier for the third time and he could feel almost no one was actually looking at him anymore. The crowd had also started to disperse. He guessed what was happening wasn''t interesting enough for people to miss work. Starting hisp around the guild Lake could tell no one had bothered following him this time.
Lake took this as a sign that this was his chance to blend into the crowd and he did just that. Lakended in a small group of people that were walking down the street. Nodding at the only person that had seen himnd, Lake said. "Nice day today." The person just shook their head in agreement and looked down at the ground.
Lake knew these people saw people who could do stuff like Lake had done everyday, and they had no reason to care, especially when he had armor and a weapon. They would just think he was an adventurer or something. Lake looked up at the sky and saw he still had more than half the day left before he needed to find somewhere to sleep.
Lake didn''t want to go back to the guild tonight and have to do this all over again tomorrow because he doubted it would work. To pull this off he was going to need some money. After thinking this, Lake looked around at all the people in front of him. Some of them had pouches on their waists or bags on their backs, so it wasn''t hard to find a victim, it just took a little effort to find a good one that couldn''t fight back.
Chapter 71: Spree Pt.1
Chapter 71: Spree Pt.1
After a while Lake saw someone he was pretty sure he could steal from with little trouble. It was a dad and their child walking a few people ahead of Lake. The reason Lake was pretty sure the man wouldn''t notice was his kid was one of those ones that liked to point at everything they saw and say what it was, and the father was indulging this behavior like it was cute.
Moving up behind them Lake waited for the child to say something and for the father to look at it and say it was indeed what the child thought it was. Right when Lake was sure no one was looking he reached out and grabbed the pouch of the man''s belt.[New job unlocked Pickpocket]
Sessful Lake slunk away into a nearby hiding spot. Lake quickly grabbed the four gold coins that were in the bag, and dropped the rest on the ground when he saw none of it was worth anything. After that he pulled up the details on his new Job. Lake wanted to be able to n out what he needed to do to make sure it only hit level one and nothing else.
Pickpocket (U) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Agility 1
Dexterity 1
Free 3
Exp conditions:
Theft of money or valuables
Bonus Exp conditions:
X6 Theft
Skills from job:
Lake was happy to see this job gave mainly free points because he didn''t think there was a limit, and they were nice to have in an emergency. This job also gave two of his lower stats so he wasn''t too worried about how many levels he ended up getting which was a good thing because he had no idea how much Exp theft gave.
Lake guessed he could just steal one gold from someone to see how much Exp it gave, but it was much easier to just steal from the next person he saw that was distracted. Getting back onto the road, Lake quickly identified another victim. Lake switched his job to Pickpocket, and slowly walked up behind the woman that seemed to be focused on the person she was about to rob.
Right when she reached for the bag in front of her, Lake did the same. When Lake tried to take it off her belt he realized it was triple knotted so it took some finger magic to get it off her belt before she could notice. This was the first time Lake appreciated the skill he had gotten when his Dexterity had hit ten Green Fingers Golden Hands.
It had definitely helped with how much work he had had to do in such a small amount of time. The only thing was he hadn''t leveled up from taking this bag, and that made him think there was nothing in it, so he just dropped it and ran. It had felt light so it must have been empty and it wasn''t worth digging through, because he could see someone up ahead that was obviously a much better target.
If he had hid to look through that bag he would have had to chase this guy downter. It was much easier just to move on, and not waste time with a bag that hadn''t even given him 5 Exp.
As Lake was moving on, the person he had stolen thest bag from turned around to see their decoy bag had somehow been detached from her belt. She was in the middle of a getaway, so she didn''t have time to stop and inspect what had happened.
It was impossible for it to just fall off on its own, so the fact it had clearly been removed by someone else made her think this was a warning from a better thief that she was in their territory. She just thanked her luck that they hadn''t done something worse to her, and moved away from this part of town.
Not caring at all what had just happened between him and the thief, Lake had finally gotten behind his next victim. Lake was just walking slightly faster than the foot traffic so no one would pay any attention to him so it had taken almost a minute to get behind this guy. This guy was stopping to pick up garbage every now and then.
Lake wasn''t sure if this was this guy''s job, or if he was looking for something, but every time he bent over it left his pouch in a very vulnerable state. Lake just pretended to bump into the guy when he bent over and continued to walk. [Level up] [Level up] Without stopping Lake pulled up his stats and the two new skills he had just unlocked.
Race: Human Lv.7 ( 2/10 )
Job: Pickpocket Lv.2 ( 3/20 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 70
Stamina 70
Mana 190
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 49
Dexterity 49
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 23
Skills
Don''t Give This Job Any More Unique Skills (U) Lv.1
Skills in use can be targeted and stolen if you''re able to get your hands to make contact.
Lake stopped reading after the first skill because the name had made himugh, but thinking about it couldeter. He wanted to see if their institutions meant he was only getting one Unique skill.
Fast Hands (L) Lv.1
Your arms and hands move five times faster.
Consumes Stamina (1 per second)
Seeing this job indeed only had one Unique skill Lake wondered why whichever insider had thought it was so important to keep it this way that they had left institutions. Lake could really only think of one reason, but it didn''t really fit because if they were trying to make sure everyone got the one Unique skill that meant it would be fine to have two Unique skills, because you got two when you reached level one in a job.
Not wanting to worry about it anymore Lake moved on to appreciating how awesome the new skill he just got was. Lake knew Skills gave off some sort of aura when you used them because Lucas had been able to sense it when Lake had used Treasured, so Lake guessed he would be able to use that as a way to take skills from others.
The only problem was he wasn''t able to sense skills yet. After thinking why that might be, Lake could only think of two reasons. The first being Lucas had some item that let him do so, but the second and more likely of the two was it had something to do with how high Lucas''s stats were.
Lake could see this being the result of your Perception being over 100. Lake bet Stats gave very special abilities once you got them past what a mortal should have. Lakes Perception was his second highest stat but it was yet to break 100 so he had no way of knowing if he was right for now.
Thinking about it some more, Lake wondered if he even really needed to be able to sense it. All the skill said he had to do was make contact. Maybe Lake could just wave his hands near someone while he was fighting them and hope for the best. Odds were he would be close to someone he was fighting anyway, so he wouldn''t really have to go out of his way to test this.
The only real downside was he would look silly but maybe they wouldugh hard enough that he could kill them after he was done. Lake was keeping his eyes out for more people to rob as he was thinking all this and he finally found something. It was a store with a giant window filled with disyed items.
Lake guessed this was the same as robbing someone considering someone owned the store. The only problem was all these items were much bigger than the small pouches he had been taking. Lake knew this would be a lot easier if it wasn''t the middle of the day so he just marked the store.
Lake hoped he would find a ce to sell stolen items in the next few days and coulde back here and do a real robbery. Lake found the petty theft fun in all, but it wasn''t really anything that could get his heart pumping like breaking into a store. Lake added finding a person willing to buy stolen goods to his list of things to do, and went back to what he had been doing.
Lake looked ahead and saw multiple people he could steal from if he was to use his new skill Fast Hands and seeing as he needed to test it out anyway Lake just chose the closest person. Lake had been untying the pouches instead of cutting them loose as a test to see what his limits were, and now he needed to see what he could do if he used his new skill.
Lake flexed his fingers and activated his new skill. Walking over to the person Lake had their pouch untied so fast he hadn''t even seen himself do it. Lake guessed that it made sense, if you multiplied his agility by five it would be much higher than his Perception. Lake wondered what would happen if he was to use Burst as well.
Chapter 72: Spree Pt.2
Chapter 72: Spree Pt.2
Lake activated Burst before he got anywhere near his target. One of the side effects of one of your stats doubling all of a sudden was sometimes it made you jerk if you weren''t ready for it, or at least that was what Lake had experienced. Lake didn''t want to draw attention to himself right before he stole something so he thought it would be best to do it now.
At the rate burst drained Stamina he could have it on all the time so he wasn''t worried about the few minutes of walking he had to catch up to the person he was about to rob. As he was walking, Lake looked at the other side of the street. It would be much easier to steal over there because he would be walking against traffic, and people would be forced to bump into him.
The only problem with that was they were much more likely to check their things after he bumped into them because it was the more known way pickpockets stole from people. The way he was doing it, they wouldn''t notice until they reached back to get something out of the pouch to find it was missing.
Lake switched his job off Pickpocket before he stole the next pouch. He had gotten lucky thest one didn''t have anything in it, or he would have identally leveled up again. Lake knew the fact he was trying not to level up was stupid and he was just being greedy.
Lake knew it was dangerous to stunt his growth because he could run into someone much stronger than him but if he didn''t at least get a few more Unique jobs first to see what his options were, he would end up underpoweredpared to how he would be with a bunch of jobs at level one.
The more skills he could get the better, and he was willing to be weak for a while if it could help him in the long run. The next job Lake nned to unlock was Mugger, its name made it pretty obvious what he needed to do.
The only reason he hadn''t done it yet was it wasn''t amon job so there was a chance he wouldn''t unlock it on the first try, and Lake felt going around mugging people wasn''t really a good idea just yet.
After Lake thought this he looked up at the sun he still had almost half of the day left before he could go all out. Lake bet in a city this size even at night there would be plenty of people out and about. Under the cover of night Lake could mug a few people no problem. He also nned to use tonight to find some of the seedier parts of town.
He could just go to the more run down parts of town but he bet seeing where the people went at night would lead him straight to the best ce to do business. It shouldn''t be too hard to find someone willing to buy stolen goods as long as they couldn''t tell they were stolen, but in this world where Appraisers existed Lake needed to find someone who didn''t care.
Lake snapped back to reality because he had finally caught up to the person he was about to rob. Activating Fast Hands on top of Burst Lake could tell this was pushing it. It was like when your cursor speed was set too high on yourputer and you were unable to use it correctly, but just like that Lake found himself getting used to the feeling.
Lake wondered if his increased ability to adapt to new things was the result of his Intelligence going over 100, because controlling his arms right now was the feat of a god. They were so fast he didn''t even have the time to describe how fast they were. He had already hidden the pouch under his arm and walked onto the porch of a nearby building.
Once the guy he had stolen from had left his field of view Lake opened the pouch like he owned it legally. Finding a smaller pouch with five gold in it Lake added it to his, and dumped the rest of the junk into a nearby pile of trash.
After doing this Lakeughed at the fact he was out here stealing from people when he could ask for anything back in the guild. He had sort of forgotten what he needed to do because he was doing what he wanted to do. Lake reopened his satchel and grabbed the core he had stolen from someone''s chest a little over a week ago.
He couldn''t use it here but this was the real reason he had needed to leave the guild he needed to be somewhere no one was able to see him transform into the guy he had killed. Inside the guild he could feel eyes on him at all times and while it had gotten better after he had gained the skill Trespasser it had never gone away.
Out here on the street people barely even nced at him so it was a much better ce to do it and if it wasn''t for the fact he might cause a scene if the skill was painful he would do it now. No one would be able to tell if his face changed under a helmet.
Lake would just wait till he rented a room in an inn before he tested it out. After thinking that Lake started to read the signs on the buildings to see if he could find one. He needed to know how much it was going to cost to spend the night to see if he needed to continue to steal or if he had enough for tonight.
Looking at all the signs Lake didn''t see any that were hotels, so he looked up to see he was standing right in front of one. Opening the door, Lake saw an old man behind a counter. Judging that he looked honest enough Lake asked. "How much for a room for tonight." The old man shook his head and said. "Sorry we''re full."
Lake wished the old man had hung a sign or something but Lake shrugged and left. There wasn''t much he could do except kill someone and rent their room and Lake didn''t think he could pull it off because the police always looked for motive, and Lake would stand out with how much he profited from their death.
Back outside Lake moved one street over and did the same to receive the same answer from the person behind the counter. Once he was outside again instead of just brute forcing the problem by checking every hotel he could find Lake tried to think why every ce was full.
It didn''t take long to remember what Lucas had told him this morning about a massive amount of people arrivingst night. Lake wondered if every room in the city was booked and he wouldn''t be able to find one no matter how hard he looked. If that was the case he guessed he could just pull an all-nighter.
He just needed to find somewhere private enough to use Impersonate. Lake was pretty sure he needed to use Impersonate to get his next mission from the Insider, so not having a room wasn''t a big enough reason to stop him. Lake looked around, he just needed an alley or something that would block anyone from seeing him.
Finding a particrlyrge pile of garbage Lake crouched down and activated the ability while holding the core. The core disappeared from his hand or more urately into his hand but after that nothing else really happened. Lake stayed where he was in case it was just a dyed reaction, but after nothing happened for an even longer time, he opened his stats to see if he could see anything.
Name: Jon Melon
Race: Human Lv.7 ( 2/10 )
Job: Pickpocket Lv.2 ( 3/20 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 70
Stamina 70
Mana 190
Strength 15
Endurance 15
Agility 49
Dexterity 49
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 23
Lake almost didn''t see it right away because he normally just skipped right over the name part of his stats because it never changed but now he guessed he had a reason to care about it. Lake took off his helmet and used the shiny surface to see if his face had changed. Lake frowned not because it hadn''t worked but because it had.
He now looked Like the first person he had ever killed. The Assassin Jon Melon. Lake put his helmet back on and started to read the message that hade up a second ago. [New Quest: Use stolen identity to infiltrate an organization] Lake was happy he had been right but right now he just wanted to figure out how to turn his face back.
After a few seconds he did the only thing that made sense and taped the name part of his stat sheet, Lake bet it worked the same as the job page he had. Seeing a new golden screen open, Lake knew he was right. Tapping his name to switch back, Lake stood up and went back onto the street.
Chapter 73: Death March
Chapter 73: Death March
As Lake was walking he couldn''t help but hope that he didn''t need to use Jon toplete his mission because the Assassins guild already knew he was dead. The Alchemist guild literally had to pay for him after Lake had killed him. Lake looked at how the mission was worded and thought it seemed like as long as he did it it didn''t matter what identity he used.
Lake wondered what guild he should sneak into. The obvious choices were either Thieves guild and Assassins guild but they were more high risk. Lake was actually leaning towards one of the normal guilds like the Adventurers guild, because they had open doors and once he had an identity he would be able to walk in like nothing was going on.
Lake was pretty sure he would have to go through some stringent test or something if he tried to enter the Assassins guild. Now the only problem was finding someone to kill, Lake didn''t really care who it was, but he needed it to be somewhere where he could hide or destroy the body without anyone seeing him do it.
It didn''t take too long for Lake to make a n, he could just follow some adventures out of town and ambush them during a fight to make it seem like they had been killed by monsters. To make this n work, Lake needed to follow really weak adventures, because they were the type that got killed like that.
Then he needed to make it seem like one of them got away, but in reality he was just going to hide one of the bodies and be them. Then head to the guild and report what happened to the others. Lake hoped that was all he needed to do toplete the mission, because he nned to leave before they found any of the bodies.
They would probably find the other body he had hidden as well even if he destroyed it so he nned to make it less suspicious by making it look like he was so worried about his friends that he returned to look for them after he reported it to the guild and ended up dying because he had already been injured or something.
Since it was impossible for people to track Lake using magic it should also be impossible to find any evidence that anything other than monsters had been there when they died, so they would only have what they could see to go off of. This made it so as long as Lake did a good job falsifying the scene around the bodies he would get away with it.
Lake was once again nning to do more than necessary just to see what was going to happen. Lake was interested in the investigation that might happen, because he wanted to know if there were any jobs that would make it possible to track him down after he killed someone.
Lake knew there had to be skills from some job that were going to give him trouble in the future, he just wanted to know what to expect. The fact that people still did crimes in this world made Lake wonder if he was overthinking it. It was possible that if there was even a job like he expected, maybe it was really rare so they would be too busy to look into some adventures going missing.
Lake finally saw someone wearing armor and stopped them. "Where''s the Adventures guild?" They pointed to a tower Lake had thought would belong to a temple or something, and said. "That''s the guild district over there." After they answered Lake, Lake eyed them to see if he could save himself the trip, and just get the core he needed now, but after thinking this Lake decided to stick with the n.
It would be ridiculous to waste all that thinking to save himself a few minutes of walking. Plus the person he had asked seemed a little strong to die fighting the weak monsters around the capital. There were hardly any strong monsters inside the capital wall and they got weaker the further in you went.
That meant Lake needed to find the worst adventures in the city to follow, not someone who might have a few stats that were higher than his. Lake could feel the Insider stir a little after he thought this. It seemed it was excited that he was trying toplete the mission, and it seemed that it liked the way he was doing it as well.
...
Lake had arrived at the guild district but didn''t go into any of the buildings. He was just waiting around for someone to move towards the city''s exit which was actually visible from where he was, it seemed the main street was where all the guilds were. Once he saw some losers go out of the city Lake would know they were off to hunt and Lake would follow them.
It didn''t take long, Lake guessed with all the refugees that hade inst night, lots of people were looking for work in the city, and since there weren''t really any monsters here it wasn''t hard for them to go out to pick some herbs or something. They were wrong though, the city was full of monsters actually, and them making themselves easy targets was exactly what people like Lake were waiting for.
On the way out Lake saw plenty of others like him trailing behind all the weak adventurers that had probably only joined the guild this morning. This gave him an idea, he could mug all the people he was looking at right now. If they were the type that were looking to kill people and rob them they should know how muggings worked.
Hopefully they would just hand over their stuff, but if they didn''t he could kill them and say they had been the ones trying to rob him. Some of them were probably also members of the adventures guild or fighters guild, and Lake would be able to use their cores toplete his mission.
Lake looked at the group of peasants he had been following and marked them. He could alwayse backter if he didn''t find any suitable cores to use. Lake had wanted a small group to target, but it seemed all these new adventurers thought they had a better chance in a group, so Lake was better off going with the single targets that were following them instead.
He would just test the investigative abilities of this world some other time. Lake nned on doing some robberies, and maybe he would receive a lighter sentence if he got caught taking something other than someone''s life.
This made Lake wonder if prisons were even a thing here, it was possible no jail was strong enough to hold the superhuman criminals that specialized in breaking in and out of things, so instead of locking them up, they just executed people for their crimes. If Lake was in charge that is what he would do.
...
They had finally gotten far enough from the capital that there were actually trees growing. It had taken a few hours at the pace they were going, and if it wasn''t for the fact Lake needed to do this far from town he would have killed everyone he could see for being so slow.
Like him, Lake guessed all these people hadn''t known how far they would be going to reach the forest their mission told them to go to. Looking up at the sky, Lake knew there was no way these people would be back to town before the sun went down.
This meant that this forest was about to be a bloodbath, and it didn''t matter what Lake did because unless he killed every murderer that had followed these people out here, most of them would be dying tonight. On the way here Lake had seen plenty of shady people that had been eyeing the stream of people moving towards the forest like hawks.
Lake had marked every one he had seen as potential threats and the number had passed 100. The amount actually made Lake think there was some conspiracy to kill all these people for whatever reason, and all these thugs had been hired by somebody, but Lake didn''t think he was right, because all these people had just arrived, and all this had happened too quickly for it to be nned out.
Unless they had done this before whenever a massive amount of people came to the city, but if that was true Lake was sure he would have seen some form ofw enforcement that hade to stop the massacre.
Lake realized he was thinking too much, and that he needed to actually just start mugging people. The best time to find out what was about to happen was usually once it was over unless you didn''t want it to happen, so there was no reason he needed to know because he had no interest in stopping it. Lake pulled out his knife and jumped to where his first victim was.
Chapter 74: Forest Massacre Pt.1
Chapter 74: Forest Massacre Pt.1
Lake didn''t know if there was a way tond quietly after jumping as hard as he did but he wasn''t really trying to be sneaky to begin with so it didn''t really matter. The guy Lakended behind turned around and looked at Lake like he was waiting for him to say something. Lake lifted his knife and said. "Give me your money."
The guy didn''t react like Lake had been expecting and started tough. "Stop screwing around and get to your area." Lake guessed his tone wasn''t right so the guy thought he was just messing around. Lake didn''t really know how he was supposed to convince this guy he was serious without violence so Lake just got a few steps closer and said it again.
"Give Me Your Money." Lake also emphasized his words to make it seem more believable. The guy seemed to get Lake was being serious, and said. "Are you for real? Instead of shaking his head yes, Lake just started waving his knife around. When the guy didn''t take out any money Lake could tell the guy was sizing him up to see if he could beat him in a fight.
"I''m not giving you anything, now scram before things get ugly." The fact the guy didn''t t out attack told Lake he wasn''t sure who would win if they fought, which was funny because neither was Lake. Lake only gave himself an 80% win rate but he was sure he could run away if it turned out this guy was really strong.
Lake made it seem like he was about to attack as ast attempt to get this guy''s money without killing him, but when it didn''t work he charged. The guy didn''t really react at all, and just took out his short sword. The speed he did so was interesting to Lake because it either meant he was holding back or the guy was way slower than him.
Lake wished he could just check, but his skill only worked on people in the same group as him, so like the alchemists in the guild, but this guy wasn''t in the alchemist guild, so Lake was just going in blind. Lake dagger shed with the sword but unlike what Lake was expecting there wasn''t really a sound from the sh.
Lake found it weird but not enough that he forgot to activate his new skills he had gotten from Pickpocket. Lake waved his free hand around the guy at the speed of light then pulled his knife back and said. "Crunch." Lake waved his hand at the guy''s face and saw his head explode like a watermelon.
Lake hadn''t used his knife, because Lake had noticed the guy wasn''t even able to perceive his hands when he had used Fast Hands so he had made it seem like he was about to attack with his knife again which had drawn all the guys attention, and made it really easy to kill him.
It didn''t make it not gross though. Lake looked at his hand to make sure it wasn''t covered in juice and was relieved to find that his hand had been spared. After that Lake quickly robbed the guy''s core and money and retreated. While he ran he looked at the notifications he had received during and after the fight.
[New Job Unlocked Mugger]
[New Job Unlocked Brawler]
[New Job Unlocked Ripper]
Lake had been expecting a level up notification not three new jobs but he much preferred this. Lake had set his job to thief so he guessed it made sense he hadn''t leveled up yet. He still needed a few thousand more Exp, and that guy he had killed didn''t seem that strong.
Without stopping Lake opened the details on each job.
Mugger (U) Lv.0
On level up:
Strength 2
Charisma 3
Free 3
Exp conditions:
Kills
Theft of money or valuables
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Kills
X4 Money or valuables taken from people or corpses
Skills from job:
Brawler (G) Lv.0
On level up:
Strength 2
Dexterity 1
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X4 Unarmed Kills
Skills from job:
Ripper (U) Lv.0
On level up:
Strength 5
Free 3
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X5 Unarmed Kills on your race
Skills from job:
Lake was happy with two out of three and switched his job directly to Ripper. It happened to match what he was doing, and he had been needing more Strength for a while. Him being fine with more strength was a good thing, because he was pretty sure the only way he wasn''t about to level Ripper up a bunch of times from one kill was if he ran into a small child.
Getting to the next mark he had ced, Lake saw another man looking evil while hiding in a bush. Landing near him Lake didn''t bother with the whole I''m robbing you pretext and just directly attacked. "Fuck. Ahh." The person didn''t react as fast as they needed to, and Lake opened a hole in the side of their chest.
He wasn''t a doctor but he knew they weren''t long for this world if they didn''t fix it in the next few minutes and it seemed they knew this as well because instead of trying to fight back they ran while trying to get a potion into their mouth. "Knife Throw." Lake used one of the skills he didn''t care about and threw his knife at the back of their head.
With a smacking sound Lake saw the knife puncture into the back of their head then Lake watched as the person crumpled and rolled into a tree. Depending on what their Endurance stat was hitting the tree that hard could have also been the cause of their death, but Lake doubted they had been alive to feel it.
Not with how deep the knife went into their head. Lake looked to see just how many times he had leveled up just now, because it felt like his strength had just doubled. [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] Lake wasn''t surprised to see he had just gained four levels because he had used a weapon so he hadn''t gotten X5 Exp on the kill. Lake still opened his stats to enjoy the view though.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.7 ( 6/10 )
Job: Ripper Lv.4 ( 33/80 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 70
Stamina 70
Mana 190
Strength 35
Endurance 15
Agility 49
Dexterity 49
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 11
Free stat points: 35
Then Lake moved on to his new skills he had actually meant to check earlier after his first fight because he had tried to steal skills from the first person but he had forgotten in his rush to get away from the body. While he read his new skills Lake looted the new body of its gold and pulled his knife out of its head then used it to get the core from the chest.
Blood Drain (U) Lv.1
Targets lose as much Stamina and Mana as they do Health from your attacks.
Blood Loss (U) Lv.1
Wounds from your attacks are much harder to heal and bleed more.
(Targets with high Endurance are affected less)
After seeing his two new skills Lake looked to see if he had stolen a skill during thest fight not seeing any Lake didn''t know if it meant he couldn''t use the skill yet or he had just missed. There was no way for him to know so he packed up and went to leave when he saw the body start to glow golden.
Lake quickly changed his job to Mugger and touched the golden light. [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Rank up] Lake was actually happy about leveling Mugger up because it gave Charisma and Strength two stats he wanted. Running away, Lake checked his two new skills with a smile.
Mute (U) Lv.1
When activated you make no noise.
Mean Mug (L) Lv.1
Targets with lower Charisma find you 5 times as intimidating.
Lake had to say he had not expected to get something that helped with stealth from Mugger. The name made it sound like the loudest form of stealing but Lake guessed it had originally been a skill used to get close to people so you could mug them and one of the past Insiders had seen its potential.
Now he just needed to get a skill that turned him invisible and he would bepletely undetectable through most normal methods. Technically someone could use their nose to find him but he took showers and his armor probably held most of his smell in.
Lake didn''t really see a reason not to turn Mute on so he did and then tried to talk he bet this was one of the down sides and he was right no sound came out of his mouth so in the future when he spoke to people he would need to turn Mute off first. Not that big of a deal but Lake bet he would forget every now and then and it would get on his nerves.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.8
Job: Mugger Lv.4 ( 33/80 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )
Stats
Health 80
Stamina 80
Mana 200
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 49
Dexterity 49
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 57
Chapter 75: Forest Massacre Pt.2
Chapter 75: Forest Massacre Pt.2
Not far from where Lake was racing towards his next victim, a small group of cloaked figures had gathered around a slightly more impressive cloaked figure. "Domare, we have just passed the required number and can start whenever you wish." The figure the man called Domare didn''t answer but instead lifted its hands from its robes.
Once its hands were in the air they stayed there, and the forest slowly lost its light like the sun was going down in fast forward. The only difference was the sun was still in the sky, and had a few hours before it actually started to set.
Once the forest waspletely ck, Domare and the group of cloaked figures took out daggers, and walked into the forest.
...
Lake was about to drop onto the person he had been watching for thest few seconds when he noticed the light in the forest start to dim. He didn''t think much of it at first because he thought it was just a cloud passing in front of the sun but when it continued to get darker at such a fast rate Lake thought he should actually see what was going on.
Lake climbed to the top of the tree he was in to see the sun waspletely unobstructed by any clouds and the forest had actually just been covered in a cloud of ck smoke. Lake couldn''t smell the smoke so he took off his helmet to see if he could get a whiff, but when that didn''t work Lake realized he had seen something else that could cause what he was looking at.
Just like in the dungeon under the Alchemist guild there was now a massive amount of Dark mana in the area. Lake wasn''t sure what had caused it, but Joy had once mentioned that Unholy mana piggybacked on Dark mana these days, so Lake could guess who was responsible.
After the battle between the Demon Lord and the Dark Goddess that resulted in the Dark Goddess disappearing The Demon Lord had somehow hijacked the Dark Element, and used it to spread his element like he would be able to if he was a god himself. These days wherever you found the Dark element the Unholy element would be there in equal amounts.
This made it possible for anyone with jobs that needed the Unholy element to work to gather Unholy mana like they would be able to do after the Demon Lord ascended to godhood. Lake wondered why the gods even bothered trying to stop the Demon Lord, he was already doing what they were, so him ascending wasn''t really going to change anything.
It seemed like they were just being stubborn, like refusing him was making a point or something. It was really just giving all his followers something to work towards, and from what Lake knew about warfare you weren''t supposed to give the enemy something they could see as a divine purpose.
Lake guessed they didn''t really have to worry about that with the people on the Demon Lord''s side, because he could just hypnotize anyone who wasn''t already willing to fight for him. Lake realized he needed to cut the gods some ck, and he was really onlyining because he had gotten caught up in whatever was going on right now.
It was a normal reaction for someone to find anyway to me the people who were responsible whenever their screw ups affected you, and the fact that people also liked to me god whenever they had a hard time made it funny that Lake had just done both in one thought.
"It''s still true that if they had done a better job at killing the Demon Lord this wouldn''t be happening right now." Lake had turned off Mute just to say this, because he didn''t think the amount of noise he made would matter with the volume of the screams that had just started toe from the darkness that had enveloped the forest.
Lake could tell it was all the peasant adventures screaming, and he could also tell it wasn''t just them being scared that was making them scream like that. This made Lake want to not leave where he was standing at the top of the tree because it was keeping his head out of the darkness, but seeing as the darkness was slowly growing and was about to engulf him anyway, Lake ducked down to see just how blind he was about to be.
After seeing that he waspletely blind inside the darkness, Lake lifted his head to enjoy thest glimpse of light he might ever get. Lake realized this situation was already pretty bad and he still didn''t know why they were screaming, so he was preparing himself for a worst case scenario.
With the light fully gone now Lake realized it had been stupid to just enjoy it and not try to use it to get him out of here but it was toote now. The first thing Lake did was try and gather Light mana but when it didn''t work Lake tried to think of a not as obvious n. Having one Lake started to grasp around in his bag for what he had taken from the two bodies earlier.
Finding one of the small bags that held their junk, Lake pulled it out and opened it. Not being able to see, Lake started to use his hand to feel if there was anything in the bag that felt enchanted or magic in any way. His thinking behind this was if the two people he killed had been working with whoever had done this they should have a way to see.
Feeling something that gave Lake the same kind of sensation he got whenever he touched his enchanted knife Lake pulled it out. When just holding it didn''t really seem to be doing anything, Lake tried to inspect it. Feeling a small fizzle on his eye, Lake realized this item was protected in some way, and he wasn''t going to be able to see what it could do.
This still gave him some information though so he put this back in his bag and dug around for the other bundle he had stolen. Digging around in it, Lake could tell all these items were the same as the one that had been in the other bag. This confirmed all these people were working together, and as long as there didn''t happen to be two different ns to kill these people these items could be his only way out of here.
Now that he had a possible way out Lake just needed to find out how to use it so he just went down the list of skills he had gotten from Appraiser until all he was left with was Decrypt. Right when he was about to use it, Lake heard something other than screaminging towards him.
The fact that the footsteps owner wasn''t screaming made Lake think they were probably part of the side doing the killing. With some quick thinking Lake took one of the cores he had just cut out of one of their guys and activated Impersonate. Lake didn''t really have time to check his face before he was enveloped in a small bubble of light.
Lake took the thing out and held it in his hand like he knew what it did after he confirmed that the other person had one in their hand as well. "Why aren''t you using your nullifier?" Lake didn''t think there was an actual answer so he said. "It''s broken." Hearing his new voice, Lake was pretty sure if this guy bought hisme excuse he was about to get another notification.
"How''d it break?" Lake could tell the guy was still not 100% sure about Lake and it made sense earlier when Lake had tried to mug the first guy he had thought Lake was one of them screwing around so they didn''t all know each other. "I got attacked before we started and had to run away, but none of my stuff works now."
Lake also remembered the guy had told him to get to his area so Lake killed two birds with one stone and made an excuse for why he wasn''t where he was supposed to be. "Let me see it."
[Questplete: Reward Skill: y The Part]
Lake looked at his new skill while the guy looked at the nullifier thing he had handed over.
y The Part (U) Lv.1
Allows the stolen identity to take over and act like they would while they were alive.
Lake didn''t activate it because he didn''t think it would help right now. These two people didn''t know each other so how he acted didn''t really matter. "It seems just fine to me." The person was about to hand it back to Lake when he saw their face change. Lake didn''t know exactly what it meant but he could tell the jig was up.
Chapter 76: Forest Massacre Pt.3
Chapter 76: Forest Massacre Pt.3
Lake was about to kill this guy when he realized if he killed him it was possible the nullifier in the guy''s hand might stop working, and he would be unable to see again. To test his theory Lake smacked it out of the guy''s hand to see if it needed to stay in contact with him to keep working or if it could continue to work after he dropped it.
While it didn''t turn off right away, Lake could tell it was slowly losing power, and the radius of whatever effect it gave off that allowed them to see was slowly shrinking. Lake saw the guy didn''t try and pick it back up but instead just used the extra one Lake had handed him. "Orange Monkey."
The one in his hand came to life, and he started to run away from Lake. Lake didn''t know what had given away the fact that this guy had no chance of winning if they fought but Lake found it annoying that he was going to have to chase this guy down if he wanted to keep the fact he was here a secret.
Right after he picked up the nullifier that he had knocked out of the other guy''s hand, Lake was about to chase him when he realized now that he knew how to use the nullifier he really didn''t need to chase that guy he could just use his to leave. He could also change his appearance again so if they did chase him down they would think he was the wrong person.
Starting to run towards where he was pretty sure the edge of the dark zone was closest, Lake realized his nullifier was still slowly running out of power. He wasn''t surprised because he hadn''t tried to activate it in any way, because he wasn''t sure what would happen if he tried while it was already on, and he nned to reactivate it after it ran out of power.
Two minutes of runningter the area he could see was too small for it to actually be useful, and a minute after that it finally turned offpletely. "Orange Monkey." After he said the phrase he had heard the other person say to activate the nullifier he could feel it start to take his mana, and almost instantly it started to project the field around him again.
Now that he had some time to think about something other than the slowly encroaching darkness, Lake looked at the nullifier, and wondered if it worked in a simr way to the torches in the dungeon below the guild. They had been set up in every room Lake had been to, and they somehow kept the darkness from swallowing the rooms like it did the tunnels.
The only difference was this thing didn''t give off any obvious light like the torches did. It was just a tiny piece of enchanted metal that somehow did something simr. Lake looked at the name nullifier than what he knew about magic and how every element had principles. His best guess was this thing was somehow canceling out one of the principles that made the Dark element.
He didn''t know what the principle was called but he knew one of the principles in Light magic controlled how bright it was and the Dark Goddess had flipped that principle to do the opposite to make the Dark element so Lake guessed this thing was just nullifying the principle instead of trying to fight it back with light.
Lake patted himself on the back for figuring out how magic worked and kept running. In the end he didn''t really need to know how this thing worked, and had just been keeping himself busy while he ran for his life. He needed something other than the fact that the forest was starting to get quiet and he still wasn''t really that close to the edge of the darkness.
If he could go faster without just plowing into a tree he would but since he could only see a few feet ahead of himself and had to constantly dodge obstacles he probably wasn''t even going a tenth as fast as he could. Lake just wished he had bothered to learn how to fly he had meant to but he just didn''t get around to it.
Once he realized how fast he needed to be to outrun Lucas, Lake had spent most of his time on leveling jobs that gave Agility. Everything else had kind of been forgotten about. Thinking back to his behavior he was surprised Lucas hadn''t brought up the fact that Lake hadn''t been actually doing any alchemy.
Thinking about it some more, Lake realized Lucas didn''t care. The day Lucas had paid for him the news about the God of Lighting back to fight the Demon Lord hadn''t spread yet. Lake realized how lucky he had been to actually get out of the Light Temple because Lucas switched to war mode a few days after he arrived and started getting rid of people with allegiances to other groups.
There''s no way Lucas would have paid for him if he had known the war was back on, and Lake was just going to leave a few dayster. Lake wouldn''t have stayed in the Temple for long, and would have tried to leave without the Assassins guild knowing, but Lucas paying his bounty had made walking around much safer for him.
...
Lake had just reached the edge of the forest and was expecting to exit the darkness at any second when he came to a stop. The bubble around him formed by the nullifier had just started pressing against something that it wasn''t able to nullify and while Lake couldn''t tell exactly what was wrong he knew it was a sign that whoever had done this hadn''t just blinded everybody they had trapped them as well.
Whatever was blocking him looked like a wall and while he thought it was a bad idea to touch it he could tell he was stuck. Lake realized how naive he had been to assume he could just run from whatever scheme he had been caught in. It was so obvious that if your n involved killing a massive amount of people you would keep them from running away.
Lake got as close to the barrier as he could without touching it to see if he could get any clues on what it was. Getting a feel for the element it was made from Lake could tell it wasn''t Dark and since it was a simr color Lake could only assume it was Unholy.
This made sense to Lake for another reason as well, however they had called all this Dark mana here would also bring the same amount of Unholy mana, so Lake guessed they used the Dark mana to blind people and the Unholy to keep them here.
Efficiency was never something you wanted to see from the people nning to kill you but he hadn''t been underestimating his opponent to begin with, so this wasn''t really a wake up call just him realizing even if he knew it was stupid, running was still the best n.
Lake took this opportunity to switch identities. He was now the other person he had killed, so when someone finally found him standing here they might give him enough time to lie once or twice before they tried to kill him.
Lake used this time to read his skills. He knew there was some n that could probably get him out of here if he could just think of it and it didn''t take long for him to reach the skill he had just received. If he activated y The Part there was a chance it didn''t just affect his personality, but his actions as well, and if that was true he could just do what they should have been until this was over.
It wasn''t like Lake was against killing a bunch of people to save himself but by the amount of screamsing from the forest he would bete to the party anyway. They were clearly almost all dead already. Lake didn''t do anymore thinking and just activated the skill and something really hard to exin happened to him.
It was like he had been shrunk and stuffed in the back of his own head. With his new small stature he could just barely see out of his own eyes, and he couldn''t really stand on his tippy toes because he didn''t have a body. Whatever Lake was right now it was pretty obvious he was just in for the ride.
Settling for what he could see Lake saw that his body had actually started to move towards the forest and a mark checkter Lake could tell it was towards where he had left the body that he had stolen this identity from. Lake was happy to see that this guy was actually about to get to work because it meant he was going to be just fine.
Chapter 77: Forest Massacre Pt.4
Chapter 77: Forest Massacre Pt.4
His body was moving much slower than he would like, but he guessed this was the walking speed of the person he was pretending to be right now, and since he couldn''t control what he was doing, Lake just pretended like he was watching tv.
He would take control but he was interested in seeing what was going to happen when this thing saw what seemed to be its own body. It was possible this identity wasn''t aware it was fake, and just the result of one of his skills, and if that was true it meant it would freak out when it saw itself dead and would no longer be useful.
Lake was pretty sure he felt this small because he had handed over most of his brain to let this identity function normally. It was also possible this was some form of hiding. In case something inspected him, him being squished into the back of his brain would make it less likely he would be discovered.
...
He had just seen the dead body and realized whatever was moving his body right now was unable to see whatever was left of its original face, and instead of freaking out it walked over and picked up the body. Carrying the body, it started to walk deeper into the forest.
Lake was a genius, so he could guess why someone who could use Unholy magic would want a dead body, and he also remembered the things Joy had said about a new job the Demon Lord had just rolled out. It allowed people to control undead, and with there being plenty of Unholy mana around he was sure there would be a load of undead here soon.
Lake realized he had just done what he always did when watching tv, he had guessed the big twist, and now the rest of the movie was going to be boring, with the only good part being when he saw he was right. With the fact this movie could take hours, Lake wondered if there was something else he could do while waiting for something to happen.
...
A hundred or so normal looking adventurers were all busy piling bodies in front of the massive robed figure that the others had called Domare, but Domare showed no reaction almost like the thousand or so bodies were beneath their notice, so whatever was going on wasn''t really that interesting to watch, unless you liked a gross pile of meat.
The interesting thing was actually about 50 Ft. behind Domare. Two of the other robed figures were silently whispering to one another about the news one of the worshipers had just delivered. "Should we notify Domare that there seems to be someone who evaded the spell?"
The other figure shook their head, and said. "There''s no way we could possibly be stopped at this point, so I don''t see a reason to say anything until after it''s done." If Lake was there he would probably say something about this being a prime example of why you didn''t intimidate your own subordinates until they were too afraid to give you bad news, but he wasn''t.
"Which one of them was the one who reported this?" Both of them froze and looked towards Domare and fell to their knees before answering. "The one standing over there." The figure who had started the conversation pointed behind them towards the person who had run from Lake earlier.
All of a sudden Domare lifted their hand towards the man and he flew into the outstretched hand. Domare''s fingers wrapped around his torso, and a few secondster the sound of bones snapping resounded through the trees which made it seem Domare had crushed the man, but he was just fine and the noise had no apparent source.
"You would be walking your own body towards the pile if you had fought him." Domare stopped talking after saying this, leaving everyone to figure out what it meant. It wasn''t an obviousmand they could follow, so they all repeated it a few times before one of them said. "I''ll look into it." And ran off in the direction the man had said he saw the suspicious person.
Unaffected by the darkness it didn''t take long for the figure to find the only person still alive inside the forest but it was just one of theirs dragging a body towards the pile. About to move on to look for whoever was hiding in the forest the figure noticed something. The person carrying the body had the same facial hair as the body.
The fact that the head had been brutalized meant the figure couldn''t confirm they had the same face, but remembering what Domare had said this was too simr to be a coincidence. "You stop." Landing next to the man carrying the body the figure reached out to grab the body from it.
When all the man did wasply the figure thought maybe it had been too quick to judge, but a few seconds ofparing the body to the person who had been carrying itter the figure was convinced they were the same. It didn''t really understand who this could happen but the fact Domare had said this was what would happen if the worshiper had fought the intruder made them realize they needed to bring this person back to Domare.
...
Lake could tell he had been caught, and the fact that his identity was acting innocent wasn''t really going to stop the fight that was about to happen, so he turned his skill off and retook control of his body. Seeing the robed figure was about to grab him Lake activated burst and put a few steps in between him and the, well Lake thought it was a woman but he couldn''t really tell because of the robe.
Not wanting to fight this person Lake said. "I would be happy to leave if you would let me." This was the truth, Lake had just ended up here by ident, and really didn''t care what they were doing. "I can''t make that decision. now surrender." Lake felt a sensation from his ring and guessed it had just activated.
He didn''t know from what, but he guessed the other person had just tried to inspect his stats and the ring had stopped it from working. Lake didn''t think it would be smart to stop and look how much mana he had lost, so going off of what he felt he would say about three.
He had just pulled this number from nowhere, and for all he knew it had almost broken his ward but it didn''t really matter because it had done its job well enough that Lake saw the figure take out a potion and pour it onto her face. In the process exposing her face enough to be able to pour the potion onto her burnt eyes, her hood fell off and allowed Lake to see her face.
The fact that she was just some normal looking person was kind of funny to Lake, but how you looked really had nothing to do with how strong you were in this world, so he didn''tugh at her. "If I surrender will you let me go after you''re done here?" This was really all Lake cared about, he was fine sitting somewhere out of the way until they left.
"Um, sure." Lake could tell they were lying because of his skill but he yed along. "Ok." After he said this Lake walked over like this wasn''t a life or death situation. Showing no resistance at all seemed to catch the woman off guard and she said. "Alright it''s this way." Lake could tell she wanted him to walk in front of her.
It was probably so he couldn''t run, or stab her in the back. Lake just went with it like he didn''t realize she was trying to keep him in control. Lake saw this as an opportunity to make some small talk and maybe get some information so he said. "You guys making an army or something?"
Lake chose to be direct, but in a nonchnt way. Like he didn''t care even though he knew already. He was hoping to make it seem he was cool with what they were doing, and they didn''t need to worry about him trying anything to ruin it. It didn''t really seem to work because the woman didn''t answer him.
Turning his head to see if she was still with him, Lake saw she had fallen to her knees for some reason. "You ok?" Lake pretended to care as he bent down to try and get her back on her feet, but when he tried to pull her up she smacked his hands off her robes.
Lake knew some people tried to pretend they weren''t hurt when they tripped, because they were embarrassed, so he said. "It''s ok I won''t tell anyone you tripped." This got a reaction from her and she looked at him like he was an idiot. "He can''t see me." Lake held his ears, and looked up to see nothing. He guessed this person knew what they were talking about.
Chapter 78: Domare
Chapter 78: Domare
While Lake couldn''t see who had spoken to him, he knew they were there, and from the way the woman he had been following was acting, Lake bet this was the person he needed to ask to let him leave. "Hello, Is it ok if I leave?" There was no response, so Lake guessed the person was thinking, but a few secondster he saw a giant hand reach down towards him.
Lake was going to dodge out of the way, but when he tried he found he was unable to move. Then he felt his ward shatter, and the hand wrap around him. The fingers knocked the nullifier out of his hand when they were closing and the radius that he could see started to shrink.
Being picked up, Lake started to panic because he could tell whatever was picking him up could crush him, and Lake always feared being squeezed until he popped. Before he had died, being squished to death slowly had always been on the top of the worst ways to die list.
Burning to death was actually the only way to die he had been afraid of more, so if he got killed by being squeezed he would have experienced two of his worst fears. Being lifted upwards Lake was finally able to see who he had spoken to earlier. Well not really them just what they were wearing it was like a robe with no hole for the face.
They were also massive, but he guessed he had already known that because of the fact he could fit in their hand. "Why would you want to leave?" Lake would have tried to cover his ears if he could move but he didn''t think it would help. He was pretty sure this giant was talking to him in a simr way that Lucas could with his mirror.
Straight into his head would exin why it was so loud. "The main reason I want to leave is to show you that I have no interest in fighting you." Lake couldn''t make it more clear. He knew if they thought he was here to stop them he would be dead in a millisecond.
Lake heard a cracking noise and thought he had been killed, but when he felt no pain it made him think maybe the noise was from something else. "I''ll let you go after I show you something." After he heard this Lake felt the Insider act up it felt like it was sighing in relief.
Lake realized if he died without passing the Insider on it would die as well and Lake guessed it had been afraid this was the end. Lake felt the same way, because his lie detection hadn''t gone off making him a free man once this giant got what it wanted from him.
Lake didn''t try any small talk this time. It was usually how he got more information but he really didn''t want the giant to answer using its telepathy again. While it didn''t really hurt it was very unpleasant, and it was like his brain stopped working whenever it happened.
As they were walking towards the middle of the forest the nullifier finally ran out of power and Lake could no longer see where they were going just feel the giant taking steps. He wasn''t really sure what he was about to be shown if he couldn''t see, but he would just bring it upter if they didn''t do anything about it on their own.
Lake felt the giant stop walking shortly after, and guessed he had been close to making it to where they were before they had caught him. If his slow ass identity had walked faster Lake wondered if any of this would have happened.
He most likely would have delivered the body with no problems. Then he could have wasted time till they were done here, and snuck away once the wall fell. Lake felt the giant''s body shift slightly and a few secondster he could tell the darkness was starting to clear.
Once he could see well enough to tell what was happening, Lake saw that the giant was absorbing the darkness into its body. Lake guessed this might be where it hade from to begin with, and the giant was just reabsorbing its mana.
Once he looked away, Lake saw two things, one was a clear sky which made him think the wall he had run into earlier wasn''t in the sky for whatever reason and the other thing was a massive pile of bodies. Lake had expected the bodies, so he actually found the fact that the wall wasn''t a dome around the forest more interesting.
The only thing Lake could think of that could exin this is they were letting strong people who could fly leave instead of fighting them. If this was true they didn''t care about the quality of the bodies just how many they ended up with. This didn''t sound right to Lake though, he bet there was another reason he couldn''t think of.
"I''m about to set you down. Don''t run or I''ll have to catch you again." Lake found this warning funny because it wasn''t really violent. It was more how you would speak to a child than a prisoner.
Once he was on the ground Lake saw the giant start to produce more mana, Lake was pretty sure it was Unholy mana based on the color. Once there was a massive corona around the giant it took out a chunk of flesh, and threw it at the pile of dead bodies.
After the ball of fleshnded the giant lifted its hands and said. "Create Undead." Lake saw all the mana the giant had made rush forward into the pile of dead bodies. The bodies absorbed the mana like a sponge, and a few secondster the pile started to shift.
It looked like the bodies on the edge were being pulled towards the center and the whole pile was growing upwards. Lake had thought they were about to make an army''s worth of undead but now he wasn''t too sure, because it seemed all the bodies were being formed into one massive giant.
Lake could clearly see the beginnings of the human form being sculpted from all the flesh, pulling his eyes away from what he was seeing, Lake looked at the giant that had carried him here. If he wasn''t mistaken they were the same thing, and the fact that the Temple evacuated all the small towns made more sense.
It seemed the Temple was killing two birds with one stone. Keeping people from dying, and the Demon Lord from getting more of these undead giants. Lake wondered why this giant had wanted him to see this. He understood it wasn''t really a secret, but Lake would expect them to be trying to slow down how fast this news spread.
With how massive the spell this giant cast earlier Lake was assuming they were pretty strong, so if they could get a few more before people knew about them it would be good for the Demon Lord''s side.
Once the news spread people would stop leaving the city out of fear of being killed to make more so maybe the Demon Lord already nned to stop, and this was thest one he was going to make before the fighting started. If this was true Lake could see this as just a way to make the people in the city to panic.
Lake could see someone people called the Demon Lord using fear as a weapon. Lake could tell this was almost over, all the flesh and bones seemed to be in the right ce for it to be able to get up and start moving around. Looking at it, Lake estimated it would be about 30 ft. tall once it got off of its knees and that was about how tall the one who had carried him here was.
"So what do you think, would you be interested in being able to do this as well?" Lake was startled by the sudden question but not by what the giant asked him. He wouldn''t be surprised if the giant was able to tell how talented he was and the fact he didn''t care what they were doing made him a shoe-in for the Demon Lord''s army.
Since this was a life changing decision Lake thought it would be better if he held off onmitting because while he found the ability to make undead kind of cool, he didn''t think it was worth his allegiance. Lake didn''t think just saying no was a good idea though it might make the giant mad so he was going to ask some questions.
"Are you the same as this undead you just made?" After Lake asked this he remembered he had just signed himself up for a headache bracing himself Lake wanted for the answer. "Our bodies are the same, but I''ve had more time to develop my skills. In a few months we''ll be about the same."
"You''re only a few months old?" If they could keep getting stronger with more time, Lake wondered how strong the oldest of them was. "No, it takes about three months to max out the jobs the Demon Lord made for us." If the Demon Lord made jobs especially for them, Lake wondered if undead couldn''t get normal jobs.
Lake remembered the Temple head telling him gods could refuse to give jobs to people and groups they didn''t like so it would make sense for the other gods to exclude undead because the Demon Lord was the only one who used undead in his army. That meant the Demon Lord was probably making jobs for undead because they couldn''t get any stronger if he didn''t.
"I''m sorry, but I don''t think it''s for me." Lake didn''t really need anymore information, he already knew he wanted to stay as far away from the Demon Lord as possible so it didn''t really matter what this giant offered him. "Ok in that case you can leave in a few minutes."
Chapter 79: Domana
Chapter 79: Domana
Lake looked at the giant. It had said he could leave after it showed him something, and the fact that he couldn''t leave now probably meant that what it wanted him to see hadn''t happened yet. Refocusing on the undead giant Lake waited for whatever he needed to see before could leave and after about a minute of waiting Lake saw the giant''s eye open.
Right after it happened Lake felt something stir in the air around him and from the sky Lake saw some form of dark cloud start to form. The cloud was the color of rust and it was directly above where the new undead giant was kneeling. Lake was pretty sure this cloud and the aura it was giving off was what he was supposed to see because this was actually affecting him.
He felt like he was about to explode from the pressure and it was getting worse as the cloud grew. Lake guessed the giant just wanted to show off how strong they were, so he would reconsider joining them, but really Lake just wanted to run away, but just like earlier he wasn''t able to get his legs to work.
After about a minute of the cloud growing the center opened and Lake saw what looked like a mouth form in the middle. Lake didn''t really know what to expect next but eventually the mouth said something. "Domana." After the one word the cloud moved like a bolt of lightning and struck the giant.
Once the cloud was gone, most of the crushing aura was as well. Only a small portion was still clinging to the giant. "That was what I was really offering you. The Demon Lord gives more divinity to his followers than any other god. Someone Like you would be a demigod in no time."
Lake felt it was a little early to be a demigod; he wasn''t reallyfortable with fighting normal enemies, let alone those that were good enough to be demigods. Lake knew he was technically strong but it wasn''t really because he was skilled in any way other than skills. Almost all his strength had been handed to him like it was nothing because of the Insider.
Even the Insider itself had just been handed to him. What Lake was saying was he didn''t think he was ready for the big leagues yet, so while he might be crazy for turning this offer down he was still going to, at least for now. "No thank you."
The giant didn''t seem too surprised by this, and said "Ok you have about 30 seconds before you can leave so just keep watching." Lake looked back at the giant that had finally gotten to its feet and saw it flexing its hands for whatever reason then he saw it look up and cover its eyes with its hand.
Like this was its cue the other giant walked over and draped one of its robes over the other giant''s head. Lake guessed undead didn''t like a lot of light or something. "You three get Domana to a safe ce." Lake saw the giant point out three of its followers and tell them to protect Domana which seemed to be the new giants name.
When the cloud had said it earlier Lake thought it had just been a spell or something but he guessed it was some naming ceremony or something for the new demigod in the Demon Lord''s army. This made Lake wonder if the giant he had been talking to this whole time had a name as well so he asked.
"Do you have a name as well?" It didn''t really matter. Lake was just curious. "My name is Domare. You can go now Lake." Lake guessed it had been about 30 seconds, so he turned and started walking away. It didn''t escape his notice that Domare knew his name even though he was in disguise and even if you checked his stats which he was sure they did it would say a different name.
The weirdest part was the giant really only seemed to know his name right at the end right after he asked for theirs. It also happened right when the giant said he would be able to leave and that made Lake think what Domare wanted him to see all along was it call Domana its name so Lake would ask if they had one as well.
But if it wanted Lake to know its name why not just tell him, why go through all that to make him ask. After Lake thought this he understood Domare probably had some weird skill the Demon Lord had given it that had something to do with being able to know things if certain requirements were met.
Lake guessed him asking Domare for its name had given it his as well. Lake assumed Domare was going to give his name to the Demon Lord now, so Lake needed to be ready for a visit sometime soon. Lake had kind of glossed over it because he was so relieved he hadn''t been crushed, but he wondered what that snapping noise was when Domare had first picked him up.
Lake couldn''t really see very far at the time so it could have been a tree or something being knocked over but it had sounded like it came from his body at the time, and the fact that this was his only clue made Lake pretty sure while it was important if he wanted to understand what just happened, with no clues he couldn''t really guess the right answer this time.
He was just going to have to say he got lucky this time, and be happy with this answer. Lucky was an understatement actually because any way he saw it, if he had fought Domare Lake would have been dead before he could even inflict the equivalent of a paper cut to them.
Maybe in the future he would be unlucky enough to be near a battle involving some of those giants, and he would be able to see what they were actually capable of. Lake was moving much faster now because he was able to see, so he was hoping to get out of the forest before he got caught in anything else. They weren''t that far from the capital, so Lake assumed there was going to be a battle that fit his description soon, and he didn''t want to be anywhere near it.
Getting close to the edge the trees became less dense so Lake picked up his speed even more by activating Burst, and started to head in a direction that wasn''t towards the capital because Lake assumed that would be where the troopsing to see what was happening would be, so he was going to take the long way home.
Not running into a bunch of soldiers was worth a few more minutes of running to him. He didn''t feel like trying to convince them he wasn''t one of them because he felt like even if they believed him they would still ask him more questions than he felt like answering. Finding a path that led in the direction he wanted to go, Lake got on it and started running full speed.
...
Lake''s legs started to hurt after a while of running full speed so when he passed a rock that was next to the path he stopped and sat down. Lake guessed his Endurance being so low was catching up to him. Lake didn''t know how long it was going to take for his legs to feel better so he pulled up his stats to see what this identity was called.
Name: Carl Nit
Race: Human Lv.8
Job: Thief Lv.10 ( 1587/5120 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 80
Stamina 80
Mana 200
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 49
Dexterity 49
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 57
Lake never expected to use this identity again, he just wanted to know what its name was. Then Lake saw he only needed one more Exp to make the Insider reach level one. He wondered what was going to happen, but to find that out he needed to get hisst mission.
Unlike thest one Lake had no idea what it could be or what he needed to do to get it. All his missions so far had walked him through all the basic things he needed to do as a thief and the Insider, so he guessed he just needed to keep doing what he wanted to do.
Not being ready to keep running yet, Lake continued to think about what his next mission might be about until he realized he might have just turned down exactly what he needed to get toplete it. It made sense to him that it might have something to do with divinity.
Even if that was the truth though, Lake still thought he made the right choice turning down Domare''s offer. There were other ways to get divinity that he wouldn''t have to get involved with the Demon Lord for. Thinking about it, Lake pulled up the locations of Amanda''s journals.
So far these were his best bet to get an artifact that apparently gave free divinity to anyone who found one. Looking around Lake realized he was actually already heading in the direction of the journal he and Lucas had nned to get today before all of this had happened.
Seeing as he didn''t have a ce to sleep tonight because the capital was full, Lake decided to go get it once he felt better. Maybe he would get lucky and they would have a empty room for him to sleep in.
Chapter 80: Orchard
Chapter 80: Orchard
Lake was running at a level he could handle for a long period of time towards the mark made by his Treasured skill. He could tell he was getting closer though and figured he would be there around midnight. The sun had only been down for about an hour, so it was tempting to pick up his pace, but he knew he would have to stop for breaks if he did, defeating the purpose of going faster.
A few hours of running seemed crazy to Lake, but he was actually happy to be getting further from the capital. Lake knew he could profit from the chaos that the capital would devolve to, but he didn''t really want to get involved in something else today. He would rather find a ce to sleep and maybe some food.
...
Lake had to stop for a rest, even holding back his legs were starting to get tired again. The nice thing was he was now close enough to see where he was going. There were a few buildings right next to a small orchard. The fact there were nts here made Lake think of the Alchemist guild because he knew there were people who grew certain nts for the guild all over the ce.
It was a loose connection, but it still made him think this wasn''t going to be a bloodbath to get the journal. This seemed to be a nice ce so he could probably just climb in through a window, and grab it before anyone noticed. He doubted a ce like this would have any guards or anything, just whoever lived here.
Lake looked at the moon and thought if he just waited a few more hours they would probably all be asleep which would make this very easy with his Mute skill. Lake realized he was about to do a robbery and got excited and not just because he thought it would be fun. There was a criminal job that could be unlocked by breaking into ces.
There were a few actually but he would have to max out the one he was about to get before he could get any of the others. Every job had requirements you had to meet and this ones were to have thief at level ten and to break into ces to steal things. It was called Burr, and it was a Rare job, but Lake expected it to be Unique when he got it.
Lake was pretty sure all the criminal jobs would be Unique when he got them. He also got a nice surprise every now and then as well Like Alchemist and Archer. If it wasn''t for Appraiser, Lake would think one of the past Insiders was turning extra jobs Unique alphabetically.
Maybe in the hopes that eventually every job the Insider unlocked would be Unique. Lake also saw the fact that a few jobs that weren''t criminal jobs were tampered with as evidence that every criminal job was already done, or at least to a level where it made more sense to move on to other useful jobs.
Lake had always wondered if jobs got harder to change as you made them stronger, and that was the reason only Thief''s level cap was 100 instead of 10. It must have been really hard to do, so no one else had been able to replicate it on another job.
...
Lake had finally made it to the orchard from where he had been resting. All the lights were off so he was about to make his way inside. Activating Mute Lake moved to the side of the house that the Mark was closest to. Lake would need to jump to reach the window he was going to enter from, but he was more than capable of making it.
Grabbing onto the window frame Lake found it odd that none of the things he was doing were making noise. He had noticed it earlier when he had used it in the forest but right now when he was trying to be quiet so no one would wake up it was even more noticeable.
It wasn''t just his body, it was things he was interacting with as well, any noise he should have caused just didn''t happen. He was pretty sure if he just smashed this window to get in the ss would make no noise when it broke or when itnded onto the ground.
Lake would test thatter when he wasn''t in the middle of actually needing to be quiet. Wiggling the window just enough to get it open Lake put his arm inside and started to drag himself inside the house. Once his head was in he looked in the direction he was expecting the shelf or table that held the journal to be, to find a bed.
Seeing someone in the bed, Lake started to move more slowly. The fact that the moon was full tonight and that he was blocking that light by using the window to enter, meant even if he was silent the shadow he was casting into the room could still give him away if the person happened to open their eyes.
Getting inside the room Lake walked over to the bed to see if the person had been reading the journal when they fell asleep. They happened to be boring enough to put someone to sleep from what Lucas had told him. The mark was under the covers so Lake grabbed the corner of the nket and started to slowly pull it off the bed.
Lake didn''t need to move it too far to be able to see where the mark said the journal was, but once the nket was pulled back all Lake saw was the person''s chest. Crouching down to make sure the mark wasn''t under them, Lake confirmed the person was marked. Lake opened Treasured and he reread the description.
Treasured (U) Lv.1
Able to identify and locate someone''s most valued item, person, and ce.
Lake had never realized how weird it was that it showed so many dots when it was item, not items. Lake guessed it was because the journals were a set so they counted as one thing. That wasn''t important right now though what was important was this was Lucas''s most treasured person.
Lake really wanted to know who they were but for now he would settle for seeing their face. Leaning over for a better look, Lake saw that they were probably in their teens and a boy Lake could have guessed they were going to be a boy from the fact they had short hair but since some girls wore their hair short Lake still needed to look.
Lake couldn''t see any obvious family resemnce to Lucas, but Lake was still pretty sure this was his son. That also meant this ce was probably more than just an orchard, Lake bet if it wasn''t for his Trespasser skill he would''ve been screwed the second he stepped foot inside the house.
There was probably some magic rm or something here to protect this boy. Lake understood why Lucas would keep him here instead of the guild. There were a lot of dangerous things happening at the guild so it made sense to let your kid grow up away from all that. It also made it less likely for other people to use Lucas''s son as a bargaining chip if they didn''t know he existed.
Lake was sure Lucas foresaw people trying to attack his son before he was even born, so he had never let anyone know about him. Lake decided to leave before anything happened. He hade here for a journal, so now that he knew it wasn''t here he should leave.
Lake decided not to steal anything even though he needed to to unlock Burr because he might identally trigger the rm he thought might be here, as he was climbing out, Lake realized something the skill also showed him someone''s favorite ce so the mark he had seen in the dungeon might not be a secret journal it might just be showing him Lucas was obsessed with the dungeon the same way he was with the journals.
Maybe there was nothing actually down there and the journals meant nothing. In the end nothing so far proved they were actually important, just that Lucas was obsessed with Amanda. Two of his three things were something rted to Amanda. Lake stopped when he thought this.
"Rted to Amanda." There wasn''t actually any sound when Lake said this because he still had Mute on but he did say it. Looking back at the orchard, Lake wondered if maybe the boy was somehow rted to Amanada in some way. Master Donna was Amanda''s daughter apparently but she was already pretty old, probably thirty, so it was possible that this kid was Amanda''s secret child or something.
If the two were 12 years or so apart it was possible they were siblings but all this was conjecture and there wasn''t really any reason for him to think about it any more he had a long run back to the capital so he needed to conserve his energy. With a brain as smart as his anytime he used it used a massive amount of energy.
Chapter 81: Exhausted
Chapter 81: Exhausted
Lake was sitting on a log thinking of a better way to get around in the future. He guessed once he was as fast as Lucas seemed to be he could do what he was doing now but at the moment he would really like a cart or something he could ride. Lake guessed he could try and find a horse that was faster than him, but then how would he catch it.
What he really needed was to actually just raise his stats by leveling up his jobs. With what had happened earlier, Lake knew he was probably going to get a visit from the Demon Lord soon, so him trying to only level up a job once before moving on was going to get him killed.
Lake needed to be strong enough that he could run for days without stopping and to do that he needed to get all his stats over 100 at the least because always being on the move was probably the best way to keep himself safe until the war was over.
As long as no one knew where he was he would be safe because of Trespasser. Lake started tough. The only way he would actually be safe was if the Demon Lord lost, it didn''t actually matter if the war was over if the Demon Lord won because he would still be around, and Lake would have to continue to run.
What Lake found funny was the Insider had shown him this before it had made him promise to help the Light Temple. It was like it knew his instinct was toy low, and it had been trying to show him that if he did that, he would be on the run for the rest of his life.
Lake knew the insider was old and had seen a lot, but the fact it had known all this so far in advance was kind of cool. He guessed it already knew a lot about this world because Laka had been here and had a hand in what was happening now, so it wasn''t like the Insider could see the future or anything.
It had just been telling him what his best option was if he wanted to survive. It had also shown Lake he could reform the Mage guild to help fight the Demon Lord which made Lake wonder if Lucas actually wanted to stay neutral.
If he was to approach Lucas with a n would he reject it, or was he just biding his time. Lucas had been acting weird when Lake left, and it made him think there was something going on. Lucas was preparing for an attack, and the fact that Lake had only seen people from the Demon Lord''s side made him think it was an attack from the Demon Lord.
With Lucas expecting an attack from the Demon Lord why hadn''t he joined the God of Lights side though. The fact the Light Temple was evacuating people towards the Alchemist guild made him think they were on ok terms, but both Lucas and the Temple Head had been very clear that they had nothing to do with the other.
Lake guessed they could be lying, but it was such an obvious lie that the Demon Lord would be expecting it, so they would get no strategic advantage from any surprise attacks they could pull off before the Demon Lord realized he had been fooled.
The only other thing Lake could think of was Lucas was nning to take on everyone by himself which seemed crazy because both sides had gods or equivalent fighting for them. Lake was pretty sure they could crush the guild building with very little effort.
Lake stopped running. He was almost back to the capital, but he had been needing a break for a while so this seemed like a good time. He had just seen a patch of weird looking mushrooms and he thought this was good enough to keep him busy till he could keep running.
As Lake was walking over he saw one of the mushrooms move a bit before shooting a cloud of spores. Lake assumed this was its way of protecting itself and stopped. He was effectively immune to poison but he didn''t know if that was what the spores would cause.
It was possible the spores would just use his body as food to grow, and his skill couldn''t stop that. Lake wondered if these mushrooms were actually closer to monsters than he first realized, maybe he could kill them for Exp.
Not wanting to get close, Lake took out his bow and took aim. Mushrooms had heads so Lake knew where to aim. After he fired he moved back away in case his attack caused the mushroom to explode or something but when the arrow pierced and he didn''t feel how he did when he earned Exp, Lake guessed a small hole in a mushroom wasn''t enough to kill it.
Switching his job to Fire Mage Lake charged up enough mana for a Fire Bolt and fired it. This actually made the mushroom explode, but it also seemed to take care of the spores, so Lake guessed he found the way he would be killing these mushrooms.
Lake waited for Exp from the mushroom he had just killed until he was pretty sure it wasn''t going to give him any, and started to st the rest. Lake thought maybe he needed to be a farmer or something to get Exp from nts. Once he had killed all the normal sized ones Lake got ready to deal with the biggest one in the center.
Lake was guessing it was a higher level than the rest by quite a bit and probably spread the others that were around it. Lake got as far as he could before he fired at the big one because while the smaller ones had exploded after the first spell Lake was pretty sure he would need to hit this one a few times.
Like he expected, as soon as the first fire stnded the mushroom started to spew spores from the top and the hole he had opened in its side. Lake wondered if this patch of mushrooms would regrow from all these spores making this a renewable source of them.
Lake guessed that would only be nice if he needed a huge amount of these mushrooms, but in reality he was only doing this to keep himself busy until he could continue to run. Finishing of the big one Lake wanted until the spores left the air and found the closest chunk of mushroom he could. Inspecting it, Lake looked at its details.
Migpie mushroom Lv.7
Effect 1: Damage Stamina 8 Points
Lake wasn''t sure which mushroom this chunk came from so he went over to grab a bigger piece he was sure came from the big one.
Migpie mushroom Lv.12
Effect 1: Damage Stamina 13 Points
Effect 2: Damage Health 3 Points
Lake was right about these mushrooms being dangerous, both of the first two effects were bad. They were also boring, Lake knew effects that affected Health, Stamina, and Mana were the mostmon but he had been hoping for at least one cool effect like a status or something.
Lake guessed it was a good thing for him though. His stamina was getting pretty low from all the running and the fact he hadn''t slept for a while was probably not helping, so eating this would make him feel better.
Lake knew eating enough of this to fill his stomach would probably give him thirty Stamina, so Lake got to work. After the first bite Lake realized his skill didn''t fix the taste, just the effect. He knew stuff tastes better when you are hungry, but he didn''t think that could fix something that tastes of dirt.
Lake wished he had a bucket of water, because he would be able to use Distill to make this into an extract that would remove the vor while keeping the effect. Lake realized he actually had a container that had water in it but it was so old he wasn''t sure if he could use it, because it still had the whanto leaf he had put in there days ago to make tea.
Removing the top Lake decided to not even try because it had clearly started to rot. Lucas had said the quality of the catalyst mattered and Lake was sure rotting tea wasn''t good enough. He would also have to remove the whanto leaf because it was an impurity in this situation, and Lake wasn''t very practiced in this area.
Lake guessed he would just have to eat it the old fashioned way and took another bite, but when he felt the spit in his mouth start to mix with the chewed mushroom he had an idea. Using his tongue to stir what was in his mouth he activated Distill.
Once distill was on he could feel the the magic properties of the mushroom start to be detached from the rest that was just mundane flesh Lake used another skill he had Poison Control to keep the important part that would restore his stamina and spit the rest.
With the first try being somewhat sessful Lake thought he could probably make it so he didn''t even need to use his mouth this time. Dragging arge chunk Lake brought it over to a log and sat down. Ripping a hand size piece of the mushroom off Lake used both Distill and Poison Control while it was still in his hand.
Seeing what was in his hand start to dete like it was in a dehydrator, Lake thought it might be working, and after a few seconds, Lake saw a small amount of the poison that was in the mushroom start to condense into a bead of liquid, but Lake could tell it was unstable through distill though, so he threw it into his mouth using Poison Control.
Once it was in his mouth Lake used his tongue to mix it with his spit and swallowed it. Lake then looked at his Stamina, and saw it go up a few points once the poison reached his stomach, and the best part was he didn''t even taste it. Smiling Lake got down to business and started processing the rest of the mushroom into a meal.
Chapter 82: Night Life
Chapter 82: Night Life
After Lake filled his stomach with as much poison as he could he ran back to the capital arriving a few hours before sunrise. Lake saw this as an opportunity toplete one of his other objectives: tracking down someone he could sell stolen goods to.
Lake wasn''t the only one who seemed excited about this possibility either. Any time Lake thought about pulling off a heist, the Insider started doing figurative backflips.
Jumping from rooftop to rooftop Lake stopped once he saw a street with people. Getting a better look Lake could tell this was a bar or something and that was why so many people were here.
Plenty of people had drinks in their hands, so Lake found one that seemed shady enough to know the information he wanted. Jumping down from the rooftop, Lakended behind the guy while using Mute.
Once Lake saw the guy hadn''t noticed him, he turned of Mute, and got the guy''s attention. "Hey I was wondering if you knew where I could sell this." Lake took out one of the items he had taken from one of the people he had killed in the forest. It was shiny enough to be worth something even though Lake didn''t know what it was.
"What da?" Lake understood drunk speak pretty well so he said. "I don''t know it isn''t mine." The drunk guy seemed to understand because he started tough. He pointed towards an alley that was near the bar. "Dow dair." Lake would thank the man, but with how drunk he was Lake didn''t know if he was even telling him the right thing.
Lake didn''t directly go down the alley because he wanted more info first. Finding a good ce to watch it from Lake sat down next to a broken ss. Lake thought he could test Mute out while he kept his eyes on the alley.
Picking up a piece of ss, Lake activated Mute and dropped the ss on the ground. Like Lake had expected it made no noise, so he did the same again, but this time throwing the ss much further. Not hearing a sound, Lake did it one more time to make sure.
Now that he knew he couldn''t cause any sounds with it activated, Lake only had one more test: what would happen if he turned the skill off after the ss left his hand but before it hit the floor, and vice versa.
Running the test Lake found the ss made noise when it hit the ground. Then he dropped the Last piece and reactivated Mute before itnded to hear nothing. Lake guessed he wouldn''t be throwing rocks to distract guards in the future, but this skill still had more upsides than downs.
Lake was fine with the extra hassle he would have to go through to turn it on and off when doing certain things. Done with his experiment, Lake focused on the alley, he needed to follow the next person who came from there to ask them some questions, so he couldn''t afford to miss them.
...
Seeing someone finally leave the alley, Lake marked them but stayed where he was. There was no point in following them because they probably lived close to here, and he could just wait till he saw them get to their house. Once they were asleep, Lake would break in and interrogate them.
Seeing as he had some time to kill, Lake decided to pickpocket some people while they were walking home drunk. He saw it as easy money if they had any left, that was. Drunks were the type to only go home once they were out of money, so Lake knew he was going to get a few empty purses.
Now that Lake had decided to Level up as much as he could he switched to Pickpocket, and followed some of the people who had just left. Less than a minuteter Lake had a pouch in his hand, but the fact that his level two job hadn''t leveled up made him think there wasn''t going to be much in it.
Opening it, Lake was happy to find a single coin. Adding it to his Lake dropped the purse on the ground and checked the Mark on the person to see if they had stopped moving yet. Lake guessed him thinking they would be home in less than a minute was hopeful thinking, so he went back to pickpocketing people.
...
[Level up] [Level up] Lake had yet to look in the purse he had just stolen but since he had finally leveled up and the fact it was twice made him think he finally got something good. The five or so before this had beenpletely empty, so he was starting to think he was wasting his time.
Deciding to make this one hisst for tonight Lake opened his stats to see the very noticeable changes.
Race: Human Lv.8 ( 2/10 )
Job: Pickpocket Lv.4 ( 14/80 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 80
Stamina 80
Mana 200
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 51
Dexterity 51
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 63
Seeing his agility finally made it to where if he used Burst he would be able to move faster than a normal person with maxed out Agility, Lake felt a little better about what he was about to do, because the number of people who could catch him had just fallen drastically.
Opening the bag, Lake didn''t find what he was expecting. He had thought it would be a nice amount of gold, but it was some kind of ring. It didn''t have the feel of something magic, so Lake assumed it was valuable in the normal way, but to be sure he inspected it.
Jeweled Ring
Made with valuable materials.
Looked like Lake was right about it being a normal valuable ring with no magic attached to it. Lake was happy to have something to sell once he confirmed the alley was actually a ce he could bring stolen goods. He could bring this ring to see what it was like inside before he brought a big haul.
Lake checked the Mark to see it was finally still. To Lake this meant they were probably at home, and hopefully asleep. It wasn''t like there was tv in this world, so other than reading a book, what else was there to do at your house.
It didn''t take long for Lake to find what street the guy''s house was on, but once he got to the door he realized this wasn''t a house but an inn. This made Lake think this guy wasn''t going to have much info because he was new to town but it was still better than nothing.
The guy was a few floors up so Lake hopped onto the roof of the building next to the inn to see if he could get a glimpse into the room. Lake couldn''t see the guy, but the fact there was no lighting from the room was enough to make Lake think the man was asleep, or at least in bed.
Making sure Mute was on, and that he had changed his identity, Lake, or Jon hopped onto the windowsill, putting his finger through the wood that was holding the ss in ce, because of Mute him punching his finger through solid wood hadn''t made a sound, Lake extracted the ss without shattering it.
Lake knew he could just break the ss to get in but on the off chance this guy was still awake, Lake thought a bunch of broken ss falling into the room was more eye-catching. Instead of sticking his head in, Lake used the corner of the ss like a mirror to check the room.
Seeing the guy was in bed with his back to him, Lake removed more of the window so he could enter the room. Once he was in the room, Lake set the disassembled window down, and walked over to the guy. Lake took a second to think about what he was about to do, because if this guy screamed he would have to run, so he needed to find a way to keep that from happening.
The best Lake could think of was to kidnap the guy before he started the questions but running through town while carrying a guy was a very obvious crime. While trying to think of a way to keep the guy quiet, Lake wondered if Mute would work. If he was the reason the guy was screaming, there was an argument one could make that he was causing the noise.
Of course this was hopeful thinking, but Lake still thought it was worth a shot. Lake took his knife out and slowly put it up to the guy''s throat. When that wasn''t enough to wake him Lake nudged him then put his other hand over the guy''s mouth. Lake wanted to make sure the guy noticed the knife before he could try to make a noise.
Chapter 83: The Interrogation
Chapter 83: The Interrogation
Lake could feel the guy''s body jerk as he woke up. Lake had clearly startled him so Lake made sure his hand was tight over the guy''s mouth. When the guy went to struggle Lake pushed the knife down slightly so the guy would get the situation he was in.
During all that Lake had heard the guy make a few sounds, so he knew his Mute skill wasn''t able to take care of the sounds others made, even if he was the reason they made them. Lake had never really thought it would work, so he just went with the other way of making someone shut up.
Whispering, Lake said. "..." Then Lake turned Mute off and said. "I''m just going to ask you a few questions then I''ll leave." Lake waited for the guy to nod before he started to move his hand away.
When the guy didn''t scream, Lake decided to be nice until the guy tried to lie to him. "Hello sorry about this, I just need some info about the alley you left earlier." The guy clearly had been expecting some higher stakes because he looked dumbfounded by what Lake had just asked for.
There must have been a better reason someone would attack this guy. Maybe he knew something important about something, but Lake didn''t care about all that, he just wanted to know about the alley. "I just went to sell some stuff I brought from my vige."
This at least confirmed there was a store in the alley but Lake wanted to know why this guy would choose such a weird ce to sell his stuff. Surely there were ces less grimy. "Why''d you go there instead of a normal store?"
The guy took too long to answer, so Lake assumed whatever he was about to say was going to have some details missing, if it wasn''t just a t out lie. "I don''t know it was just the first ce I saw." This was a lie so Lake got serious and started to push the knife down.
"Stop, please Stop!" Lake did stop, but not because he was told to. He still needed more answers. "Just tell me the truth." Lake wondered what could be worth lying about in a situation like this. He was literally about to cut this guy''s head off.
"One of my friends from home ran off to join the Thieves guild years ago, and I ran into him yesterday when I got to the city. He said he would give me a good price if I went to his store." This was the truth, and all Lake needed to know, so he reactivated Mute, and Burst and left before the guy could scream.
Lake never heard a scream which was nice because it meant the guy was probably just going to pretend this never happened. Even if he did try to find Lake, the only thing the guy had seen other than his normal looking armor was his eyes, which had been a different color because he changed his identity.
Going straight to the alley, Lake looked down it to see there was only one door that was on the left building. No sign or anything that would tell you it wasn''t just a door they threw trash out of so Lake guessed this was a word of mouth ce which meant he needed to have an exnation of how he found the ce.
Lake thought saying a drunk guy told him sounded believable, so he decided to go with that. Walking down the alley, Lake stopped once he reached the door. When it didn''t open on its own he knocked. "We just closed." Lake was about to walk away when he realized what they had just said was a lie.
He thought this must be some dumb test to see if he was in the thieves guild or not. He didn''t know the password, or whatever so he just knocked again. When the door opened so he could walk in, Lake guessed he had passed.
Stepping inside Lake was surprised at how much nice stuff was inside this shop. Every counter and shelf was glittering with a million different pieces of jewelry. Lake guessed there was so much because everyone who came here only sold stuff and never bought anything.
It made him wonder if they would even take his ring, and even if they did he would probably only get a few gold for it. Lake had never really needed the money though, he was just here to see if they would take bigger stuff if he brought it here.
Walking to the counter, Lake set the ring down, and waited for the guy to start a conversation. After he inspected the ring for a while he said. "Usually people bring me more than one thing at a time. Are you new to town?" Lake nodded yes, and said. "Just here to check the ce out first. Wanted to see how much you could handle at once."
"More than this." The guy threw the ring in a pile next to the counter and said. "You see that door, if you can get it through that I''ll buy it." Lake was happy this guy seemed to understand what he was saying and had a nice rule Lake could follow while doing business here.
Lake was about to leave when the guy said. "You''re not a member of the guild are you?" Lake didn''t lie because he knew the guy was about to offer him a membership card like every other cashier would. "No." Lake saw the guy was about to take something out from behind the counter and stopped him. "Some other time maybe."
The guy nodded but still gave Lake something. A piece of gold, Lake guessed this was for the ring, and left while putting it in his satchel. Lake didn''t want to join yet, because he wasn''t sure how his identity would work if they had something simr to the scroll he had signed when he joined the Alchemist guild.
It had known his name after he touched it so it had somehow read his stats, and Lake wasn''t sure if his Impersonate skill would be able to fool something like that. Thest thing Lake needed was a badge from the thieves guild with his actual name on it. Lake thought it would be better if he killed a member and stole their identity badge and all.
He could just pretend to be them for a while using y The Part, and get all the info he needed to know to be a member. Once he was outside Lake couldn''t help but think he had been too cautious, none of the things he had been expecting to happen had. The guy didn''t even ask him how he found the ce.
Lake thought it might have been his demeanor that had won the guy over. Lake knew he wasn''t the only person who could read other people because he was pretty sure it was a side effect of having high Perception, and that guy would have high Perception from being an Appraiser because it gave 5 per level.
Lake had also noticed he couldn''t really read the guy behind the counter too well and he was pretty sure it had something to do with shopkeepers having high Charisma. Charisma made people better in social situations, so it made sense to Lake that having a lot of it made it harder for people to read you.
Looking up Lake saw the sky was starting to brighten meaning it was the day the feast was originally going to be held. Lake was sure it had been postponed because of the war starting up again so he didn''t need to go back to the guild today if he didn''t want to but he was starting to get tired again.
At the moment he felt how you did when you drank coffee instead of going to bed, plenty of energy but still tired. It was mainly his legs, they didn''t really want to walk anymore, and it made sense with all the running he had done today.
Lake didn''t really see any other option but to go back to the guild to get some sleep. He had originally wanted to stay out here for a few days before going back, but with him not being able to find a room to rent, he had nowhere to sleep but the guild.
Walking towards the guild Lake felt a number of eyes snap towards him. Not wanting to give it away, Lake continued to walk. Lake knew if he started to run at least one of the people that had been here spying on the guild would want to catch him before he could get inside.
Lake wondered if these were the same people from this morning. If they were, he was surprised they were still here, but it would exin why he was drawing so much attention if they remembered him. They clearly knew he wasn''t just some guy walking down the street with nothing to do with the guild. Lake just hoped none of them tried to stop him.
Chapter 84: Bedtime
Chapter 84: Bedtime
Rounding thest corner before he could walk into the barrier surrounding the Alchemist guild Lake heard a noise behind him. Pulling out his knife Lake spun so he could intercept any attack that wasing for him, to see the person had yet tounch one. Right when he was about to ask what they wanted, he heard another personnd behind him.
Lake saw the person in front of him snicker because their genius n to surround him had worked. Lake didn''t know exactly how they were nning to actually get him under their control though. Lake guessed they must be pretty strong if they thought the two of them could stop him no matter what he could do.
That was how fights in this world went between people who didn''t know each other. Both sides just had to guess how strong their opponent was. Unless they were able to inspect the other person, but that was a pretty rare skill that was easy to block with a ring like the one Lake had.
The only other way you could try and tell how strong someone was was to look at their stuff, if they had a lot of nice things they were either strong or rich enough to buy strength. Lake hadn''t turned to look at the person behind him yet so he wasn''t sure what they looked like, but the person in front of him had some rings and a ne, so Lake expected at least one of them would be protecting him from magic.
Lake could tell they weren''t about to say anything because they were clearly just waiting for him to make a move, so Lake said. "Can we do this tomorrow? It''s my bedtime." No oneughed, and Lake thought it was because they could tell he was being serious. "No, but if you''d like we could knock you out for a while."
Lake didn''t know if that counted as sleep or not but it wasn''t something he was interested in, so he guessed he was going to have to fight these two, plus whoever else came out once these two were dead. This was really upsetting to Lake because he was so close to being able to go to bed, and now he had to deal with these idiots.
"Before we start, do either of you belong to a guild or anything?" Lake wanted to make sure he didn''t kill someone from the Assassins guild again because it was too much trouble. It would be much easier to just knock them out if they were Assassins. "Why would we tell you that?"
Lake took this to mean they weren''t from the Assassins guild, because if they were they would probably just not answer instead of being cute with him. Lake marked the guy in front of him, and then turned to look behind him. Lake nned to fight towards the barrier so he could slowly get away, and if he was lucky one of the guards might see him ande to help.
The person behind him wore a simr amount of jewelry but their clothes didn''t match the guy in front of him. Lake guessed this meant they were free agents, or they had purposely forgotten to wear their uniforms to keep their identities hidden.
Lake was pretty sure even the dark guilds had uniforms even if most members didn''t wear them, even if that wasn''t true the higher ups probably had something they all wore at the least.
Lake knew the best n was to rush this woman and even if he didn''t kill her in the first attack he could test their speed by booking it towards the barrier. That would be when the rest of them would probably show themselves. Blocking his way forward, and forcing him to fight.
Lake just hoped he would be close enough to the guild by then that maybe someone would see him. It was unreasonable to think Lucas wouldn''t have a single person out here watching the situation. Lake looked at his Stamina before he started just to see if he was ok to go all out right from the start.
Seeing he had 65 Lake decided he would be good as long as he didn''t use Fast Hands too much. Rushing forward Lake could tell he hadn''t caught her off guard at all but his speed had surprised her because she started moving backwards away from him to buy herself more time before they shed.
Seeing he had time, Lake risked a look behind him to see if he was faster than the guy, which he wasn''t. Spinning Lake switched targets; the woman clearly had less Agility than the man did, so he needed to make sure he kept his eyes on the man until he was dead or incapacitated.
Lake had just realized his skill The Sight had activated, making it much easier for him to tell what was happening behind him, so as long as he kept his ears peeled for attacks, he could disregard what the woman was doing, because he could still hear her making distance between them.
Lake activated Burst and jumped backwards away from the man getting both in front of him. Lake could tell neither of them had been able to keep their eyes on him when he activated Burst so while he was still in the air he activated Fast Hands and Knife Throw at the same time and threw his knife at the guy.
Lake''s knife moved faster than he had when he had jumped so there was no way the guy would see iting so as long as he didn''t have some skill that could block physical attacks Lake had a good chance of killing the guy.
Lake saw the silver blur that was his knife m into the guy''s head hard enough that even his helmet exploded. With the stacked effects of Burst and Fast Hands, Lake wasn''t surprised the attack had been so powerful, but the shock value was the best part.
He could feel half of the eyes that had been on him were now gone, Lake guessed he had scared them off from this one disy of power. The only thing was he only had one knife, so he couldn''t repeat the attack without retrieving it.
Left with his sword and bow Lake chose his sword. Since no one hade to back this woman up yet he figured he could finish her off and retrieve his knife. It wasn''t his original n, but he didn''t want to run, and leave his knife here.
Once hended Lake jumped again, but this time towards the woman. Lake could tell he was moving too fast for her to see, because her eyes were looking around even though he was heading straight for her.
Once he was close enough Lake used Crunch and smacked her head off her shoulders. With her head now a thinyer of red on the wall next to them Lake picked up his knife then headed towards the guild. It seemed his disy had run off the rest of them because he could only feel one, or two people were still looking at him.
Looking back at the fight scene, Lake bet whatever rich bozo lived here was going to be pissed once they woke up, but he doubted they would clean it themselves, and he really didn''t have the energy to clean it up, so if anyone found him through the evidence he left, good, maybe they would see how stupid it was to bother him.
Lake felt the two headless bodies spoke for themselves, so hopefully whoever was in charge ofw enforcement would just sweep the bodies under the rug instead of making trouble for him. Getting through the barrier Lake saw there were some guards there that reacted to his presence.
Remembering what Lucas had said about him being checked once he got back, Lake handed himself over to them. He wanted to get all of this out of the way as fast as he could so he could go to bed.
Being brought into a room with an old wizard looking dude, Lake was cleared for entry a few minutester. Lake guessed that guy was a curse master, or something that could tell when someone was being controlled, but he was more focused on finding Lucas, so he really didn''t think about it.
Entering Lucas''s office Lake could tell he was really busy so Lake tried to make it quick. "I saw a bunch of crazy shit today, goodnight." The rest could wait till morning but before he started up the stairs Lucas stopped him. "Like what?"
Lake wasn''t sure if the news about what happened at the forest had spread yet, so he asked. "Have you heard about what happened in the forest?" Lucas seemed interested, but Lake couldn''t tell if it meant he had or he hadn''t. "Are you talking about what the Demon Worshipers did?"
Lake nodded and said. "Yeah I was there when they did it. They used all the bodies to make a giant undead." Lucas didn''t seem that shocked by what he said, so Lake assumed the giants weren''t new. Lucas had probably seen one during thest war. "Who made it? I''m guessing by the fact you''re here right now you didn''t see the Demon Lord, which means you saw someone with the new job that lets them make undead."
"It was another giant, and once they were done, I saw a cloud with a mouth give the new giant divinity." Lake sounded like a little kid lying when he said this, but by the look on Lucas''s face Lake could tell he believed it. "He made the giant a demigod?"
Lake didn''t really know how he was supposed to answer this so he just nodded until Lucas said. "Goodnight." and disappeared. Lake looked around for the mark to see where Lucas had gone, until he saw it at the top of the spire. Lake shrugged, and started climbing towards his room.
Chapter 85: Making Poison
Chapter 85: Making Poison
Waking up Lake got straight out of bed, he had a lot he wanted to do today plus whatever he had to do, so he didn''t have time to waste in bed. Getting dressed, Lake said bye to his servants; who had been very surprised to see himst night because no one had bothered to tell them he hadn''t left, and rushed down the hallway only slowing down when he saw Millie.
"Hey Millie, you''re still here too huh?" Millie turned around and said. "Yeah, Lucas asked me if I wanted to stay until the restaurants were approved." There was probably more to why she had stayed but this was probably the reason she actually believed. Lake could tell Millie wasn''t a fighter, so it made sense she was still here because she would be too scared to pick a side.
This made Lake wonder if Solomon was actually still here because the only person Lake had seen leave yesterday was Nia. "Is Solomon still here?" Millie had already seemed kind of upset before he asked, but her face fell even more, as she said. "No, he left in the first wave, so I didn''t even get to say goodbye."
Lake didn''t want Millie to cry, so he quickly changed the subject by asking. "Is the feast going to happen today?" Lake knew the answer was most likely going to be no but it was still good to make sure. "No, we''re just going to send some food to the pce."
This sounded like a better n than the feast to Lake, so he was happy it had been changed. Especially after what had happened when he was at the pce, he would rather not see the king again. "Alright I''ll see you."
Lake excused himself because he didn''t want to spend the whole day talking to Millie. He was sure she would be feeling lonely now that Nia was gone because the two of them spent a lot of time together for thest few years.
Getting to his first stop today the library Lake looked for a book on poisons. Yesterday when he was using Poison Control to pull the poison out of that mushroom it had made Lake realize he was wasting a valuable skill, and he nned to remedy that by making some strong poison he could use as a secret weapon.
In the future anyone who got too close to him in a fight would regret it. Looking through the book, Lake stopped once he got to the best poison he thought he could make, and returned to his room to get his servants to prepare theb.
Once he was in theb It didn''t take long for his servants to enter carrying 5 metal containers. Lake was confused at first until he remembered not everyone was able to drink poison. The containers were clearly a safety precaution, one that he would be disregarding as soon as everyone else left the room.
"You three can leave the room. I''ll take care of the rest." His three servants dropped the containers and left like he told them to. Lake walked over to the first and only container that looked different and picked it up. This was the first time Lake was doing actual Alchemy because so far he had only been mixing things with clearlybeled properties anyone could see if they used inspect.
nts had levels as well, and as they leveled up they gained new properties that made it real easy to make potions, but nts weren''t the only things you could use in Alchemy. The only problem was other things didn''t have their properties listed in their description like nts did, so it was really easy to mess up when you used them.
The cool thing was they usually added really strange properties to the potions you couldn''t get if you just used nts. And the special property he was hoping for today was texture, this poison was renowned for being almost impossible to get off of skin giving it plenty of time to pass through the skin and into the body.
That wasn''t even the best part, even if the person used the right antidote, there was a good chance they were still covered in the stuff, meaning they would just be poisoned all over again until they either ran out of antidotes and died, or they found a way to get it all off their skin.
Opening the container Lake saw the special ingredient, small purple slugs that had been dried. Lake needed to grind them into powder because when it came to things this dangerous most people weren''t willing to risk their life just to make somebody like him have an easier time making a dangerous poison.
For most people if you breathed in some of the powder while crushing the slugs that was it, you were dead because as soon as the powder met your wet lungs it became glue, and poisonous glue at that. Good luck coughing that out. Your best bet was actually to cut your own lungs out one at a time while drinking an antidote and a potion that could regrow them.
It was brutal and exactly what Lake wanted for his enemies. Breaking some of the slugs down into a powder Lake activated poison control to make sure none of it got into the air. Once he was done he moved on to the normal nt ingredients. The first being.
Millo Root Lv. 25
Effect 1: Damage Health 26 Points
Effect 2: Damage Stamina 16 Points
Effect 3: Decrease Agility 6 Points
Lake forgot the part about it slowing people down as well. It being like glue already made it hard for people to move if they got hit but once it got in their system their agility would start to be affected. Lake did the same for this ingredient, and broke it down before moving to the next.
Ugly Flower Lv. 21
Effect 1: Decrease Agility 22 Points
Effect 2: Damage Health 12 Points
Effect 3: Damage Stamina 2 Points
Looked like someone skimped on the Ugly Flower because its level wasn''t the same as what he asked for. He guessed the fact it had a better effect as its first made it more expensive, but it still made the cut because it had the first three effects unlocked which was all he needed for it to work. Lake broke it down, and moved on to thest nt ingredient.
Dane Lion Lv. 25
Effect 1: Damage Stamina 26 Points
Effect 2: Damage Health 16 Points
Effect 3: Decrease Agility 6 Points
Lake liked thest one''s name because this nt looked almost exactly like a dandelion. The only difference was this one was extremely poisonous apparently. It didn''t really matter though so he broke it down and moved to thest container.
This one held the catalyst he would be using, spider venom, since he was making such a strong poison he had to use something better than water because water would most likely not be able to contain the reaction that would happen once he added all the ingredients. Even if all the ingredients liked each other as much as these three did there would be something simr to an implosion.
Lake was actually going to have to use his two skills to slow the reaction down so it mixed correctly. Pouring the correct amount of spider venom into the mixing pot he would be using to make the poison, Lake got it over some heat. Heating it up was the only way he would be able to mix it once the slug powder was in. Lake activated both Distill and Poison Control and added a small amount of the slug powder. Since they both had poisonous properties that affect health this was a mixture and the first ingredient. Inspecting it Lake saw this mixture would do 15 points of damage a second if he was to stop here but Lake had no ns on doing that.
Adding the Millo Root and the Ugly Flower Lake could feel them start to interact as soon as they both dissolved in the catalyst and a few seconds of stirring the Damage Health portion of the potion was stable at 53 a second.
This was an interesting state for the potion to be in because the other two effects were still missing the third ingredient they would need to be stable but the damage heath was fine as is, so this potion was technically a split potion while also being stable enough to be done.
This meant if he stopped now this potion would deal 53 damage to health a second 19 to stamina and would damage someone''s Agility by 28 points all while being sort of sticky. Lake wasn''t done though, he just thought it was cool that this poison could kill him in less than 2 seconds if he wasn''t immune.
Picking up thest ingredient Lake poured it in and braced Poison Control he ned to use it to make sure thest two effects didn''t bond to fast and to keep the new Damage Health effect from the already stable one because he would have to deal with it after he was done with the other two by adding more slug powder.
Mixing the Damage Stamina portion first Lake made quick work of it because it had wanted to do it on its own. Then he did it with the Damage Agility portion. Making this potion have three stable effects with an unintegrated matching effect. Grabbing the slug powder Lake added a little more to thicken it up some more and to make it easier for the Damage health effect from the third ingredient to integrate into the already stable potion.
Once he was done Lake removed it from the heat to let it cool then added up the effects before checking using inspect.
Sticky Poison
Effect 1: Damage Health 69 Points a second
Effect 2: Damage Stamina 44 Points a second
Effect 3: Decrease Agility 34 Points for duration
Added effects: Sticky Lv. 3, Flesh Corrosion Lv. 1
Duration 9 hours
Lake saw the spider venom had also added an Corrosion effect, and was happy with the final result, and tested out how well he could control it using Poison Control. Making it fly around the room for a while,ke had itnd in a bottle he would be keeping in his satchel from now on until he needed it.
Chapter 86: Mobile Home
Chapter 86: Mobile Home
Now that Lake was done, he did the best he could to make sure he cleaned his mess up, and activated the purifying crystal to make sure any small particles were cleaned from the air. Once all that was done he left the Lab to see his servants had been standing in the hall the whole time. "What are you three doing in the stairway?"
Jason, who seemed to be the leader of his servants, held up some bottles and said. " We were on standby in case you needed help." Lake guessed these were the antidotes for the ingredients he had been using, because he hadn''t told them he was immune to poison.
It was nice they were being so thoughtful without him even needing to ask so he said. "Thanks for your hard work but I''m fine. Would you three mind putting the ingredients back where they go? Once you''re done you can have the rest of the day off because I''m leaving again."
Waving bye, Lake started downstairs to find Lucas who was back in his office. Lucas was really busy so Lake said. "I need a cart, and a guard to drive it." Lake was hoping Lucas would just ok it without any questions because it was such a simple request but he said. "We''re low on carts at the moment because a lot of them were stolen during the evacuation."
"Is that a no?" Lake really needed the cart so he could stay outside of the guild for long periods of time so if Lucas was saying no Lake was going to have some problems. "I''m just asking what you need it for." Lake was fine telling Lucas, he had just been hoping to not have to spend so much time talking to him.
"Yesterday when I was looking for a ce to sleep I found every room in the city was full because of all the refugees. Sost night before I fell asleep I thought a cart would be a good ce to sleep until I can get a room." Lake also thought it would be useful to have a driver that could bring him ces at night while he slept, but he didn''t mention that part.
"Why don''t you juste back to the guild at night like you didst night?" Lake realized Lucas didn''t really know about all the people that had their eyes on the guild at all times, and he probably didn''t care even if he did because they were outside, so it didn''t really matter to him.
"It''s kind of dangerous to just walk outside on foot. There''s a lot of people out there trying to gather information, andst night when I wasing home I was attacked." Lucas didn''t seem too surprised to hear this but Lake could tell he wasn''t happy about it.
"You can have a cart but you have to bring it back in a few days, don''t just keep it forever. One more thing before you go, I got a report of two headless bodies found one street over from the guild this morning, and I have some people out investigating it, would those happen to be the people who attacked you?"
Lake nodded and said. "Yeah, were they important, are they from the Assassins guild?" Lucas looked at him like he was a pain in the ass and said. "No, but you should try your best not to kill in the city because the king''s guard take it seriously. They try to make sure people feel safe inside the city so if you ever kill someone in the future, make sure you tell me so I can take care of it before the investigation starts."
It seemed Lucas was done talking so Lake tried to leave the room but Lucas stopped him and said. "Don''t take any of the big carts, you''re one person and we need them." After that Lake got on the elevator and rode it all the way down to the dungeon.
Lake wanted to see if Joy was back to normal, or if she was still under the effects of the loyalty curse. Without leaving the elevator, Lake yelled. "Hey Joy, how are you doing today?" When she didn''t react at all, Lake knew she was still in work overdrive mode because she would have walked over to him to say hi if she was herself.
Riding the elevator up to where the carts were, Lake found one of the small ones pretty quickly then found the closest driver he could and asked. "Would you be willing to drive me around for a few days? I have stuff I need to do outside." The guy shrugged and said. "It''s what I''m paid for."
This was a good attitude for his driver because he wanted someone who wouldn''t ask too many questions, and Lake could tell this guy was fine with anything as long as he got paid on time. Bringing him to the cart, Lake said "This is the one right here. You know where the carts are outside the city, that''s where I''m headed."
After Lake said this he got in the cart and let the guy drive him to the edge of the city where the massive stable was. Getting out of the cart, Lake said. "You can do what you want. I''ll find you when I need you to drive me somewhere." Lake could tell the cart driver was confused when he walked back towards the city, but when he didn''t ask about it Lake knew he had picked the right guy for the job.
Once Lake was back inside the city he headed towards a residential area. Lake nned to use Mana Vision to look for empty houses he could break into then take the loot to the alley to sell. If he did this enough he should be able to not only unlock Burr, but Max it out.
The money he would be making was just a nice bonus because he had found he had started to really like the way gold felt in his hands, and he was hoping this could lead him to thest mission he needed toplete before the Insider became level one.
There was one other thing Lake would like to do today: Repair his knife. Its de was deformed now because of how he had used it yesterday, and he needed to get it repaired, or maybe even get some that were designed to be thrown so he would have more than one.
Lake nned to go to the cksmiths guild once he had more money because if he just bought cheap stuff it would break after one use. Turning Mana Vision on Lake started to scan the buildings he was passing until he found an empty one.
Once he did Lake looked around to find any windows he might be able to get through without someone on the street noticing him. Lake wasn''t worried about them hearing him, just them seeing him while he was doing it. Under normal circumstances Lake bet no one would be able to see him do it because of how fast he was, but he was sure there were plenty of people with high Perception around.
Lake was about to move on to a house with less people around it when he thought of something. If he acted like he wasn''t suspicious, no one would notice a man walking into their own house. Figuring he should try it out, Lake walked up to the front door and grabbed the handle.
Activating Mute Lake pushed until he felt the lock snap, and the door start to open. With the door ready to open at any time Lake made sure there wasn''t any visible damage to the door or the frame then opened it and walked in.
Once he was in Lake skipped the first floor and went up stairs. Lake didn''t want someoneing in and seeing him as soon as they opened the door, and he figured most people would keep the good stuff upstairs if they were fortunate enough to have one, so he had more than one reason to go upstairs.
Once he was upstairs Lake picked one of the four rooms at random. It seemed to be a kids bedroom, so he skipped it and moved on to the next room. Lake figured the kid would be the poorest person who lived here, so it would be a waste of time.
Opening the next room, Lake found something more interesting. There was a desk and a few tables packed high with books and equipment. Lake walked over to one of the tables, and inspected one of the smaller pieces on it.
It was a metal ring but not the kind you would put on your finger; it was more like a big coin with a hole in the middle. Reading its description Lake learned it was a magic item that helped with identifying what things were made from, and you held it up to your eye while letting it take your mana in to make it work.
Lake could think of a lot of ways something like this could be useful so he put it in his bag and moved to the next item on the table. Seeing it was also a tool used for observing things, Lake just grabbed all five that were on the table. there was on point in checking them one by one.
Moving to the desk, Lake opened all the drawers until he found one was locked. He did the same to it as he did with the door and just forced it open. Lake grabbed the small box that was in the drawer and opened it to find a silver bar. It was pretty roughly forged but Lake could tell it was something special as soon as he touched it.
It gave him the same feeling enchanted items gave, so he knew it was worth taking, so he put it in his bag and moved on to the next room. He would inspect it in more detailter once he wasn''t at risk of running out of time.
Opening the door to what seemed to be the parents bedroom, Lake started to look for Jewelry because he knew they must have some, especially since it seemed whoever owned the office dealt in metals, or at least studied some metals.
Finding a box in one of the drawers on the end table Lake opened it, and when he saw jewelry he dumped it into his satchel. Lake thought this was enough, and reactivated Mana Vision to do one final sweep to see if there was anything obvious that he should take real quick before he left.
Not seeing anything he went for the front door, and was back out on the street in less than four seconds.[New job unlocked Burr] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] Lake knew there had been one more door upstairs, but he knew the more time you spent digging around the more likely you were to get trapped when someone came home. It was best to just take the obvious stuff and leave.
Chapter 87: Making Money Pt.1
Chapter 87: Making Money Pt.1
Lake''s bag was full, so he started towards the alley to sell what he had gotten from the house. It was a pretty long walk, so he had plenty of time to look at his stats, and the details of his new job.
Race: Human Lv.8 ( 5/10 )
Job: Pickpocket Lv.7 ( 58/640 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 80
Stamina 80
Mana 200
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 54
Dexterity 54
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 72
Seeing how high his free stat points had gotten, Lake knew he should spend them but couldn''t bring himself to. Deciding he would once it reached 100 he moved on to his new job.
Burr (U) Lv.0
On level up:
Agility 2
Dexterity 3
Free 3
Exp conditions:
Theft of money or valuables
Bonus Exp conditions:
X8 Theft
Skills from job:
Lake didn''t really look at it because it seemed to be more of the same, and he would only really be interested once he hit level one and got his first two skills. Seeing the alley Lake walked down it and knocked. He was hoping they were open 24/7 so he wouldn''t have to find a ce to stash his stuff until they opened.
When the door opened to let him in, Lake didn''t waste any time and walked up to the counter. "I''m surprised to see you again so soon. Did you not hear the part when I told you to bring more than one thing at a time?"
Lake was also surprised to see the same guy behind the counter. It had probably been about 8 or 9 hours since he had been here, so someone else should have taken over by now, but maybe this guy was like Lake and didn''t sleep much.
Lake pulled out the tools and jewelry he had stolen, but left the silver ingot. He wanted to inspect it some more before he sold it. "Never mind. What did you rob a house right after leaving herest night?"
Lake guessed the guy thought it was unlikely Lake had done it in broad daylight, so he figured he had used thest few hours ofst night to get this stuff. "No, I stole it before I came here the first time." Lake had sort of hinted he had stuff to sell the first time he hade here, so he was just continuing his backstory by lying like this.
"I''ll give you 100 for all of it." Lake didn''t know how much any of it was worth so he took the deal. From what he knew about the value of gold 100 was a few months of work for a normal person who wasn''t willing to risk their life to level jobs, and a few weeks for someone like a hunter.
Putting his money in his satchel Lake said. "I''ll see youter." This was a joke because Lake knew the guy wouldn''t think he literally meantter today. Lake started to head towards the cksmiths guild while scanning for empty houses. If he didn''t find one, he would just go and see how much money the things in their store cost.
Finding a decent looking house that seemed empty, Lake did the same thing he had done earlier and broke the lock on the door. While still using his Mana Vision, Lake entered the house. It was really helpful in these sorts of situations, so he was just going to have to put up with the fact that it made it kind of hard to see regr stuff.
Since he could see things through walls if they gave off a lot of mana it made it hard to see all the mundane things around him because all the mana sources glowed like stars, but he figured the magic stuff would be worth more, and that was the whole reason he hade into this house in the first ce.
He had seen the massive amount of manaing from what he assumed was their basement and decided it was worth the risk. Basements were really dangerous because there were no windows, or anything you could escape through if someone came home, so he was being a little greedy, but the basement had made him curious.
Not finding an obvious way down to the basement, Lake headed upstairs. He knew it seemed counterintuitive, but maybe they had adder down or something. Seeing six upstairs rooms, Lake went as fast as he could to check all of them. Not finding adder Lake still stopped because not a single room had a bed in it.
He found this kind of weird because there hadn''t been a bedroom downstairs either, and that just left the basement. Lake wondered why someone would live in their basement when they had so much house to choose from. It wasn''t like the rest of the house seemed abandoned either, it was still clearly used.
Lake decided this was too weird for him to bother with so he went back downstairs, and left through the front door. Turning around Lake marked the building and decided he woulde back in a few hours to see if anyone hade home. He thought it might be possible to watch them through the walls using Mana Vision to see how to get into the basement.
Lake just hoped he returned before whoever owned the ce did because when they realized the lock had been broken they would rush to check on the most valuable stuff first, and Lake wanted to be able to retrace their steps straight into the basement.
Getting onto the main street Lake stopped someone and asked. "That''s the cksmiths guild right there correct?" Lake pointed at a building with about 50 smokestacks spewing various colors into the sky. When the woman didn''t answer because of how dumb the question was he asked. "Is there stuff for sale here, or do they have a separate store somewhere else?"
The woman became less judgmental as she said. "Both." This was the answer he had been expecting. He thanked the woman and walked away. The only reason he had asked was he could see them not wanting too many people who weren''t members in their building meaning they wouldn''t have things for sale here, but it seemed he was wrong.
They had multiple entrances so Lake figured the one with all the people around it was the store, so he walked in. Seeing there was a line into another door Lake had to ask to keep himself from waiting in a line he didn''t need to. "Is this line to enter the store?"
"No, the store is on the other side." This made Lake want to know what all these people were lining up for, so he asked. "What''s the line for then?" He was fine lining up for something if it was cool enough so he wanted to know before he left to go shopping. "They hold a test to join the guild once a week, cksmith is a prettymon job, so they only take the best as members for the capital branch. My master said..."
The guy kept talking, but Lake was done listening, so he walked outside to go to the store on the other side. Opening the door Lake saw a warehouse sized room with a massive amount of shelves filled with weapons and armor. Then he saw the guards. There were about 20 of them and they looked kitted out. He guessed that was the benefit of working for the people who made the best gear.
Walking in Lake saw the counter all the way in the back of the store, so he started looking around. Lake noticed a lot of the things already had sold tags on them so this ce seemed to actually be a warehouse as well as a store. He guessed people bought stuff then had to travel to get it from the guild once it was done.
From what Lake knew there weren''t that many strong adventures in the capital because there weren''t that many strong monsters around, so he guessed the fact that all the good stuff was for sale in the capital really made it a chore for the adventures toe pick up the stuff they bought, and that was the reason so much of it was still here, even though it was already sold.
It could also be a tactic to make him think he needed to buy something he liked before it was sold to someone else. Lake already nned to buy something though, so he didn''t see it affecting his decision making. Finding the wall with short swords, daggers, and knives, Lake started to look at the prices.
There were plenty he could afford but he wasn''t too sure how good they were, because they were at the lower end of price. Picking up one he liked the look of, he could tell it wasn''t even enchanted. Inspecting it to confirm its status Lake realized the knife he had damaged was much nicer than anything he could buy right now.
This made him think his best bet would be to repair the knife Mary had given him instead of buying a new one. Walking up to the counter Lake was about to ask if he could have his knife repaired when thedy behind the counter said. "What can I help you with today?"
Lake didn''t like the tone she was using, because he could tell she thought he was a waste of time because he hadn''t brought anything to the counter to buy. Lake pulled out his knife and said. "Would it be possible to have this repaired?" Thedy took it and Lake could tell she was inspecting it.
Eventually she said, "It''s possible, but if you don''t have it upgraded, it will just happen again." Lake knew she was right, but he just wanted to know how much it would cost first. "How much would it cost?"
"It depends, this is a level 20 knife. Already pretty high, so to have it reforged to level 21 would be about 400 gold." Equipment having levels was news to Lake, he wondered why he couldn''t tell. When he used his Appraiser job on nts it told him the level.
Chapter 88: Making Money Pt.2
Chapter 88: Making Money Pt.2
Lake left as he was still thinking about why he could see the levels of nts but not equipment. His best guess was it had something to do with him being an Alchemist, maybe if he became a cksmith he would be able to see the level of metals the same way he could with nts.
Lake remembered Lucas saying Appraiser helped with Alchemy but maybe Appraiser helped with all production jobs. Lake knew three production jobs: Alchemist, cksmith, and Enchanter, but he was sure there were more that he had yet to hear about.
The fact his Alchemist job was Unique made Lake think maybe it wasn''t the only production job one of the past Insiders had tampered with. He could see why someone would want to make sure they could make themselves anything they needed, or maybe they had specialized the job for making one thing really well Like how they had done to Alchemist.
Lake''s Poison Control skill made him extremely capable of mixing poisons to the point where it seemed too easy, and on top of that it doubled as a method of attack. Someone had seen a way to make the Alchemist job something useful to a thief, so maybe someone had done the same to more production jobs.
It was worth testing once he got back to the guild he would look up which jobs people knew the unlock method for. From what the guy earlier had said cksmith was a job a lot of people had, so there was a good chance they knew the exact method to unlock it.
Once Lake reached the house he had marked earlier he checked to see if anyone was inside with Mana Vision. Not seeing anyone he moved on. He would like to stake out the house, but with him learning how much money he would need to fix his knife or buy a new one he wanted to start work again.
Finding another empty house not far from the one he broke into earlier, Lake snapped the door open and walked in. Once he was inside and saw how rundown it was, Lake didn''t even waste his time looking around too much and went straight to the big bedroom. Finding a small bag of gold, Lake took it and left. [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up]
Race: Human Lv.8 ( 9/10 )
Job: Burr Lv.4 ( 53/80 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 80
Stamina 80
Mana 200
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 62
Dexterity 66
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 84
Lake was a little unhappy to see his Agility and Dexterity weren''t the same anymore, but he knew he could fix that by maxing them out, so he just moved on to his two new skills.
Burr rm (U) Lv.1
Lets you know who owns the property you''re on and where they are.
Cat Burr (U) Lv.1
Every part of you can be used to cling to surfaces.
Once he was back outside, and done checking his new skills, Lake counted the gold to see how much was in it. Adding the 16 new coins to his he moved on to another empty house only five down from the one he was just in. This one was nicer on the inside, but it didn''t have an upstairs like most houses on this street.
Going down the hallway that had all the doors to rooms, Lake pushed them open one by one till he saw something. It seemed to be some sort of altar. He guessed whoever lived here was devout. Lake looked at the stuff on top of the altar, but decided none of it was worth making a god mad so he moved on.
Lake pushed thest door on the halfway open, and found the bedroom. a single step inside the room and Lake saw something he wanted to steal. It was a full suit of chainmail on a stand in the closet. The only problem was he didn''t think he would be able to fit it in his satchel.
Taking the sheet off the bed, Lake put the full set on top of it and did his best to roll it up, putting it under his arm. Lake walked out and headed straight for the alley. [Level up] [Rank up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level Max]
Lake hadn''t needed to leave yet, the owner wasn''t anywhere near their house yet, but he doubted he could carry more without it looking weird. Pulling up his stats and new skills while he walked Lake started to read.
Race: Human Lv.9 ( 5/10 )
Job: Burr Lv.10 ( Max )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 90
Stamina 90
Mana 210
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 74
Dexterity 84
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 102
Lake saw his free stat points had gone pass the limit he had set for himself and didn''t keep his promise of spending them. Then Lake looked at his next, and final two skills from Burr.
Booster Bag (U) Lv.1
Stolen items can go into a second secret space Inside a container.
Detector (L) Lv.1
You can set this skill to search for certain things.
(Range scales off of Perception)
Booster Bag Seemed to be a really good skill, and its effects made him think of something Laka had said about the Insider. He had said if he ever needed it he could just pretend to pull it out of his pocket, maybe Booster Bag worked in a simr way.
Arriving at the alley, Lake knocked, and was let inside a few secondster. "Sorry I only brought one thing this time." He said as he set the rolled up armor on the counter. Unrolling it, Lake let the guy inspect it and a few minutes Later the guy said. "Light armors are very valuable to people in our business, are you sure you want to sell it? Because with one enchantment to take care of the noise this would be much better than the stuff you are wearing."
Lake was only worried about making money right now so he said. "No, I''ll sell it." The guy seemed happy to hear this, as he said. "I''ll give you 900 gold." Lake was blown away by the price, until he realized chainmail was really hard to make, meaning it was very valuable.
Taking the deal, Lake said. "I''ll see youter." He didn''t want to take too long because he wanted to catch the guy with the weird basement while he was still there. Running towards the house, Lake stopped once the basement was in range of Mana Vision. Seeing it was empty, Lake checked the rest of the house which was also empty.
With this done Lake decided to test out his new skill in a new way. Walking up to the house, Lake opened the door and walked in. With Burr rm activated Lake looked around to see if the person was close. When he saw they were nowhere near the house Lake decided he could take his time looking for the way down to the basement.
His skill also told him the identity of the person who owned it but it wasn''t helpful information right now. Activating Mute Lake pried up a floorboard and looked through the hole. Seeing dirt he knew his n to go through the floor would be pretty difficult. Putting the floorboard back, Lake started to remove paintings, and move shelves away from the wall.
When everything on the walls were removed he moved on to rugs and furniture. Grabbing a chair that was near the wall to check under it, Lake realized it was attached to the ground. Figuring this must be the way downstairs, Lake grabbed the handle that would make it recline if it was a normal chair, and pulled it.
When it actually reclined Lake thought he had failed and was about to move on when he noticed how much space was under the leg rest. It had gone much higher than a chair should, making it an obvious entrance. Looking under the chair there was indeed a brick passageway down to the basement.
Crawling under the chair Lake into the passage, Lake stood up. With how dark it was done here Lake was happy he had night vision. After about 20 feet or so of tunnel, Lake reached a ck metal door. Running his hand along it Lake found it waspletely smooth with no obvious way to open it. Using inspect on it, Lake felt a stinging in his eye.
He realized this was probably the same situation he had been in with the nullifier. This door probably had some sort of password that he needed to say for it to open. Lake used his skill Critical Eye on the door in the hopes it would reveal some major w, but when it just told him the best ce to hit it if he wanted to bust through it he moved on.
This seemed to be his opportunity to use a skill he had wanted to use for a while. Activating Decrypt Lake felt his mana start to drain. This was a weird feeling simr to whenever he put mana into his ward ring. He could feel his mana twisting through the doors internal mana pathways into a few odd shapes.
Lake guessed these were the separate effects the door had, but there was really no point in guessing now since it probably wouldn''t take too much longer. Feeling his mana stop depleting Lake looked at the results. There were now three distinct glowing shapes on the door and when he focused on them he understood how they worked like he was reading a description.
One was an anti observation formation that was keeping him from using inspect on the door. The next was an enchantment that made the door much stronger and better at resisting magic. Thest was the one he needed. It was the one that listened for the password, and moved the door when it was uttered.
Lake had to say this Decrypt skill was something else; it had worked through two separate effects that should have stopped him from being able to get information on this door. He guessed that was what made it a Legendary skill.
Lake guessed that was why the skill said, can result in failure. Most items that you would use this skill on would be heavily loaded with anti magic formations. He bet there would be items that could stop this skill in the future. After thinking this, Lake went back to trying to open the door with the information he could get from it.
The password itself wasn''t in the door''s formation, but the part that matched what was said could be used to slowly figure out what he needed to say. Turning off mute Lake said. "Aaa." The door''s formation went to work analyzing the sound, and Lake realized his brilliant n to trick the door was going to take forever.
Chapter 89: Making Money Pt.3
Chapter 89: Making Money Pt.3
Going through the sounds words could start with, Lake saw the formation finally do something new. It seemed whatever the password was it started with a "CA." sound. Looking at the amount the Ca sound had activated the password formation before failing, Lake would say Ca was a seventh of the word or phrase that was the password.
Lake started running the test again by following Ca with every letter of the alphabet, finally seeing progress when he said "Can." Now that he had a word, he wanted to know if this was apleted word, or if this was just the beginning of a longer word like Canada. He knew Canada probably wasn''t a word here but he still said it.
With Canada not working Lake went through a few more words he knew that started with Can. "Cannon Canoe Cancel Cancer." With this method not really helping, Lake just went back to adding a letter at a time. It didn''t take long for him to say "Cand." Lake could only think of one word with Cand in it. "Candle."
Seeing he was exactly halfway through the password now Lake said. "Candlewick Candle Light." After he said candle light the ck metal door shed a bright golden color before parting. Lake was really lucky the first word and the second word had to do with each other, because if they didn''t it would have taken a lot longer.
Lake also realized how cheeky the password was. If he was a normal person he would have probably used a candle to light his way, and the door going from ck to a golden light was the same thing that would have happened to the passage as the candle lit it.
Lake was a little surprised they had picked this password though, because someone using a candle might say Candle light by ident and open the door without meaning to. Of course it was unlikely someone would say "Man, this candle light is sure doing the trick." They would probably say "Man, this candle is sure doing the trick." and since they wouldn''t know candle was half of the password it wouldn''t matter.
Lake knew hiding something in in sight could work very well in certain situations, so he couldn''t really call it a dumb password, just a cheeky one. Before he stepped in he took a second to check where the owner was.
Seeing they were still miles away Lake was relieved, even though in a world like this some people could cover that distance in a second, it was still nice to know they weren''t heading home yet, or at least not quickly.
Now that he was nning to go inside Lake activated Mana Vision he wanted to see if he could gather information on what could be inside. This also gave him time to regenerate some mana, so he wasn''t really wasting time doing this because he might need all the mana he could have depending on what was inside.
Looking through the doorway Lake saw there was still a lot of manaing from inside and it seemed this vault was blocking some because he could definitely see more now that the door was out of the way. There were 23 strong sources of mana and they were all glowing the same golden color.
Lake took this to mean they were the same element, and from all the elements he knew only one was a golden color. Taking a step inside Lake saw on the walls there were weapons mounted in protective cases. There were weapons of every type on the walls and on the back wall there were three swords.
Lake thought the swords were awesome, but there was a dagger in one of the cases on the left wall he wanted more. It was really thin, almost like a needle, and if he could steal it it would solve his knife woes. He also liked the golden glow it gave off. With how much he seemed to like gold now it really satisfied his urges.
Walking over to its case Lake was about to inspect it to see how to open it when it opened all on its own. Lake thought maybe the fact he hadn''t blown the door down meant the cases thought he was allowed to be here. If that was the case he had actually saved himself some time by guessing the password.
Picking up the dagger Lake felt that it was very enchanted and inspecting it he found it was also a vessel like his ward ring was. That meant it had an ability he could use if he was to fill it with his mana. Lake didn''t do it right away though, he had a limited amount of mana, and maybe one of these other weapons would be better suited for him.
Going for the bow next Lake felt the Insider stop him. Once it stopped him it showed him a vision like it had done a few times in the past. 23 different warriors using their Holy weapons to kill giants. Lake could tell the 23 holding the weapons weren''t normal because they were using magic at the same level as the giants.
It seemed the weapons were possibly a secret weapon the Temple had hidden in the city in case it was attacked by the Demon Lord or at least that was what the Insider thought but it seemed its main point was he should only take one for himself and leave the rest for the people who actually needed them to fight the war.
Lake knew Holy weapons were hard toe by now that the Holy Goddess was dead and they also happened to be the bane of undead. That meant they were probably perfect for killing the giants Lake had seen yesterday. Grabbing the sheath for the dagger Lake put it in his bag.
Of course he put it in the secret space he could store stolen items in because his bag was already full of junk. Mainly gold actually Lake really needed to find a ce to keep his gold because he couldn''t just keep carrying it around, It was starting to get heavy. [New Quest: Acquire one million gold]
Lake was stunned, was the way to unlock this mission really to just think he couldn''t carry all his gold. At least he had been right about gold being the way forward. Lake had realized the Insider seemed to subtly nudge him in the right direction so that was what had caused his recent obsession with gold.
It was trying to help him unlock the mission by making him like gold, so he would eventually have too much and unlock the mission by thinking. "I can''t carry all this gold." It was very roundabout and a weird thing for something that had just told him what to do with a vision to do.
Why hadn''t it just shown him a vision of him getting gold. Lake guessed it was possible the Insider couldn''t control when the visions happened so it had to just do what it could the rest of the time.
Realizing he was in a very dangerous ce to be just taking his time to think, Lake started to leave when he looked back at one of the swords. He thought it was a real shame he could only take one. Maybe in the future he woulde back and switch if he ever wanted to try something new.
The Insider should have no problem with him trading them out as long as he didn''t take more than one at a time. It was kind of like how a library made you return the books you had before you could take more.
Once he was in the tunnel Lake said the password again and once the door was sealed he walked up the tunnel and crawled out from under the chair and into the living room of the fake house.
Lake wondered if the people who lived here were also the ones who were supposed to wield the weapons if the city got attacked, and if so why aren''t they here, and why didn''t they have beds in their house. Also this ce was big but 23 people was a stretch.
Maybe there were 23 people in the city somewhere who all had normal lives until they were needed. It could be like the secret protectors of light, or something. Looking out towards where the owner of the house was, Lake thought maybe that was where the war was being fought at the moment, and maybe they hadn''t busted out the big guns yet, which was why all the weapons were here and not there.
It was prettymon for wars to escte, so the fact they had hidden weapons wasn''t that surprising. Opening the door out onto the street, Lake moved as fast as he could to get away. What he had just done really only hit him once he opened the door.
Chapter 90: Making Money Pt.4
Chapter 90: Making Money Pt.4
Once Lake was outside he really started to think about how much a million was. He had had a good day today with finding the chainmail and all but that was just luck. Most people wore their armor so the odds he would find some just sitting there were pretty low. Lake guessed the owner had to go somewhere it would be inappropriate to wear something like armor.
Lake headed towards the cksmiths guild because while he now had a new dagger it wasn''t something he could use all the time. It was too nice so he was going to use all the gold he had made today to get the knife Mary had given him upgraded. It was better to spend his gold instead of lugging it around all day, and with 1000 he was sure he could get a pretty good upgrade.
He would still probably break the knife again, but he was sure when that happened he could afford another upgrade, or maybe even do it himself if he had unlocked cksmith by then. Reentering the cksmith guild store, Lake walked up to the counter and started to talk to thedy who seemed to havepletely forgotten him already.
She only remembered him once he pulled out his knife. Lake guessed this made her good and bad at her job at the same time. Lake set up the repair and was told it would be ready at the same time tomorrow. Having spent 840 gold for his knife to be upgraded to Lv. 22 Lake''s satchel was much lighter, so he thought he could go back to work now.
With it being around 4 in the afternoon people were starting to go home with their day at work being finished, or at least that was what it seemed like because there were hardly any empty houses anymore. Lake guessed it would be a waste to break into houses if their owners wereing home so he switched targets.
With people heading home after work they should have what they earned at work today in their purses, so Lake saw this as a good time to pickpocket people. Lake didn''t waste his time with easy targets anymore, with how fast he was able to move his hands he could go after rich people with guards, and they still couldn''t stop him if he timed it right.
There weren''t people with guards around, but Lake could see some rich looking people with fat purses. Lake was about to go after one when he realized there was probably something like his ward ring you could wear that would protect you from someone like him.
Lake wasn''t really sure how it would work but he thought he had a pretty good chance of evading the anti theft measures with his Trespasser skill. Making sure he switched his job to Pickpocket Lake went after the closest fat purse he could see. Bending the metal sp open, Lake walked off with the purse, but before he got far he heard amotion behind him.
Figuring the man he had stolen this off of had noticed the missing weight Lake dashed or picked up just enough speed where he didn''t seem like he was running. If he didn''t have the skill A Thief''s Sense he would have ran to get away, but its effect that told him when people were paying attention to him, let him know the guy didn''t know who had stolen from him just that it had happened.
Once Lake was far enough away he got to trying to open the purse. It was enchanted and Lake couldn''t just open it the normal way. Lake guessed this was to buy the person time to find whoever had stolen from them before they took what they wanted and dumped the rest. Lake didn''t have a lot of time to waste, so he used Decrypt to reveal its enchantments, and whatever other effects it had.
Finding the right formation that opened the bag, Lake saw it had something simr to a keypad on it. But it wasn''t one where you had to put a code in, you just needed to put your fingers in three spots at the same time and it unlocked the bag.
Lake grabbed the gold two potions and this weird rock that looked simr to a core but was opaque instead of looking like gemstone. It was a light brown color, and when he touched it he could tell it wasn''t magic, or at least not like how cores usually were.
Lake knew you could only feel something was magic if it was currently giving off mana in some way or effecting the mana around it so this weird brown thing might just be too stable for him to feel its effects. This and the bar of metal he had gotten earlier were on his list of things to study tonight once he got to the cart.
They were both interesting but he was more worried about maxing out Pickpocket, so he had no ns to stop what he was doing, and inspect them in great detail right now. Seeing another rich person walk by him, Lake followed them for a few steps before he grabbed their purse and faded into the crowd going the other way.
Like thest time this person actually noticed their purse disappeared after a few seconds, but no one around was able to see Lake''s arms when he used Fast Hands, and even if their Perception was high enough, Lake wanted until no one was paying any attention to him to steal anything.
With thisbo of skills Lake didn''t think there were many people in this city that could stop him from stealing from them. He just wished he could take what they were wearing, because that was the real valuable stuff. Lake guessed he could steal peoples helmets off their heads, but it would be such an obvious thing they would probably chase him.
If anyone got a glimpse of his armor he would have to change it just to be safe because it wasn''t really the stealthiest set, there were a few distinct features to the armor he was wearing that made it possible someone might remember it if they got a good look at him while he ran.
It also needed a coat of paint, it was too shiny for Lake''s needs, he needed a way to dull the surface so it didn''t reflect so much light. Finally finding a good ce to go through the purse Lake opened it. It seemed not all rich people used the same form of anti theft, because this bag opened no problem.
This one had less stuff in it and Lake only took the gold and dumped the rest into some trash like he always did. Lake was surprised he hadn''t leveled up yet, but Lv.7 only needed 640 Exp, so he had to be getting close. Lake decided to take a break. He had been going nonstop since morning, and he needed to find some water.
There were plenty of wells around, one every few streets, so he just found one with arge amount of people, and sat down for a drink. He figured he might as well listen to what they were talking about while he rested. "Are you nning on getting a new job, so you can stay in the city?"
"Yeah, who would want to go outside with what just happened."
"Do you know what you want to do, because there aren''t that many openings with all the people who just showed up in thest few days."
"It''s crazy that so many were killed, and you can''t even tell. It''s like the streets are half the size that they used to be."
Lake wasn''t surprised everyone was talking about how the massacre that happened yesterday affected them and how much all the new people who moved to the city for safety annoyed them. It was human nature, and not that interesting.
Finished with his water, Lake stood up and started to head towards the part of town with more stores. It was about the time normal ces would start to close, and Lake wanted to see if it was realistic for him to break into one. He was sure ces with high value stuff wouldn''t just leave it unintended, so he wanted to see if it would be human guards, or magic that would be keeping it safe overnight.
If it was magic Lake could break in no problem of course he wouldn''t take his sweet time while inside but with him having Trespasser he wouldn''t set off any rms. What he was worried about were the items themselves setting off an rm when he moved them.
They could also be marked in some way that would allow them to be tracked, so he needed to use Decrypt on a few things before he started taking stuff, which would increase the amount of time he would be inside the store.
Chapter 91: In progress Pt.1
Chapter 91: In progress Pt.1
Lake had just passed the store he had marked yesterday, and while he still thought it would be a good ce to hit it was still open, so he moved on. It seemed the only ces that had already closed were the ones that no one would want to steal from. He was sure even they would have something he could steal.
...
Lake had found a cluster of a few stores with good stuff, and found a ce to watch all of them. He figured after a while of walking around that being able to see so many at once was his best chance at finding somewhere to break into, and it seemed he was right.
One of the jewelry stores just had itsst person leave and with no guards showing up Lake guessed they had a magic rm system. Jumping on to its roof after activating Mute, Lake punched a hole in the roof tiles then retreated.
He figured the door would also set off an rm if he opened it, so he was going to dig in through the roof but first he wanted to make sure they hadn''t thought of the possibility already. When no one showed up to see what was going on he got back onto the roof.
Lake wasn''t just digging in a random spot either when he was using Mana Vision he had seen most stores had a small amount of items that gave off mana in the back of their store, Lake assumed it was the good stuff that they had locked up for extra protection, and Lake was digging right towards it.
Once he had removed enough of the roof for him to enter, Lake used Mana vision one more time on his surroundings just to make sure no one was rushing towards the store. With nothing but normal foot traffic passing by Lake stuck his head in to see what he had dug into.
He was guessing they had an unused attic because there was no lighting from the space he had made an entrance into. Seeing nothing in the attic, Lake dropped inside, and positioned himself over the mana sources. Prying up the wood, and making sure that none of it dropped down, Lake looked down to see a medium sized safe.
Lake didn''t think he could carry it out of here in his satchel, so that just left him opening it to take the stuff inside. Lake could also go to the front of the store to take the less valuable stuff, but there were windows so people would see him in here. The safe was in a back room, so no one would see him trying to open it.
Using Burr rm to see where the owner was, Lake fell into the backroom next to the safe. When the owner didn''t move after him being inside for a while, Lake knew he was ok to start on the safe. Not even trying to inspect it, Lake used Decrypt on the safe and a few secondster two formations were lit up in Lake''s eyes.
One of them was a formation that increased the safe''s strength, but Lake didn''t care about that one. Moving on to the next one expecting it to be the way to open it, Lake found it was just an rm that went off if the safe was damaged or moved.
With there not being anything stopping him from inspecting it Lake Lake used Critical Eye and found his skill was showing him the thin space between the door of the safe around where he would assume thetch would be.
The reason Lake thought this safe had a magic method of being opened was it had no obvious handle or keyhole so he thought there would be a password to make it open, but it seemed it was a trick. The keyhole was hidden to make people think that, and give up on trying to open it without force, setting off the rm.
Lake got his eye closer, so he could see into the crevice better. He didn''t really have anything he could slide in there, so he wasn''t sure if he should just give up and move on but he decided he should try one of his new skills first.
Lake hadn''t tried it out because he wasn''t sure how to use it. Thinking "Detector, key for this safe." Lake looked around and when he didn''t see anything happen he wasn''t sure if it was because he hadn''t used the skill right, or if it was because the item wasn''t in range.
Lake decided to give up on opening it now and got a good look at where the owner was. Then he memorized his name and left heading towards where the mark was. The mark from Burr rm disappeared as soon as he was outside but he was hoping Detector would show him something once he got close to where the owner was.
Their house seemed to be only a few streets away and Lake was where he thought he should start looking for them. Stopping someone walking out of a house, Lake said. "Do you know where Ry Ander lives?" The person barely nced at him before saying. "No" and walked away.
They were lying though, so Lake stopped them again. "Where does he live? Where does he live? Where does he live? Where does he live?" The person seemed to realize Lake wouldn''t stop until he got an answer, so they said. "Right there."
It seemed Lake was only a few houses away. Thanking the person, Lake got closer to Ry''s house and once he was right next to it he saw Detector finally do something. It seemed it''s range was only about 15 ft at the moment, but that wasn''t what Lake cared about.
He had found the key for the safe, so now he needed to get it. Lake wasn''t about to bust in and fight this guy and his whole family, so he just marked the house with the n ofing backter when it was time for people to sleep.
Going back to the area the jewelry store was in, Lake Looked around for more empty businesses he could break into while he waited for night. Finding a decent looking potion shop Lake decided there was no point in robbing his own guild, so he moved on.
His next option was a clothes store and with his mana vision he couldn''t see anything good, while that didn''t mean there wasn''t, he didn''t feel like doing all that work for cloth. The next ce seemed to be a pawn shop, or maybe a store of curiosities, because when he looked through the window he saw all types of things. He couldn''t really see anything that didn''t look like junk, so he moved on once again.
...
Lake finally found something he wanted to break into, a weapon shop, the only problem was it had a guard. Lake saw the guard through the window as he walked by, and it seemed this ce was owned by the cksmith guild because they were wearing the same armor as he had seen when he was there earlier.
The sun had been in the process of setting when he had found this ce, and he had waited till it did because there was now less light, and people. Lake was going to try to break in because there was only one guard and he moved around from room to room, so if he timed it right he should be able to steal a few things before the guard noticed.
Lake activated Mute, and jumped from where he had been watching the ce onto its roof. He nned to go through the roof again because it was the one part of the building the guard wouldn''t notice if he broke it to get in.
Breaking a small hole in the roof, Lake checked to see if it had alerted the guard somehow. Seeing no reaction, he started breaking chunks of the roof off until the hole was big enough for him. Poking his head inside while looking at the guard using Mana Vision Lake still saw no reaction, so he looked at what was in the attic.
Unlike the jewelry store there were actually things in the attic this time. Stacks of wooden crates Lake wouldn''t be surprised if there were more than 50 of varying size and shape. Thinking he might have just hit the jackpot without even needing to go downstairs, Lake lowered himself in.
Even if he jumped there would be no sound, but he was afraid of dust falling from the ceiling downstairs and alerting the guard, so he was going to move slowly. Walking up to the first crate Lake pried the top off to look inside. Rows of swords were packed into the crate. There were 20 of them, and Lake was about to lose his mind until he looked closely.
They already had price tags on them that said 9 gold, and they were all the same cheap crap. It made sense that cheap stuff would sell in bulk because there were a lot of new adventures that would need a first sword, and this cheap one would be all they could afford.
Lake guessed whenever they sold a cheap item they came up to the attic to get the next one that would be on disy. To confirm he walked over to the next closest crate, and pulled the top off to see wooden bows like the one Stan had let him have.
These were even cheaper than the swords at only 5 gold. Lake put the two tops back on and decided to go downstairs to get something worth his time because at 5 gold a bow Lake would have to make 20 trips from here to the alley to make 100 gold, if they would even take it, and he thought he could do much better downstairs.
Chapter 92: In progress Pt.2
Chapter 92: In progress Pt.2
After waiting for the guard to leave the room the staircase down from the attic went into, Lake crept down the stairs. He was now in a back office, and after looking around to see if there were any items he could take without going to the front of the store, and not seeing any, Lake waited for the guard to move to the next room.
Lake nned to stay one room behind the guard as they did their rounds. Doing it like this, Lake would be able to check every room without risk of the guard noticing. This ce wasn''t too big, but from what Lake had seen there were at least three back rooms including the one he was in.
Lake thought this because the guard stopped three times before they returned to the storefront, where they spent most of their time. Seeing the guard had moved on to the next room, Lake followed suit. This room had a few more of the same type of crate from the attic in it. There were less, and Lake hoped that meant what was in them was more valuable.
None of them had tops on them, so Lake looked into the closest one to see what was in it. It was full of all types of things but there was an obvious simrity between them, they were all damaged. Lake didn''t know if these would be recycled for materials or repaired, but why would he steal junk when brand new stuff was a few minutes away.
Once the guard went back into the main storefront Lake moved to thest backroom. He didn''t look around much in this room though because it seemed to be a lounge for employees, or maybe important visitors. Now all Lake was waiting for was for the guard to start his rotation again.
Once the guard went back into the office he would have about five minutes in the storefront, where all he had to worry about was someone seeing him through a window. Lake was nning to stay low and behind a shelf while out there, so it was unlikely anyone who happened to walk by would see him.
Crouching down and entering the disy area as soon as the guard left, Lake wasted no time in finding an expensive item and using Decrypt on it. He had to make sure stuff wasn''t booby-trapped to set off an rm if it was moved before he started filling up his bag.
He picked a really expensive item because he felt they were the most likely to be trapped. Once Decrypt was done doing its thing, Lake looked through all the effects this helmet had and found one was tying it to the stand it was on.
Lake guessed doing it this way made sense at night they would just flip a switch, or whatever, and all the shelves and stands would make sure nothing was moved until morning. This meant Lake had to turn this off before he could take anything, which meant he was going to be spending a lot more time here than he had wanted to.
Seeing if the guard had almost finished their rotation yet Lake figured he had enough time to use Decrypt one more time. Using it on the stand itself Lake wasn''t expecting it to take too long or much mana, but when he felt the skill move on from the stand itself, and into the floor towards the office, Lake stopped Decrypt because he had his answer.
The way to unlock all the stuff was hidden in the office somewhere, and since the guard was about toe into the storefront Lake moved on to the office to look. This meant the guard was now one room behind him, so he couldn''t spend too much time looking.
Looking in the most obvious ces first Like the desk Lake didn''t find a switch, of course since this was a magic system a physical switch was ridiculous. He had only checked because he was hoping to do this fast, so he could move on.
Moving to the lounge because the guard was probably about to enter the office. Once they did, Lake reentered the storefront. Now that he had more time Lake used Decrypt on the closest shelf to the office. The skill slowly traced a line from the shelf to the office, and once it was done, Lake started to break down how the security formation that kept the items from moving worked.
The formation was unlocked by using an item Lake guessed was with whoever managed the store during the day. Lake was guessing it was like the ring he had seen Lucas use to open the door while they were at the top of the spire. Lucas had inserted his ring into a divot on the door which had unlocked it.
Lake was a little upset when he realized there was no way to unlock the security system without tracking down the key. There was also no way to know if the owner had the key because this was a guild business, so the owner and the person who managed it had a high chance of being different people.
Lake guessed the owner would technically be the guild leader of the cksmiths guild but he had no way of knowing through his name and location he could see because of Burr rm. Lake had one more thing he wanted to try though before he gave uppletely. Lake thought there was a small chance the guard might have a key for some reason.
There wasn''t a reason the guard would need to unlock the items at night but it was still worth a shot. Lake used Detector, and set it to look for the key. Now all he needed to do was get the guard inside the range of his skill to see if they had a key. It wasn''t too hard because he only had to move a few feet with its radius being twenty feet.
Seeing nothing from his skill he knew he was right about the guard not having a key, so this break in was a bust, unless he just tried his luck at pulling the items away from the shelves and stands they were on. This wasn''t a good way to go though because the rm would go off as soon as he tried and there was no way to guarantee he could even do it.
If he was able he could probably only get one item before the guard reacted plus whoever their guild sent to chase him. If he left without stealing anything he wouldn''t be able toe back either because of the huge hole he had put in the roof. There was no way they wouldn''t increase the security, even if it was just for a while.
Lake was upset about his failure but he saw the bright side of this being a good reason to learn more about a ce before he tried to rob it. If he knew who the manager was he could have gone to get the key from them like he had done at the jewelry store.
Lake felt a lot better after he thought about the jewelry store because it made him realize tonight wasn''t a total failure because he had really only been wasting time by breaking in here, which he had seeded at much better than he could have ever hoped with him getting nothing from it.
Getting back into the attic, Lake left through the hole he had made in the roof. If he made amotion here it might mess up his ns at the jewelry store so he was ok leaving empty handed. With it beingte enough that someone who worked all day would go to bed, Lake returned to Ry''s house to steal the key.
Once Lake was outside he retuned Detector for the safe key and since he was also using Mana Vision Lake saw the key wasn''t near anybody. Lake assumed it was because Ry had left it in his pocket when he had changed to go to bed. This made it easier for Lake because it meant he wouldn''t have to pickpocket a sleeping person.
Finding a window into an empty room, Lake decided not to go through it because Ry seemed rich, so the windows were probably trapped. After making this decision it left him with a wall or the roof and of course he chose the roof. Very few people would be able to see him since almost every house or building in this city had t roofs.
Since Mute had been on this entire time Lake punched a hole in the roof, and made his way in. Ry''s house didn''t have an attic it seemed so Lake needed to be quick before someone woke up to pee and saw a huge hole in the hallway. Lake dashed towards the key, and only stopped when he saw where the Detector said the key was.
Chapter 93: In progress Pt.3
Chapter 93: In progress Pt.3
It seemed the key was in a safe. Lake guessed Ry liked to keep his things safe at home as well. Lake didn''t have time to waste so he walked over and activated Decrypt. This safe had a handle, but no keyhole, so Lake was expecting it to be opened with magic.
Once the three formations were lit up Lake went through them real quick and found the way to open the safe was to grab the handle for a while then let go without pulling. If you pulled, you would set off an rm, but only if the safe had things in it.
Lake guessed this Ry guy really liked tricking people because both of his safes had tricks in their design. Opening the safe Lake grabbed the key to the safe in store, and left through the hole in the roof. Running to the store Lake hopped up and a few momentster he was in the jewelry store''s attic. Dropping down to the safe, Lake looked at the key before inserting it.
It was really thin and kind of shaped like a lollipop with the head being round with just a few small divots that kept it from being a perfect circle. Lake wasn''t sure which way the key went in, so he just tried the way he was holding it.
Once it was in, he wasn''t sure which way he was supposed to twist, so taking the tricky nature of the safes owner he spun it the opposite direction of what a normal key would. Lake wasn''t too worried about being wrong because he had seen the formation that set off the rm earlier, and it only went off if he moved the safe from its spot or damaged it in some way, so if he was wrong he could just try again.
Hearing a click, and seeing the door open slightly, Lake knew he had used the key correctly, but before he grabbed anything, he looked around using Mana Vision, while checking if Ry had reacted by seeing if his mark had moved any from where it had been.
Everything was ok, so Lake finished opening the door of the safe and looked inside. There were a few different types of jewelry inside but it was mostly rings, and since Mana Vision was still on Lake could see none of the rings were normal. Lake was sure the other things that weren''t giving off any mana were good as well since they were in the safe also, but it might just be because they were expensive, or special in other ways besides magic.
Opening his satchel Lake put everything inside the safe into the hidden inventory Booster Bag made next to the dagger he had stolen earlier. Once that was done Lake escaped, [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level max] and only stopped once he found a ce where he could calm down in peace.
While he calmed down he opened his stats to see what they were and to check his two new skills and see if they were as helpful as Fast Hands was. Pickpocket was said to mainly give skills that helped with dexterity rted actions so Lake thought there was a good chance.
Race: Human Lv.9 ( 8/10 )
Job: Pickpocket Lv.10 ( Max )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 90
Stamina 90
Mana 210
Strength 43
Endurance 15
Agility 77
Dexterity 87
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 111
skills:
Summon Hands (L) Lv.1
Form two extra arms from mana.
Lasts five minutes or until destroyed.
(Cost: 40 Mana)
Ghost Touch (L) Lv.1
You can turn things you touch ethereal for a short amount of time.
While they''re ethereal you can still interact with them.
Doesn''t work on living things as well.
(Amount of time scales off of Intelligence)
He was starting to wonder if there was something that kept you from getting skills that did the same things from different jobs because he had notices the skills he had been getting recently were getting moreplicated, and there were no repeats, but there was no way for him to know, so Lake opened his bag and pulled out all the stuff, and started counting.
He wanted to know how many things he got before he started trying to find out what each one did, and since they had price tags he would also organize them ordingly. Once he was done he had 23 items lined up with the cheapest being a ring worth 1700 gold, and the most expensive an amulet worth 4750 gold.
Lake knew he wouldn''t get this much when he sold them, but even if he only got half he would have more money than he could fit in his bag. Picking up the first ring Lake did his best to see what it did.
Ring of basic Fire Affinity
Helps gather Fire mana.
Must have appropriate Affinity to use.
Lake didn''t see any more relevant info when he used his various skills to try and find out more though when he used Verify it mentioned that the ring had been stolen in the past. Lake guessed this was why Appraiser was such a valued job in almost every guild or shop. Moving up the row to the next item Lake did the same.
Ring of basic Water Affinity
Helps gather Water mana.
Must have appropriate Affinity to use.
Lake wasn''t sure why this item was more expensive with them being so simr but he could guess the rest of these rings were going to do simr stuff, so he did them all really quickly. He only started paying attention again once he got to item 13.
Ring of Low Fire Affinity
Helps gather Fire mana.
Must have appropriate Affinity to use.
This ring was 2400 gold and Lake only stopped to acknowledge that something other than the element had changed. Moving to the next item which was another ring but also thest Lake looked at its details.
Ring of Low Metal Affinity
Helps gather Metal mana.
Must have appropriate Affinity to use.
Lake was happy to get through the rings and moved on to a set of earrings. They were on the big side of earrings so Lake guessed they actually did something other than look fancy.
Earrings of the Scout
Increases Perception and Agility by 10.
Can''t be used to pass the max of 100.
Lake could see why these cost so much now. 2700. It was like having another maxed outmon job if you wore them. Lake guessed the rest of these bigger items would be giving various amounts of stats but he was still going to look through them to see if any of them were like his ward ring, and were Mana vessels.
He could always use more Mana so he might consider actually keeping anything that he could use. It would be a risk to use stolen goods, but the fact people still bought them meant it wasn''t that big of a risk. Gabbing the next item, a bracelet, Lake looked at its details.
Bracelet of Strength
Increases Strength by 10.
Can''t be used to pass the max of 100.
Lake guessed this was only more expensive because of the increased material used to make it. With it being much bigger than a set of earrings, but that didn''t change the fact its effect was only half as good as the earrings. Lake had more hope for the next bracelet because it was clearly designed to show off the fact it did two things with it being two different colors of metal intertwined.
Bracelet of the Warrior
Increases Strength and Endurance by 10.
Can''t be used to pass the max of 100.
With the next few items having almost the exact same price as this Bracelet Lake was guessing they would only be different in appearance. He was right there were three more items with the effect of the Bracelet of the Warrior with slightly different names.
Moving on to the first item with a price tag over 4000 Lake tried to look at its details. When he felt a sting in his eye he knew he was going to have to use Decrypt to get the info. Once the two formations on the thin gold chain were lit up he skipped over the one that kept him from inspecting it unless he was wearing it and looked at the one that was the item''s effect on the wearer.
It was a plus 5 to all stats, so 35 stat points in total. Lake thought it was good, but he would prefer an item that specialized more. Like something that gave 35 to one stat would be nice but Lake guessed that was harder to make for some reason. Lake could tell this 5 to every stat formation was just a bunch of weak effects changed together into one.
Picking up the next one, Lake could tell this was one was different right away. He could feel that it could take his mana which made it something that would give him an ability instead of just stats. They looked like gold sses with really thin brims but they had no lenses in them so Lake guessed there was another reason they went over the eyes.
Once went through the tree effects on the sses, Lake understood why this item cost 4500. Once you filled it with mana it was able to imitate the effects of the Appraiser job to some extent but Lake bet if you already had the job they made it much better. They also protected your eyes from counter spells that would damage them to some extent so they were really something.
Once he was done with the sses he moved on to thest item, the amulet which was also able to take mana. Using Decrypt Lake saw this amulet had 4 separate effects the first off course being an anti inspection formation. The second being an effect that raised your intelligence by 10 but the next two were the real effects you could only use when you fed it mana.
They were both effects Lake could see mages liking so he guessed that was why this thing also increased Intelligence by 10. This thing seemed to help with casting high level spells by making the mana you fed it more stable while you changed the element you were going to use for the spell, and it didn''t just work on your own mana you could feed it the stuff you gathered from the surroundings as well.
Lake knew you had to control the principles of whatever element you were using if you wanted to be able to cast stronger spells, so he guessed this amulet made the process easier and faster. Thest effect was just one that let you store more mana to use for spells, so overall this thing just made a mage''s job much easier.
It was also the only one of these items that gave Intelligence other than the one that gave 5 to all stats and there was nothing that gave Dexterity and Charisma either so Lake guessed this chain with the 5 to all stats was much better than he had thought and if it was a Mana vessel it would probably be much more expensive than any of these other items.
Lake decided to keep five things: the chain, the amulet, the earrings, the sses, and one of the Bracelets of the warrior. Everything else he was going to sell for cash, but in a few trips because he didn''t want to walk around with thousands of gold in his bag because to be honest his satchel would probably rip and spill it all.
Lake was sure he could get around 18000 for the 18 things he was going to sell though and that was quite a bit for one night of work. He was actually kind of happy he hadn''t gotten any more because he would have had to buy a house or something in town to keep all the money he made.
Lake wondered if there were coins more valuable than the gold ones, so he wouldn''t have to carry around so much. Maybe something worth a thousand gold, or something. Then he would get 18 instead of 18000. Of course you couldn''t use something like that in a normal store because they wouldn''t be able to exchange it but still.
Heading towards the alley to get the first 1000 to spend tomorrow, Lake started to think about the skill he had received when his Intelligence had hit 100. It was simr to the amulet in some ways and the reason he had chosen to keep it. He thought maybe tomorrow was the day he would finally get around to learning to fly.
Chapter 94: The interaction
Chapter 94: The interaction
Once Lake got to the alley and was let inside he saw that a lot of the stuff was actually gone. Lake guessed someone came by and bought all the jewelry they had for some reason. Well not all of it, just a lot, more than half seemed to be an urate estimation. Lake saw this as a good thing for him because he knew they would have enough gold to pay him.
Seeing the same guy he had every time he hade here, Lake walked up and took the two cheapest items he had stolen from the safe and put them on the counter. It didn''t take long for the guy behind the counter to say. "It''s good stuff but I''m not able to urately estimate its value, so you''ll need to take it to someone else I know. The only problem is you''ll need to be in the guild to meet them. If you don''t want to join I''ll have to lowball the price to make sure I don''t give you too much."
"What''s the offer?" Lake was hoping for something around 1400 for these two rings, so he would make a decision after he heard how little he was actually about to get. "I can only give you 800 to be safe." Lake guessed this guy was bad when it came to appraising magic items, so he couldn''t tell what the effects of the rings were.
He could also tell this wasn''t just a ploy to get him to join their guild because the guy hadn''t lied about not being able to urately estimate its value, so he asked. "What is the process to join?" Lake could tell the guy was happy he was interested even if he hadn''t lied to make it happen.
"It''s simple, you just have to finish one of these." The guy pulled a stack of papers out after he said this, and let Lake see them. "Just choose one no matter what the difficulty is and you also get the reward if youplete it on top of bing a member." The guy had handed him a stack of jobs that needed to bepleted.
Flipping through them real quick to see if the one Lucas had set up was on one of the sheets Lake didn''t see it. He also didn''t see anything that hard, it was just a lot of taking something from their neighbor or ex because they wanted it. Just picking one where he needed to break into someone''s house, Lake handed it to the guy.
"I''ll do this one, is there a time limit?" The guy shook his head and said. "No you just have to be the first toplete the mission because others can take it as well and if you take too long you''ll end up failing your test." Lake had actually been nning to go sleep in his cart after this but he guessed he could go do this real quick.
It would only take a couple of minutes once he got to the house and all he needed to steal was a family heirloom because the person who hadmissioned the job thought his brother would sell it, and that his parents should have left it to him instead.
...
Standing outside the guys shack that he would probably call a house Lake set Detector to look for the shield he was there to steal then give back. Since this guy''s house was so small it ended up being about 5 feet from where Lake was standing outside the house.
Lake used Mana Vision to see if anyone was inside and when he saw there were a couple inside he knew this would take longer than he hoped. When Lake said a couple he meant literally, from the way their cores were moving he could tell what was going on inside.
This wasn''t the first time he had seen this while using Mana vision because he was looking into people''s houses but this was the first time it had anything to do with them. Lake just hoped the woman didn''t live here and would leave after they were done and Lake hoped this guy did the ssic move of falling asleep soon after. It waste so there was a good chance.
Lake was actually surprised they were still at it with it being a few hours after most people had already gotten done with their nightly routine, maybe they both had high Endurance or something.
Almost forty minutester Lake saw the movement finally slow down and he guessed they were done because right after that Lake saw one of them get off the bed and a few secondster he guessed they used to get dressedter they headed for the door. Lake was already hidden from their view, so he didn''t need to hide or anything, so once they had left he waited for whoever was still inside to fall asleep.
Once he thought that it had happened Lake smashed a hole in the thin wooden wall and grabbed the shield. Turning to run it didn''t even take a second for Lake to tell there was something wrong. Lake could tell this shield wasn''t as crummy as it looked and when he felt it tug itself out of his grasp and back to the surprisingly awake person watching him from the bed, Lake knew he had just been caught for the first time.
"My brother sent you huh? Well after I kick your ass to death you can tell him our parents gave me the shield because I can use it, and he can''t."
Lake couldn''t tell if this guy was about to kill him, or not because the threat hadn''t made sense, but he could tell they were about to fight. Lake could run of course, but he would fail the mission, and to get the shield now he would have to knock the guy out, so he couldn''t use the shield any more while he took it to the alley.
Also the brother had asked that he wasn''t killed, so if Lake just offed the guy, he would also fail. Lake waited for the guy to make the first move because he was going to take a passive approach towards this fight at first, so the guy would overuse his skills and hopefully the shield would stop working, but when he expected the first attack to be used the guy just put a shirt on.
Lake couldn''t help butugh because this was the first time he had ever seen someone do that before a fight. He also admired this guy''s guts to do something like that in front of someone who was there to do crime on you, but he also saw it as a chance to end this early using his full speed including Burst Lake hent for the guys throat.
He wasn''t going to slice it or anything, just give it a smack that a potion could heal, but right when his hand was about to rumble his apple, Lake''s hand hit something much harder than a gizzard. With a crunching noise Lake felt his hand be blocked by the guy''s shield.
Lake hadn''t expected any form of defense from a guy still in the process of getting his shirt over his head, but it seemed this guy was willing to take the time to put it on during a fight because he knew his shield would protect him while he did. Pulling his hand back, Lake could tell his fingers were fine; he had just hit his hand hard enough to pop his fingers.
He also knew the shield had just blocked an attack from him while he was using Burst so unless he used Fast Hands or Crunch that was his max attack power. Lake was in a bad position in this fight because he couldn''t kill the guy, or destroy his shield if he wanted to pass his mission, so he couldn''t rely on strength to win so that just left Intelligence and Agility.
Seeing the shield start to move out of the way, Lake was about to try and make a non lethal attack when he realized the shield was spinning towards his face. He had to turn his head as he dodged because of the speed the shield was moving and when he turned it back to get his eyes back on the guy all he could see of him was his fist a centimeter away from his face.
Lake didn''t have time to dodge, but he still tried while bracing his nose. Feeling a crunch from his nose Lake was knocked back a few steps and when he was about to get his movement under control he felt something like a searing pain in his shoulder.
Opening his eyes that were tearing up like crazy from the attack to his nose, Lake saw the shield now back in front of the guy had blood on it. Looking at his shoulder Lake saw a gash that had gone straight through his armor and cut down into the center of his shoulder. He could tell by looking at it that his cor bone had been cut so it was a serious wound.
This was the first time Lake had ever been injured during a fight so he was kind of in shock when he was the mess that was his shoulder. "You''re one of those Bitches from the Thieves guild aren''t you. I can tell you aren''t used to being hit with how easy it was to break your nose. Is that enough for you to run and tell my brother not to try this again, or do I need to take your hands off."
Lake could tell this guy also had no ns to kill in this fight, but Lake was having a hard time with the amount of pain he was in so he really couldn''t get himself to do anything but watch the blood gush from his wound. Snapping out of it he said. "I''ll go and tell your brother." Lake started to walk away and tried to use his arm to get the first aid stuff out of his bag when he heard.
"Tell him toe visit as well. I haven''t seen him since moms funeral." Lake doubted he would do that because he had no intentions of ever seeing this guy''s brother; he just wanted to stop himself from bleeding before he came back for round two.
Chapter 95: A Fight With No Real Risk
Chapter 95: A Fight With No Real Risk
Once Lake was around the corner he looked at how much health he had left while getting a potion out. Seeing he still had 67 he guessed his wounds just looked bad, and weren''t life threatening. Ripping the top off of the potion Lake poured some on his shoulder then once the bleeding stopped he inspected his nose.
The guy had punched him in the face so hard that even with the helmet his nose had been ttened, and Lake knew this because he hadn''t been able to breath through it since. Getting his helmet off to inspect the damage, Lake thought that when he fought that guy again he should really use someone else''s face.
Doing his best to straighten his mushed nose, Lake drank some of the potion and felt it return to normal. He could also feel his corbone return to being one thing. Looking at his health and seeing it was maxed, Lake put his helmet back on and changed his identity to Jon.
Now that he was all better, and ready for round two, Lake headed back to the shack, and punched another hole in the wall. "You stupid bastard! Why do you keep doing that?" Lake was about tough, when he realized the guy had already attacked because The Sight kicked in.
Jumping out of the way the shield flew through the wall leaving only a thin hole like it had sliced through butter. Lake hadn''t realized earlier when he had grabbed it but it seemed the shield had razor sharp edges. Lake guessed a flying shield didn''t have to be limited to defense, and this point had been proven earlier when it had cut through his armor like it was nothing.
Keeping his eye on the shield, Lake waited for it to try and hit him on the way back to the guy, and dodged out of the way again. With the shield inside, Lake couldn''t really see it any more so he turned on Detector again because it was still set to the shield.
Seeing it was inside and wasn''t moving, Lake opened the door to the shack, and saw the guy wasying on his bed like he wasn''t even involved in the fight. "You know I''m trying to sleep right now, why don''t you juste back tomorrow instead?"
Without saying anything Lake crouched down, and grabbed one of the pieces of wood that used to be part of the wall, and threw it at the guy. Lake saw as the shield flew and intercepted the attack while the guy still had his eyes closed.
This made Lake wonder if this guy was even controlling this thing. "So, did you see my brother when you took this mission?" Lake didn''t see a reason not to answer, so he said. "No, just a piece of paper."
"Too bad, I wanted to know if he still looked stupid." Lake could tell there was a lot of story behind this guy and his brother, but he really hadn''t picked a side, he was really just here to finish a mission that he had originally thought would be easy.
Lake looked around a little with the fight seeming toe to a halt he felt it was safe enough. He had to say this guy''s ce was a dump, the floors were literally dirt and there was no furniture other than the bed the guy was on. Lake didn''t understand why this guy would live this way when he was obviously extremely strong.
even if all that strength came from his shield, so what, he was capable enough to make some money. Lake guessed there was no point in thinking about what a clearly stupid person was thinking. His whole Life was probably nonsense, and Lake didn''t want to know any more than necessary.
Walking over to the shield that was floating in the air around the guy, Lake tried to get close to it only for it to move away from him. Seeing this, Lake tried to get close to the guy for the shield to try to cut his arm off.
Lake could not tell if the guy was controlling it or not but it didn''t really matter. Using Burst, and Fast Hands, Lake smacked the bed frame, shattering it. The guy started to fall off the now uneven bed onto the floor, and Lake was about to kick him when the Shield came flying to block the strike.
Knowing there was no way to hit the guy before the shield got in the way, Lake jumped and smacked the shabby barley functional roof, copsing it onto where the guy wasying on the floor.
Lake had been trying to use this as a distraction for the shield so he couldnd a hit on the guy but the shield didn''t move and just let all the wood fall into a pile on top of the guy. "You''re really going to make me mad with all the shit you''re breaking."
The guy exploded out of the pile, and threw a punch at Lake, and at the same time the shield went low for his legs. Lake knew the only time he could possiblynd an attack on this guy was when he set the shield out as an attack, so Lake just jumped and epted that the guy''s punch was going tond somewhere on his chest.
Throwing his own attack at the guy''s throat, Lake watched as the shield raced up towards his attack, but Lake was pretty sure he was faster with the Burst and Fast handsbo. Stabbing his finger into the guy''s throat, Lake knew he had just gotten revenge for his nose, now all he needed to do was stab the guy in the stomach for the shoulder wound.
Pulling his finger before the shield could cut his arm off, Lake made some distance between them to see the wound on the guy''s neck was gushing blood Like a fountain. Lake didn''t know what the artery was called, but he guessed he had hit it with his attack.
Lake saw the confusion on the guy''s face as he tried to get the bleeding under control. With him unable to, he said. "What the fu..." Before passing out in a pool of blood. Realizing this was from the skill he had gotten yesterday Blood Loss Lake rushed over and pulled out what was left of his health potion.
Pouring it onto the wound Lake saw it slowly start to close and once it was done, he checked the guy''s pulse to see he was still alive. Lake looked around for the shield that both of them seemed to forget about after the blood started shooting from the guy''s neck to find it partially in the floor.
Lake guessed when the guy passed out it had lost power and retired to the state it was in when he had first tried to steal it. Kicking as much of the broken wood under the part of the bed frame he had broken earlier to keep it up, Lake threw the guy onto his bed and dropped a drop of potion into his mouth to help with the blood loss.
Once he was done making sure the guy was fine Lake grabbed the shield, and headed towards the Alley. Lake stopped to get some food at the bar right next to the Alley before he went inside and after eating the crap they were selling he knocked on the door.
"It seems you weren''t able to pull it off without him catching you." Lake could tell the guy was talking about the hole in the shoulder of his armor, and said. "Here''s the shield." putting it on the table to let the guy look at it, Lake went to leave when he heard.
"That mission had been open for over 6 years, and the guy you took it from is named Donny and it''s pretty much his whole life fighting off the thugs his brother sends to take the shield from him." Lake could see why his brother would want it so much it was really strong, but it was a little much harassing your brother full time like that. "I wanted to tell you to pick again when you chose that mission, but Donny never kills any of the people we send, so I just thought you would need to regrow your hands, which you can afford."
The guy pointed at a potion that wasbeled 2500 gold. "Why are you telling me this?" Lake understood the mission must have been hard but surely this guy had another point. "Well you didn''t ask for your reward forpleting the mission."
"Oh yeah you''re right, what is it? Lake hadpletely forgotten why he had even done any of that. "Well first you need to be a member here you go." The guy handed Lake what seemed to be a gold coin but when Lake looked at it he could tell the design was different. "That''s your ID for the guild, and here''s where you need to go for the rest. Take the shield with you. I don''t have enough for the reward so turn it in when you get there."
Lake still didn''t know what the reward was but he guessed he would know soon. Looking at where the card told him to go, Lake headed towards the Alchemy guild. It seemed he was about to go to where he had seen Lucas go when he tried to set up the job to steal the journal in the pce.
Chapter 96: Separate From Lake
Chapter 96: Separate From Lake
Separate from what Lake was doing, two events that would affect him were happening at the same time. Inside Donny''s shack he had just woken up and could tell right away that his shield was gone. Donny was pissed and got onto his feet walking past all the rubble that used to be his roof he went over to his neighbors house, and kicked their door down.
"What the hell Donny, get out." Donny knew his neighbor pretty well because they saw him fight off some of the thieves that came for his shield every now and then. It was kind of like an event that everyone around here would watch when they were free. "Shut up, I need to borrow your spear."
Donny had used a spear before he inherited the shield from his father when he passed so it was the weapon he was best at. Pushing his neighbor away when he tried to stop him, Donny took the spear and headed into town. He had dealt with the thieves enough to know where they did business.
...
The other event happening was a fleet of carts were heading into the city. This had been happening non stop for the past two days as people evacuated to the city, but these carts held the residents of Corn town where Lake had stayed when he first got to this world.
Wace had wanted to be some of the first to arrive to the capital but when he had told his n to the residence, they told him they were not willing to go anywhere until the festival was over, and they had packed as much of the corn in their warehouse up as they could to be sold once they got to the capital.
Wace knew they would need the money and the festival had almost been over, so he had agreed to the n, and luckily nothing terrible had happened to them. Wace had been scared that what the Temple of Light had told him about the Demon Worshipers killing whole towns in the middle of the night would happen in the one night they had postponed the evacuation.
Now that he had heard about the forest massacre he thought they had been unintentionally lucky by holding off for a day. He was sure some of his people would have been killed during it if they hade yesterday
Seeing that they were about to arrive Wace sighed in relief and said to Stan sitting next to him. "Don''t let any of the carts out of your sight until I get back from the farmers guild. The price of food is skyrocketing because all the farming viges were abandoned overnight. Someone might try something."
They had 15 carts filled with food and each one was worth only 200 gold just a few days ago but now the price was quickly closing in on 600 so someone might try to steal one in the short amount of time it would take for him to sell all of it to the guild.
Then once he returned and gave the people of the vige the money from the sale, he was done being their mayor. His golems had made it to a level where he felt he was ready to start his business. It had always been his n from the start to move to the capital to sell his goods and now that he was here everything had kind of worked out for him.
Now all he needed to do was find out which guild wanted him more. His golems had to do with two fields so he could see him ending up in either the Farmers guild or the Alchemist guild. His new farming golem he had developed after Lake''s idea for a golem that could shuck corn had been a major breakthrough, and with the fact people wouldn''t want to farm during the war meant he could silently take over the food production industry if he found the funding he needed to create an army of them.
Wace was leaning towards the Alchemist guild for a few reasons first was his grandfather had been a member of the Mage guild so he knew they had the equipment he needed to make golems there. The second was he would be a hotmodity because he had an Legendary skill for Enchanter that made his golems better at things other than fighting.
The third reason was he was sure they would fund all his research because he meant to develop golems that could care for nts other than corn which was something they would like to have with all the nts they needed for Alchemy.
His Last reason was a little embarrassing but he knew it was a good business strategy. Lake was a member of the Alchemist guild and with him being an idea machine Wace was sure he would have some more good ideas if he was around him.
Wace knew it would have taken him forever to realize he might be able to make a golem that did something other than fight, but Lake had had the idea after he had pressured him for less than five seconds. Wace hoped that being someone with a Legendary skill would get him into the Legend Spire, so he could be in close proximity to Lake.
A lot of people didn''t know that people that made golems gain Exp from the actions of their controlled golems. It was how a lot of Enchanters leveled even though all they did was sit in ab all day. The thing was Wace had started to gain Exp from the nts his farming golems were harvesting.
This meant the assumption that you could only get Exp from your golems killing something was wrong, and that Wace had just found a much easier way to level up his jobs from now on because you earned the Exp even after you switched your job from Enchanter. It didn''t matter what your current job was, the Exp your golems earned you went towards leveling you up.
Wace had hit the max of 100 in Intelligence long ago and had always wanted to buy the Elixirs the Alchemy guild sold that allowed you to pass 100. The problem was they were expensive and they only sold the weaker one that had less of an effect. This was also the reason he had be the Mayor of corn town because he had been unable to level any jobs that gave intelligence, so he had switched to earning Charisma for the day he opened his business.
If he was to join the alchemist guild he would be able to earn an Elixir with his hard work and finally raise his Intelligence past 100. Wace couldn''t wait to see what would be possible for his golems once he mastered a few more jobs and gained more skills that would boost his craft.
...
Donny had just arrived outside where the Thieves guild did most of their business, and was just trying to get a whiff of his shield. Since it was filled with his mana there was very little difference between it and a part of his body. As soon as he got close enough he should feel it react to his presence.
He just hoped his brother didn''t already have it because his brother kind of knew how to use it, and that would mean he had no chance of taking it back with this shitty spear he had just borrowed, but if the thief still had it he had a chance in the fight especially once he had his shield back under his control.
Stopping to catch his breath Donny checked his Health to see all three of his stat bars were low not just his Health, so it looked like he wouldn''t be using very many skills or spells. This was the first time in a long time he had to look at his health because most of the time there wasn''t anything around that could get past his shield. It seemed his brother had finally busted out his portion of the will, their parents'' money.
That had been what his father had decided Donny would get the shield and his older brother would get everything else but somehow his brother wasn''t happy with just that he wanted something that was almost useless in anyone else''s but Donny''s hands.
The shield had been in their family for over ten generations and it was always handed down to whichever person could use it the best, and before Donny had been born that person was his brother. Who could actually get it to float, unlike their father who was only able to use it while holding it, but he could use it better than anyone in thest six generations.
His father had said that Donny would be able to revive the family with nothing but the shield, and that was the reason it was the only thing he had received in the will. Nothing but a shield was how their family had been started when his ggggggggggggggggreat grandfather found the shield while fighting in the first war against the Demon Lord.
Donny''s head snapped to look off in a direction he hadn''t been expecting for the thief toe from. He had just felt his shield for half a second which meant it was still full of his mana, so his brother wasn''t here yet. Him feeling it also meant it was pretty close, so he rushed in the direction it was before it was no longer there.
Chapter 97: A Matter Of Skill Pt.1
Chapter 97: A Matter Of Skill Pt.1
Lake felt the shield wobble a little so without thinking he started running back the way he came from. Lake guessed there would only be one reason it would wobble like that so it seemed he had been a little generous with thatst drop of potion he had given Donny.
He calmed down when the shield started to act like an actual shield again. It seemed keeping the shield away from Donny would keep him from controlling it. When it had first moved Lake hadn''t been sure if it meant he was close or just awake. If it had been that he could control it no matter where he was as long as he was awake, Lake would have had to go back to the shack for round three.
Lake didn''t ever bother to mark Donny because he had thought it was over, so he didn''t know which direction he wasing from, so every time he felt the shield move he would switch directions. It didn''t seem to be working though because the amount of time between it moving was decreasing which meant Donny was slowly chasing him down.
Lake was surprised that Donny was able to keep up with him so well, and guessed he needed to use Burst to get out of town. Donny must be able to sense where the shield was, so his only hope to get away was to make him see he could never catch him. Lake nned to do that by going faster than any normal person could.
With his Agility being as high as it was as soon as he activated Burst he would leave Donny behind; the only problem with this n was he was sure Donny knew where he had been going so he would just wait for him there. Lake thought it was too bad that his satchel wasn''t big enough for him to try and store the shield in the space created by Booster Bag.
He had noticed the daggers considerable aura disappeared when he had ced it inside the space and it made him think it might be a way to cut items off from this world or something. Whatever it was doing would probably make Donny unable to find or use the shield if it was in there.
Speeding to the edge of town, Lake was about to head to his cart but stopped himself when he thought about the possibility of Donny knowing where the shield was at all times. If he was to head home Donny might show up and do what Lake had done to his shack.
While still moving, Lake used Decrypt on the shield to see what all it could do. Lake figured if he was to know how this thing worked he would be able to make a n that would allow him to get it to the Thieves guild.
After a few seconds Lake realized this thing was packed full of formations and different magic effects and he quickly came to realize even with the mana stored in his ward ring he wouldn''t have enough to fully Decrypt the shield.
Stopping the process so he would not waste all his mana, Lake tried to think of another way he could get past Donny. If he knew where he was, Lake could just leave the shield and intercept Donny before he could reim it, but since he hadn''t bothered to do so, Lake would just have to deal with being chased.
While Lake had beaten Donny technically he knew it had only been because Donny hadn''t killed him in the many chances he had to do so. Like when Donny had cut his shoulder he could have easily sliced his head off or when he had been punched in the face if Donny had been holding any form of weapon that would have been it.
The next time they fought Lake doubted Donny would go easy on him anymore. Lake was sure Donny would go for the kill if it meant he got his shield back and that was why he was running away instead of fighting him.
With some more thinking Lake realized he could probably just give the shield back, he already had the guild badge so all he needed it for now was the reward which he didn''t even care about enough to look at what it was when he had been picking a mission.
With this thought Lake just threw the shield into some bushes and started back towards town, Lake thought this was the safest way to hand the shield back to Donny without there being a fight to the death.
Once he made it to the street the Thieves guild was apparently on Lake looked for the entrance for a while until he heard. "Found you." Lake spun around to see Donny charging towards him with a spear. Donny seemed to have high Agility because there wasn''t much time for Lake to react let alone say something.
Using his sword to deflect the spear thrust away from his body, but Lake was actually just pushed back out of the way. He guessed this meant he had lost in a battle of Strength and that Donny had the advantage if Lake didn''t use Burst. It was actually still possible that Donny had more than when Lake used Burst if he had over 86.
Donny seemed to realize Lake didn''t have the shield anymore as he said. "Where is it?" This made Lake realize he had probably been wrong about Donny being able to feel where the shield was at all times and was happy he had marked the shield during the second fight with Donny because now he could go get it after he knocked Donny out again.
After he didn''t answer, Donny came at him again with the spear. Lake got ready to slide backwards after he was struck but was caught off guard when Donny switched up the attack at the Last second and swung it at him like a bat. Moving his guard to the side, Lake felt himself get sent flying towards a building.
Lake was surprised again at how strong Donny was because at first he had seemed to focus on Agility with how fast he was able to move, but Lake guessed he had high numbers in both, and that made this fight much more dangerous to both of them because it meant Lake couldn''t really hold back too much.
He just hoped Donny had bothered to put any points into Endurance, so Donny wouldn''t die when he hit back. Once Lake stopped himself from mming into the wall He braced for the next one. He nned to let Donny whale on him until he calmed down or slipped up on an attack.
Donny was clearly very mad that Lake had done something to his shield, so Lake was expecting this to take a while. Receiving the next attack Lake slid back totally fine until he felt his foot hit an elevated part of the street which made him lose his footing. Lake did his best to keep his eyes on Donny even as he tumbled in the air and was able to block the attack that Donny hadunched towards his stomach.
Lake was sent tumbling backwards along the ground, and was unable to keep his eyes on Donny during it. Lake wanted till he felt his fingers make some form of contact on something and used what he grasped to stop himself and scrambled to his feet to see Donny hadn''t been able to get close enough to take advantage of him rolling backwards.
Now that he was back on his feet, Lake saw the foolishness of his original n and decided to be more proactive in the fight; there was no reason he couldn''t be the aggressive one so when Donny moved towards him again Lake moved in as well. Lake was pretty sure Donny was going to go for another straight thrust so instead of blocking it Lake dodged to the side and sent his sword down towards Donny''s hands grasping the spear.
Donny was able to block the attack with no problem, but Lake had mainly done it so he wouldn''t be sent flying again. Activating Burst Lake did the same attack but twice as fast, hoping to catch Donny off guard. With it being blocked again Lake didn''t use Fast Hands just yet he wanted Donny to think this was the fastest he could swing his sword for now.
Lake continued to attack Donny at this speed for a while till he knew it was safe to use Crunch. Lake wanted to make sure Donny blocked in a way that he wouldn''t kill him after he sliced through the spear. Silently activating Crunch Lake''s sword passed through Donny''s spear like it was nothing.
Lake could tell Donny was confused by what just happened because he moved back away from Lake. Lake smiled towards him, and said. "You want to be done now?" Donny shook his head no, and said. "It''s the first time I''ve seen something other than my shield cut something like that."
Lake knew what Donny meant the way his shield passed through things with no resistance was very simr to what Crunch did. "Are you sure you don''t want to end the fight here? You don''t have much of your spear left." Lake had cut it down to about two and a half feet, so Donny wasn''t going to be able to do most of the attacks he had shown anymore.
After Lake was done talking he saw Donny put the two sides back together and say. "Repair Weapon." And after he was done he swung it, and said. "We can continue." What Lake didn''t know was Donny had an affinity with metal and had maxed out the Metal Mage job long ago before his father had even passed on the shield meaning he could use quite a few Metal spells like the one he had just used.
Chapter 98: A Matter Of Skill Pt.2
Chapter 98: A Matter Of Skill Pt.2
Lake hadn''t thought about the fact that someone could use magic to fix something before but now that he did it was pretty obvious. He wished he had known this before he had spent so much to get his knife fixed, but most of what he had paid had gone towards upgrading it, not just fixing its shape.
Not wanting to give Donny the chance to pick up speed for his strike, Lake Used Burst to close the distance and swung for Donny''s arm. Lake doubted Donny would be able to reattach his arm as easily as he had his spear, so Lake guessed he was going to have to take a risk and use Crunch on Donny.
Donny seemed to understand Lake could just go through his spear if he used it to defend, so he moved out of the way of the strike instead of blocking. Lake had expected this and made the next strike towards Donny''s fingers as fast as he could using both Burst and Fast Hands.
Lake stopped the swing before he took all of Donny''s fingers so he would be able to heal him after he passed out from blood loss again. Because of his Blood Loss skill Lake had a hard time with being nonlethal, so if he went overboard with how big of a wound he opened on Donny there would be no way to stop Donny from bleeding to death.
Donny didn''t react much at first but once he saw the amount of blood he was losing It looked Like he was about to run so Lake said. "If you pass out where I can''t find you, you''ll die before I can close your wounds." Lake marked Donny just incase He didn''t take his advice, but it seemed it was unnecessary because Donnyid down the spear and said. "Fine you win!"
Lake watched as Donny got on the ground and started squeezing the two nubs where his fingers used to be and said. "Almost bleeding to death twice in one night is pretty dangerous. You should have quit after the first one." Donny didn''t seem to be in the mood to talk so Lake shut up after he said this.
Lake could tell Donny had some time till he passed out because this wound wasn''t bleeding anywhere near as much as the one in his neck earlier, so he knew this would be a boring couple of minutes so he had been hoping to talk to him while they waited.
Once Donny''s face had started to turn white they both could tell he could pass out at any moment and surprisingly Donny asked. "Is this poison or a skill making me bleed this much?" Lake had no idea why he would answer this so he said. "Does it matter?"
"No. Just wanted to know if this was a skill from Assassin because it seems specialized in killing people." Lake could see what Donny meant but he was wrong, he was pretty sure Ripper was actually one level higher than Assassin, but he didn''t actually know since his said U where the rarity was.
"And It isn''t just my Health falling as I bleed out either my Stamina and Mana are falling as well, that''s why I thought it might be a poison." This was info Lake was happy he had because he had actually wondered if Blood Drain and Blood Loss worked together Like they seemed to. "How much did my brother pay to hire you?"
Lake could tell Donny was about to lose consciousness so he said. "I don''t know." and moved to close the wounds on Donnys hand before he died. Lake used most of what was left of his potion to close the skin around the amputated fingers and then he left Donny lying there, and went home to his cart.
He was tired and the sun was about toe up, so he would do the rest tomorrow. Lake knew that Donny would probably be up by then and there was a chance he would be here waiting for him, but he hoped Donny would assume he had already turned the shield in for the reward, and head home. Getting to his cart, Lake decided to leave the two things he had stolen and wanted to inspect today for tomorrow, and went straight to sleep.
...
Once he woke up Lake opened the cart door and was about to head off in the direction of the shield when he saw everyone was looking behind his cart. There was a massive crowd all looking off in the same direction, so Lake assumed something must be going on.
Getting far enough from his cart that he could see what they were all looking at Lake was a little relieved that it was just smoke rising in the distance. It wasn''t good news, but it was better than a giant army or something headed towards them.
Lake guessed this was a sign that the war was getting closer to the capital, and maybe by tomorrow it would be here. Either way Lake was sure it would be much more chaotic in the city today, people would most likely start to panic now that they could see how close the war was.
Now that he knew this might be hisst day of safely being able to wander the city, Lake tried to think what would be a good use of his time. There wasn''t really a way for him to make a dent in the million gold he needed, so he decided today might not be a good day to steal anything.
He already had plenty of money for the day so other than to level up a job there wasn''t much reason to steal. He needed to pick up his knife, but he still had a few hours until then, so he figured he should go ahead and go get the shield before he couldn''t leave the city anymore.
It didn''t take him too long to find it and he was quickly on the way towards the Thieves guild. He also stopped to get some food on the way. He didn''t eat it, but he figured it was good to have some with him at all times from now on just in case he was ever cut off from a supply.
Once he got to the ce the card told him to go he saw a guy sitting on a chair next to the door. After a few seconds of staring at each other Lake tried to walk in when the guy said nothing so Lake walked inside with no problem.
Once inside Lake saw quite a few people all looking at massive boards that Lake assumed had jobs posted. Lake wasn''t surprised by theck of security because he remembered what Joy had told him about messing with the dark guilds, and how no one did so if they wanted to live.
Lake didn''t see a ce to turn the shield in for a reward, so he walked through the only door he could see to find a much more office looking ce with counters and people at desks. It seemed there was a lobby for people to look through jobs before you came back here once youpleted them.
Walking over to one of the desks, Lake showed the person behind the counter the shield and said I was told to bring this here. "Do you know what mission this was for?" Lake had no idea so he shook his head. "Well usually I''d be pissed at you for not knowing the mission code, but since this is obviously Donny''s shield I''ll let you slide."
Lake saw the person get up and go into one of the doors that were in the room ande back out a few secondster holding a bag that Lake assumed held gold. It was kind ofrge and Lake didn''t want to lug it around for the rest of the day, but he guessed this was still a good thing since it got him closer to his goal of a million.
"Here''s the reward, can I see your badge to update your status?" Lake didn''t see a reason to say no, so he held out the piece of gold that was his guild badge. "This was your first job. Does that mean you''re new?" Lake nodded.
"Ok then I''ll give you the rundown this badge of yours has all your guild info so you need to have it whenever youe in. You already know how missions work so I''ll skip that, so thest thing is the gold storage we offer. I''m sure by the name you can figure out what it is but I''ll still tell you we will hold your gold in the vault if you would like and as long as you have your badge you cane and get it whenever you''d like. It''s not popr with the new members like yourself, but once you get richer, and gain more trust in the guild I''m sure you''ll take advantage."
Lake guessed he wouldn''t mind keeping this here until he found a good ce to keep his secret stuff that he didn''t want at the guild. If everything was at the guild it could all be taken at once if someone like Lucas ever thought it would be best if Lake didn''t have it anymore.
"How much is this?" Lake asked while pointing to the bag. "It''s 11000. It''s not everyday I see someone not know how much they''re getting paid for a job." Lake was also a greedy person butst night he had been in a hurry so he hadn''t even spent that much time looking at what the mission entailed let alone all the other details.
"Would you mind putting this in the vault, and do you buy stuff here, or do I need to go somewhere else?" He wanted to know where he should go to sell stolen things that were too advanced for the guy in the alley from now on.
"You see the guy behind the green desk he''s the best Appraiser we have so most people like to go to him when they have something good." Lake thanked them and walked away after they updated his guild badge, and walked over to the man behind the green desk. Handing him all the items from the jewelry store he was going to sell.
After the guy looked at each item he said, "19,500." Lake nodded to show he approved of the price. "Ok let me go get it for you." Lake stopped him and said. "Can you just add it to my vault?" The man nodded and said. "Let me see your badge then."
Lake did his best to see what the man was doing to the badge but he still couldn''t tell any difference once the man handed it back to him. Lake guessed it made sense that this ce would use such a secretive method to store personal information but he still wished he could tell how they did it.
The man told him his total in the vault was 30,500 and after Lake heard this number he left the building. Seeing the time Lake headed in the direction of the cksmiths guild. It was early but not by much. Maybe they would be done with it already.
Chapter 99: Temptation
Chapter 99: Temptation
Donny slowly opened his eyes to see he was outside and it was daytime already. He knew this meant the shield would already be either with his brother, or on its way which meant there was no way he would be able to get it back. Trying to sit up, Donny felt he was too dizzy.
Getting his head up to look around he saw he had been moved by someone into an alley and left behind a pile of garbage. The spear he had borrowed was also gone so it looked like he was going to owe some money to his neighbor. Once he got up off the ground he inspected his fingers where his fingers used to be.
He was now missing most of his pinky and the one next to it on his right hand, and since he had no money it would just have to be that way for now. Donny was actually able to make a lot of money because of how strong he was but for thest few years he had been too busy fighting off the people his brother hired.
He guessed he no longer had that problem, so once he got a new spear and shield he would go to the Fighters guild to get some work. Once he saved up enough money he nned to hire the same person who had taken the shield from him to steal it from his brother. It should be much easier for the thief to take it from his brother, so he hoped they wouldn''t charge as much.
Looking at his status Donny saw his health was almost 2/3 of the way back, but the real problem was his stamina. He guessed massive blood loss really put a burden on his body''s ability to restore his energy. He needed to get home so he could sleep more; he just hoped no one was waiting for him when he got there.
After a few steps Donny heard someone behind him say. "It took a while, but it was just how I told you it would be." Donny didn''t stop, this wasn''t the first time he had heard the voice, but he knew this time it would be much harder to refuse. "That brother of yours is a real piece of work wasting your parents fortune to go against their wishes and leaving you on the street to rot now that he has the shield."
Donny didn''t want to hate his brother, but it was hard when all these words were all true. His brother had hid his jealousy well until their mother had passed and he inherited the full amount from her but Donny had always known that his brother wanted the shield and it went past just wanting it because it gave great strength to those who wielded it.
His brother wished he had never been born, and to Donny this hurt more than if his brother just hated him. "If you''d like I can get your shield back for you." Donny knew this only sounded like a good offer because there were no conditions to it but he would be a fool if he said yes. "It''s fine you don''t really need it, you passed its test long ago."
The shield had been made by the God of Metal as a test to find suitable demigods he could recruit but the practice had been stopped a long time ago when he no longer had divinity to spare so now the shield was just a really strong weapon that his family treated as an heirloom.
It still tested its users apparently and ever since he passed he had been hearing the voice every now and then. Donny knew it was most likely the Demon Lord because the gods who had already ascended couldn''t talk to you if you weren''t near something like an altar but he really wished that it wasn''t actually him because people said the Demon Lord didn''t waste his time.
What they meant when they said this was those he spoke to were those he could win over so if he was hearing the Demon Lords voice there was something inside him that would eventually lead to him taking one of the Demon Lords offers. From the fact that the voice always brought up his brother there was a good chance it had something to do with their rtionship.
If there ever came a day that he started to hate his brother for everything he had done to him, Donny was sure there would be very little stopping him from agreeing to whatever the voice offered, but to be honest he couldn''t see it getting worse than what had just happened, so if he could just get home and go to sleep there was very little chance he would ever cave.
Of course his n was to deal with the temptation while he slowly made his way home, and from where he was at the moment it would take over an hour. "If you would like I could give you a new shield it wouldn''t be exactly the same, but it would give you a chance to work on some of the other elements you have an affinity for."
One of the things the shield tested for was a Metal or Earth affinity. Either worked, but you needed metal to make it fly like he and his brother could. Their father had an earth affinity so he could only hold it like a normal shield. "If you don''t have something like the shield all your mana control training will be for nothing."
This was true because Donny hadn''t reached the level where he could keep his mana stable outside his body without something holding it in shape. "I''ll be fine." Donny tried his best not to answer most of the time, but the voice was really picking at his weak spots. The shield helped with mana training so it was an invaluable tool for those who had hopes of bing a demigod with their own efforts like Donny.
Without it all his effort would go to waste, and Donny valued all the time he had spent with his father while they had trained together, and the thought of all that being useless was hard for him to ept. This was something only he would know, so the fact that the voice knew to use it against him was unnerving.
"I''ll get the shield back!" Donny knew him yelling like this was the opposite of a show of strength and that his weak state was affecting his self control. "I know you will, but how long will it take, and why would you even want it if I''ll give you something much better?" Donny could feel some form of auraing from behind him; he guessed it was a glimpse of the power his new item would have if he were to ept.
Donny wanted to look, but if something was actually waiting behind him he might just reach out and take it before he could stop himself. "You''ve already mastered Metal, so I figured you would want to move on to either Dark or Unholy, but the way I see it with your talent you can do both."
Donny had been granted three affinities when his Intelligence had reached 10 but if he could change that he would be fine with just one because his other two were the reason the Demon Lord would ever even notice him.
He had done what people said to do if you had an Unholy affinity and wanted nothing to do with the demon lord, and never used it, but in the end it hadn''t worked. Donny guessed the gods looked for those who had potential even if it wasn''t to look for friends, but enemies, and the Demon Lord had just happened to notice him.
"The way I see it you''ll be twice as strong if you use two elements instead of just one." As the voice said this Donny could feel the two sides of the aura re as if to emphasize their distinct nature. "By that logic wouldn''t it be best if I used all three?" Donny said this just to prove that he understood the voice only wanted what was best for it and not him but he wasn''t expecting for the voice to agree.
"If that''s what you want." Donny felt a third aura form inside the other two but from his years of experience with the Metal element he could tell this was just a replica made bybining the right principles, but it would function in about the same way.
Donny just did his best to ignore what was going on behind him because he had regained hisposure. Now that he was out on the street the noise all the other people were making made it easier to drown out the voice. It was too bad there weren''t any brothels on his way home. That was the one thing that could drown the voice outpletely.
Chapter 100: Aftermath
Chapter 100: Aftermath
Ry felt someone shaking him and opened his eyes to see his wife''s face only a few inches from his. "Honey, wake up, we were robbed. I think they got into your safe." Ry was fully awake as soon as he heard this because there was really only one thing in his safe, and if they took it he was sure they had gotten into both of his safes.
Once he was in the Hallway he saw there was a hole right next to his son''s room. How did they do this without us waking up?" He was confused but he didn''t dwell on it too long because he had more important things to deal with. Getting to his safe and seeing his key was gone he was out his front door in less than a secondter.
He knew he would already be toote, but he thought maybe there was a chance they hadn''t known what the key was for, and had just taken it because it was the only thing in the safe that looked remotely valuable. Getting to his store he didn''t see anything going on, but that was normal for this early none of the employees would be in yet.
Inside he only briefly nced at the cases in the front because he didn''t really care if they got stolen from, most of this stuff was less than 50 gold. Inside the office it didn''t take long for him to see the open safe and the hole through the roof. Covering his face with his hands, Ry just barely kept himself from screaming.
He didn''t understand how someone could have gotten through so many detection formations and how they had opened both safes without setting off a single rm. He had been broken into more times than he could count, but this had never happened before.
It looked like he would have to start paying the Thieves guild for protection after all because that would be less expensive now that they had someone who could do all this. If someone got into his safe just a few more times he would be out of business so the 400 a month they were asking was nothing.
"But why did they go through the roof?"
...
Lake had just left after picking up his knife. He couldn''t tell the difference, but it was back to its original shape, so he was happy. Sadly he couldn''t wave it around like he would like to because the streets werepletely packed. The level of unrest was palpable, it could devolve into chaos at any moment like he had predicted.
The amount of guards and other strong looking people had also increased. Lake wondered if the king had asked for help from the Fighters guild or something. It seemed like a smart thing to do so he wouldn''t be surprised.
Lake wondered if the Temple of Light was aware of the amount of people they had sent into the capital, and if they were the fact this was the best thing to do was crazy. He wondered how many were sleeping on the streets because there had been no rooms two days ago, and people were still arriving.
It was to a level now that he wouldn''t be surprised if they stopped letting people in soon; he also wanted to know where they would be getting all the food that would be needed tost till the war was over. It seemed food was already starting to be a problem because every time in thest few minutes he passed a ce that sold food there was some form ofmotion happening.
It looked like he had made a good choice when he had bought food earlier because to get it now he might have to fight a few families out of the way. He decided there was no reason to stay out here anymore and after he went to the weapon store he failed to robst night he would find the cart driver and head back to the guild.
Lake wanted to see what form of reaction his break-in had caused for the future when he needed to know if he could hit the same ce more than once or not. Walking by the shop, Lake could tell the hole had been discovered because there were quite a few guards standing by the door into the office where the stairs up to the attic were.
He wondered if they would think it had been a breakin at all because there were multiple ways a hole could be caused and the fact he hadn''t taken anything and the guard saw nothing could make them think it was just a coincidence that something had hit a hole in their roof.
If that was the conclusion maybe he coulde back sometime once he could wander the streets again. He hadn''t really gotten anything from that, so he thought he could make one more stop real quick before heading back to his cart.
Just a few secondster he walked by the jewelry store he had sessfully robbed to see something more like what he had expected the first time. There were royal guards all over the ce, he guessed they were looking for any clues because the thieves guild didn''t guarantee the safety of its members the way the Assassin guild did.
It was a funny thought that the guards would probably give up on a murder case faster than a robbery. Lake also saw Ry, the owner who his skill had shown himst night. The look on Ry''s face told Lake he was very upset about what had happened and Lake could understand, he had stolen more than a lot of people made in their life in this world.
Lake had to stop himself from snickering. There was no way someone could feel bad for a rich person who had just lost a bit of their money and took it this hard. He was still rich, just slightly less so now. Ry''s face almost made Lake want to do it again as soon as he got the chance but he would give him time to procure more items and maybe some new safes.
It would only be fun if there was a challenge, and it would make Ry''s reaction funnier as well if all his new precautions were useless. Now that he was done with this, Lake went to get his driver. He was actually very close to the cart, so it wasn''t that hard and they were on the way back to the guild.
It was too bad that the city was so hectic but Lake no longer felt it was a good idea to stay outside the guild even if he wanted to level up a few more times before any fighting started in the city. He would probably regret his safe approach as soon as he got into a fight but he was sitting on a massive amount of free stat points so in the worst case he would use those to get him through.
Once he was back inside the barrier he and his driver were both checked by the same old wizard guy that had checked himst time and were given the green light to go inside. Lake waved bye to his driver and went to look for Lucas. He had some things he wanted to ask him about.
The main one being what it was going to be like once the fighting started then he wanted an estimate on how long the war wouldst. He knew it would probably be nowhere close to correct but it was good to have goals for the future.
Inside Lucas''s office Lake took a seat because he could tell by the mark he had ced on Lucas''s amulet that he would be here in just a few seconds. "Hello, did you bring the cart back or did you abandon it because the streets were too packed?"
Lake thought it was funny that Lucas became more sarcastic by the day so he said. "I sold it." Lucas didn''t react and sat down at his desk. "I''m busy right now, so if you need something just ask so I can get back to work."
"No, I was just wanting to know what the fight would be like if we get attacked tomorrow." Lucas really seemed to think he was wasting his time by the way he answered. "Why tomorrow specifically?" Not really an answer at all, just more sarcasm.
"So there''s no chance at all?" Lucas shook his head and said. "No, we''ll know in advance because there will most likely be a siege first." This made sense to Lake so he shrugged and got up to go up stairs to his room.
"You got a new neighbor today, they seemed to know you so I put them on your floor since there was room and there was no sense in putting them any further from my office than necessary." Lake couldn''t think of anyone who he would know that woulde here so he asked. "Who is it?"
"Some guy named Wace. He had a good idea and I agreed to fund his research." Lake nodded his head in approval. It was good Wace had made something of himself in the time he had been away.
Chapter 101: Reunion
Chapter 101: Reunion
Getting to the floor his room was on Lake opened the door into the hallway and saw a guy standing there simr to how Solomon had been the first time he had walked in. Lake already knew Wace from the small amount of time he had lived with him so he greeted him. "Hello Wace, how''s the family?"
Wace had a son named Sam that was the first person Lake saw after he arrived here; he had also been very helpful when Lake needed things, so if he was around now Lake would be interested in saying hi. One of the things Sam had given him he still used to this day, the satchel, and since he would be upgrading for something bigger soon he would probably return it.
"Oh Sam''s fine, he''s actually here if you''d like to see him." Lake had nothing going on now that he was going to be staying inside the guild, so he said. "Sure, let''s go." On the way to Wace''s room Lake thought about what he would be doing until the fighting started. He guessed this would be a good time to go deeper into the dungeon.
It had the added bonus of allowing him to level up while he explored the dungeon to see if there were any secrets down there because at this point it could go either way with how his skill Treasured worked. There was no way he could differentiate between item, person, and ce until he was close enough to see the mark''s location with his own eyes.
In his many trips into the dungeon he hadn''t gone past the safe part where the undead were still weak from just being born, he didn''t know if born was the right word to use but he wasn''t too sure how the ones in the dungeon formed, so when he went further next time some of the undead would be much older, so stronger as well.
Getting to Wace''s room, right next to his, they both walked inside. Lake saw Sam right away as he was at the table that was next to the door in all of these rooms reading a book. His back was towards them though, so Sam didn''t see Lake and just assumed it was his father. "Dad, I don''t want to read anymore. What else can I do?"
"You can start by turning around." Sam looked back after Wace said this and when he saw Lake he said. "Who''s that?" Lake had put his helmet on right before Sam turned around so it just looked like some cheap knight was in their room for some reason. Wace didn''t seem to understand how Sam could possibly not recognize Lake, so he looked.
"Quit messing around." Waceughed a little and moved like he was going to take the helmet off, but Lake beat him to it. Sam''s reaction wasn''t as excited as Lake had been expecting, but he didn''t think it had anything to do with Sam not wanting to see him. It was probably not that big of a surprise because Sam had already known he was in the Alchemist guild.
"Lake, do you know if there''s anything else to do around here other than read." There were a few things, but Sam was too young to go into the dungeon, so Lake said. "If you learn how to make potions there are." Lake was telling Sam he should keep reading in a subtle way.
Now that the happy reunion was over Lake turned to Wace and said. "What made you join the guild?" He knew it had something to do with golems, but Lake wanted more info. "My grandfather was a member of the Mages guild, so I knew they would be able to help with my research."
It sounded like just enough info for him to stop asking, and he did. "Well I''ll see you twoter, there''s a few people I need to see." Millie and Joy were who he was talking about. The main thing he wanted to know was if there would be lunch today because that was the only perk of being at the guild.
Then he nned to check on Joy to see if she was less restricted by the curse yet. He had seen some guards talking on the way up, so he thought that was a good sign. It looked like the panic inside the guild was starting to die down, and would stay that way till there was an army outside.
The panic inside was moving in an opposite fashion to what was happening outside. The benefits of living inside the biggest fortress on the continent he guessed. Feeling safe was usually enough to make you think you were.
At Millie''s door Lake knocked and waited hoping for an answer, but when one didn''te he moved on. If she wasn''t inside there was a good chance there would be no lunch today because the one meal she made took all her time to prepare.
Now he was going to see Joy next but he was already upstairs and she would be in the very bottom of the guild so he figured he might as well go to his room for a while. If he didn''t it would make it seem there had been no reason for him to climb the stairs at all, and that he was dumb to do so with no goal in mind.
Inside his room Lake greeted his servants then had them help get his armor off. Once it was off he looked at the damage to the shoulder of the chest piece. It wasn''t too noticeable because of how thin the gash was but he would still like to get it fixed. Deciding it wasn''t worth the effort to do it himself he told Jason to do it.
It was an easy job if he was lucky someone around here knew Metal magic and could do it in an instant. Going into his bed area Lake looked through the different outfits he had, and chose the first one he hadn''t been wearing for two days. Then heid down, he had been too tired to carest night but the benches in the small carts were not as cozy as the ones in the big carts, and neither were as good as his bed.
Sadly he wasn''t actually tired now so he couldn''t actually sleep, but you couldn''t appreciate a bed while asleep only while you were trying. You could also appreciate a good bed once you woke up and your back didn''t hurt but since he hade to this world he hadn''t had a single pain after sleeping.
Probably something to do with the Endurance stat and how Health and Stamina recovered faster when you were asleep. Lake let time pass as he pretended to sleep and after about 20 minutes or so, he got up and grabbed his bag. He ignored the ingot because he would probably need a cksmith to know what it was, and found the weird brown gem that he had stolen.
This was the item he had thought about the most since he had stolen it other than the dagger which he wouldn''t be pulling out unless he was somewhere that no one else was. The dagger had a really strong aura so he was afraid that someone would notice if he took it out and ask him where he got it from because it was clearly something special.
Inspecting the brown gem its name came up as Sealing wax, and from that he realized this item was probably just a core that had ayer of wax on it for some reason. Lake went to scratch it off but stopped himself, maybe there was a good reason so he needed to think about it first before he did.
He thought about how he had gotten his hands on it in the first ce. The person he had stolen it from had just been carrying it around so it was unlikely to be something too dangerous, but it was possible it was some form of weapon like you threw it and the wax would be damaged causing an explosion.
It also made him think of those blue dye things they would put into money when someone robbed a bank but since it hadn''t gone off as soon as he opened the bag the first time it either meant it had been unable to sense him because of Trespasser, or he was just being paranoid for no reason.
Lake thought the best n would to be to throw it next time he was outside the guild. If the wax was damaged from the throw he would be able to see what was inside if it didn''t blow up. Next he pulled out the two small potions he had stolen from the same guy. They were both stamina potions so Lake wasn''t too interested in them because he didn''t need them with the much bigger one he had from the guild.
Getting up, Lake started to walk towards his door when one of his servants stopped him. "Your armor is on its way back up if you need it." Lake nodded his head and said, "Thank you." Sitting down to wait for it to get back, Lake thought he must have been right about someone in the guild that could use Metal magic to fix weapons and armor.
It was probably their job to take care of the guards equipment. Once his armor got there he put it on and headed down to see Joy. If she was back to normal he nned to enter the dungeon with her and that had been why he had needed his armor back. He would have still gone in if he hadn''t had it but he wouldn''t have gone deep like he wanted to.
Chapter 102: Going Deeper Pt.1
Chapter 102: Going Deeper Pt.1
The elevator stopped and Lake said. "Hey Joy." When he saw her head move when he said her name Lake knew she was back to normal. "Hey Lake, they told me you wouldn''t be back for a few days." Lake wondered who had said that to her and why but it wasn''t surprising that people would be talking about him inside the guild, so he didn''t ask.
"Are you in the mood to go into the dungeon today?" This wasn''t a real question because no one liked to go into the dungeon, but Lake knew Joy couldn''t refuse, so he was sort of messing with her. "Of course let''s go." Once they were inside it didn''t take Lake too long to get to the deepest he had ever been into the dungeon.
It was about 6 torches deep if you just kept heading straight. Most of the time they went all over the ce because they were looking for weak undead to earn easy Exp so it usually took them a while to get this deep. The dungeon was like a web of tunnels leading all over the ce so it was actually kind of hard to know where, and how deep you were at any given time.
When you weren''t in a lit ce it also had a darkness akin to what it was like while inside the forest during the massacre. Getting into the next tunnel to go even deeper Joy asked. "Are you sure this is about how deep the guards clear so we''re going to start to run into actual undead that can do things other than run and swing their arms at you."
Lake had found undead more interesting since he had seen Domare make that undead giant out of a pile of dead bodies and a giant chunk of meat. "What kind of things can they do?" He wanted to know what to expect. "Undead as a race or whatever you want to call them are naturally gifted in Unholy and Dark magic as their mana is naturally already those two elements. Other races like us have in mana when we are born, and only change it into an element once you choose to so you can try and ascend to godhood."
Lake knew you could change your mana into different elements so you could cast spells with it but he didn''t really know you could make that change permanent. He guessed it made sense since the gods were literally the ones who put the elemental mana into the world and this made him wonder about the voices you heard when you used spells for the first time.
"Is the voice that tells you the name of the spell the god of that element''s voice?" Lake couldn''t see Joy because she was behind him but it sounded like she nodded before saying. "Yes they''re the ones who make the spells and since they own the element it''s ingrained into the element itself. If you were to make your own spell you wouldn''t hear the voice even if you use their element."
Lake kept being reminded that he needed to learn more about magic every time he asked someone about it, but the answer usually helped him do just that. "I hear something get ready." Lake had high Perception so it wasn''t unusual for him to hear the undead before Joy did. "Ok, just remember what I said about the magic."
Lake wasn''t too afraid of magic because he had his ward ring and it was fully charged so even if he got hit with a spell there was very little chance he would take any damage. Now that he was about to fight he took this chance to switch his job off of Pickpocket and to Mugger. Pickpocket was already maxed so having it set as his job would be a waste of Exp.
Pulling out his sword, Lake got ready to Imbue Fire by charging up a bit of Fire mana. He had found this was a good way to kill undead, and he was also hoping he would unlock Enchanter soon. Getting close enough that he knew the fight could start at any second he stopped and activated Mana Vision.
Seeing where the Undead was through the darkness Lake used Imbue Fire on his sword and rushed towards it. He had seen this undead wasn''t that strong from the power of its core. He had fought plenty with equal strength, and knew he could kill it with one strike from his sword.
Slicing the undead in two, Lake watched as the fire slowly spread out from where the sword had made contact and a few secondster Lake felt the Exp from the kill. That was why he liked to use fire after the first cut, the fire slowly burned them until they were dead. Waiting for the mes to die down enough that he could walk over the corpse, they continued to go deeper.
"Seems someone was down here for Exp recently because usually these tunnels are packed full." Lake was fine with that because the amount of distance between here and where he was trying to get there would be more than enough undead for him to fight. Probably too many to be honest.
What he was doing was actually pretty dangerous from what people had told him about down here. As he went further there would be no light sources or barriers keeping the undead in the tunnel they were born in allowing the undead to wrap around behind them surrounding them if they weren''t careful.
Lake had no hopes of actually making it in one try and would probably stop when Joy told him they should head back. The nice thing was any time he killed any strong undead it would take a long time for it to be reced, so if he did this every day he would slowly make progress.
He didn''t know if this was a good n or not though because he didn''t know how many were down here. So far the most he had seen in one tunnel was four and there were about 20000 tunnels down here supposedly, so at most he would have to kill 80000 undead which he could probably do in a few years.
Lakeughed at his very sarcastic math he had just done because it was hrious, and thinking about that actually being correct was ridiculous. He also couldn''t help but think that if the number of undead was actually that high it could potentially be a massive security risk if the Demon Lord was somehow able to get control of them.
Lake thought maybe that was why there were barriers that kept the undead from getting anywhere near the gate that the guards were at. Lake had never really thought about the reason the guards were there at all. He guessed they were there to keep an eye on the dungeon in case anything weird started to happen.
Getting into the next lit room Joy stopped him before he could go into the next tunnel. "Past this point there are no more torches, so it will be pitch dark from now on." So far every room Lake had been to had had one and he had been treating them like a goal every time he went into a tunnel so hearing there would be no more light at all was not something he liked even if he had been expecting it.
"What about the barriers?" They were more important than the lights because they made the tunnels more safe so he was hoping for more. "No the torches are what create the barrier, the undead can''t get close to them." If Lake had thought about this he might have figured this out by himself.
"Have you ever been past this point?" Lake was looking at Joy so he could see her shake her head as she said. "No, it''s against the rules for us to go this deep without orders to do so, and since there are no reasons to tell us to unless they want to kill us I''ve never been sent in."
"Do you think we should?" Joy shook her head even harder and said. "There''s nothing in there other than undead that have been down here for years." Lake could see why Joy would think this because she couldn''t see the Mark like he could, so to her he was just being overly curious.
"I''ll be right back." Lake took a few steps into the tunnel to see if it was packed full or if it was oddly quiet like he thought it was. He could usually hear undead in a tunnel before he went into it but he couldn''t this time. He could only see about ten feet because of the blinding effect from the Dark mana but he couldn''t see any undead in the ten feet he could see.
Backing out of the tunnel, Lake said to Joy. "Let''s go down this tunnel first then make a choice. This is thest tunnel where they won''t be able toe from behind us so we might as well." Joy seemed reluctant but followed him in, and they started walking at a snail''s pace with their ears peeled for any noise.
Chapter 103: Going Deeper Pt.2
Chapter 103: Going Deeper Pt.2
Finishing the first tunnel with no sign of any Undead Lake was actually more apprehensive than if there had been at least a few. He couldn''t think of any reason none would be here other than there was some form of nning on the part of the undead to keep them away.
Lake had seen that undead could be as smart as people at least in some cases so it wasn''t a stretch that there was some form of ruling ss that told the weak and stupid to stay away from this part of the dungeon because they would be hunted. It made Lake wonder what form of society could possibly be down here.
It was hellish to him but he could see this being paradise for them and some of the rooms down here were pretty big so he could see them sitting down in big huddles and hanging out. There wasn''t really anything down here for them to do other than use magic, so he could see them all slowly teaching each other new spells or something.
If that was the case he could see this being really dangerous because there was an abundance of the elements they would be using to cast spells down here allowing them to just fire strong spells nonstop. Thinking they should probably stop here Lake asked Joy what she thought. "Do you think we should keep going?"
Lake didn''t like the amount of noise he made when he asked this because the room they were in was dead silent so even though he had whispered it made him feel like he had just given himself away. He knew it was just all the movies he had watched in hisst life making him overly paranoid, but it didn''t make it not possible.
"Of course I want to turn back. I didn''t even think we should have entered." Lake had expected an answer like this and had really only asked to give himself an excuse to turn back without the only reason being he was a wimp. It was too bad though they were probably only 7 or 8 tunnels away from where he needed to go to see the Marks location.
Turning around to tell Joy to head back, Lake felt a fluctuation in the mana around him, and heard a voice call out to him. "I promise safety for you and your friend if you want to keep going, Lake." Lake turned around to see no one where he had felt the shift in the mana. He had thought that some undead or something had somehow teleported or used a skill to move behind him.
Now that he saw there was no immediate danger Lake tried to think about what had just happened with a clear mind. The name thing wasn''t that big of a clue because he was inside the guild where everyone knew his name. The only thing he could really get from what had just happened was the fact that the voice had been in his head.
It fit the description of what he had heard about the Demon Lord, and how the Demon Lords wasn''t extremely loud like other voices in your head. Lake had also been expecting this ever since Domare had called him by his name even though he had been in a disguise. Now he just needed to decide if he could believe what the voice had said.
While he did so he turned to Joy and said. "Did you hear anything?" Lake asked this for two reasons, the first just because he wanted to know if she had heard the voice as well, and the second was to make it seem there was a reason he had stopped abruptly like he had done when he heard the voice.
"No, did you hear something?" Lake could tell Joy was freaked out by his question because she started to move her head around like she was trying to look around. This was a funny reaction because she could only see like ten feet like him. "Calm down, I was mistaken."
Lake made up his mind and decided it was best for him to leave for now. He had no ns on giving up exploring the dungeon forever but the fact that he had no experience dealing with the Demon Lord made him think he would be an idiot to believe the first thing he ever said to him.
Lake was sure the Demon Lord would continue to speak to him from now on, and once he got used to it he woulde back down here if he decided the Demon Lord was telling the truth. "Come on Joy, let''s get out of here." Lake let Joy go first and followed her. He knew he was faster than her so this would allow them to go as fast as possible without him leaving her behind.
Once they were back to the torch he said. "I''m done for the day so keep going." She had stopped like he was going to start heading down all the tunnels around them to clear out the undead they could hear shuffling around but he wasn''t in the mood anymore. Now that the Demon Lord was actually talking to him he felt like it was too dangerous to literally walk into somewhere he had the most influence.
Once they were outside the gate Lake told Joy toe with him upstairs. As far as he could tell he was kind of out of things to do so he might as well spend the rest of the day talking with Joy. It would probably make what he was about to do more entertaining. He nned to finally do a deep dive into Magic, and to do that he would need to spend some time in the library.
He wasn''t looking forward to the amount of reading he would have to do to find the information he was actually looking for. He already knew the basics because the basics were in every book he had read but he needed to know how he was supposed to control the principles that made up magic.
So far all he had done was use the mana you could gather out of the air which was already ready to use for the most simple spells. Opening the library after climbing up the stairs, Lake walked over to a shelf he knew had books on magic from one of the past times he had been here.
Grabbing a book about the Wind element, Lake sat down and started to read it. Getting to a part about how to train control of the element Lake actually started to read instead of skimming. "Swirling the mana around in your palm is the best way to increase your control of the speed principle of the Wind element."
Lake saw a diagram that looked like a small tornado on top of someone''s palm. This seemed to be something really easy he could do right now but he knew it was against the rules to practice inside a library. He moved on to see if there were any more things in this section of the book he should know before he went to practice.
"Solidifying the Wind element is one of the harder things to do with the element but is necessary if you n to use defense spells. The best way to train this skill is to form a cube, and slowly stretch it into arger andrger area. You will find after a while that you will no longer be able to make it anyrger and once you find this size you should work on the toughness of the cube by condensing it to make it denser. Once you get it as small as possible, start the stretching again without letting the density drop."
The diagram was a little moreplicated this time. It was a cube that grew and shrunk over and over again all while getting darker and darker. Lake guessed this was to show that the cube should get more dense with every round. Moving on now that he thought he understood, Lake saw another section about the principle that made the Wind element clear and how you could make it different colors if you wanted to but how there was very little reason, so it wasn''t necessary to train the ability unless you wanted to be fancy by using pink wind or something.
The next section was about some of the best principles to add to the Wind element to make it better in fights and how the Wind element was one of the most simple elements which made it into a nk te that was good for custom spells. With this he was almost done and just wanted to find out how he was supposed to fly.
Getting to a section on the spell that you used to fly Lake saw it wasn''t the only way you could do it there were multiple ways you could fly using Wind magic and the spell was just the most simple way. Finished with his book, Lake turned to Joy and asked. "Where should I go to practice spells?"
Chapter 104: Going Deeper Pt.3
Chapter 104: Going Deeper Pt.3
Entering the 41st floor that was supposedly used to practice magic for as long as the spire had existed. From what Joy had told him there were actually a few floors devoted to training the use of magic. Lake had thought it was a distance thing at first but then Joy had told him that when the teleporters worked distance was no issue and there had only been more than one to deal with the volume of people that used to live in the spire when this had still been the Mages guild.
It was funny to Lake to think about this massive training room not being enough at one time because now it was empty. It was weird to think the Mages guild had been so much stronger and had so many more members than the Alchemist guild when the Alchemist guild was still so much stronger than most other organizations.
Lake wondered if it was possible the other guilds and such had been affected in the same way that the mages guild had so they had also dropped in power leaving the status quo intact. That was very likely from what he had heard about how the Demon Lord was able to win people over or even just directly control you when you meet him in person.
"Joy, how do I enter one of these rooms?" There were smaller rooms that seemed to be for private practice and Lake wanted to use one but their doors were shut. "Use your badge." Lake guessed it was like how keycards worked in his old world. Putting his badge next to the door it slid open and he walked while telling joy she could go if she wanted.
She probably wouldn''t mind with her job literally being standing in one ce for hours, but where she usually did it she had other guards to talk to to pass the time, so Lake had no intentions of making her silently wait till he was done because it might be hours. Once the door had closed behind him he looked around and sat on the bench that was in the center of the room.
He thought it had to be what he was supposed to do with it being the only thing in the entire room. Now that he was here he quickly went through what he needed to do and what he knew about the Wind element. The wind element was almost as simple as an element could get; it was literally three principles: form color and speed. The form being gaseous, the color clear and for some reason a certain speed.
He wasn''t sure why the speed was set so low, but unless you were only fighting small weak monsters you needed to get control of the speed principle so you could make your spells faster so they could do more damage. Gathering only a small amount of Wind mana into his hand, Lake spun it until it formed a small vortex in his hand.
He couldn''t really see it too well with it being clear so he turned on Mana Vision. It wasn''t necessary because he was controlling it, but he wanted to be able to see what he was doing, not just feel it. Ready to start for real Lake got it spinning as fast as he could with minimal effort then started to really try and spin it faster.
After a minute of trying he found his efforts had done nothing to speed it up. This was its principle that made it move at a curtain speed working against him and to make it go any faster he was going to need to figure out how to lift the restriction. He wondered if his skill Gale Force would help because it said it only Doubled the speed of Wind spells, and he wasn''t casting any spells just controlling mana.
Also the fact that it just did it for him and he had no idea how it worked would probably not help even if it did affect what he was doing now. The other skill he had that he thought would help was Spell Weaver. It literally just made him better at controlling every principal, but he bet its effects would be subtle and hard to notice.
After some more time passed with zero progress Lake wondered if there was some way he could get a feel for what he was looking for. The first time he had used magic he had just used the mana Nelg had gathered to figure out how dark mana felt and through that process he had learned how to separate the element you were looking for from all the others.
There was no one around that he could copy but maybe he could try and separate the Wind mana into its three principles. He would be destroying it but he could always gather more so it was no big loss he just needed to figure out if he could even do so. It was possible he would need to be able to control the principles in the element to be able to pull it apart.
Stopping the vortex Lake tried his best to see if he was right but when nothing happened when he thought about breaking it down he was pretty sure he was right and this was a dead end. He thought maybe had started with the wrong exercise and he should have done the cube one first.
He already knew how to turn unsolid elements solid because he had done it with Dark mana during his first fight using magic. Trying to do so he found it wasn''t that hard to make a solid cube out of the mana he had been using for the vortex. Lake stopped here to think about why he was able to do this, which was just changing its state from gas to solid, or in other words changing a principle, but he wasn''t able to speed it up by changing the speed principle.
The only thing he could think of was he actually understood what a solid was in some way that he didn''t understand speed but the way he saw speed there was nothing to it he didn''t understand; it was just the speed you were going whether it be fast or slow.
Lake started to stretch the cube by adding in more mana as he thought about speed and once he got it to a size where he didn''t feel like he could make it any bigger without it losing its shape he contracted it and slowly got it back to its original size. Even though it hadn''t taken him too long it had actually been pretty hard to condense that amount of mana into such a small area.
It had also caused a cool effect where the cube now looked like it was made of ss instead of beingpletely invisible like it had been at first. After looking at it for a while he started the stretching process again. It was much slower now than it had been the first time because the amount of mana he was having to add to keep the density the same was much higher.
He also found he was having a hard time getting it anywhere near the size it had been the first time he had stretched it, and the edges that had been perfectly t were now starting to lose their shape. A few seconds after he noticed this happening he lost control of the mana and it popped like a balloon.
It actually just returned to being a gas, but it felt like a rush of air and sounded like a balloon popping. He hadn''t really learned anything from that other than this process would probably help someone who was having trouble turning air into a solid so they could use it to defend but he already knew how it worked to begin with, so he hoped there was more to it if he made it to the next round ofpression this time.
Forming the cube again Lake quickly finished the first round and was to the part where he had failed the first time Doing his best to make sure there were no bulges in its shape Lake slowly increased the size until it was finally at the size he needed it to be to start thepression right after starting he could tell he was quickly starting to lose control and one of the sides started to bend outwards which meant he wasn''t evenpressing everything inside at the same rate.
Letting up and getting the cube back to the right shape, Lake tried again but much slower and was able to shrink it slightly before it started to bend again. Stopping before it could pop, Lake did his best to reshape it into a perfect cube, but was unable to, no matter what he tried. Trying to let it grow out a little so he could try again, Lake lost control for a second and the density dropped as some of the mana turned to air and burst from the side of the cube.
Sighing Lake let the rest of the air out there was no reason to continue because the method he had read said once the density dropped it was easier to just start again. Reforming the cube Lake quickly went through the first cycle, and slowly made it through the second round of stretching. He only slowed down once he started thepression again.
Chapter 105: Going Deeper Pt.4
Chapter 105: Going Deeper Pt.4
Starting thepression Lake quickly got it to the point where it had sprung a leakst time. He was happy to find that this training actually did something and he wasn''t just failing at the same ce every time. He guessed this meant he was getting better at controlling the state principle and he would soon be able to finish this secondpression.
Making a small amount of progress, Lake found it was easier to do if he focused on shrinking the middle of the cube and only put a small amount of focus on keeping the sides in a perfect cube. Thest few times he had done this he had been using the sides of the cube to crush the insides smaller, and that had probably been why the insides were bulging outwards, and he was losing control of it.
Seeing he was making slow but steady progress, Lake did his best not to let his mind wander; he needed to focus more now that he had split his attention on doing the insides and sides separately, but with it being so slow it was kind of boring to watch. Lake just closed his eyes, and really focused on the feeling of the cube shrinking.
After a while his progress once again stalled and he was stuck with only a bit to go thinking about it he decided to just do what he had donest time and add anotheryer ofpression on the inside in between the sides and the ce he waspressing in the middle. Lake was pretty happy with the results until he felt that the bnce was off in some way and the middle waspressing much faster than the sides.
Lake knew this was because he was barely paying any attention to the sidespared to the inside so he readjusted his focus to be more even and he finished the second round ofpression. Using his finger to touch the cube Lake could tell it was now dense enough to be used as a shield meaning he had made it to the first mile stone and could now use thispressed mana to cast Air Wall which was the basic defense spell for the Wind element.
It was funny it was so hard to make just the first level of a solid defense with the Wind Element when he had been able to do so with Dark before he even understood what he was doing. Why he thought it was like that was because the other elements had more principals, so they didn''t need to rely on just how hard it was to make a shield.
Also most elements started off much harder to begin with so most of the time you only had to do a small amount of work to get them ready to be used for defense. Wind was the least dense element Lake knew of even the Light mana he had gathered seemed to pack more of a punch. This was another example on how the elements used for spells differed from what was in the environment.
The best example he had found so far was darkness; it was just a shadow cast by something blocking light, and it was nothing like the Dark element you used to cast spells. The same way the air you breathed wasn''t the same as the Wind mana you used for spells. Both Dark and Wind were both just basic mana with principles added to make it seem like what they were named after.
Stretching his cube to be wider, Lake heard a voice tell him the name of the spell and he repeated. "Air Wall." After he said this the mana moved and did the rest of the work itself. The mana he was using was what he pulled out of the environment and actually belonged to the God or Goddess of Air and not only had they created the Wind Element but the spell he had just used so the spell was ingrained into the element itself which was what allowed it to know what it needed to do after he called out the name.
He just wished it could condense itself for him because with how long that had taken he couldn''t see him using it in a fight any time soon. Now that he was done with that, Lake had one more thing he wanted to try with condensing Wind mana before he moved on to the speed principle. Starting a new cube, Lake got it back to what he had used to cast Air Wall and stretched it out into a t surface.
Stepping onto it Lake lifted himself a few feet before he set himself down. What he had just tested was one of the methods the book said you could use to fly. He had just wanted to see if it actually worked and he was happy he had tried it because he also found he had been able topress the cube much faster this time.
It seemed if he continued to do this over and over again he would be able to use Air Wall in a matter of seconds instead of the minutes it took him to do it now. Of course if he needed to cast a spell to defend himself he would probably just use Dark magic because he could do so almost instantly.
Most people didn''t have the luxury of choosing any element they wanted to use unlike him, so if they only had an affinity for Wind they would have to go through a lot of training because it was their only option.
Getting the swirl going again Lake Just let it spin while he thought about what he could be not understanding about speed. It was possible the problem was he didn''t know how fast this swirl was even going so he was unable to set a goal. With the cube he had been able to tell exactly how hard and dense it was so he was able to tell if he needed to keep going or not.
If he needed to know how fast this was going to be able to control it he had no idea how he was supposed to figure it out, so he thought maybe he could just say this was 1 and work his way up from there. It would be like how bike gears worked sort of.
Putting his idea into practice Lake tried to think of the speed the vortex was going as 1 and tried to get a feel for what that meant. It didn''t really seem to be working but Lake tried to switch it to 2nd speed anyway just to see if it would work. When there was no reaction at all he guessed his system wasn''t going to work.
It was to bad because he thought it would have been nice if he could control what speed it was going by just thinking a number, but he would probably just use the highest number he could so the number system would have only been helpful to track his progress and not really something he would be using to change back and forth between speeds because why would he set it to 1st speed for an attack when he could use 2nd.
Stopping the swirl, Lake wondered what he was supposed to do. He had read the full section on the speed principle and it hadn''t really said anything other than the fact that spinning the swirl was the best way to learn how to control the speed. Lake smacked himself in the forehead. It had never told him to increase the speed only to increase your control of the speed principle.
Lake already knew how to slow it down, he had done it on multiple asions whenever he stopped the spinning. The Wind element had some sort of hard cap set on it which was the speed the spells flew when you cast them but you could slow it down pretty easily if you wanted so Lake guessed he should just fluctuate the speed up and down until he got a grasp on the speed principle.
Once he thought he actually got it that would be when he would try to pick up the speed past the limit set. Starting the vortex again he slowly picked up the speed until he hit the limit then he did the same in the opposite direction until it dissipated back into a ball of mana. He just kept doing this over and over again until he thought he could probably do this with two different balls of mana at once.
Forming another vortex over his other hand Lake found it was really easy to do the same thing with both so as a challenge he thought he could do the opposite in each hand instead. Speeding one up while he slowed the other down. It would be like how people did that thing where you taped your head while rubbing your belly.
Chapter 106: Speed Limit
Chapter 106: Speed Limit
Lake had been controlling the two separate vortexes in an inverse manner for about 30 minutes at this point. It had been hard at first because splitting his attention was something he had never really done until today when he waspressing the cube but in that instance his attention had mainly been on the insides of the cube and keeping it in shape had been nothing.
Now that he had the hang of controlling the speed of the vortexes he thought he could try to break the limit. Dissipating one of the vortexes Lake started to speed up the other one until he got to the max set speed. Feeling his progresse to a halt, Lake guessed it wasn''t going to be as easy as he had hoped.
He thought he would be able to get past the limit now even if it was just by a little because of all the training he had done in thest hour or so. He had no idea what he was doing wrong and thought maybe there was some form of affinity for different principles. He remembered when the Temple head had told him he would be good at earth magic because he understood how to turn things solid.
He had no idea what she had been basing that off of when she had said it but she had been right because it seemed that was all he could do when it came to magic. Apparently turning Wind mana solid was supposed to be much harder than speeding it up because the section about turning it solid had been much longer but he had been able to do it in less than 20 minutes and he had already spent double that amount on speed if you added the time from earlier.
Lake shrugged and just reformed the two small vortexes. The book had said this was the best way and Lake would be stupid to try ande up with some new method before he had actually made any progress. It wasn''t like he had anything to do today so he could just stay here till he got hungry or tired.
Continuing the process Lake was eventually to the point where he didn''t even need to think about what he was doing anymore. Lake thought maybe this meant he was finally ready because when he had made the cube earlier before he had started to stretch it out this was about the amount of effort he had put into it.
He had just thought about what he wanted and it had happened all on its own and now the vortexes were doing the same thing with no manual control being added by him. This time when one of the vortexes got to max speed instead of starting the slowing process Lake pushed it trying to get it to go even a little faster then it was supposed to.
Lake felt some form of snape from the vortex and it directly exploded. Lake hadn''t been expecting anything like this to happen but since it hadn''t happened before he thought it meant he had made some progress. Using the other vortex Lake did the same thing again but got ready for the snap that had happenedst time and when it did he took manual control to make sure it didn''t explode likest time.
Feeling the speed rise, Lake knew the explosion had been caused by him changing the speed principlest time without him being ready to control the new much stronger version of wind mana he had made. It seemed as you raised the speed the mana could go it also made it much harder to control.
It made perfect sense Lake just hadn''t been ready for it. Lake smiled now that he had been able to do this; it meant he would be able to learn the Fly spell. He just needed to get the mana up to a speed where it would be able to take him off the ground, growing the vortex by adding more mana. Lake listened to the rumbling noise it was causing as small amounts of Wind mana were being forced past the speed limit as he added them. Once the vortex was around the size of his body Lake moved it around him where he was standing in the eye of the vortex and did his best to raise the speed until he heard a voice tell him the name of the spell he was trying to use. "Fly."
Lake felt his feet lift off the ground and his head bash into the ceiling of the room. If he had put any thought into his actions he would have probably been able to avoid this but he had been caught up in what he had been using. Thankfully it seemed this room had been designed with things like this in mind and Lake hadn''t hurt himself because the ceiling was soft like a pillow.
Landing back on the ground, Lake walked out into the bigger area outside to see Joy was still here and was sitting on the ground with a red sphere surrounding her. "Lake had seen her use something simr in the battle against Nelg so Lake knew Joy was using this opportunity to practice magic while she had been waiting for him.
Lake remembered Joy telling him she could only use something called Antimagic when he had asked her about which elements she could use so Lake had no idea what it was past its name. Not bothering her, Lake started the vortex again and once it was going fast enough Lake said "Fly."
Getting into the air, Lake slowed himself down so he wouldn''t smack his head again. Once he was stable Lake realized why there was a limit on the Wind element and you could only learn Fly once you broke it. It was so you would be able to control your speed and not kill yourself on ident the first time you tried to use it.
Lake could see if there hadn''t been a limit people would try to fly before they were ready and not be able tond or stop himself from mming into a wall or something. Lake wondered if the amount of forethought put into this by the God or Goddess of Wind reflected on what they would be like if Lake ever met them.
Maybe they would be extremely cautious or not like it when people died. As he flew around the room Lake saw that Joy had noticed him and was now watching him. Slowing down and heading towards her, Lake saw her out stretch her hand and say "Disrupt."
He saw a red beam fly and smack into the vortex that he was using to fly. Right after the impact happened, Lake felt his spell crumble and he crashed into the floor. Once again he found the ce hended was soft and he wasn''t hurt in any way but he was confused why Joy had done this until he heard herugh.
It was just a prank apparently. "That''s something you should remember if you ever n to use Fly during a battle. I''ve killed people by doing something as small as what I just did to you at a good moment during a fight." Lake guessed this was probably a good thing for him to realize as soon as possible, so he said. "Thank you for this lesson."
It felt odd thanking someone for something like this but she had only done this because she knew it was perfectly safe. "If I was you I wouldn''t use fly in battle until you can recast it instantly." Lake nodded and asked. "Can Antimagic do that to any element or are there exceptions?"
"It has more to do with the person than what element they are using. It just messes with the principles that were in your spell making it hard for you to control if you are inexperienced in magic. If you had been practicing magic for a lot longer than I have you would have been fine and only experienced a small hup."
Lake nodded he still didn''t really understand Antimagic very well but this was a start and he only needed to ask one more thing before he knew if he could use it as well. "Is it just an element with an odd name, or is it different?"
"There''s a God of Antimagic if that''s what you''re asking, but the only way someone can use it is if they are given themon version of Comprehension and Antimagic is their one Affinity. Someone like you who can use Different elements can''t use it."
Lak nodded He could see why Joy would think this because under normal circumstances she would probably be right Lake was pretty sure Joy had seen him use 4 elements up to this point so she would think he had either an epic or a legendary version of Comprehension which would exclude him from Antimagic but he bet she was wrong.
The only way Lake saw it not working for him was if the God of Antimagic himself stopped him but Lake had no intentions of doing it Infront of Joy so he just said. "You want to eat dinner in my room tonight? You''re already in the spire so you might as well." Joy shook her head and said. "I was nning on going to the cafeteria that Millie reopened. The food isn''t as good as what she was serving us in her room, but you can get it at any time now so it''s a good trade off."
Lake guessed this was why Millie hadn''t been in her room earlier when he had knocked it seemed her new apprentices had arrived and she had moved her operation into a bigger area than the small kitchen she had been using in her room. "Ok let''s go there then." Joy helped him onto his feet and they both started the long walk downstairs.
Chapter 107: More Magic
Chapter 107: More Magic
After their meal Lake and Joy had gone their separate ways for the day and Lake had looked around for Millie, but gave up after he had found her and saw she was too busy to stop and talk to him. After that he had just gone to the library and wasted his time until he could go to bed. He hadn''t actually wasted his time because he had learned a few things, but he had been really bored the whole time, and that was what he had meant by wasting his time.
The nice thing was he found what he nned to do today while he read and having just woken up he needed to find Lucas to ask permission. Getting up to get ready Lake looked around till he found one of his servants and told them to clean him. It was nice to take a shower but Lake was the kind of person who didn''t like how long all that took so whenever he thought he stunk he just had one of his servants clean him using magic.
When that was over Lake headed for the door when one of them called out to him. "Sir you should go out onto the balcony before you go." It didn''t take much of a reminder for him to remember that he had seen the smoke out in the distance yesterday and thought there was a chance the capital could be the new front lines today, but he had totally let that slip his mindst night and this morning.
Stepping out onto the balcony, Lake saw what he was supposed to. There were a few fires set in the city and a portion of a wall that separated two parts of the city had copsed. He couldn''t see fighting going on though so he guessed whatever had happened while he had been sleeping was over now.
Lake guessed this gave him something else to talk to Lucas about as he headed out his door. Once he was in Lucas''s office Lake got his attention. "What happenedst night in the city?" Lucas didn''t really seem to care about what he was saying as he told Lake. "Some Demon Worshipers that had been hiding in the city tried to do somethingst night, but from what I''ve been told it didn''t go well for them."
"Do you know what it was they were trying to do?" Lucas shook his head and said. "It had something to do with the Light Temple but they wouldn''t say what it was so it must be important." Lake took the fact that Lucas didn''t seem to care as it was fine for him to disregard whatever had happened for now.
"Can I go to the top of the spire for the day?" This was what Lake was going to ask originally before he had seen what had happened. Lucas seemed to be taking his time to give an answer so Lake thought it would be a good idea to add more details to his request. "I just want to go to the formation room, not the Master Lab."
The formation room had been mentioned in one of the books Lake had flipped throughst night and from what he had read it was a pretty helpful ce for those wishing to train their own mana instead of using the elemental mana you could pull out of the air. "It''s kind of early for you to go in there. You know it''s up there for a reason."
Lucas meant it was for masters only that was why it was where they lived. Lake had only asked because Lucas seemed to usually just give people whatever they wanted so he thought he would receive a yes with little effort. "It''s fine if no one stops you, go ahead and try."
It seemed Lucas had convinced himself so Lake was free to go. It also seemed Lucas was leaving it up to him to actually get there. "Lucas, how do I get through the barrier that blocks off the top ten floors?" Lake remembered Lucas had stopped him to let him through some form of invisible wall.
"You''re good, I only had to do that because you didn''t have your badge that said you were a resident of the spire yet." Lake nodded and asked one more question. "Is that the only obstacle I''ll need to pass to get there?"
"Your badge will get you through everything." Lake nodded and started heading up the stairs when he remembered he could fly now. Getting into the center of the stairwell, Lake started to rise and sped up until he was passing a floor every few seconds. He was happy with this speed and held it steady as he quickly made it to the top of the spire.
It looked like he had made the right choice in learning to fly yesterday because he had just saved himself so much time, and from now on he would only need to walk when he was with someone who couldn''t fly. Stepping back onto the stairs, Lake passed through the barrier, and walked up to the floor the formation room was on.
Seeing no one around likest time he hade up here Lake was pretty sure no one was going to try and stop him. It seemed the Masters spent most of their time in the Lab and he didn''t need to worry about them too much. Opening the Door Lake walked in to see there were actually people inside.
They all had their backs turned towards him and hadn''t looked to see who it was who had just entered st Lake just walked in and sat down at one of the screens. Once he started he was sure people would think he was supposed to be here so he wanted to waste no time in getting started. Putting his face as close as he could in front of the screen, Lake stretched his hands out until he felt them enter some sort of wet area.
There wasn''t actually anything there other than some form of mana produced through a formation, but the book had said it would feel like your hands were in water so that''s what he had thought when he touched it. Now that he was in position with the screen over his eyes and his hands outstretched he squeezed his hands into fists which told the Formation Trainer to start.
Seeing a shape form around his hands, Lake tried to use his mana to make the shape but was unable to even get it out of his body. This was the reason he had wanted toe here up until now he had never even tried to cast a spell using his own mana and he had found that it was a lot harder than he thought it was going to best night.
It was the reason he had picked up the book on mana training that had led him here. After a few seconds Lake saw the shape outlined around his hands on the screen change again and did his best to push his mana out of him and into the shape it wanted. He failed again but he had expected to fail for a few hours until he could find out what he was doing wrong like he had done yesterday when learning to fly.
This thing was also way above his level; this was for people that could already do what he was trying to learn to do and were actually already at the level where they could form their mana into formations that did things. Lake had learnedst night that the feeling he felt anytime he put mana into his ward ring where it felt like it was being bent into a shape was actually correct.
The shape was the formation that once powered activated the ward that kept him safe but the thing was once you could control your mana you didn''t need the ring anymore if you wanted to make something like a ward. You could just form any formation using your mana. The only problem was it was really hard, and that was why people used things that held your mana in the right shape.
Lake had no ns to learn that today and just hoped to get basic control of his mana so he could use it to make custom spells. On the next shape Lake tried to replicate the feeling he felt when mana was put into something. It was like he had grown a tail from his finger the first time he had put the ring on and filled it, and it was a sensation he would never forget.
That experience had shown him what it felt like to use his mana so trying to actually put it into practice Lake saw a small amount of mana swirl around his finger where his ring usually was. He had his ring off right now in case it would somehow mess with the Formation Trainer and it seemed he had made the right choice because it had allowed him to push some mana out into the trainer instead of into his ring.
This formation Trainer stabilized his mana as well, that was what the wet sensation around his hands was for, it was some form of environment created by the trainer to help beginners like him learn to move their mana into shapes faster, and the reason he had wanted to use his machine, because usually unless you had something that would keep your mana stable it would copse ass soon as it left your body unless you added principles to use it to cast a spell.
In a normal environment you couldn''t do what he was doing now and just move it around into various shapes in its base form unless you were experienced in mana control. The act of adding principles was what made mana stable and that was what the elements were, stable mana that the gods had expelled from their bodies into the world for people to use for varying purposes.
With his new string of mana Lake did his best to form it into the shape the disy told him to. Not even getting close Lake tried again with the next one and was pretty sure he did even worse. It must have been beginner''s luck that first time which meant this was probably something you couldn''t overthink or it would mess you up.
Lake had realized a long time ago that beginner''s luck usually applied to things that needed very little thought to be good at. Trying to just make it happen instead of trying to figure out how to make it happen, Lake found he had been right and this was a feeling thing not a thinking thing and found he had done much better thanst time.
He had already done what he hade here to do as soon as he got his mana out of his body but there was no point in leaving just yet because he wanted to see if he could get better at this formation thing as well and maybe even find a way to get more than just this small amount of mana out of his finger where his ring went.
Chapter 108: Bystander
Chapter 108: Bystander
Lake Had been messing around on the formation trainer for a few hours at this point and he had made a lot of progress in actually getting more mana out of his body but not much progress at actually controlling it. He had long ago passed what he had wished to achieve ining here so he was about to rap it up and head down stairs when he heard one of the Masters say. "Another fight has broken out inside the city."
Lake didn''t know what source this news came from but it didn''t really matter because within half a second every one of the Masters had disappeared from where they had been sitting. Lake wasn''t sure where they had gone but he was sure they all had responsibilities to the guild they had to fulfill during times like these since they were the backbone of the guild.
Standing up Lake put his ns to test his new found skill into the back of his mind and walked out into the stairwell. Flying down the center, Lake stopped on his floor and headed to his room. He wanted to watch whatever fight was going on and while he knew other balconies existed the one in his room would be the easiest for him to get to.
Stepping out Lake saw his servants were already outside and were watching the shes of bright light that wereing from the city. In between the shes Lake could see there were lots of people fighting in a few ces in the city but other than obvious details like what color their clothes were Lake was unable to really tell what was happening.
It was still impressive that he could see anything though considering he was able to see individual people from miles away and while they were moving at a speed that was probably impossible for some jets in his original world. There was also some form of battle happening above the city but other than the shes Lake had already mentioned that seemed to being from there he couldn''t tell who or what was fighting in the sky.
After a while of watching the shes of light that reminded Lake of a firework he had seen as a child He saw something new happen in the sky. He saw a pitch ck bubble start to form and a few momentster five rust colored bolts came flying out from the bubble. Lake had expected something like this, but he was unsure why all five bolts were headed downwards towards the city.
He couldn''t tell if the person was trying to destroy the city or just force whoever they were fighting into blocking, but either way Lake couldn''t wait to see what would happen when theynded. As he watched them fall one of the spears suddenly disappeared. Lake assumed it had been destroyed but the way he saw it there wasn''t enough time for them to stop the other four with how long it had taken them to stop the first one.
Right when he expected to see the next spear be destroyed based on the amount of time that had passed since the first Lake saw a golden shield start to rise from the ground. "Gasp." It wasn''t thatrge but from its speed Lake could tell it was what would be responsible for blocking the rest of the attack.
Lake wasn''t sure why people had gasped though it was much more important than anything else that had happened yet because they hadn''t gasped when the attack aimed at the city had happened. Lake would ask after he watched the shield stop the bolts though because he wanted to see what would happen.
As the shield met the first bolt that Lake assumed was an Unholy spell based on its color of dried blood, nothing much happened. The shield just let out a small ripple of golden energy and moved on to the next one. Lake knew Holy and Unholy were the opposites of each other so he had been expecting the shield to have a hard time but he guessed he was wrong.
Losing interest Lake looked over to one of his servants and asked. "Why did everyone gasp when the shield was formed?" Lake wanted to know what the big deal was because to him it was just a spell on the same level as the bolts that had been sent down onto the city. "It''s because no one has seen Holy magic like that since the Goddess was killed during thest war."
Lake nodded he hadn''t really thought about that because to him magic was magic. He didn''t really care what element it was as long as it worked, so he hadn''t cared when he had seen something as rare as Holy magic. He guessed to other people it was a big deal especially when someone was able to use such a strong Holy spell.
Lake remembered he had actually met someone who could use Holy magic when he had been in the Light Temple. Her name was Mimi or something and she had told him it was really hard to train in Holy magic because there was barely any in the world anymore so it would take a very long time to even gather enough to cast the spell Lake had just seen.
Looking back to the fight, Lake saw that there were now none of the unholy bolts left and the shield was lowering back towards the city. After a while it seemed the fight might be wrapping up because the fight in the sky seemed to be over because there were no more shes or anything.
Looking at the ground Lake looked to see if he was right and the two sides were disengaging from the battle. It seemed he had been right because the people that weren''t wearing white robes were starting to disappear from the streets. "It seems this was just a probing attack to see how strong the members of the Light temple holding the city are."
Lake had to agree with Jason''s assessment that was exactly what it was. They had all retreated after the golden shield had appeared so it was probably what they had been after. "There will probably be a real attack tonight where they will try and kill that Holy mage." Lake knew the Demon worshipers always did their best to kill anyone with the Holy attribute so there was a good chance that would be exactly what would happen.
Lake knew one of the reasons they killed Holy attribute holders was because they helped revive the Holy goddess in some way but Lake wondered if there was another reason. He remembered when he had read the book about different elements he had stopped on the section about Life magic because he had been confused why it existed when Holy magic had been a better version of it.
The book had said it had been created to heal around Unholy curses because for Holy magic to heal someone it would have to Fight the Unholy curse because they were opposite to one another. The two were natural enemies and it caused it to be almost impossible to save someone who had been cursed using Unholy magic because the sh between the two elements would usually be violent enough to kill the host.
It was possible that following that logic the only people who posed any real threat to the Demon Lord and his army were people like that mage in the city because from the fight he had just seen the Light Mage in the Sky hadunched like a hundred attacks and it had done nothing to the Unholy Mage.
Lake hadn''t even seen them fight back really because the only spell Lake had seen them cast had been at the city. It was almost like they had been disregarding the Light Mage Like they were nothing because they posed no real risk. Lake didn''t understand the interactions between the elements very well, but he thought maybe Light just happened to be a bad matchup for some reason.
Now that the battle waspletely over Lake headed back inside. It had been a good show but Lake had been too far away to really get anything from it. It had felt more like he was watching tv then watching something actually happening where he lived.
He was sure he would care a lot more if he was one of the people who lived in one of the now burning buildings. Entering his kitchen, Lake got himself a ss of water and sat down for a few seconds while he thought about what he would do for the rest of the day. Lake had nothing to do so he thought maybe Lucas would have something for him.
Lake was pretty sure that was how he was supposed to be acting anyway. Doing things for the guild was probably what most members did, and he was surprised that he hadn''t been given anything to do yet.
Chapter 109: A Boring Evening
Chapter 109: A Boring Evening
When Lake entered Lucas''s office he wasn''t there so Lake sat down to wait for him. He wasn''t surprised that Lucas had things to do with the fact that a huge battle just happened outside. Lake was sure Lucas had gone to watch the battle the same way he had and was on his way back right now.
Lake wasn''t actually guessing he always knew where Lucas was and he could see he was currently on the elevator and would be here in less than a minute. As soon as the elevator reached the office and Lucas stepped off they made eye contact, and Lake could tell Lucas was high strung.
He must have seen something during the battle that had made him nervous. Lake knew Lucas had Perception much higher than his so he wouldn''t be surprised if Lucas had been able to see the fine details of the battle in the sky. "Lake I''m busy so you need to go."
Lake could tell this wasn''t the same Lucas he usually dealt with and he needed to get out of his way. Standing up Lake said, "If you need anything done just tell me." and headed for the stairs. This in a way aplished his goal of getting something to do without Lucas getting annoyed with him.
After about thirty seconds of flying, Lake was on his floor and heading towards his room when he thought he might as well go see Wace. Lake disliked sitting around and doing nothing so he thought it would be a good way to pass some time while he waited for Lucas to get back to him.
Knocking on the door it wasn''t long before one of Wace''s servants let him in. Being led inside Lake saw Wace and Sam. Wace was chasing Sam around the room telling him to calm down and that the fight they had just watched wasn''t something to be excited about. Lake could tell by the way Sam was acting that he had really only been able to see therge spells that had been cast and all the people killing each other had been too far away for him to see.
Watching Sam run around imitating people casting spells, Lake thought how three people could see the same thingpletely differently. He didn''t really care about what had happened, and Sam was excited because he thought it had been cool, but Lucas was deathly serious and was acting like he had seen death on the horizon.
Wace seemed to also understand it was serious by the way he was acting but seemed to be downying it so Sam wouldn''t be scared. "Hello Wace, Sam." Lake was sure both of them had already seen him but he wanted to get them to stop because it was starting to get annoying.
It worked and Wace finally caught Sam and made him sit at the table, and start reading some book.
"Hey Lake, did you see the fight just now?" Lake nodded and said. "Yeah it was too bad that the spell was blocked. I wanted to see what would happen when itnded." Lake was messing with Wace and started tough as soon as Wace made a face of confusion. "I''m just kidding."
Lake said this just to make sure Wace understood because the joke had kind of bombed because he was the only oneughing. "Yes of course you are. So did youe for a reason?" Lake had a reason but he didn''t want to say he was just here to kill some time so he made up a lie. "I just wanted to see if you had made any progress in your research."
Wace made golems so it would be interesting to get to see anything he had been working on. "Yeah I have one I''m about to send down to floor three, you want toe with me?" Lake knew the first twenty or so floors had nts growing in them so he guessed he was about to see something Like the Scarerat.
Following Wace to the office area up the stairs, Lake saw a golem that was about 4 feet tall that had long thin arms and a wide bin area on its back. Getting a closer look at its limbs Lake could tell it wasn''t at its full height at the moment and once it was activated it would probably be around 8 feet tall.
Its legs weren''t the only thing that looked like they could stretch either; the arms seemed to also be in a retracted form even though they were already so long. "Alright, help me lift it, actually you know what, let''s have the servants do it. I keep forgetting I can make them do stuff I don''t want to."
Lake remembered it had taken him a second to get used to having servants as well so he could understand why Wace had almost made a mistake and did physicalbor he didn''t need to. Watching Wace''s servants pick up the golem Lake heard Wace tell them to take it to floor three, and they would be there in a little while.
"I''m gonna go tell Sam to behave while I''m gone then we can leave." Lake nodded and headed to the door to wait. He heard Wace say exactly that to Sam and after telling Sam that he wasn''t allowed to leave the room Wace walked over and motioned for them to leave.
Once they were in the hallway Lake turned to Wace and asked. "Why didn''t you just bring him with us?"
"The staircase is kind of precarious." Lake guessed he was right, the staircase didn''t even have railings in 80% of it and it had clearly been added after the spire had been built because the quality dropped in a few ces to just wooden nks, so Lake could understand Wace thinking Sam would fall.
"I Also don''t want him to bother anyone because he isn''t actually meant to be in the spire, and I don''t want anyone toin." Lake nodded to this as well. Sam could be kind of annoying just because he was a child and this was a ce of work so people had no time for such things as a child''s antics.
"Can you fly?" Lake asked once they were in the stairwell to which Wace said no. It wasn''t that big of a deal that he had to walk because he had already expected this to happen anytime he was with someone else, and he had no ns to princess carry Wace to save himself a few minutes.
As they were making their way down Lake saw someoneing up in their direction. This happened all the time but most of the time it was someone''s servant so Lake never paid them any attention because you couldn''t really have a conversation with them while they were working.
"Hey Millie." Lake had been wanting to talk to Millie for some reason for a while, so it was nice to finally see her not working. "Hey Lake, I''m really tired, so I''m not going to stop and chat because you know all these stairs." Lake did know about the stairs. They were a pain in the ass, and every time you climbed them it made you wonder why people even lived in the spire anymore.
Lake was sure there was a reason, but one of these days he should really ask Lucas what he would need to get the teleporters working 24/7 again. He remembered it was some form of resource problem which made Lake think he could probably solve it if he really tried.
"So that was Millie huh." Lake looked at Wace who seemed to have heard of Millie, and said. "Yeah, have you had a chance to try the food?" Wace nodded and said. "Yes, it was one of the first things I did after joining. She was apparently one of the reasons Lucas let me join so fast after I showed him my golems, he said the guild was going to need a lot of food real soon."
"For the restaurants?" Wace nodded and said. "Yeah he said we could have the golems work a farm near any restaurants we open that would be able to grow all the food we serve. When I first came I was expecting for him to ask me to grow food for the city because of the war but then he showed me some of Millie''s food and I realized the guild already nned to take over the food industry before I even arrived."
"It''s nice you can help though, Lucas wouldn''t have let you in if you weren''t going to y an important role in the future." Lake had been blown off by everyone except for Wace today, so he thought he could repay him by giving him more confidence in himself. "Yeah I guess you''re right." Lake was happy his deception had worked.
Chapter 110: Golem Detail
Chapter 110: Golem Detail
On the third floor Lake just followed Wace because he had never bothered to stop and look around any of the farms. Walking into a small room that had a few small grow zones, Lake saw the golem Wace told his servants to deliver. It was sitting on a small pedestal that looked like it had been built very recently just to hold it.
Lake thought that because the golems feet fit perfectly into small slots Lake wasn''t sure but he was guessing it was some form of charger like the pole the Scarerat had been on. Sam had said something like it absorbed energy from the environment to power the Scarerat but Lake was sure this charger probably worked differently being inside and all.
As Lake thought about what he was seeing he was also keeping his eyes on Wace as he went over the golems body. Lake assumed he was checking to make sure it hadn''t been damaged on the way down or whatever. After Wace had done a very thorough job he ced his hand on the Golem and it started to move a few secondster.
"This is my design for harvesting the whole nt. I n to make a separate design for picking fruit from branches without damaging the rest of the nt but it''s going to take more time because I''ll have to design some nimble fingers instead of just giving it des for hands like I have with this one."
As Lake was listening he saw the golem get to work chopping rows of nts with its long arms that worked like scythes and depositing the nts into its bin on its back. It seemed efficient but Lake didn''t understand why they couldn''t just get people to do it. In this world people could move and work much faster because of stats they earned from jobs so he didn''t understand the benefit.
"How is this better than just Letting farmers do it?" Wace smiled like he had already prepared an answer. Lake was sure he was about to hear what had originally been intended as his sales pitch but went unused because Lucas had said yes almost instantly.
"It isn''t at the moment and to be honest I''ll probably never be able topletely rece farmers but right now Lucas has asked me to make golems that can set up a farm anywhere in less than a day. He also said if I can make them resistant enough we will be able to farm nts that grow in hazardous environments much easier."
Lake nodded, he guessed they had their uses if you knew how farming actually worked. He had been thinking using his idea of farming from his world but here not every ce you needed to grow was safe. He could also see the golems being useful for poisonous nts since they were mainly made of metal they would be immune.
Lake saw the Golem''s bin get full so he asked. "What does it do now that it''s full?" Wace walked towards the golem as he said. "I n to add a function that allows it to bail up whatever it''s harvesting so it can keep working but at the moment I''m just going to tell it to empty itself in that corner."
"So how much work is it to build one of these?" From what Wace had said about all of Lucas''s ns for the golems it sounded like they were going to need a lot. "The designing takes a lot longer than actually making them, as long as I have the resources I can make around three a day but once I send my designs to Lucas he''s going to find people that can build the bodies while I just enchant them."
"How many do you think you need?" Lake wanted to know if once they started if it would just go forever or if they had a set number they nned to make. "No idea, I''m fine with doing it forever if it''s what the guild wants. Even if we ever had enough farming golems I would probably just start making different golems."
"Are golems something all Enchanters can make, or do you need a special skill, or is it a separate job?" Lake had been trying to get the Enchanter job for a while but not really that hard because he kept forgetting to use Imbue before he killed things. "All Enchanters can do it if they put the time in, but there are skills that make it much easier. For instance I have a skill where I can just use my Mana to make a golem instead of needing all the materials most Enchanters need."
"What kind of materials do most Enchanters need to make a golem?"
"It''s mostly cores, the main issue being the moreplicated the golem is the stronger the core needs to be to actually bring it to life. It can be really hard to get a good supply of powerful cores considering no one really risks their life fighting monsters that can easily kill them, or travels very far into the wilderness."
This statement seemed to be hinting towards how the world he was in was structured and Lake wanted to know more but whenever something like this came up he never really asked because he felt like it gave away the fact that he didn''te from here. He tried to keep his questions to things not everyone would know unless he was talking to Lucas.
Lucas had known for a while that Lake probably came from another world even though he had never confirmed it. Lake would just ask Lucas Later about what Wace had just said about the wilderness. Lake had been wondering for a while if there were other parts of the world he hadn''t heard about yet but every time he had seen a map all it had on it was the continent he was currently on.
This had made him start to wonder if this world had more of a t shapepared to the world he hade from that was a sphere. He could see a fantasy world being t since it didn''t work the same way reality wise. Lake was done watching Wace''s golem do Farm work so he turned and said goodbye before leaving to head to the cafeteria.
It was about lunch time so Lake couldn''t really help himself but go and eat even if he wasn''t that hungry. Lake had to say his skill Refreshed was nice but he wished he could control it so he could be hungry more often when he was inside the guild. At the moment he had a hard time eating twice in a day if he wasn''t doing anything.
...
In a ce Lake was just a few days ago Five people were standing around an empty case wondering how someone was able to get inside without them being alerted and why the person hadn''t emptied the ce out, and had settled for not only one, but also the least impressive of the weapons.
"With them only taking one there''s a zero percent chance whoever entered the vault works for the Demon Lord so it leaves the Thieves guild as the most likely candidate. It''s possible whoever broke in thought if they only took one we wouldn''t track them down which means they probably know who we are and if you factor in the skill it took to get in here they are definitely one of the big shots."
"It''s probably more they think we will be too busy to figure out which of them actually did it. With the war and all, they probably thought it was the perfect time to pull a job like this, but now that Tiff doesn''t have a weapon I say we send her to find it." The other four didn''t seem to agree and one of them finally said something.
"If we send her without her weapon there''s a good chance she could die. Not all of us are as strong as you Greg, and Tiff can only use Holy magic making her one of the weakest." The four of them knew Greg had a tendency to overestimate them because he assumed all of them were about the same strength but the truth was all three people who had been chosen to wield the three swords were much higher inbat strength than the rest who had really only been chosen because the Temple didn''t have that many other choices.
"You four are forgetting she specializes in stealth and she has a maxed out agility there are very few people who could actually catch her even in the capital."
"There are still plenty of ways she could get hurt, and there is no way the Temple will allow her to go after the dagger alone, so even if you tell them it''s missing they will just put it off until after the battle. Which is the only reason we would need it."
"You might be right but I don''t think you realize how much the dagger matters. It might seem that there isn''t really that much of a difference between 23 and 22 but from what I''ve been told we were already heavily outnumbered so I think the temple will send her to retrieve it even if she could die. She doesn''t have much use without the weapon anyway."
The four of them knew the Temple told Greg more about the war since he was one of the three swords but none of them liked the way he had been treating them recently. He had gone from being friendly to treating them like they were expendable and while they were all soldiers who could very well die, the way he was talking about Tiff, who had been with them since they were children was concerning.
"Alright pack up the weapons we have already wasted more time than we should have the others are waiting for us." The four did as they were told and soon were on their way to arming the others. In just a few hours they would finally get to unveil what the Temple considered one of the only things that could possibly win the war.
Chapter 111: True Chaos Pt.1
Chapter 111: True Chaos Pt.1
After lunch Lake had gone to the library to read more about how to create spells. After some reading he had seen that he wasn''t ready yet because with only really understanding two principles any custom spells he made would becking and not much different from Wind magic.
Once he started to learn principles from other elements that would be when it would make sense for him to start making custom spells that mixed multiple elements together. He had also stopped because he didn''t want to miss the start of the battle everyone was predicting.
During lunch he had heard a lot of people saying that there would definitely be arge-scale fight tonight and if the Temple lost the capital would turn into a bloodbath. It seemed the Demon Lord didn''t keep prisoners and just turned any people he found into undead for his army.
Lake had already known this because he had seen it happen with his own eyes, but for some reason he thought the capital would be spared and just upied by the Demon worshipers, but from what he heard from the people who had been eating if the Temple failed to protect the city the only ce in the capital that wouldn''t be turned into Undead would be the Alchemist guild and any guilds that had already joined the Demon Lord''s side.
After that all the people he had been listening to said was which guilds they thought were on what side and why. Lake would have continued to listen if it had been true and not just wild conjecture that none of them could agree on but he had been done eating so he had left.
He was currently just waiting in his room. He had sent one of his servants outside onto the balcony and told them toe get him once it started. A few hours had already passed and Lake was just going to go outside and wait because there wasn''t much difference if he waited here or outside, and he was getting tired of sitting at the table.
Stepping onto the balcony, Lake saw his servant just standing there doing exactly what he had told them to. "You can go to your room if you want. I''ll watch and call if it starts." His other two servants had already gone to their rooms but had asked to be called down if there was a fight, so it seemed he wasn''t the only one who wanted to watch.
Lake was sure every person in the guild would be doing the same since the result of the battle was so important. It would be kind of crazy not to be up and alert when anything could happen.
Not long after the sun had set Lake finally saw something without confirming Lake called out to his servants because even if he was wrong and the fight wasn''t about to happen, it wasn''t that big of a deal, and his servants wouldn''t want to miss the beginning.
Lake didn''t turn to greet the three when they came outside and just pointed where he had seen a sh of light moments ago. "Something just happened there, and I think it''s about to start." A few seconds after he said that he saw another sh in a different part of the city. Staining his eyes, Lake saw two people fighting.
He was happy he had such good vision and could see in the dark because he bet he was one of the few people who could see this. Of course it was just a low level fight but it was better than nothing especially after the hours he had been waiting. Watching the two throw punches and spells at one another it wasn''t long before more people joined them.
It wasn''t just in that part of the city either, it was starting to spread. "Where are all of theming from?" It was like the city was infested or something. He guessed since the city didn''t have a barrier like the guild did there wasn''t anything stopping the two armies from justing in.
A lot of them had also probably already been here to begin with so he guessed it made sense that this amount could be in the city with no one really noticing. He just wished they would hurry up and pull out the big guns because everyone who was currently fighting was kind of weak.
After a while Lake finally saw something big happen. One of the bigger buildings in town exploded. Lake wasn''t sure what had happened or why it had been that building but he was excited because it probably meant the fight was about to ramp up. It seemed he was right because a few secondster there was a sh and a section of the city close to the edge burst into mes.
"I was expecting the Temple to hold back more while in the city."
"Maybe they had no choice."
Lake liked hearing his servants''ments. It was like court sidementators, and it was making his experience much more rich. After another big explosion they continued theirments.
"That was the Temple again, what are they doing?"
"It''s probably because they know that everyone in the city will be killed if they fail to stop the Demon Worshipers."
Lake agreed with Jason and was about to say so when he heard a knock at his door. He was going to tell one of them to go and let whoever it was in when he saw Jason was doing it already. Turning back around to watch he heard. "You don''t mind if I watch here do you? my balcony faces the wrong direction."
Lake didn''t need to turn to know Millie was here and since he had been meaning to talk to her since he had returned he had no problem with her watching with him. "No problem." Millie walked over and stood next to him by the railing. "Sorry about not stopping to talk yesterday. I was really tired, and all I wanted was to get to my room to sleep."
This had technically happened earlier today, but that didn''t matter so he didn''t correct her, and Lake got it so he said. "I get it, none of us like to climb the stairs after a big day." Getting back to what was actually happening, Lake asked. "Which side do you want to win?"
This was aplete joke because Millie wouldn''t want every person in the city to be killed so it was obvious which side she probably wanted to win. Most people would probably be the same way because most people saw killing as wrong, and most of the time there wasn''t anything that could justify it.
"I mean I thought everyone wanted the Light Temple to win." Lake was about to say something along the lines of, not everyone, but was stopped by a giant wave of golden energy in the sky. "Looks like the Holy mage from yesterday finally started to fight."
Once again Lake was too far away to see the fight in the sky, and the fact that it was kind of cloudy wasn''t helping, so he kind of just watched the golden shes that happened every few seconds while listening to his servants and Millie makingments.
"I didn''t think it was possible to use Holy magic so frequently whoever it is must have a max affinity to be able to gather so much."
"It''s also possible they have something that can store Holy mana, or that they have a really high Intelligence."
"No, if they were just relying on Intelligence theirs would have to be over 200 which would make them a demigod, and if demigods were fighting most of the city would have already been destroyed, or you know all of it."
"It''s most likely some form of weapon. You see how every attack is a wave. I think it''s because whoever the mage is, they are using a sword or some kind of ded weapon."
Everyone seemed to be waiting for more details and they all stopped talking to pay attention. But Lake did the opposite. Jason had just said the mage was probably using a sword which made him think about the weapon vault he had broken into a few days ago. It was very possible the weapon they were currently using to fight was one of the ones he had seen while he was inside the vault.
Lake guessed it was a good thing The Insider had stopped him from taking them all and had made him settle for a dagger because the city would be screwed if the temple didn''t have what they needed to fight off the Demon Lord''s army. It did make him wonder why they had kept all the weapons in a random building instead of a church or something though.
That vault must have been special in some way he didn''t understand or maybe the weapons had been hidden away from the temples to keep them safe from traitors. Lake knew every organization had problems with members that weren''t actually loyal to them. "Ining!"
Lake looked up to see a massive fireball was heading straight for the guild. "Don''t worry the barrier will take care of it." Lake still ducked behind the railing as the explosion happened just in case. It was an instinctual reaction because it had caught him off guard with him not actually paying attention.
When the light and sound had died back down to normal he stood back up to see Jason had been right and the barrier had stopped the ball of fire just fine. "I bet guild master Lucas is mad right now." Lake turned to Millie to see she was still right next to him. "Why would he be mad?" Lake didn''t think there had been any damage caused by the attack so he didn''t understand why Lucas would care.
"The barrier doesn''t really use any power as long as it isn''t being attacked so a stray attack just happening to hit us is bad luck." Lake hadn''t been paying attention, so he had actually thought the attack had been aimed at them, but he guessed now that he knew it was an ident that had cost the barrier some power he could see why Lucas could be mad.
Seeing as Millie seemed to know about the guild buildings working he thought she might know about the teleporters so he asked. "Do you know how the teleporters work as well, or just the barrier?" Millie shook her head and said. "You would have to ask Lucas, they have been off so long that I''ve never even heard anyone talking about them."
Millie had been in the guild for a lot longer than him so if she hadn''t ever seen them on it meant they were almost never used. He remembered Lucas had said they were only for emergencies so they did work, they were just hard to recharge, but this was starting to seem like an emergency might happen soon that would cause Lucas to reactivate them.
And just after he had learned to fly making him not need to walk the stairs anymore. Life was never fair.
Chapter 112: True Chaos Pt.2
Chapter 112: True Chaos Pt.2
Tiff had just left a meeting with a few of the Temples higher ups that didn''t have thebat strength to match their importance to the Temple, meaning they were also sitting out of the fight like her. They had informed her that the dagger that she had been meant to use during the battle that was currently happening had been stolen and the best thing she could do was try to track it down before the battle was over.
From what the temple higher ups had said she had plenty of time because the Demon Lord''s Army had enough troops to fight for about a week without taking any breaks. It probably wouldn''t be nonstop fighting with the fact they mostly liked to attack at night but with the temple wanting to attack during the day there would be very little time when the two sides wouldn''t be butting heads.
This all added up to her having a really bad environment to actually track down who had her dagger. It would be one thing if she knew where it was and all she had to do was kill her way to it, but gathering information in an active war zone wasn''t going to be easy.
Stepping out of the safe house she and the rest of the 23 had been staying in for thest few days, Tiff looked up into the sky where she saw golden light illuminating the streets every few seconds. She could tell one of the three swords was up there but not which one it was, but if she had to guess she would say it was Greg.
He had a tendency to be aggressive which would exin the frequency ofrge attacks. Tiff didn''t like this style of fighting but she had apletely different situation to Greg; he had the strength one would need to fight like a maniac, and she had to be careful with her limited amount of attacks she couldunch before she needed to spend a few days gathering more Holy mana.
Silently slipping past all the people fighting in the streets, Tiff headed towards where the temple had said was the most likely ce she would find some of the better thieves that were still in the city. She wasn''t surprised that most of the thieves had made a run for it as soon as the fighting had started because even though they were technically in the thieves guild that swore allegiance to the Demon lord most thieves couldn''t fight.
This was good news for her because neither could she when it came down to it. She had been unlucky in the magicpartment meaning she had to rely on the skills she had gotten from the few jobs she had had time to level when she had been on the run before she was saved by the temple.
Most of them were obviously rted to stealth or outrunning her pursuers which was the only reason she had ever been chosen for the dagger. Her fighting style matched the most out of all the people the Temple had had on hand at the time when the Temple had started the training for the 23.
She said at the time because since they had begun the training a few others who had skills like her had arrived at the Temple and a few were actually a little stronger making it a popr opinion that she should be reced. She was pretty sure the only reason she hadn''t been was because most of the others in the 23 had refused a recement.
It did make her doubt the reason she had been set out by herself though, she was pretty sure they were just hoping she would die making it much easier to rece her without the others making a fuss about it. It also made her think the dagger hadn''t even been stolen and just moved so they could have an excuse to get rid of her.
It was a good n if that was the case because all her friends were too busy to help her and none of them would suspect the Temple could ever do something so shady. It was one of the problems of them all being raised in the Temple: none of them could see the Temple as anything but the good guys. Making them blind to the admittedly few bad things the Temple did in the name of winning the war against the Demon Lord.
Tiff wasn''t saying they weren''t the good guys just that they weren''t perfect like the 23 had been made to think. It was a good strategy to make your strongest assetspletely loyal, and it would have worked on her too if she hadn''t been able to sneak her way into some ces she wasn''t allowed to be in.
She had overheard the meeting where it had been decided they should rece her against the wishes of the others at any means necessary, and a lot of other unseemly things they had decided on. If it wasn''t for the others she considered her family in the 23 and the fact the Demon Worshipers could eventually catch her she would have left the Temple and let them rece her willingly.
She would actually settle for even one of them leaving with her because they would all eventually die during this war so trying to save them all was foolish but whenever she had tried to talk the others into leaving they always told her she shouldn''t say such things and that everyone was counting on them to protect them.
It made her ufortable how willing the others were to die if it meant the temple might win. The way Tiff saw it none of the stuff they were doing really mattered. The real fight was between the Gods and the Demon Lord, and nothing they did could really change the results. All they were really doing was making it slightly harder for the Demon Lord to kill every person he wanted to.
They couldn''t stop him though just slow him down and if the God of Light didn''t find the Demon Lord soon they would be overrun. The Demon Lord had such an advantage because anytime someone was killed they were just added to his army meaning they could never really win just hold him off for a few months while the God of Light figured out where the Demon Lord was recovering/hiding.
Turning the corner Tiff saw the street she had been nning to use to travel to the other side of town was burning and she would need to go another more dangerous way. By dangerous she meant it was packed with more people fighting which increased the odds of her getting hit by a stray attack, or possibly running into someone who could see her.
Heading to go around the fire Tiff saw another of the 23 was on the street ahead. They couldn''t see her, but it was nice to know not all of them were in life or death battles just yet. It wasn''t surprising Dawn was the holder of the bow making her the perfect person to have watch over the safehouse and make sure none of the Demon Worshipers got anywhere close to it.
Dawn was also one of the few people around that could sense her so she needed to be careful not to be mistaken as an enemy as she passed through. The best way to do that was to make herself visible to let Dawn see her. This would allow others to see her but she knew she could rely on Dawn to keep her safe as she passed through.
Deactivating her skill she waved to Dawn and once she was sure she had been seen she started to walk towards where she needed to go. It didn''t take too long for her to leave Dawn''s range so she could reactivate her skill and not too long after she had left it she saw a sh behind her she was sure meant dawn had just killed someone.
It was a good thing she had noticed Dawn on top of that building or it might have been her that Dawn had shot. It would have been a quick death though so she guessed it was a lot better than how most people died. It would have made Dawn really upset though if she had killed her by mistake though.
Reaching the ce she had been told to go, Tiff was waiting for someone to jump out and kill her but when it didn''t happen she guessed she hadn''t been set up and she was actually about to talk to some people who might know where the dagger was. Walking over to knock on the door Tiff stopped and stared up into the sky. There had just been a huge sh of red light and when she looked she saw a giant ball of fire flying over the city towards the barrier she had been told was the Alchemist guild.
"It Looks like tonight''s fight is over." Fire meant that the person in the sky defending the city had in fact been Greg because the fireball was his finishing move he had been using for years to finish off opponents that were on theirst legs. She was sure whoever the Demon Lord had sent to take over the city from them was now ash and the Demon Worshipers would soon retreat, even if it was just for a while.
Turning Tiff knocked on the door. She was just nning to buy the information she needed because she had plenty of money and thieves sold each other out all the time. Tiff always did her best to avoid fights unless the others were in danger like they were now, so she needed to get her dagger back as soon as possible.
Chapter 113: True Chaos Pt.3
Chapter 113: True Chaos Pt.3
It wasn''t long after Tiff knocked that she was let in by someone she was pretty sure was just some bum the thieves paid to act like a servant. Being led down a set of stairs Tiff expected to see whomever she was being led to but instead the servant opened another door that had another stairway down.
Tiff guessed this was why the thieves here had felt safe in staying in the city; they had built some sort of underground bunker in preparation for situations like these. It was probably also used as a base for them to meet with clients they didn''t exactly know. It was always a good idea to meet people you couldn''t trust on your terms if they would agree with it.
It was a trust building exercise, if they wouldn''t walk into your fortress to meet they probably had ns to screw you over, or they thought you were going to kill them meaning there was no reason you should be working together to begin with. Tiff wasn''t too scared of walking into their den though because even though they would have the upper hand, most thieves wouldn''t risk a fight with someone like her.
The most dangerous thing here would probably be some form of defense formation and it would probably be the kind that would trap her and give the thieves time to run because the type that could kill you were usually much more expensive because they dealt with more violent magics that were harder to make and contain.
Also most people saw offensive formations to be stupid when you could just cast a spell to kill someone for almost free while something like a shield that could protect your property was very valuable. There were still plenty of offensive formations but they were usually only in really big things like castles or guild buildings.
Stepping through a doorway that had a very thick metal door on it Tiff couldn''t help but think it would close behind her right after she entered but when it didn''t she looked forward to see three people sitting in the very dimly lit room. She couldn''t see their faces but she could see enough to know they were very sessful for thieves.
Their gear was much nicer than what she was wearing and she was in a fortunate position within the Temple meaning her stuff was already very expensive. This made her think she might not have brought enough money to buy the information she wanted. Under normal circumstances with normal people it would have been more than enough but she hadn''t known just who she was about to meet.
It was still worth a shot though it wasn''t like they would start a fight just because she had wasted their time. All they were doing was sitting in a small dark room. At most she had interrupted a conversation. "Hello, I''m here to buy some information about something that was stolen from the Temple of Light."
Tiff heard some very subtle whispering but couldn''t hear what was being said. "How much money do you have with you?" Tiff was happy to see the three were willing to do business but was a little unhappy they didn''t just set a price. The way they were doing it she would have to give them everything before she got the info.
Tiff didn''t throw the money at them and just handed it to the servant who brought it over. After a few seconds Tiff heard some more whisperings then the thief in the middle said. "It''s good we don''t know anything because the amount you brought would have made you give us your gear as payment."
Tiff understood they were done and turned to leave when she heard some more whispers. "One second, we don''t know anything, but there seems to be some ovep in what we hope to aplish. When was the thing you were looking for stolen?"
Tiff didn''t know the exact date but she knew it couldn''t have been more than a week because that was thest time the weapons had been checked. "Within thest few days." Tiff answered like she was keeping the date secret to not give away the fact that she didn''t actually know.
"Well if it was within thest few days it lines up. A few days ago a master ss thief came through town and pulled a few jobs. The main one being a jewelry store where they got past over twenty different security measures without triggering any of them. We were hoping to make contact with them but the only thing we know about them is that they are a member because some of the jewelry they stole was sold to the guild. We wanted to make contact to cut them in so they wouldn''t just keep doing random robberies but we would much rather that they be dead because they are now our number onepetition."
Tiff could kind of see where this was going. They were going to use the fact that the Temple was looking for the thief as a way to get them killed for free. They had probably been going to use the Assassins guild originally but they were very expensive.
"We have a way to track their guild badge so we will give it to you. We were going to have it taken care of once the thieves guild returned to normal but now that you are here there''s no reason we have to wait. All we ask is that you return after you are done so we know it''s over and you seeded."
Tiff nodded and when one of the thieves held out a small coin she took it from them and inspected it. "That is a guildmunication device that the guild usually only uses when someone is doing a job for the guild but I had one of my friends in the guild office set it to track the badge issued to the person who sold the jewelry. This is a secret function powerful people in the guild use to find members. All you need to do is activate it and it will tell you which direction you need to go to find their badge."
Looking down at the tracker, Tiff thought it would probably be best for her to bring this back to the Temple and let them handle the rest but the thief hadn''t finished talking. "If you finish this job and bring the tracker back without spreading news that something that can track our members exists we will pay you 100,000 gold. It''s not really something we want anyone to know about because once the news gets back to the members they will stop keeping their badges on them making this function unusable."
Tiff nodded and said. "I''ll keep it to myself." She couldn''t really trust what the thief had just said because they would most likely do other things like kill her when she came back to return the tracker so they could make sure she didn''t spread the information after she received the money but there were ways she could force them to pay her and let her leave with her life.
For example if she told someone to spread the news if she didn''t return alive and she told the thieves that they would have to pay her and let her leave.
Once she was back outside Tiff didn''t use the tracker right away and instead headed home. The streets weren''t exactly safe right now so her going on a wild goose chase now would be kind of reckless. It also gave her time to think about her ns for the money she would receive. The temple paid them very little to keep them dependent, and what she had just paid for this information had been her savings for if she ever had to run away.
Theck of money had always been one of the biggest problems with her, and whoever she could talk intoing with her, leaving the temple. As Holy magic users they were constantly tracked by the Demon Worshipers making it impossible for them to work for money because they could never stay in the same ce for long.
With 100,000 she would be able to feed them as they ran plus buy whatever they needed for the road. Medicine was expensive, and the constant fighting would definitely requirerge amounts of it if they wanted to survive as a group. By herself she wouldn''t need much because she was good at hiding, but the others weren''t like her and they would asionally be found, and be injured during the resulting fight.
She could also buy a nice cart they could use to move at a faster pace, and if she had it enchanted to conceal them it would make it much harder for the Demon Worshipers to track them down in the first ce, but it would be hard for her to set this order up without it giving away she nned to run away, so it would have toe after they had already left.
The hard part was definitely going to be actually convincing the others that they were just throwing their lives away by staying with the temple and if they came with her they had a better chance of actually living to see the end of the war
Once one of the three swords died the rest of them would die soon after and there was no way the God of Light would find the Demon Lord before that happened, and while she thought the God of Light would win the final fight, there was no guarantee. What she was getting at was there was no way any of them would live if they stayed even if the God of Light won, so they should just go before they died for no reason.
She knew it was heartless, or at least it would seem that way to everyone else, but the people they were protecting were going to die, so there was no point in standing in the way, and forcing the Demon Lord to step on them first. Getting inside the safehouse, Tiff went to see if there had been any losses tonight. It was unlikely, but she still needed to confirm it to make herself feel better.
Chapter 114: A Day Of Constant Fights
Chapter 114: A Day Of Constant Fights
That night after the fireball had hit the barrier the fight had ended soon after and Lake had gone inside and gone to bed after he said goodbye to Millie. When he woke up one of his servants informed him of three things. The first that Mille had just knocked at his door and the second was the reason she had knocked. There was another fight happening and she was hoping he would let her watch like he hadst night.
He had no problem letting her in but he couldn''t stay because the third thing they told him was Lucas had asked to see him. Lake bet it was a follow up to him offering to help with anything the guild might need done. Flying down to the office, Lake walked in and sat down. He had gotten in the habit of sitting down in the same chair every time he talked to Lucas, and it didn''t really matter how long he was going to be there, because the way he saw it there was no good reason not to sit if you could.
Lucas didn''t seem to be busy anymore because all he was doing was sitting and staring at the shelf that had the two journals on it. After a while Lucas asked him. "Have you finished leveling Alchemist to level ten?" Lake remembered that he had never told Lucas about that because when it had happened he had still been nning on escaping, and he thought if Lucas saw his other two skills were legendary Lucas would have increased the amount of security on him and that would have made it harder to escape.
Now he had no ns to go anywhere because the guild seemed to be the safest ce a person could be and he and Lucas had reached an agreement where he could go outside whenever he wanted. "Yeah. Sorry, I forgot to tell you with everything that has been going on." Lucas went over to a shelf Lake knew had the skill books he had seen the first day he had been here.
"What rarity are you two new skills?" Lake had long ago realized Lucas was trustworthy so he was honest and told him. "Both of them are legendary." Well not exactly honest since one was actually Unique but Lucas had told him that he shouldn''t really ever mention that, and Lake was pretty sure Lucas would want him to lie even if it was to him because it would be good for the guild if no one found out about him being super special.
Lucas didn''t look too surprised as he moved from the shelf to the pedestal that held the Legend of Legends which was the book that held all the Legendary skills the guild knew of. Lake watched as Lucas undid the seal on the book and headed back to the table. "Alright what''s the first new skill called?"
Lake actually knew what it was called by heart because he had used it quite a bit since he had unlocked it but he still opened his skills so he could give the description once Lucas saw it wasn''t in the book and needed him to tell him what it did. "It''s called Poison Control."
"Ok." Lucas put his hand over the book and repeated the name of the skill. When the book didn''t react he turned to a new page. Knowing Lucas was about to ask Lake just told him what the skill did. "Grants the ability to control poison." Lucas nodded and wrote it down. "Two new skills we''ve never seen before you''re on a roll but before we move on to the next one I want to see what it can do. I''ll be right back. I need to go get a vial of poison."
Lake stopped him and pulled out the poison he had made just a few days ago and said. "I have some here." Lake was in the habit of always having his satchel with him even while in the guild because he had everything he needed in there, including the poison he made to be his secret weapon.
Handing it over to Lucas to let him inspect it he saw Lucas give him a nod of approval before asking. "Did you make this yourself?" Lake nodded and said. "I wanted to test if Poison Control could be used during brewing."
"And?"
"It can, it makes it extremely easy to make poison as you can probably tell by what you''re holding, I don''t even need to be anywhere skilled enough to do so."
"Is that all the skill is useful for?"
Lake shook his head no and held out his hand telling Lucas to hand the bottle back. Receiving it Lake uncorked it and started to fly the poison around the room making sure to not get it anywhere near Lucas. Lake was sure Lucas would have a defense against poison, but there was no reason to risk it identally hitting him.
After a while Lake threw in one fancy shape then had the poison fly back into the bottle before closing it. "It''s a very useful skill that not only gives you better control during brewing but doubles as a method to attack. It''s very rare for a job like Alchemist to give skills useful in battle, so I would say you have lucked out not to mention you now have two skills that deal with poison that help inbat. It''s almost like it wasn''t random."
Lake could see the smirk on Lucas''s face as he said thatst part but they both already knew Lake wasn''t normal so there was no need to have an actual conversation about it. "Alright next skill, What''s it called?" Lake was less familiar with this skill so he had to look before he answered. "It''s called Concentrate."
Lucas held his hand over the book and said. "Concentrate." Once the book finished flipping to the page marked Concentrate Lucas read out the description. "On activation, increases the effect of targeted potion by decreasing volume and stability. It looks like we have had three members in the past who had this skill, but none are still around. It is certainly a useful skill, but lowering stability will affect shelf life and how long the potion affects whoever it''s used on."
Lake was happy to finally know what the stability thing meant because he had just assumed the potion had a chance of exploding or something. "Well now that we are done with that I can ce you in the ce the guild needs you the most. We always wait till people hit ten to ce them because it saves us from having to reassign them, and it''s good to have free time when you are trying to level up a job like alchemist to read and such. It''s much different from a job where all you need to do is kill a few monsters and boom you''re at level ten. You actually need some knowledge to sessfully reach ten."
Lake nodded it was true Alchemist was probably very hard to level for people that didn''t get the massive amounts of bonus Exp he received for crafting poison. He had also spent quite a bit of time in the library reading up on how you actually made potions. "As a member of the spire you can refuse any missions I try to issue to you, so keep that in mind. The guild realized it was best to let skilled people do what they want long ago so don''t worry about being forced to do anything."
Lake nodded some more; he always valued his freedom, so it was nice to know he had special privileges that protected him from forcedbor. "It''s pretty easy to see what field you would be most useful, so your mission is to Help Master Na brew the poison the guild ns to use on whatever army tries to siege us first."
Lake nodded once again, he was interested in helping a master even if it''s just for the one day so he asked. "Where do I need to go? Is it in the Master Lab?" Lucas shook his head and said. "No. He is working in the Master Lab but unless he says you can join him there you will be doing prep work in a different location getting the ingredients ready."
Lake didn''t like the sound of this because he had only been willing to ept because he wanted to see a master at work and it must have been showing on his face because Lucas said. "Don''t worry I''ll put in a good word for you so at the worst it will only take you a few days to enter the Master Lab."
Lake guessed this was enough for him to work. He had no ns so he might as well help make a giant amount of poison the guild nned to dump into the streets. He would love to see something like that happen and if he helped there would probably be arger amount spilled into the streets making it more enjoyable to watch when it finally happened.
"This is where you need to go to start your assignment. It will be considered a day''s worth of work after you prepare 40 sets of ingredients, but do a good job, don''t rush things to get done faster, or Na will probably not let you join him." Lake nodded and said his goodbyes. Seeing where he was going was also in the spire he headed back towards the staircase to head to work.
Chapter 115: The Grind Pt.1
Chapter 115: The Grind Pt.1
Reaching the 85th floor Lake walked up and shed his badge to the door to let himself in. Walking in he saw there was one other person inside who was already doing what looked like the same thing he was here to do. The only thing was they were clearly a servant. Lake could tell by the clothes they were wearing.
With them being the only person in the room Lake walked over and said. "I''m here to help process ingredients." The servant pointed over to the center of the room where there were quite a few of those metal containers he knew the Alchemist guild kept the most poisonous ingredients.
"There are nine separate ingredients you need to turn into powder than that''s one set. You can pour the powders into those over there; they all havebels so you should be able to figure it out. I don''t know how many you''re supposed to do, but I would rmend sticking around until I need to bring the powdered ingredients to Master Na, so you can help."
Lake took back his negative thoughts on the only person other than him being a servant he had thought he would be dealing with a normal servant, but this person was clearly perfectly normal, and not being affected by the loyalty like most servants in the spire. This meant he could actually have a conversion with them like a normal person.
"Hello I''m Lake, I''ll help, you don''t need to worry about bringing all those upstairs by yourself." Lake was expecting some form of introduction but after a few seconds of silence Lake just got to work. It was too bad when he had figured out the servant wasn''t under any restrictions he was hoping they could have a conversation but it seemed he had been unlucky and met the one rude person in the guild.
It was bound to happen eventually, and there was probably a reason they were in a bad mood. There was probably a connection to them being the only person here. Lake didn''t know how long they had been working alone or how much they had to do, but it had probably stressed them out trying to meet the quota alone.
It would make more sense for them to be nice to him out of relief of not having to do it alone anymore, but sometimes people stayed mad even after whatever they were mad about was over, and it caused them to take it out on however was the closest. It could also be they were always rude, and it had nothing to do with anything other than their personality.
Walking over to the canisters Lake saw the first one was filled with what looked to be feathers. Lake wasn''t sure what they were and he didn''t waste his time inspecting it because he had a lot to do. There were 9 ingredients he had to do 40 times meaning he had to grind something into powder 360 times before he was done.
It did seem he didn''t have to do it by hand though which was nice. There were auto grinders here so all he would need to do is supply his mana and the machine would slowly turn whatever you added into a fine powder. He would still only be able to do one at a time though, and he would have to either clean the grinder or move to a different one every time he started the next ingredient.
There were a lot of grinders in this room so Lake would just move around and clean them at the end once they were done for the day. Adding the feathers in Lake touched the grinder and started to feed it mana. He could tell it didn''t take a lot to power the grinder and that he would be able to do this for hours before he needed to top up his mana.
If he added in his regeneration he might not need to at all. He wasn''t actually sure how fast his mana regenerated at the moment because he hadn''t been using it for anything. After a while Lake saw the feathers were now a fine powder so he extracted them and dumped them in the canister that said Wind Wyvern Feathers. Getting the next ingredient that looked like moss, but was apparently hair from arge monster, Lake started up a new grinder.
About halfway through he finally lost a point of mana meaning he would lose a mana for every one and a half ingredients he grinded. Lake was pretty sure that would mean it would take 240 mana to finish the job for the day. He had 90 mana naturally plus whatever he had in his ring for a total of 210 meaning even if he didn''t regenerate mana at all he would almost be able to finish the job just on his banked mana.
That meant he could just stop worrying about how much mana he was using so that''s what he did. Finishing the second powderke grabbed the next ingredient which was scales that he assumed would be from a snake but when he looked at the name it turned out to be a fish called Water Eye Fish.
With the name Lake was surprised he wasn''t grinding up dried fish eyes but he guessed the fish was named before anyone tried to use it for alchemy. It could also be that the eyes did simr things as the scales but at the volume they were using ingredients they had decided to use the scales because a fish had more scales than they did eyes typically.
...
After a while of working Lake had finished eight sets of ingredients meaning he needed to do 32 more and he would be done. He was starting to get really bored and thought it might be worth a shot to try and talk to the servant again. "Are there really not any bigger grinders?" He had been wondering for a while why the grinders only had enough room for one set of an ingredient.
"There are, but they work off of the guilds internal magic power system which is off to save power. It wouldn''t matter even if they were on though we wouldn''t be allowed to use them for poisonous materials anyway. You aren''t allowed to prepare poisons anywhere someone might wander into by ident."
Lake guessed this made sense; it wouldn''t be good if someone identally breathed in some of the powder that would be in the air while you ground down the ingredients. "So is this room only for poisons?"
"Yes, now stop asking me things, and get back to work." Lake guessed that exined why no one else was here. Maybe people like them who were able to be around poison with no risk were quite rare. Lake guessed the odds of getting the one skill that made you immune to poison out of the hundreds that were possible made it unlikely.
That was with the assumption that there was only one skill that made you immune to poison, but Lake didn''t think there was a reason there would be more than one. Finishing the next set of ingredients, Lake started to think about what kind of poison would need so many non nt ingredients to pass the time.
After thinking about it he decided he should ask the servant if he knew what they were helping to make. "Is this all for the same poison?" This seemed like a good thing to confirm before he started to ask about the poison. Lake didn''t receive an answer though which made him a little annoyed.
Lake knew how to get him to talk though. It had always been his go to when someone wanted to keep something from him. "Is this all for the same poison? Is this all for the same poison? Is this all for the same poison? Is this all for the same poison?" Lake just kept saying it over and over again till he saw them snap.
"Yes." With his first question out of the way Lake asked the next one. "What is the poison called?" It seemed the servant understood that he would just do the same thing if he didn''t get an answer because they told him right away. "It''s a poison Master Na has been working on for a while called Nine Element Acid."
Lake would have liked more information but he guessed this was all he had asked for. Now that Lake had interacted with the servant some more he was pretty sure they just didn''t like other people around while they worked. The exact opposite of what he had assumed earlier when he had first gotten here.
This meant they had probably actually enjoyed working by themselves even if it meant they had to do all of it alone. It also meant he would never be able to have a conversation that was coerced out of them with his slightly embarrassing to do as an adult, ice breaker.
Chapter 116: The Grind Pt.2
Chapter 116: The Grind Pt.2
Lake had just finished the twentieth set of ingredients which meant he was halfway to being done but he was having a hard time pouring the powder into the canisters they were slowly filling because they were almost at the top, and he didn''t want to spill any onto the floor. Turning to ask if they should start to fill new canisters he saw the servant was walking over with somepleted powder.
Lake saw them start to screw the tops on the canister, and put them on a scale before writing the weight on each of them and pulling out a new set of canisters. This made it so he didn''t need to ask anything so he got back to work. He guessed they would carry these up stairs at a set timeter, and they weren''t supposed to do it whenever they finished a set of canisters.
Getting back to work Lake just passed thest half of work by working. Total the 40 sets probably took 5 hours. Lake could see why the guild didn''t force the members of the spire to do such tedious work and let them conduct whatever form of research they wished.
If they forced someone like Millie to waste five hours a day there was no way she would have been able to push her food to such an extreme, and it might have also made her too busy to ever even have the idea in the first ce. It also made Lake wonder if Lucas had understood what he had meant when he said he wanted to do something for the guild.
Lake had wanted an interesting and possibly dangerous mission that he could do that might have him outside the guild. In Lake''s mind he was going to be assassinating some evil general or something, but instead he was in a small poisonous room with a mean person who hated him.
It really felt like his talent was being wasted but he understood he was working his way into the Master Lab. Lake had been inside once before and it had been a great show of Alchemy and what it could do if you were to push it to its highest point. Spending time there would probably be the most fun he could have while he was stuck inside.
"Hey I''m done with what I was told to do. Do you want me to continue to work, or should I leave?" The answer would tell Lake if the servant liked to work alone, or if they preferred help. Lake didn''t get an answer at all though so he didn''t really learn anything. He was going to ask a bunch of times until he got an answer but decided to just sit down.
If the person told him to get to work that would mean they wanted him to help and if they never said anything he would get to sit down. It would also annoy them if they wanted him to leave. They had asked him to help carry the ingredients upter, but he was pretty sure they just wanted help because they were so old, and would have to make multiple trips to get nine canisters upstairs.
Lake knew that even if you had high stats you started to decline as you got older just like in the world he came from, and by the looks of it there was no way they weren''t over eighty. This made him think there was a chance that the servant couldn''t hear him very well. Some of their other behavior had been rude but if they couldn''t hear him half the time it would make them a ssic grumpy old man.
Lake could probably get them to talk to him if he was just careful of what he said. Right when Lake was walking over to start a conversation he stopped himself. He realized he was obsessing over this old man for no reason. It had to be because he had gotten ustomed to people being nice to him so now that someone was being mean he wanted their affection.
It was an embarrassing thing to realize about yourself; that you wanted someone''s attention just because you couldn''t handle some old idiot not liking you. Lake went and sat back down. He knew he was only focusing on this old person''s behavior so much because he had nothing to do and his obsession didn''t have some deep meaning.
He would Like to know their name though so he could look into themter after he left. Lake was pretty sure this person was probably Master Na''s servant, so he could probably use that to get their name. Lake stopped himself again because he realized he was still doing it. This was getting weird, it was like there was something about this old guy that was making him fixate on them.
What made him think this was that he usually didn''t care about anyone enough to give them more than a few minutes of his time but he had been thinking about this old guy for most of thest five hours. It made sense to Lake that this old guy would have a skill that made people see him differently because Lake had a skill like this called Mean Mug.
It meant so far he had figured out that this old guy was rude, couldn''t hear very well, and most likely had a skill Like Mean Mug that affected how people saw him, oh and that he probably served Na. This was everything he would need to find out this guy''s nameter. He could probably ask Lucas right after this.
There was probably something like employee files that Lucas had ess to that Lake could get his hands on. Lake realized he was doing it again and there was no reason he should want to know this guy''s name so bad. Lake didn''t think this was anything he needed to be afraid of but still decided to leave, so he could get his mind straight.
On his way out he couldn''t help but think how a skill that did this to people could help with a job. It was most likely something to do with Charisma, but it didn''t make Lake like the guy, just want to find out more about him. It was like the skill made people think the old guy was some form of mysterious figure.
Lake guessed it might have been true at one point in the guy''s life, but he didn''t think the old guy had much going on any more. Lake thought that might be what it was that the old guy had been some awesome person in the past who had gotten a skill that made him more enigmatic for whatever reason.
The only thing with this exnation was Lake couldn''t really see how this could ever be a positive thing. For example if you were a spy you wouldn''t want people to have the instinct to look into you out of nowhere. Was it possible that there were negative skills because it sounded ridiculous.
Imagine you were grinding Exp for weeks to max out your job only to gain a skill thatpletely ruined your ability to ever work in that field ever again. There was no way that could be the case meaning it was probably something to do with a curse maybe. Lake knew there were all sorts of curses from the way people talked about them, but he didn''t understand why someone would make a curse that did something like that instead of killing the target.
Lake guessed there were probably people that didn''t like to kill people so they used nonlethal curses to weaken their enemies instead of killing them. Lake stopped thinking about this to see if he would be able to know that he was out of the room. Sitting down on the stairs once he saw the effect wore off as soon as he was away from the old man Lake decided he could just wait here to help carry the canisters upstairs.
This would allow him to still enter the Master Lab while not only being able to think about that old guy. This experience had been odd and had also been hard to notice. The worst part was Lake didn''t understand how you were supposed to defend against things that messed with your mind directly like that. He bet the only reason he noticed at all was his high Intelligence so maybe that was how you defended against mind altering attacks. That made sense to Lake, but he still felt like he should make an effort to learn more about mind control and curses the next time he was in the library.
After a while Lake saw the old guy step out of the room with a canister in his hands. Lake jumped up and stretched out his hands like he was saying let me take that for you but when the old servant just walked past him Lake walked in and grabbed another of the full ones. Lake wasn''t sure if he was supposed to bring any of these up right now but there was no way for him to ask with the old guy already on the way upstairs.
Chapter 117: Master Nancom
Chapter 117: Master Na
Once they reached the top floor Lake saw the door into the Master Lab, and wondered how they were going to get through it becausest time Lucas had unlocked it with one of his rings, and Lake didn''t see a ring on the old servant''s hands. Lake knew it wasn''t actually going to be a problem, but his inner thief was interested in ways to open this door.
Lake had a goal of a million gold and he could reach it much faster if one day he was able to get into the guild''s vaults and take a few things. As they approached Lake saw the servant hold out what was probably the servant''s equivalent to a guild badge. When the door opened Lake guessed it meant as long as he had the clearance he would be able to open this door whenever he wanted.
He doubted he had clearance at the moment though, and he was sure the old servant only had it because he worked for Master Na. This gave Lake another reason to want to start working in the Master Lab, not that he needed one.
He had also noticed now that he was around the old servant again he wasn''t having that hard of a time keeping his mind off of him. Lake wondered if the effect built up the longer you were around him, or if it was because he had noticed the effect earlier and now he was able to defend against it better after fighting it off one time already.
As they walked into the Lab Lake made sure to stay close to the servant as they made their way through it. Lake did let his eyes wander a bit as they walked though. Looking towards where he had seen an Alchemist injecting arge ape with what he assumed to be poison, the first time he had been here he saw what seemed to be the same guy now working on what looked to be a corpse.
Lake wished he could ask if it was a human or an undead corpse because he couldn''t tell and he bet this detail would tell him which side the guild expected to face first. As he watched he saw the Alchemist was doing the same thing as thest time he had seen him just on a new subject.
With that source of information depleted, Lake looked around to see if there were any clues justying around that he could pick up on that would tell them what they were preparing for. As he looked around he could kind of see a few things that he was pretty sure were rted to the war but some of them pointed him in opposite directions.
This lined up with Lucas''s n to stay neutral because either side could decide to attack them at any time. Sadly the one piece of information he actually wanted, which was why they were staying neutral wasn''t something he could really find out by doing this. Lucas was usually pretty open with almost every piece of information so him not telling him why they were natural was really making him curious.
Lake remembered when he had asked Lucas the first time Lucas had made it seem like he was confident with this choice even if he wasn''t willing to share why. "Are You Lake?" Lake looked up to see one of the red robed Alchemists was talking to him so he hurriedly answered. "Yes. Hello Master." Lake didn''t add a name to the Master just yet because he was only 90% sure this was Master Na.
Lake saw the servant was putting the canister he was carrying down next to a huge vat so Lake did the same quickly before the master could say anything else. "Lucas said you would be helpful to me if I could tell you exactly what I needed. The poison I''ve been working on is filled with dozens of different interactions so I have to brew it very slowly, so it doesn''t destabilize during arge chain reaction."
Lake didn''t know the recipe, but he was aware of potions being able to fail if you let them get out of control, and he was sure the problem got worse with something as filled with different effects as this so-called nine element acid. He could also understand how Lucas could think he could help with this.
"I have a skill that lets me control poison which includes during brewing. I can slow down reactions or keep them from happening until you want, but keep in mind I''ve never tested this on such arge scale." Master Na seemed to believe him, but he could tell he was about to be asked to give a demonstration.
Lake could tell because master Na was clearly setting up a station where Lake would be asked to brew something while Na watched. "You, go get these ingredients." Na practically threw a short list of ingredients he had just written to the old servant. Watching him go, Lake wondered why Na had spoken with such malice towards the old servant.
Not thinking it was a good thing to ask about, Lake decided to just try and figure it out by himself, or wait till he had known Na for longer before asking. It did make the old servant more interesting though and it made it really hard not to start thinking about him again. After a while the servant returned with three ingredients.
Lake didn''t recognize any of them because they were all powder making it hard to tell what they were at a nce. When he tried to approach to inspect them Na stopped him and said. "I want to see the limits of your skill, so I would like you to blind brew." Blind brewing was something someone like him who was an appraiser never had to do, but Lake could see the merit of the test, so he nodded.
Stepping forward Lake started to mix the water that was in the cup he was making the potion in. Once it was going at a good speed he activated both Distill and Poison Control. Grabbing the first powder Lake added it and did his best to feel what sort of energies were in the cup now. Feeling four different effects Lake knew he was dealing with at least a level 40 ingredient.
He then separated all four of them into their own spaces then added the second powder. Finding a matching set of energies Lakebined them slowly. He could see why Na had made him use water instead of a better catalyst. With level 40 ingredients the reactions were so strong that no normal Alchemist could keep the potion from blowing itself apart.
Once he got all four of the matching energiesbined Lake moved on to the third ingredient. Lake knew this was the actual hard part. All four of the reactions would be even stronger this time. He didn''t think he would be able to keep the potion from failing even with a skill like Poison Control.
Putting something he had noticed earlier into practice Lake lifted the poison out of the cup and spread it out in the air. He then tossed the third powder up and took control of it once it entered the poison he had spread out really thin. Feeling the reactions start, Lake used the skill he had learned during his magic training, and started topress the poison like he had done during the wind cube training.
His hopes were the increased pressure would keep the poison from blowing itself apart. He wasn''t sure if this was a more safe method or not but he knew he would have failed for sure if he tried to do it normally. Feeling the weakest reaction start to subside and stabilize, Lake moved it to the outside of the floating ball of poison and used it as a thick shell that the other reactions would have a much harder time busting out of.
This was kind of like how you used a split potion as a way to toughen up the catalyst before you made the strongest reaction inside it. A stable split potion was much stronger than the normal catalyst because it made it harder for the new reaction to blow the stable potion apart. The two ways to make it so a potion wouldn''t explode were pressure and internal stability and he had both now.
As the next two reactions stabilized, Lake moved them to the edge and used them to make sure the final and strongest reaction had no chance of erupting and causing the poison to fail. Once it was done Lake went to put it into the cup he had been using for the first two powders but Na stopped him.
"Put it into this." Na was holding a bottle up, and Lake used Poison Control to fly the poison into it. Once the cork was on Na asked him. "You used Mana control techniques to do that right?" Lake nodded. "What Level were the ingredients in this poison?" Lake could see Na was trying to see if Lake had been able to tell even though he had never inspected them.
"The lowest they could have been is 40. I couldn''t tell the exact level, and I only know this because of how many separate effects I had tobine." Na was the one to nod this time. After a few seconds of silence Na turned to the two servants who had just silently watched this whole time.
"You two go help Taron grind ingredients and get the rest of the canisters up here as fast as you can." The two servants gave Lake the stink eye for recing them, but Lake was too engrossed in finally learning the old man''s name to notice. It was like a weight was lifted, and he could finally have no reason to think about the old man any more.
"Lake I''m going to have you make the first and easiest part of the poison I''ve been working on. It''s what I use as the catalyst but from what you just showed me you should have more sess than those two. Nowe over here and let me show you how to make it."
Lake did what he was told right away. He didn''t want to mess this up and be sent back to the grinding room. One day of that was already enough for him, and if he made Na think he was unable to get this after one time of him being shown, he was sure Na wouldn''t like it.
Chapter 118: Why Is It So Complicated Pt.1
Chapter 118: Why Is It So Complicated Pt.1
Lake followed Master Na over to a vat that was around half the size as the big one they had been standing next to while he was showing what his skill could do. "This is where you will be making the catalyst while I get the ingredients ready. Once you are finished tell me and I will start the poison brewing and after a few rounds of you watching we will see if you think you can help."
Lake nodded to tell Master Na he had been listening whenever Na looked towards him. "Ok now that you know the process we will be taking I will show you how to make the Catalyst. The first part is easy. All you need to do is pull this lever to add the fluid. It''s blood so don''t be surprised when you smell it, also there is a mark to tell you how much to add."
Lake had known lots of potions used blood as catalyst, so he didn''t think it would have caught him off guard but it was still nice to know beforehand. "After that you need to add these three powders. This part will also be easy because there will be no reactions, and all you need to do is stir it up as well as you can. Feel free to inspect all the ingredients if you want to know what they are but I don''t think it will be necessary for you to know so I won''t waste my time going into detail."
It seemed Na had already formed some expectations in his abilities which he hoped he could match. "Nextes the part where you''ll actually need to use your skills. This ingredient here will bind to all the things already in the mixture, but it won''t stabilize it so you will be dealing with four reactions that happen all at the same time but with the control you showed earlier you will be able to slow it down to whatever speed you think it should happen at."
When Master Na looked back at him for a while without saying anything else Lake asked. "Is that all?" Master Na handed him a long spoon he guessed he would be using to mix and said. "Yes, the two you are recing had the brewing time down to ten minutes but that was after two days of practice and they failed about 40% of the time so even if you need to take more time than them as long as you don''t fail I''ll consider you a huge improvement."
After Na said this he walked away not giving Lake enough time to answer. It was a good thing because all Lake could have said was something like, leave it to me, and he didn''t want to have to say that. Getting up on the steps that would allow him to see inside the vat he would be brewing in.
After he could see the bottom, and the mark that told him when to stop adding the blood, he pulled the lever until it was full. After he saw the amount of blood he was working with he couldn''t help but wonder what kind of monster it came from, and the amount of them it would take to get this much of it.
Using inspect a name of a monster he had never heard of came up. It was called a Mason Troll and while he had heard of trolls in hisst world there was no way to know if any of that information was correct or not. He guessed it didn''t really matter how they got the blood because they had it but he was pretty sure these trolls must be pretty big.
Getting ready to add the next three powders, Lake inspected them real quick to see what they were. None of them were nt ingredients, and they were three of the exact ingredients he had been grinding up less than an hour ago. Dumping them in Lake could tell the stirring process was going to be a little difficult because as soon as the powders touched it the blood started to turn to what looked like mud.
He thought he had failed from the sudden change, but when it didn''t get any worse he figured this must be exactly what the blood was supposed to do. Using the information he knew about trolls from hisst life and how they usually turned to stone in sunlight he guessed their blood turning into mud was correct.
It also made their name make more sense since Masons made things out of stones and bricks. After about five minutes of vigorous stirring, Lake used his skills to see if the ingredients were stirred in correctly, seeing a nice even consistency, Lake inspected the next powder to see he was finally dealing with a nt ingredient.
It was an odd ingredient though because it was level 0 meaning it was seeds ground into a powder. The name of the seed powder was odd as well, Nisysis seed powder. Lake got the feeling Nisysis was the name of a monster for some reason. If he was right this would be the first time he saw an ingredient that was from both a monster, and a nt at the same time.
He had wondered if there were nt monsters that would have the level based alchemy effects like other non monster nts had. He also wasn''t sure how a level zero ingredient would be able to do anything if it wasn''t from a monster unless there was something about seeds that he didn''t know yet, but he was getting ahead of himself. There was no way for him to confirm this at the moment.
Pouring the powder in Lake got ready for the strong reaction that master Na had warned him about by activating Poison Control. Feeling the powder and the mixture he had already made were both poisonous or at least his skill could control them like they were, Lake got them under control and started to slow down the reactions that were happening where the powder wasying on top of what looked like dirt at this point.
Doing his best to stir the dirt around while controlling the reaction, Lake tried to see if he could understand the kind of effects this catalyst he was making had through the feeling it was giving off. He was pretty sure this was something he could do with the use of distill. He focused on the strongest of the reactions of the four that were happening.
He could tell it was the reaction between the blood and the seed powder but not really what effect it was going to make. After a while of not really getting any information he felt one of the weak reactions that was happening was starting to end, so Lake switched his focus to it to see if its increased stability would allow him to tell what it did.
Lake could kind of feel something but it wasn''t something he understood. The moss-like hair that he had ground earlier and the seed powder had made some kind of weird poisonous energy that didn''t feel like what he usually dealt with. He guessed this was the difference between a normal poison and something designed by a Master.
He was starting to get excited to see the part that came after this that Master Na was going to start after he finished with the catalyst. He was sure it was going to be a show that would really let him see what a master was capable of. When the next of the four reactions ended Lake once again moved his attention.
This was the reaction between the seed powder and what was ground up talons from some kind of lizard called a Fire Mouth. Lake could kind of tell what kind of abilities something called a Fire Mouth Lizard would have, but he didn''t think that ability woulde from the talons, so he didn''t know what kind of effect it would have on the Catalyst.
Just likest time all he was able to tell was it had formed an odd kind of poison that seemed to be about to burst as soon as he did anything else to it. The next reaction was the same with him not really being able to tell what it did past it being slightly poisonous. With that all he was waiting on was for the reaction between the blood, and the seed powder.
He could see why it took the other two ten minutes to brew because with him slowing it down it took almost 15 for it to finish. When it was done other than a visual change where the dirt like substance got slightly slimy, he was unable to even really tell that there was a fourth energy inside the catalyst that he had just made.
Turning around to Master Na Lake said. "I''m done." Master Na seemed to also be finished with whatever he had been doing and walked over to look into the vat. "Good job. Now get out of the way so I can get to work." Lake nodded and stepped aside to see Na lift the whole vat up using some form of magic, and pour it into therger vat that he had been getting ready while Lake worked.
Chapter 119: Why Is It So Complicated Pt.2
Chapter 119: Why Is It So Complicated Pt.2
After Na dumped the dirt like mixture that they were apparently going to use as the catalyst. Lake saw Master Na start to throw new powders. Lake could tell he wasn''t just throwing them in haphazardly like he did either. There was some fancy technique he was using to get the powder to fall in very specific ces, and Lake was pretty sure he was using mana to do it.
It was something most people that had any skills could probably do, and if he ever wanted to learn how to use Alchemy to make non-poisonous things he would probably have to do it as well. He didn''t really need to ever learn how to make non-poisonous things though because of Poison Taster.
If he wanted to make a health potion he could just make a poison that dealt damage to health and drink it instead. He didn''t really like Alchemy enough to ever waste his time getting good at making regr potions just cause, he would need an actual reason.
After Na added three powders in his fancy throwing style Lake saw him start to mix the dirt around once again in a fancy technique. Lake guessed this was how normal people would control the speed of any reactions they didn''t want to get out of control. He could see how much superior his skill was to this technique though.
At this speed it would probably take an hour to finish with there still being more ingredients that had yet to be added. Lake could now see what Lucas wanted from him. If Lake was to take control of the reactions he could probably speed it up without there being a chance of it getting out of control.
Lake had already known this was what he was here for but did not understand how much of a difference he would be making. Master Na didn''t want him to help yet though just watch, and figure out where he could help in the future. Lake was expecting there to be a conversation at the end where Na asked him what he thought he could help with.
This meant Lake needed to do his best not to let his mind wander, so he could give a satisfactory answer. It wasn''t going to be easy though with how little was happening moment to moment.
After some time Master Na finally added more powders to which Lake was excited about at first until he saw how they had been added. It was the fancy throwing technique again meaning he was in for another round of slow stirring. Doing his best to focus as the stirring started, Lake finally saw something new.
It was subtle but the color of the mixture was definitely starting to move towards being more green than the dark muddy red color that reminded him of y that it had been. As Lake was watching, a sudden thought came to his mind. Why was Na making such a strong poison that used so many ingredients to kill off an army.
The quantity was correct, you would need a lot, but most of the army would be weak, meaning Na could save a lot of time by making lots of an extremely simple poison. Lake was sure there was a good reason he woulde to find out as he worked with Na because Lucas wouldn''t have sent him to work with someone who was wasting the guilds time and resources.
After some time Lake saw Na grab thest few powders he had prepared in advance. Lake was pretty sure this would be thest step because Na would have gotten everything he was going to need before he started. "Step back." Lake hadn''t expected Na to say anything to him, so it took him a second to actually do what he had been told.
After he got back away from where Na was working Lake saw he finally added thest few powders but he didn''t try to stir it and instead moved towards a huge ss dome that had been next to them the entire time. Lake hadn''t thought anything of it though because there were huge things on the floor all over the Lab.
Seeing Na lift the ss dome, and ce it on top of the vat he had been brewing in, Lake didn''t know what to expect. His best guess was there would be some form of toxic gas released and Na didn''t want to fill theb, but Lake didn''t think that was what the dome was for because he knew they had purifying crystals that cleaned the toxins out of the air, so it wouldn''t hurt anyone or anything.
"You can get close and watch now that the top is on." Lake stepped forward, so he could actually look down into the vat. All he saw was the same green mud substance with some loose powder loosely thrown to cover the top. Unsure he looked towards Master Na to see he was looking into the vat as though he was waiting for something to happen.
Taking that to mean it could happen at any moment, Lake looked back to see where the powder on the top was slowly changing not in color but in depth. It seemed the powder was starting to slowly sink down into the mixture. This made sense if the powders were reacting with something that was in there already because there was an attraction that happened between two ingredients when they started to bind together.
That attraction was partially what you were fighting against when you were trying to slow a reaction down but most of the time it was really weak especially when you just put the ingredient on top and didn''t stir it in at all. After a while Lake saw what seemed to be a bubble pushing up because there was a bulge starting to rise out of the dirt.
This was weird because the vat wasn''t on heat so it shouldn''t be boiling. Right when he was about to ask if everything was alright because he thought the reaction might be out of control and was about to blow the poison apart, Lake saw a small green sprout shoot out of the ground.
A few secondster he saw another than another after that, soon there were nine. When there were no more that came up from the dirt, that had just been confirmed as dirt, he guessed nine was all there was going to be. After a few seconds Lake could tell these nine sprouts were growing much faster than he thought was possible, and they were all over three feet tall before a minute had passed.
Lake could see the nts were starting to develop some features such as leaves and branches and then they all started to develop buds on the ends of their branches. "Seems the fire sprout is underdeveloped." Lake looked at the nt that had red buds assuming that would be the one that would be fire.
Seeing it only had three budspared to the four or five the other nts had, Lake assumed he had guessed right. "It''s still within tolerance, but I''ll need to readjust the amounts of every ingredient we will be adding before we do another run." Lake remembered that this was a new recipe that Na had made himself and it seemed he was still working on it but only small tweaks here and there.
After a while Lake saw the flowers were starting to open and got his face real close to the ss to try and get a better look when a glob of brown liquid came flying towards his face. Pulling his face back from the sudden attack Lake saw the liquid hit the ss, and slowly slide down until it hit the dirt.
Once it made contact with the dirt, Lake saw smoke rise and heard a sizzling sound. Only one thing came to mind, Acid. He guessed this was the acid part of the name he had been told earlier, Nine Element Acid, oh and the nine element part would probably be the nine different colored nts.
After the fist glob of acid that had hit the ss right in front of him it wasn''t long before all different colored acids were being shot towards the ss in front of him and Na. It seemed the nts understood they were supposed to target living things, but not the concept of ss.
After a while the amount of smoke that was rising from the acid meeting the dirt the nts were growing from made it impossible to see the nts any more. The only way he could still tell they even existed was the amount of acid being shot towards the ss, but after a few minutes it too stopped.
This made Lake wonder if they had somehow dissolved even themselves with the acid they had been spitting. He would think that they would be immune to their own acid but then he remembered that there had been nine different types of acid and that had probably been why they had been susceptible.
Once all the acid had run down off the ss Na started to lift the top off. Lake moved back to let the smoke pass without touching him, and saw all of it was being sucked upwards towards the closest of the purifying crystals.
Once all the smoke was cleared Lake moved forward to get a good look at what was left. Nothing but a dark pool of liquid was left in the vat. "This was a good run, after we dilute this we will have about twenty vats this size filled with poison." Lake still had a lot of questions but this answered why Na was making such strong poison, he nned to dilute it.
This was actually them making twenty vats of poison, not just one, so Lake could actually see it as a huge time saver that allowed them to still have a strong product as an end result. Now for the next question. "Master, where did the ntse from?" He had never seen any seeds that weren''t ground into a fine powder being added so he wanted to see if there had been another source he hadn''t known about.
"I can see why you would be confused even though you were the one to add the seeds. Nisysis is an extremely tenacious nt and its seeds can survive even being ground into a fine powder. They also absorbed the elemental energies that we added with the various monster parts we mixed, well you saw, just know if you evere across Nisysis in the wild you should turn back."
Lake was starting to see Na wasn''t the type to waste his time exining things to others and it was too bad. He was very interested in what he had just seen and wondered if this might be Na''s specialty within the guild. It seemed he would have to figure that out on his own because it seemed Na had already gotten back to work on tweaking the recipe.
Chapter 120: Down To A Science Pt.1
Chapter 120: Down To A Science Pt.1
After a short period of time where Na had readjusted the amounts in the recipe they had done another run where the fire nt had four flowers with four being the mostmon number with only two of the nts having five instead Na seemed to be satisfied. Lake wasn''t sure what he had done, but he felt like he could get Na to tell him as long as he timed it right.
Na came off like he was a little temperamental, so Lake was trying to not get on his nerves with how little he actually knew. Lake would have no business being in the master Lab if it wasn''t for his skill Poison control, and he was sure if Na thought he was an idiot he would be switched with the two servants back to the grinding room until the servants messed up and they were switched out for him again.
This was just a guess and Na might have more patience, but there was no reason to find out if he didn''t have to. Once the second round had finally finished Lake saw the same dark brown liquid, and he couldn''t tell any difference from the first round he had helped with, but Na seemed very pleased, so Lake saw this as an opportunity to ask a question.
"So how did what you did this time make it better? I understand the final product is probably more stable with the amounts of the different acids being closer, but wouldn''t that really only increase the amount of time it would affect whoever it is used on?"
"That''s a very important thing when you n to dilute it as much as we do. The dilution will make its active time fall drastically, so the higher it starts the better, but there is another reason. Nisysis gains effects like any other ingredient so they need to hit a curtain level and the fact that the fire nt only had three flowers meant it didn''t have enough energy to absorb to hit level forty which meant I needed to add more fire element rich resources for it to be able to grow to forty."
"So when they dissolve it isn''t just killing the nts, but giving the poison more effects. I thought the acid they produced was the final ingredient and never even considered they were the icing on top." Lake knew this made him sound a little inexperienced, but he was alsoplimenting Na''s work, so he was sure it was fine.
"When you have time you should look into reading a book called Cascading Alchemy. It''s what gave me the idea for this poison. It''s too bad I can''t show you my original recipe, and just this sad excuse filled with substitutions, but with the war we need to ration the ingredients that are hard to replenish."
Lake made sure to look surprised as he asked. "You have an even stronger version than this? I bet it''s a memorable experience just seeing it made." Lake was hoping he could stretch this conversation out as long as he could by acting like he was very impressed with Nas work so far because he was pretty sure it would ingratiate him enough that Na would be willing to actually bother exining himself instead of just doing everything in silence.
"Well would you like to help me with the next one? Maybe you''ll be able to gain more incite into the process if you are actually involved." It looked like he might have gone a little far, and now Na thought he waspetent enough to actually help. After a few moments of thought Lake doubted he could actually do anything catastrophic as long as Na wasn''t expecting him to do it himself, so he nodded.
"Ok go ahead and get the catalyst ready, then we can really start." It seemed Na was really riding the high of theirst sess and he didn''t want to be the one who caused him toe crashing down, so he got to work right away. Na hadn''t changed anything this time so it was exactly the same and he was pretty sure he had even shaved a few minutes of the brewing time.
It wasn''t because he was familiar with the process either he was pretty sure he was just getting better with his Poison Control skill. He had been wondering why skills had levels for a while and he thought maybe this might be the first clue to actually hitting level two in a skill because with all his time spent in the library he was yet to find a book with any information on how to level skills.
He was also too afraid to ask as he thought it might give away too much information about him if it turned out he was the only one who could level skills. He thought he might need to hit level 1 with the Insider to actually do it though because he thought the golden text in his Unique skills, and the level function might be rted.
He really had no evidence of this, but he thought maybe two of the things he had yet to find any information on might be rted. The only way he could find out was to actually get the million gold the Insider wanted from him.
Once he was done thinking about him getting better at using a skill, Lake got Na''s attention. "Master Na, I''m ready." Master Na came over to look and nodded. "Perfect and fast, good work." Lake could tell he was actively feeding into Master Na''s positive mood. This fact would cement him in this position as long as nothing bad happened during the rest of the brewing process.
Once Na had poured the dirt into the bigger vat they would be using for the poison. Lake thought this might be one of the ces they might be able to speed up the process once they got used to working together. Lake was pretty sure Na only had the two servants working in a separate smaller vat was because they failed asionally during the process to make the catalyst.
"Ok I''m about to add the powder. Do you want me to spread it around like I have been or just dump it in and let you take care of it." Lake wasn''t confident he would be able to control whatever reactions would start if Na just dumped it all in one spot so he said. "Do what you normally do. I just want to help you stir faster for this first run."
"Good choice if I can stir even twice as fast we will save 20 or so minutes during this run." Lake was happy Na wasn''t being too pushy, and letting him decide how much he could handle. It seemed Na didn''t really care how much time they shaved off this run, but instead wanted Lake to get used to helping him while still seeding.
Na really seemed to hate failure because he had been treating his servants like they were useless for a 60% sess rate on something he would treat as really difficult if it wasn''t for Poison Control. Seeing Na start to add the powders, Lake got ready by activating Distill and Poison Control.
Taking control of every poison he found in the vat Lake could tell almost instantly which ones were reacting with which. He let them do their own thing until he saw Na start to stir. Seeing this as a go signal, Lake started to control the reactions by slowing them down. This might seem counterintuitive if they were going for a good time, but with him controlling the reactions Na was free to stir faster.
Lake would worry about speeding up the reactions once all the powder was stirred in because this would let him see what kind of strength he was dealing with. "You can stir faster, but be ready to slow down." Na did just what he asked him to and after most of the powder was mixed in Lake was surprised to find the strength of the reactions he was controlling were all underwhelming which wasn''t what he was expecting.
It was more of the same kind of reaction he had controlled during the process of making the catalyst which he now understood as the seed powder reacting with the monster part powders that contain elemental mana that the seed powder would use to growter. This exined why the two servants had been failing, what they had been doing was already as difficult as this first step they were doing now.
If that was the case, Lake wondered why Na wasn''t doing it himself. Once the reactions had pretty much finished Na said. "The second reaction between the seed powder and the troll blood is about to start." Lake didn''t know what Na was talking about; they were already bonded, so how could there be another reaction?
He also couldn''t feel anything from them to signal that anything was about to happen. Right when he was about to open his mouth to ask what Na meant, Lake felt something he had never felt inside a potion that was being brewed. Something that was already bonded was trying to do something again with nothing new being added to it.
Chapter 121: Down To A Science Pt.2
Chapter 121: Down To A Science Pt.2
Lake didn''t really understand what was happening, but since Na had warned him it probably meant this was an important moment, and he needed to help in some way. Lake didn''t see a way to slow down the reaction with it already having everything bonded together, so he went for the other move of increasing the pressure to make sure the reaction stayed stable.
Lake wasn''t sure how other alchemists would handle this situation, so he kept his eyes on what Na was doing to see how someone would usually keep this kind of reaction stable. The only problem was Na wasn''t really doing anything other than barely stirring the stick around which wasn''t doing anything as far as he could tell.
Lake was sure he wouldn''t be doing it at all if there wasn''t a point though which probably meant he was just staying ready to intervene if he thought the reaction was getting out of control. This probably meant Lake had seen what normal alchemists did to control this kind of reaction thest few times he had watched Na make the poison.
All he had done was a few different stirring techniques and thinking back, Lake remembered Na cutting through the dirt and straight lines a lot during this part. Lake thought maybe this had broken up the reaction into smaller and smaller pieces as he broke the dirt up, and this somehow slowed it down.
Lake thought this was probably true and he would try splitting the reaction if it seemed like the pressure technique wasn''t going to work. He had confidence that he could just keep doing what he was doing though because it seemed to be working. If the reaction was already at its strongest point he would have no problems keeping it steady till whatever it was doing was over.
After a while the reaction started to fade and Na said. "That was about five minutes faster than when I have to break it up during the reaction. Ok I''m about to add some more ingredients. These are regr nt ingredients that give the potion some desired effects, so the reaction shouldn''t be very strong."
Lake nodded and watched as Na just dumped the powder in to let him take care of it. He did so with no problem. "These are thest three ingredients and I''m sure you remember what happens after I add them, so you can''t really help anymore go ahead and back up." Lake did as he was told, and watched as Na lightly sprinkled the powders over the dirt before cing the ss dome over the top.
After the dome was in ce Lake walked back over to the vat, so he could get a good look of the nts once they started to grow. While he was waiting for it to happen he thought back to the things he had noticed during the brewing process, so he could get the questions he was going to ask ready.
The first he wanted to ask was obvious, he wanted to know more about the secondary reaction that had happened between the seed powder and the troll blood. The only other question he could really think of was actually just confirming what he thought the weird poisonous energy that formed between the seed powder and all the other monster parts they had added was.
He was pretty sure it was the life energy of the Nisysis seeds growing strong enough to sprout after absorbing elemental mana. He was guessing the only reason they didn''t right away was because they had been ground down before being added. Now that he thought about it he guessed that was why Na had done it at all even though he wanted the Nisysis to grow he was making sure they didn''t spring up before he was done mixing everything in.
Lake had originally thought it was just because you needed to grind something into a powder if you wanted it tobine with other ingredients well. It was probably both actually, it didn''t have to be one or the other in this situation. Seeing the nts start to sprout, Lake stopped thinking, and just enjoyed the show.
He had already seen it a few times but there was something magical about the way the nts grew. Once the buds started to emerge Lake got to counting. Once he was done he found all the nts had the exact number of buds they didst time which made sense with Na not changing anything.
Lake had really only counted to see if it was actually up to how much of curtain ingredients they added or if there was a bit of chance rted to them dealing with living things. Lake had wondered if the nts could end up underleveled even though they had given them the exact same amount of food, but it seemed Nisysis used every bit of energy they had given it.
It was good there wasn''t any chance involved because if one of the runs he help with ended up worse for whatever reason, especially if this one had, he might have been med by Na and kicked out of the Master Lab to grind more powder. When the Acid started to fly towards them he thought he might be able to get a question in without Na just giving him a basic answer.
"Do those two nt powders you added right before thest three monster ingredients bond with the Nisysis nts after they dissolve themselves?" This was the only thing that made sense to him because they had only reacted together when he had been controlling them during their reaction and to make a stable effect you needed three things bonded in some way.
Everything else they had added had bonded with the seed powder so everything other than the to nt powders were bonded like that, so the two nt powders had stuck out in his mind and now that he saw the Nisysis nts growing he thought they could now have what it took at level forty to bond everything together.
"That''s right, but the original recipe has a lot more nt ingredients, and the Nisysis nts grow to a higher level so there isn''t much to that step at the moment." Lake nodded and then asked one of his prepared questions. "Is the poisonous energy that forms between the Monster parts and the Seed powder the nts Life energy?"
"That''s not quite right, it isn''t forming, just changing slightly and growing in power as it absorbs the elemental mana from the other ingredients." Lake nodded and asked a follow up. "Why is it different with the troll blood?" The troll blood was also a monster part he was sure had elemental mana in it, so why didn''t an earth flower show up?
"Nisysis reacts differently with the earth element. I''m sure you have observed how the troll blood starts to turn from a dirt color to a green color. Well that''s the Nisysis making the environment more suitable for it by making the earth poisonous just how it likes it." Lake couldn''t help but wonder why it took Na so much time to make the Nine elements acid when it seemed the Nisysis did everything on its own.
It was almost like the nt was the alchemist not Na but he needed to keep in mind this was an iplete version they were making now and the original was probably much moreplicated. This question had also answered his question about the secondary reaction so he stopped talking because the amount of acid being sent towards the ss was starting to die down meaning the nts had started to melt themselves.
A little over a minuteter Na lifted the ss dome off and said. "We saved 15 minutes total. Let''s do it again." Lake was a little caught off guard with how fast Na wanted to go again and asked. "Is there a goal, or are you just going to do it as many times as possible before we''re attacked?"
"I''ve been doing ten a day, and I''ll stop when I''m told to." Lake wanted to know how many of the ten they had done so far, but decided knowing wouldn''t change anything, so it wasn''t worth potentially annoying Na by asking. It would give Na the impression he didn''t want to work hard for the guild.
It wasn''t a good look if he wanted to stay in the Master Lab for an extended amount of time, so he just got to work to seem diligent. "Would you be alright with me making the Catalyst in the big vat? I won''t fail and it will save us a bit of time." Na nodded so Lake did just that.
With him knowing exactly what he needed to do he just put himself into autopilot. It wouldn''t be long, especially if he was able to make the process even faster this time around.
Chapter 122: Reminder
Chapter 122: Reminder
Lake and Na had finished after three more rounds of brewing. Thankfully he had been able to shorten the amount of time they were spending on each batch or he wouldn''t have had time to go get some food before he went to his room to sleep. Sadly the food had been slightly sub par, it was still better than normal food, but he could tell Millie had never even touched it.
He guessed she had trained her apprentices to a level where she thought they could start to handle food on their own. He was sure she was relieved to not have to cook for hundreds of people everyday anymore. Stepping into his room Lake didn''t see any of his servants which made him think they were probably out on the balcony.
Stepping outside Lake saw four people, three being his servants, and the fourth being Millie. Lake wasn''t too surprised she was here if there was a fight happening at the moment and with the sun officially being down he was sure there was at least a small scuffle somewhere in the city.
"Hello." Lake kept his greeting short, and walked over to get a better look of the city. "It hasn''t really started yet, but there was a small fight over there a few minutes ago." Millie was pointing towards the part of town that had received the most damage during the various battles. Lake wondered if that part of town had something important, or if it had just been unlucky so far.
Since there wasn''t anything happening Lake guessed he might as well confirm his thoughts on the food in the cafeteria today. "Did you work today, or did you spend the whole day watching fights?" If Millie said she worked today he would probably drop the issue of the quality being lower than normal and just chop it up to a bad day for her.
"I tried but I couldn''t focus, so I told my apprentices to do their best, and I''ll tell them how they did tomorrow." Lake guessed Millie didn''t want her students to realize she wasn''t up to the task, so she made it into some kind of test. "Did you eat today? How''d they do?" Lake always liked to tell people his opinion so he just told her straight.
"They need some more time if they ever hope to match your work, and I don''t see any of them ever making any improvements to any of your recipes." Lake was actually exaggerating because if he was right Millie would just agree with him but if some of the Apprentices were any good Millie would probably tell him about them.
"You''re right, it makes me wonder where the guild even got them from. It''s like they just brought all the Alchemists they could find who had the Chef job as well. Half of them hadn''t even leveled it up beforeing here, and none of them even like cooking." It seemed it was actually worse than he thought.
This didn''t spell a bright future for the restaurants, there was no way they wouldn''t be sessful but they would probably underperform if Lucas didn''t find Millie some better students to teach. The way Lake saw it Lucas had taken the wrong approach, probably because ofcking time. Lucas should have instead looked for chefs who they could try to help unlock the Alchemist job.
At least that was how he would have done it but he didn''t know how hard it was to unlock Alchemist usually, or how much training the chefs would need to be able to perform the Alchemy part of whatever Millie did to food to make it so much better. He still had a suggestion though.
"I know it isn''t possible now with the city in chaos, but could you get some chefs for the next batch of apprentices and try to teach them Alchemy, or would that be more work?"
"I don''t really mind the work as long as I can actually sessfully get any of them to unlock the job. From what I know about Rare jobs Like Alchemist, the odds of actually getting someone to unlock it isn''t very high." Lake knew this as well, and said. "It doesn''t matter you''ll need to train normal chefs to work in the restaurants anyway so any that fail to unlock Alchemist can just be used as normal staff."
Mille seemed to think this was a good idea but they both understood they didn''t really have ess to outside personnel at the moment, so she was just going to have to make do with what she had. Changing the subject, sort of, Lake asked. "Why couldn''t you focus today?" Lake understood not paying attention if you were doing repetitive work but that wasn''t the problem Millie was having.
"I left in the middle of the battle that took ce this morning, I don''t know if you heard, but it was revealed there is more than one Holy mage in the city, but even with the two of them it was obvious that they were struggling to protect the city from whoever the Demon Lord sent." Lake could understand not being able to focus with something like that happening right outside, but there seemed to be more to what Mille wanted to say so he asked a question.
"Are you regretting staying inside the guild instead of leaving when Lucas offered?" Lake could kind of tell he was right, and Millie was feeling guilty by how her face looked after he asked. "I didn''t really understand when I made my decision. I''m pretty sure everyone should be fighting for the city even if they aren''t particrly strong because if the Light temple is forced to retreat everyone who''s anywhere close to the city will be killed."
Lake could see what the problem was so he cut Millie off and said. "Millie the Temple is going to win so you''ll be more helpful if you''re still alive for when that happens. You need to remember Lucas promised to feed all the people affected by the war with the money you''ll be making the guild with your restaurants."
Lake was 100% sure this argument would talk Millie out of trying to join the army that was fighting the Demon Lord. He had put together Millie had probablye from a poor family that had been starving while she was a child during his first few interactions with her, so the thought of feeding everyone who would be starving because of the war would probably make her stop feeling guilty for not helping.
"You really think the Temple will win?" Lake nodded and said. "The Demon Lord was only able to get a half victoryst time because of The Betrayer who''s dead now so unless something like that happens again I''m sure the God of Light will restore the status quo soon." He was also aware that the Temple was working on reviving the Goddess of Light/Holy Goddess, and once that happened Holy Mages wouldn''t be the rarity they are now and the Demon Lord would lose his biggest advantage.
It was all a matter of time, and Lake knew they were probably in the best ce someone could be if they were trying to wait out the war. Today inside the Master Guild had made him realize just how many resources they had. Every one of the masters had been working on something to help them defend the Guild until the war was over.
"All you really need to be thinking about is the best way to make sure the restaurants make enough money that we will be able to fulfill our promise to the king." Lake looked towards Millie''s face to see her deep in thought which he took as a sign that she was taking his advice. Lake was done talking anyway so he didn''t snap her out of it, and instead looked back towards the streets below.
Her thinking probably meant she was motivated to make her restaurants as good as possible so his words worked as intended. After a few seconds of scanning the streets below he saw something weird. There was a person wearing the Temples garb looking up at them. There was no chance they were actually being seen because of the barrier the Guild had in ce but the person Lake thought was probably a woman was looking directly towards them and it was giving him a weird feeling.
After a few seconds Lake saw the person disappear and reappear a few moments in a different ce. This happened a few times before they disappeared for good. People disappearing wasn''t anything new because loads of people could move faster than he could see, but this seemed different because the amount of time it took for them to reappear in a new ce meant they weren''t moving fast enough for him not to be able to see them.
Realizing he should have Marked them while he had the chance, Lake started to look around to see if he could see them looking up at the guild from a different spot. While he was looking for them, Lake started to see massive shes of golden Light in the sky meaning the actual fight had started up again, and he quickly lost interest in the person he had seen looking at the guild.
Chapter 123: Fast Forward Pt.1
Chapter 123: Fast Forward Pt.1
The next day after Lake got up he did what he had been told to do and went to work in the Master Lab with Na. They had to make ten vats of poison then he could go and do whatever he wanted. He couldn''t see it taking more than five hours, so he wasn''t really even considering it the main thing he would do today.
...
It ended up only taking four and a half hours and he was pretty sure the speed had to do with his skill Poison Control getting stronger again. He wasn''t sure if that was the right way to put it, but he wasn''t sure if he was getting better or the skill was. He was now at the point where instead of slowing down reactions he was making them go faster than they should.
That of course was only with the weakest of the ones that happened in the poison, but it was still a huge time saver after ten rounds of brewing. Now that he was done he was heading back to his room to see if there was a battle happening outside. He had been in a hurry this morning, and forgot to check before heading to work.
...
Stepping out onto his balcony Lake saw everyone he lived with out here. No Millie, and he took this as a sign that his talk had gotten through to her and she had been able to focus at work today. This was a good thing for every person who could eat in the guild, and it made him feel bad for anyone who had a skill that made them unable to eat as often as a normal person like him.
Watching for a while after he saw there was a fight happening in the city, Lake headed inside and went down to the library to look for the book Master Na had rmended to him. Scrubbing the library for it Lake never found it, but he did stop to read a few interesting books while he was looking so it hadn''t been aplete waste of time.
It made him wonder if he was starting to hit the limit of what Lucas had called a beginner library had to offer. He was pretty sure the next library in the spire was on floor 49 right under the floor seniors that lived in the spire who hadn''t quite made it to master lived. From what he had heard none of those so-called seniors were ever around, so he could probably head there with no problems.
That would be a good thing for him to do after lunch though. He had already been awake for almost 8 hours so he was starting to get hungry. He nned to just eat dessert today, and it was something he had been looking forward to for a while, so there was no reason not to head there now even if it was a little early for his once a day meal.
...
He had identally stuffed himself so instead of heading straight up the elevator and flying his way to the 49th floor because he thought he might barf on the way up he took the elevator down to see if joy was normal again. It was kind of annoying that whenever something happened that caused the guild to go into a state of high alert all the guards were affected by the Loyalty curse.
He hadn''t even bothered toe see her for thest few days after the battle in the city had started because he was sure he would just be wasting his time. He thought she might be back to normal by now though because even though the situation outside wasn''t good it was stable enough that he could see them letting down the alert level on whatever system they used to control the curse on the guards.
Once he reached the basement he saw the gate and totally forgot why he had evene down here. It was almost like he had been purposely forgetting about thest time he hade down here, but that was over now. He needed to actually think about the implications of the Demon Lord talking to him while he had been in the dungeon.
Lake had been expecting more after first contact and the silence from the Demon Lord was probably why he hadn''t thought about it at all. He guessed he should probably ask Lucas about it when he passed through the officeter. Lucas would probably know the best thing for him to do about it.
Pulling his eyes from the gate, Lake saw Joy was staring at him probably wondering why he hadn''t done the usual of saying hi as soon as he saw her. Getting back to his ns, Lake did what was expected of him. "Hey Joy."
"Hello, are you here to enter the dungeon?" Lake shook his head maybe slightly too hard and said. "No justing to say hi because it had been a while since I saw you. I''ve been kind of busy because I started to help one of the masters as an assistant." Lake was bragging to show off how much progress he had made in thest few days, but it didn''t seem to impress Joy at all because she said.
"I Surprised any of them would let a rookie like you near what they were doing, you must be letting that skill of yours do all the work." Lake wasn''t surprised that Joy would say this but he was sure she would be surprised that he dared to say this. "You''re right, your work is definitely much more impressive."
After he said this he didn''t let her respond, and just rode the elevator back up to the office. His insult would just grow in power the longer she wasn''t able to say anything to him in retaliation. Getting to the top, Lake stepped out to see Lucas wasn''t in his office, but because what he had to ask him was so important he sat down without even seeing where Lucas was first.
Lake usually checked then decided if it was worth the wait but he didn''t have the luxury of letting this wait tillter. He should have taken care of this as soon as it happened. After about ten minutes Lucas walked in with one of his seldomly seen servants. Lake wasn''t sure just how many Lucas had, but all of them were probably some of the busiest people in the guild.
Lake didn''t interrupt whatever they were doing and just waited patiently for the servant to leave after they received their assignment from Lucas. "Lake I just saw Master Na a little while ago. He said you have been doing good work for him." Lake waited about a second for Lucas to continue to talk, but when he didn''t, Lake said.
"I''m actually here to talk about something kind of important. The other day when I was in the Dungeon I heard a voice and I''m pretty sure it was the Demon Lord." Lake wanted for the reaction but it never came. Lucas looked extremely calm as he asked. "Have you heard it outside of the dungeon?"
Lake shook his head no so Lucas continued. "Then all I would rmend is for you to stay away from there, and make sure to tell me if you hear it again." Lake nodded and asked. "Why are you so nonchnt about this?" Lake had expected a bad reaction from Lucas so the fact it almost seemed like he didn''t care at all was a little weird to him.
"The voice is something almost everyone who has any strength has to deal with and it''s actually one of the benefits of working for the Alchemist guild. The Demon Lord will have a hard time talking to you as long as you''re in the spire. It''s still possible, but you would need to form a rtionship with him."
Lake didn''t understand what Lucas meant by rtionship so he asked. "What do you mean to form a rtionship?" Lake was sure Lucas didn''t mean this in the ssic use of this word, like be friends with the Demon Lord. "There are a few things that can make it easier for the Demon Lord to talk to you. The first and mostmon is using Unholy magic, a lot of people who are given this affinity just pretend like they don''t even have it."
Lake had seen the warnings in all the books that talked about the Unholy element so this wasn''t new information but Lucas wasn''t done. "After that the worst thing you can do is listen to anything the voice says to you and actually listen or ept any of his offers." Lake nodded this pretty much confirmed what he had thought about the voice and how he should avoid the Dungeon from now on.
It was too bad though, he had really wanted to see what the mark formed from using Treasured on Lucas was. He guessed he could just go and check it out after the war. Getting up Lake was about to leave when he remembered he had been meaning to ask Lucas about the teleporters. "Lucas, one more thing. I wanted to know what the teleporters use to run." It seemed Lucas was asked this question a lot because he opened a drawer and handed Lake a piece of paper from a stack he had prepared. Looking at the paper he saw it was a list that had the names of curtain resources.
"It took you a lot longer to ask than most of the people who live in the spire but you all do eventually." Lucas wasughing a bit as he said this then continued. "If you evere across any of the things on this list consider selling it to us first because we have the most money and I''ll make sure to give whatever you want for it."
Lake nodded and put the list in his bag, then said. "Do you know where I can find a book called Cascading Alchemy?" There was no point in him blindly searching when he was already talking to Lucas. "Are you sure it''s kind ofplicated?" Lake nodded, even if he didn''t understand everything he was sure with time he couldprehend what the book was about.
"Ok well there should be copies of the book in almost every library, so it shouldn''t be too hard to find. It is a popr book though, so if you can''t find it it probably means someone has it and you''ll need to wait a few days, or look in a different library."
Lake thanked Lucas and went to look for the book. He was sure this would probably be what the rest of his day was spent doing and if he was lucky enough to find it rtively fast he would probably read a bit before going to watch the fight that would happen tonight.
Chapter 124: Fast Forward Pt.2
Chapter 124: Fast Forward Pt.2
Last Night Lake had eventually given up on looking through the entire library on floor 49 because he wanted to watch the fight that pretty much started at the same time every night. There were fights during the day as well but for whatever reason they never got as heated as the ones during the night.
His look through the library hadn''t been aplete waste though Lake now knew where he could find books about curses which was something he wanted to know more about for a while. It would be a good thing for him to do every night if he had some spare time after work and such.
Stepping out onto the balcony, Lake saw no one was outside at the moment. This meant there was no fight happening in town which was a good thing, but it wasn''t like there was that much of a difference there would be at some point in the day.
Heading upstairs for work, Lake wondered if he and Na would be able to get the time even lower than 4 and a half hours today. He was pretty sure they were getting close to the max speed they could reach and at most he could only shave a few minutes off of each round of brewing.
...
He had been right about not making much improvement to the time today. The difference ended up being less than ten minutes. This meant from now until whenever they were told to stop he would be spending about 4 hours at work meaning he had about 16 hours a day that he didn''t really have any ns for.
He had things to do like look around the library for Cascading Alchemy or watch the fight that happened for around five or six hours a night but he didn''t have to do them if he didn''t want to. He wondered if he should ask Lucas to give him another job because this amount of free time was a real bore.
He guessed there was no reason to ask Lucas he should just start up his magic training again. He needed to start to master a few more principles if he wanted to make custom spells any time soon. From what he knew about magic training he could easily spend his whole day doing it with it being such a tedious process.
Seeing he was at the 49th floor Lake stepped into the Library to continue his search for Cascading Alchemy. He had a little over half the library to look through but right when he was about to start he remembered he had a skill that was perfect for something Like this. Activating Detector It wasn''t long before Lake finished checking the whole library.
He didn''t find the book which meant someone had the book out of the library at the moment. This made him wonder if you could just take any book you wanted from the library and return it after you were done. No one had ever told him what the process to check out a book was so he had just assumed you were supposed to read inside the library, but it was possible you could just take whatever you wanted and there was no need to check them out.
This was probably one of those times knowledge from his world had made him make an assumption that was wrong. A few minutester Lake was walking out with two books one about fire training and another about curses. Lake had just grabbed a small book about curses because all the books in this library seemed to assume you weren''t a beginner like he was and most of them would take forever to read with how long they were.
Lake was starting to see why there hadn''t been any books about curses in the beginner library; it seemed it was aplicated subject. It was fine, Lake wasn''t trying to be an expert, he just wanted to learn the basics, so he wasn''tpletely in the dark if he ever encountered them.
Stopping by his room only long enough to set the two books down on his desk, Lake headed for the cafeteria. He wasn''t quite hungry yet but it wouldn''t be long and he had gotten in the habit of listening to people talk while they were eating. Most of the things they said were useless opinions, but every now and then he could get some nice information from someone who held a position somewhere important in the guild.
...
Nothing had really happened while he ate, but the food had been incredible. It was good Millie had been able to refocus herself and get back to work. Riding the elevator straight up to Lucas''s office, Lake got off to see Lucas had a lot ofpany. He hadn''t nned to stop, but this made it seem like there was something important happening.
Standing out of the way Lake started to listen to what Lucas was saying. "Did you see anyrge groups leave out of this hole in the wall, or did they all move in the same direction?"
"No sir, they all left together in the same group a few hours after thest fight happened. It took us a few hours to confirm, but it seems less than 10% of what was in the city is still here."
It seemed Lake was right to stop and listen, it seemed one of therger groups that had been upying the city had picked up and left. Now he just needed to figure out which group they were talking about. He just hoped it wasn''t the Light temple because if it was the city was done for.
"Has anyone figured out why they fell back, or if they n to return?" It seemed he had missed the part about who they were talking about because Lucas was already on the part where they were trying to figure out why it had happened. Lake thought he could probably still figure it out as long as he kept listening.
"No sir, we''re pretty sure none of them were even expecting to get the retreat order because they had been setting up for the attack tonight when they dropped everything and left."
"Did you send anyone to follow them?" Lake was starting to think Lucas was talking in a way that the identity of who they were talking about wouldn''t be revealed just to annoy him. "Yes Sir, I told them to report back every few hours until they run out of people to send so we can expect a report for the next few days as long as nothing happens to them."
It seemed Lucas was out of questions for them because he sat down and pulled out his mirror. Lake knew this meant Lucas was about to give orders to the guild, so he got his ears ready because Lucas talked kind of fast when he used the mirror. "Send two groups of scouts to make contact with the Light Temple to see if they know why the Demon Worshipers evacuated."
This gave Lake his answer, the Demon Worshipers had left all of a sudden and while the people in the city probably saw this as a good thing there was no way they had just given up. It did give him a small window to go outside though. The only thing was he didn''t really have anything he needed to do out there.
He was a little bored staying inside all the time, but it wasn''t enough that he thought it was worth risking his life. He did want to finish his mission to gather a million gold but what were the odds he could do that in the amount of time it would be peaceful. The Demon Worshipers could be back at any time, and he was sure they would be bringing reinforcements when they dide back.
Making up his mind to stay inside the guild, Lake went back to listening to Lucas who had been talking this whole time he had been thinking. "Rush as many shipments as you can. This might be thest time we can get resources into the guild for a while." It seemed Lucas wasn''t happy with the massive amounts of everything they already had stored away inside the guild.
It would be stupid not to use this opportunity though, so he couldn''t really fault the decision and maybe there were things they really needed already, he wasn''t exactly privy to all the things the guild used on a daily basis. Seeing Lucas was putting the mirror back where he kept it, Lake was expecting the orders to be over but Lucas looked at all the people in his office and said.
"Get back out there, and identify the best paths in and out of the guild for the carts to take." After Lucas said this all the people Lake knew where scouts rushed out leaving them alone. Lucas was looking directly at him but Lake didn''t really have anything to say so he waved bye, and headed for the stairwell.
"Lake, I need you for a second." Lake turned around and sat down in the chair in front of Lucas''s desk. "What do you need, Guild Master Lucas?" Lucas didn''t seem to like the fact that Lake used his full title for no reason but he just said what he was going to without acknowledging it.
"I''m going to be leaving the guild tomorrow for important business, and I need you to tell me if you can use that skill you used on me the other day on anyone." Lake new Lucas was talking about Treasured so he nodded and said. "I can." Lucas looked happy to hear this and said. "In that case you will being with me. I''ll need you ready and in my office before the sun rises, and don''t worry about work, I''ll tell Na you''ll be with me."
Lake nodded, and stood up. He could tell Lucas was done with him by the way he had started to read one of the many documents on the desk. On his way towards his room, Lake started to think what they could be doing tomorrow that would need Lucas to go, and the use of his skill.
Chapter 125: That Way Pt.1
Chapter 125: That Way Pt.1
Lake did as he was told and arrived in Lucas''s office before the sun was up. It had been really easy because he just told his servants to get him up if he wasn''t up by a certain time. Lake didn''t end up needing them though because at most he only ever slept five hours, and that was after a long day where he was really tired before he got in his bed.
Stepping into the office, Lake saw there were a few people who were clearly not members of the guild because they were tied up and guards were holding them in ce. Well they might have been members in the past he guessed, but either way it seemed he might be using his skill on them.
Once Lucas got done whispering to one of the people that were tied up he told the guard. "Take this one back to the prison, there''s no reason to take one that''s willing to talk. It will just make it harder for us to keep them under control." Lake knew Lucas knew he was here so he didn''t say anything and fell into line behind him.
Lucas would tell him when it was time to use his skill so for now he would just watch. After a while and with a few more prisoners sent back to the jail or whatever they were left with two who Lucas hadn''t sent back after he had spoken to them. Getting a good look at them Lake saw they were both just regr looking people which added credence to them being ex members.
"Alright take them to the cart, we will be down in a little while." Once the guards had left with the prisoners Lucas turned to him and said. "Your skill can track items that people want the most right?" Lake nodded and said. "It''s actually what they care about the most, but it''s probably the same thing right?"
"And it works on any one?" Lake nodded again to which Lucas said. "Alright put this on and start charging it with your mana. I''ll tell you when I need you to use your skill." Lake received the ne Lucas was holding out towards him and started to feed it mana. He could tell it could hold a lot so Lake took the opportunity to inspect it.
Now that it was full of his mana he was the owner so he didn''t need to worry about any anti inspection effects it had to protect itself from prying eyes.
Scrying Skills Boosting Ne
Lake couldn''t help but to wince at how bad the name was, but he got over it and started to read through the effects the ne had.
Counters the protective effects the target has ced on them by using the mana stored in the ne to boost the power of the skill.
Protects the wearer from any anti scrying effects by using the mana stored in the ne.
These were the main two things he found after reading all the facts his various Appraiser skills brought up. Also the ne could hold 310 mana before it was full so he was going to need a mana potion if he wanted to fill it in a timely manner. "Lucas, do you have a mana potion I can use to fill this ne?"
Lucas nodded and went over to one of the shelves in the room and brought Lake a bottle. Taking sips whenever he started to get low, Lake filled the ne with his mana soon after. "Ok I''m ready. Is it ok if I wear this, and my ring at the same time?" Lake remembered Lucas telling him items could interfere with one another so he was just checking before he put the ne on.
"Yeah it''s only a bad idea if the two items have a simr effect, so you should be fine." After he put the ne on they went towards the elevator as Lucas said. "There''s a risk to what you''ll be doing, so if you feel like the Ne isn''t enough to keep you safe you need to cancel your skill before all the mana in the ne is used up."
"So what is it that we are doing?" Lake felt Lucas was getting ahead of himself by not telling him what the mission was before telling him how dangerous it was going to be. "We have to track down something stolen from the guild about a week ago. We were lucky enough to catch most of the people who were working with the one that got away but none of them have given us any real information even when they try. It seems they were all told fake info so our efforts to make them talk were all wasted."
"Why did you have the guards bring back the ones willing to talk if they were just going to give you fake information?" It didn''t make sense to Lake but Lucas seemed to have a reason. "I figured they wouldn''t care enough about the item for your skill to be able to track it down if they were willing to give what they thought was real information."
Lake saw what Lucas meant the two that wouldn''t talk would probably be the best targets for his skill since they seemed to care the most. "So what did they steal?" Lucas was always keeping the most important detail out of anything he said, Lake wondered if it was from the years of being uncertain if anyone was listening to what he was saying.
"They stole around forty Elixirs with the ns to use them to make themselves stronger before they abandoned the guild. Of course we caught most of them but the few that got away was enough to make us think there was no point in trying to track them down because we thought they would have already used what they could and sold the rest, but one of the scouts we had out in the town got some info that the people who had stolen them had been attacked before they made it out of town. This makes it much more likely that we will be able to recover what was stolen with almost no risk since we won''t have to leave town."
Lake didn''t know what the elixirs were worth but it must be a huge amount if Lucas was willing to go and do this himself but Lake did have one question. "How were they able to steal them? I thought they were kept in the Master Labs vault." Lucas nodded and said. "The good ones we give to important people are but the ones normal guild members have to work to earn aren''t as well guarded, but they didn''t break into a vault or anything they just took a shipment they were supposed to guard. Usually we have multiple sets of guards and members from different parts of the guild take such shipments to make it hard for them to n something in advanced but with the amount of shipments we sent right before the barrier came up we were a littlex with who we sent out together because we didn''t have the manpower to do otherwise."
"You thought there wasn''t a way around a few of the shipments getting stolen, so you didn''t even worry about it." Lake just stopped Lucas from giving him every detail by saying what he thought the gist was. "Yep." Lake new big businesses like the Alchemist guild expected some losses but he also knew they didn''t just let it slide if they had the chance to right the wrong.
He had learned this the hard way in hisst life when he had gotten caught after stealing from the same ce one too many times. That was how he ended up spending all his free time either in court or at the therapist''s office. He was sure he had gotten off easypared to how this world handled theft though.
They were probably on their way to execute anyone who they found, and take back whatever was left of the Elixir. Lake guessed it would have actually been better for him in the long run if they had executed him though, probably faster than burning to death, and he wouldn''t have had to sit through all that bullshit.
Once they made it to the cart bay Lake saw there were quite a few carts ready to go, but he wasn''t sure if all of them were for what they were doing because he had heard Lucas say this would be a good chance to ship and receive while the war was on pause in the capital. He just followed Lucas because he was sure Lucas would know which carts they would be leaving in.
Seeing Lucas open the door of one of therge carts, and get inside Lake did the same. Sitting next to Lucas Lake saw the two prisoners and a few guards were inside as well. "You can go ahead and use your skill whenever you''re ready." It seemed everyone was waiting on him to tell them where to go so Lake went ahead and used Treasured on the first of the two prisoners.
After feeling some Mana drain from the ne and seeing a dot appear in the distance, Lake looked around to see there were three. Two were too far away to be in the city so Lake nodded to Lucas before he said. "I''m ready whenever. No guarantee it''s right though." Lucas gave the order for the cart to start heading out into the city then looked at Lake and said. "Tell me when we start getting close."
Lake nodded as he felt the cart jerk forward. Looking back towards the prisoner he had just used the skill on Lake saw they were confused. After a second of thinking why he realized the two had probably expected something akin to torture to get them to talk but instead all Lake had done was look at them for a second.
These two probably didn''t know that their info was no longer good since their colleagues had lost the Elixir soon after stealing it. Giving the two a small smile Lake dismissed them and started paying attention so he could give Lucas some basic directions to where they were going.
Chapter 126: That Way Pt.2
Chapter 126: That Way Pt.2
They had been moving through town for 15 minutes by now and it seemed they were about halfway there. Usually they could go much faster with a guild cart but the card never went full speed in a city, and the fact there was rubble everywhere now made it so they had to go even slower.
"We''re close." Now that they had made it this far Lake activated Detector to look for Elixirs. He saw this as a way to confirm if the mark they were getting close to was actually the right thing without them having to stop and raid whatever ce they ended up at.
After they got close enough that Lake was sure Detector would have reacted if there were elixirs anywhere near the mark Lake turned to Lucas and said. "It''s not here. There''s something they care about more here." Lake didn''t like he was saying this in front of the prisoners because it kind of gave away how his skill worked but he didn''t think they would be able to hinder him with this information.
Trying to change what you cared about to protect what you really cared about would never work because you clearly cared about whatever you were trying to protect more. "What do you think it is?" Lake shrugged, and said. "Who knows, but it might be worth getting if you want to send someone inside to clear it first. Then I can go in and find what my skill is pointing towards."
Lucas shook his head and said. "It''s not really worth the time, we''re in a bit of a rush." Lake nodded and used Treasured on the next prisoner, after he was done he looked around to see there was more than one mark close enough to be inside the city. This was a bit of a problem because he didn''t want to give away the fact his skill could be used to track people as well in front of Lucas.
He had identally found a child that Lucas cared about enough to hide them far away from the guild and if Lake found the person this prisoner cared about the most, Lucas might realize Lake could do the same to him and probably already had. Lake doubted Lucas would kill him over this but it might make Lucas more weary of him since he had kept what his skill could do from him in the past when he had used it on him. It was probably good that Lucas had decided not to raid the ce they had just passed.
Lake decided the best thing he could do was just lie; he didn''t like to do this because he thought some people could tell, and those same people were most likely the kind of people you didn''t want to know if you were lying, but Lucas had said Lake should lie to keep the fact he was special secret, so even if Lucas knew he was lying he wouldn''t say anything.
"It seems this person has a few things they care about, or the Elixirs have been split, so we''re going to have to make a few stops." This was a good lie as far as Lake was concerned it wasn''t like anyone but him knew how his skill worked and he thought it might actually be possible someone might be able to care about two things the same amount so his skill would show both.
It was like if he used the skill on someone with multiple children and they were one of those parents who actually meant it when they said they loved all their children the same, his skill might mark multiple people when it was only supposed to do one.
After a while and some directions they were getting close to one of the marks so Lake said. "Slow down." Looking out the window as they passed the ce the mark was Lake said. "I''ll need to get closer than I can while in the cart to confirm this one." He would need to get much closer and possibly go inside the building to get the mark inside the fifty foot radius of Detector.
The fact this one was actually being kept down in a safe basement instead of just in some random building made him think there was a good chance this might actually be the Elixirs that had been stolen. As the cart stopped a few seconds after Lake had asked to get out of the cart and he opened the door to get out the prisoner who he was currently using Treasured on said. "Wait, this is my house."
It seemed exactly what he thought would happen did, and he was just leading them to this man''s family. "In that case I''m sure you have already gone through his house after the theft. We can move on to the next mark. He probably just has some heirloom inside that he cares about."
Lucas nodded and gave the order for them to move on after Lake shut the door. After a few minutes of driving they were in front of a new ce. "Do you recognize this ce?" Lake thought he might as well ask before he made them stop the cart. When the prisoner shook his head no Lake said. "Alright have them stop."
When the cart came to a stop, he, Lucas, and one of the guards stepped out and approached the building. When they got close to the door the guard just busted it down. Stepping inside it didn''t take too long for them to find the way downstairs. They were unobstructed until they reached a reinforced door.
It was too Late though, he was already in range and he saw Detector form a new mark over the one formed by Treasured. "It''s here." Now that Detector had actually led them to what they were looking for, Lake asked Lucas who seemed to be getting ready to bust down the door. "Why do they care so much about Elixir?"
He understood a lot of people were addicted to strength and that was why they had taken the risk that was stealing from the guild, but to care so much that the Elixir was the thing you cared about the most. "It takes years of constant service to earn an Elixir, so there''s no way around some people bing obsessed."
Lake guessed it was just that simple. The Elixir was seen as a ticket to bing special and at the end of the day that was all some people wanted. Lake watched as Lucas blew the door down with a swift p. Lake always found it funny whenever he was reminded just how strong Lucas actually was because he didn''t give off a dangerous vibe at all.
"You two can just stay here, I''lle and get you if I can''t find them." Lake nodded and watched Lucas disappear down into the bunker a few secondster Lake heard and felt a massive boom he assumed was Lucas killing whoever was down there and then saw Lucas walk out with a small case that looked like something that could hold the thin bottles Elixir was stored in.
"That was pretty fast, so how many are left?" Lucas had said there had been forty stolen so if even half of that was left it would be a miracle. "I''ll look once we get back to the cart." Lake nodded and followed Lucas back up the stairs out of the house and into the cart. Lake thought it would be funny so he made sure to get a good look of the two prisoners'' faces as they got in and sat down with the case these two would have helped steal around a week ago.
It was pretty much what he expected and how they looked at him after seeing the case was particrly funny. He could see the jealousy people with no powerful skills had for people like him. After a few seconds of thiske felt the cart start moving so he looked over to Lucas to watch as he opened the case to see how many were still inside.
"So now that you don''t need us any more, why don''t you kill us now?" One of the prisoners made what Lake thought was a good point but Lucas seemed to disagree. "That''s how I would normally deal with it, but since you betrayed the guild during a crisis your punishment will be more severe than normal."
Lake understood Lucas would make all the thieves they had caught into an example and he had to agree this was how militaristic organizations handled what they called treason. Lake hadn''t even understood how bad these guys had messed up until now. He wondered if there would be a public execution like you would see in movies from his world or if it would be even worse somehow.
He was sure there were ways you could use magic to do something much worse to someone then he could evene up with. After getting his fill of the prisoners'' terrible expressions, Lake turned to see Lucas had opened the case and got to counting. "Wow it''s almost all here." Lake couldn''t believe only four vials were missing.
"It seems the four in the basement all used one, and were waiting for a good time to be able to sell the rest. We were lucky in a way that the war made the city such a mess." Lake guessed this was a good way to look at it, but it kind of made him see the Guild in a new light, and it made him realize why Lucas was so confident in staying neutral.
The only people who could benefit from something like a war were the people selling to both sides. He wondered which side these Elixirs had been meant for and how much they had been paid for them. It also made sense of the fact that Lucas had taken care of this personally when you were selling something like Elixir it not showing up made you look bad.
Say this was supposed to go to the Temple; they would be pissed if it didn''t show up when it was expected, especially if the batch you sent to the Demon Lord did. You had to make sure both sides got the same or one of them would eventually turn on you. Not to mention the fact some of the guilds people had stabbed them in the back would make it seem like they were suffering from low morale and they would crumble if they were attacked.
It might give the impression to one of the other groups that it was better to just take over the guild because they didn''t have the strength to protect themselves. Why pay someone when you could just force them to work for you. Lake smiled, he bet these poor bastards sitting in front of him were about to be more than publicly executed. It was probably going to be the most gruesome shit he had ever seen.
Lake didn''t miss the fact that he was also a thief, and he could end up in the same exact position, but just like how the thieves guild treated their members he saw the people who were caught as the ones at fault, and he would happily watch the execution as a member of the Alchemist guild.
Chapter 127: Line Of Sight
Chapter 127: Line Of Sight
Tiff had been outside of the Alchemist guild since she discovered the tracker the thieves had given her was telling her that was where the badge of the person she was looking for was. At first she had just assumed that whoever she was tracking was a nt put into the Alchemist guild to gather information for the thieves, but after getting more familiar with the tracker she found she could see exactly where it was telling her to go.
Unfortunately it was pointing into the sky above the guild where the famous spire was usually visible. At the moment she wasn''t able to actually see it though because the barrier the Alchemist guild used to cover themselves wasn''t clear and instead made it seem like there was a permanent cloud in the middle of the capital.
It was a bit of an annoyance for everyone who lived here but it did kind of make it seem like they didn''t exist at all as long as you were looking at them from a distance. It really made them blend into the skyline. Either way she had been assigned to get the dagger back from whoever had taken it from them, so she had pretty much spent all her time as near to the guild as she could get waiting for the person she was tracking toe out.
She was starting to think it would never happen because who would go outside at a time like this but when the Demon Lords forces retreated all of a sudden and the Alchemist guild started doing business while they could Tiff saw it as the only possible time that she might get lucky enough to get a chance to confront the person with the dagger.
Her hopes ended uping true when right before the sun came up her tracker followed a cart that came flying out of the guild. She hadn''t been expecting it because the ce the tracker was pointing moved all the time with it actually pointing underground at one asion. She knew this just meant the person who owned the badge was moving around inside the massive guild building.
It was different this time though with the person actually being outside where she could reach them, so she got up and started to follow the cart. They weren''t going too fast, so she was able to sit in one ce for a while while she watched them. This would let her pause the use of her skills and conserve both Mana and Stamina for the fight that might happen.
That was one of the downsides of having a skill that was too strong for you; sometimes it was hard to conserve your Mana. She didn''t have a choice though, people not being able to see her was the only reason she was able to do anything by herself without worrying about being killed.
After a while Tiff saw the cart finallye to halt. She was starting to wonder if it ever would because they had taken a very odd path that made it seem like they were just on a leisurely ride through town. Getting ready to pounce if whoever stepped out of the cart didn''t have too much back up, but Tiff saw the door close soon after opening without anyone getting out.
After being confused for a second Tiff used her tracking device to make sure whoever she was after wasn''t able to do something simr to her. Seeing it was still pointing towards the cart Tiff followed it when it started to move again. While following the cart Tiff started to wonder if she should go in blind.
It would be dangerous but she couldn''t just let this opportunity slip past her because there was a good chance when the Demon Lords forces returned they would have what they needed to take over the capital, and that would mean her friends who would be standing in their way would end up dead.
It meant she needed to make a decision if her odds of living were better with or without the dagger because she would be in danger soon no matter what she did. Before she could make up her mind the cart came to another stop. When she saw the door open Tiff made sure the tracker was in her hand.
The moment she saw someone step out of the cart she readied herself to attack but right before she did she saw another much more familiar person step out second. It was the master of the Alchemist guild, and someone she knew she stood no chance against. She couldn''t believe someone like him would be here and right next to the person she was after.
After getting over her initial shock she started to think what this could mean for her chances of getting the dagger back from someone who was apparently close to Lucas. Seeing the bog standard guard they were with kick down a door and all three of them enter, Tiff decided she might as well leave now before they came back.
There was no reason for her to risk Lucas seeing her when they came back out. He would definitely be the kind of person who could see through her skill if he just happened to look right at her by chance. On her way back to the Temple Tiff guessed her only option was to tell the higher ups the dagger was in the hands of the Alchemy guild and let them deal with that however they wanted.
...
At the same time and about half a day''s travel from the capital, Donny was sitting in the middle of a small encampment of refugees from the capital eating some of the food they offered to people like him who were functionally guards for the people living in the middle of the forest. It was a pretty easy gig. All he had to do was kill a few monsters every day and he received some money and food.
It was lower pay than he would like but at the moment finding a better job would most likely end up with him being killed on the way. The streets were more dangerous than he could have ever imagined. The worst part was every thief that had been in the capitol, and there were a lot, was now robbing people who were running away from the front lines.
Thinking of those bastards made him remember the one who had taken his shield from him. The thought that all his money he was currently making would probably go to that same bastard to hire them to take the shield from his brother made it even worse. Then the fact that it would probably keep happening back and forth till one of them got tired of it and killed the other pissed him off.
Deciding he should just focus on his food and stop thinking about the future, Donny heard a whistle that sounded like a wyvern, but he knew this was a signal from one of their lookouts in the forest that there was troubleing towards them. Standing up and grabbing his spear and shield Donny headed towards the edge of the encampment.
On the way he heard a few more rms ring out from different directions meaning more and more of their lookouts were seeing the same thing. That there were monsters heading towards them but the amount of rms was starting to rm him. Stopping and looking around at the people in the encampment he saw they were already getting packed and were starting to make a break for it.
It seemed he wasn''t the only one who thought this was a worst case scenario and that Undead or Demon worshipers was what was heading towards them. The thing was they had different rms sounds depending on what wasing and these were definitely the signals for monsters.
Deciding to put his trust in their lookouts and not the skittishness of people who had been running from Demon Worshipers for thest few days Donny lined up next to the other guards and waited for whatever monsters they were about to face. When he saw something running towards them from the forest he got ready to attack but noticed it was one of their lookouts waving his arms so they wouldn''t mistake him for a monster.
Once he got close to them he said one word. "Giant." After he got his breath he continued. "There''s a giant right outside the forest heading towards the capital." Donny didn''t understand, and asked. "Is it heading towards us?" The lookout shook his head no and said. "No but we didn''t know what signal we should use to tell you there was a massive monster a few hundred feet from the forest.
Thinking about it Donny guessed he should give the order to evacuate for now. Giants were rare but they were feared for a reason as soon as it stepped foot in the forest this ce would be about as dangerous as the capital itself. Sharing his opinion with the others that were about as strong as him to get some feedback Donny said. "We should go before it realizes we''re here."
Donny was expecting a quick response, but none of the others seemed to have finished absorbing the news just yet. Looking back He saw most of them had dazed looks on their faces Like he expected but there was one who, like him, seemed prepared to make a decision, but of course it was the girl who never really talked.
He didn''t even know her name all he knew was she wasn''t really that strong but her skills were impressive particrly with the bow. He guessed she had been lucky enough to get a strongbo of skills between Perception and Archer or Hunter. Either way her not talking was something he could excuse since there was a chance she had just seen her whole family be killed or something.
She didn''t ck off or anything either, so she was actually one of the better guards and her ability to keep a cool head which she was doing now was definitely a big advantage during times like these. Saying what he had said a moment ago to snap everyone out of it Donny got a reaction. "You''re right we should go."
Everyone seemed to be in agreement so Donny said. "Go get all the lookouts." to the one who had delivered the news and headed back towards the encampment to help people pack the important things onto the few carts they had. As he was walking away Donny heard someone say in a low voice something to the lookout who had been running back towards the forest.
Turning around he saw it was the archer that usually kept her mouth shut. Thinking it must be something important if it had gotten her to speak, Donny got closer so he would be able to hear what they were talking about. "Was the giant wearing anything?" Donny found this to be an odd question until he saw the lookout nod.
"What did it have on?" Donny unconsciously took a step closer because he had never heard of a giant wearing anything other than their own hair and he was intrigued. "A ck robe." Donny couldn''t help but think there had been no robe, and it was just hair the lookouts had mistaken for clothes, but the girl seemed to take the answer at face value and walked away.
Donny tried to stop her so he could ask what the point of her question had been but she dodged him and headed towards the camp at a brisk pace. Going after her Donny couldn''t help but realize how futile what he was doing was. There was no way he could get her to talk if she didn''t want to, and she wasn''t a very friendly person to interact with either.
The only time he had seen her smile was when one of the older refugees had fallen off of a cart so his n of trying to get her to talk was most likely going to end in him getting punched in the face once he got on her nerves.
Chapter 128: Opinions Pt.1
Chapter 128: Opinions Pt.1
After Lake had returned to the Guild the rest of the day had passed pretty quickly because he had gone to see if Na needed help finishing the batch of ten vats of poison. There had been no fight either since the only force in the city at the moment was the Temple so he had just read until it was time for bed.
The book on Curses turned out to be a little over his head but he had been able to understand they weren''t something you wanted to mess with. As he was going through it he had found out that just because you were able to dispel a curse didn''t mean you would be able to repair all the damage they had done to you or your stats and skills.
It was kind of terrifying that a curse could permanently change a skill to work against you, but he had finally found information on changing skills and their levels even if it was heading in the wrong direction. It was a good start, but he guessed that kind of information was even further above his head than curses were.
That was for the future though he needed to focus on what was happening now. He and about forty other people were standing in Lucas''s office Listening to him read out the ns for how they were going to make an example out of the thieves that had stolen from the guild.
Lake had no problems with what Lucas had nned, but from the looks on the faces around him he was in the minority. He could see how these people could think it was going too far, but the way he saw it Lucas just wasn''t presenting it the right way. He kept making the same point how order was important during times like these, and how they needed to make sure none of the other members got the bright idea that stealing from them would be easy, but the way he would put it was they could get all these benefits without actually having to do what the guild rule book called Extended Dismemberment.
Seeing an easy way around this problem Lake walked forward before anymore people voicing dissatisfaction with this method could speak. It technically wasn''t his turn to share his opinion yet, but there was no reason not to say something that could solve the problem, and most people were shouting out of turn anyway.
Lake stood next to Master Na with the hopes that if anyone was to question his idea Master Na would use his status in the guild to back him up. "I have a way around this. I''ve noticed almost everyone agrees the guilty should be executed but not that they should be in such a gruesome manner, so why don''t we just make it seem gruesome. We''re the Alchemist guild so if anyone could fake an execution like this one it would be us. The way I see it the guilty don''t even need to be alive when we subject them to torture all we need to do is make it seem like they are."
He didn''t know if what he was saying was actually possible but how hard could it actually be to get a corpse scream and struggle while you repeatedly cut off its limbs before regrowing them. Looking around it seemed the higher ups understood what he was saying so he guessed his idea did make sense but the only person he really needed to like the idea was Lucas and with him being such a people pleaser, Lake was sure he would go with the flow now that everyone seemed to be appeased.
Especially since he would still get what he wanted which was to make some of the lower level members afraid to screw around. Lake nodded and headed back towards the back of the room where he had been standing this whole time up until this point. Once he got there the fact that everyone liked his idea made him wonder why none of them had thought of it.
This was a room of smart people, many of them much more so than him. It must be because of his personality everyone here had been outraged so they had been unable to think objectively while he who didn''t really care at all had been able to solve the problem. It was just one of those funny things about life where sometimes the best person for the job had no business even being there if you were to judge them by normal standards.
Feeling someone nudge him he saw Millie wanted to say something to him so he leaned in to let her whisper into his ear. "That was a good idea, how''d youe up with it?" Lake didn''t think this was the best time to try and exin how he was the best guy for the job, so he said. "I''ll tell youter." and went back to listening to the meeting.
He hoped Millie didn''t get her hopes up too much though because other than telling her his brain was really smart he didn''t know what he could say about having an idea. Now that the meeting was going smoothly all he was hearing was ns to actually pull off what he had proposed which was somehow even more boring than thest hour of people saying the prisoners should just be killed the normal way.
Not being able to help it his mind started to wander and he was soon thinking about something that seemed a little odd to him. Why were there so many bleeding hearts here? It didn''t make sense that anyone that lived in such a dangerous world would actually care if someone was tortured and even if there were people like that in this world, why weren''t the ones here off fighting the Demon Lord?
Lucas had given everyone who wanted to leave the chance under the guise of evacuating important personnel to secret locations, and while that had actually taken ce most of the carts they had sent never arrived because a lot of their members had allegiances to different groups.
It had been a smart move by Lucas to make sure everyone left would be a team yer, but now here they were giving him a hard time over some small execution that was by the books even if it dide off as a little extreme. Lake guessed it was possible some of these people were cowards that wanted to fight but just didn''t have it in them.
A coward would never leave a ce like this for some battlefield where they might die at any moment even if morally they wanted to. Looking at Millie Lake couldn''t help but wonder if that was why she had been feeling guilty the other day. Deep down she knew the real reason she had stayed, and it wasn''t to continue her work.
After a second of looking at Millie, Lake finished thinking about how annoying the people included in this meeting were and Looked at Na. Na and a few others had been on board the whole time, so they were probably the real backbone of the guild even if a lot of the people in here had the same position technically.
Either way it was starting to seem like the meeting would be over soon and he would be able to go and actually get something done. He nned to get some reading done today and maybe even start practice on Fire Magic if the book was as easy as the one on Wind had been. Of course all that would probably take ce after Lunch and on the way down he would have a chance to finish the conversation Millie had tried to start earlier because he was sure she would be going in that direction as well.
About thirty minutester the meeting finally ended and he and Millie headed towards the elevator. Right when he was about to start a conversation he heard. "Lakee back." It seemed Millie wasn''t the only one who wanted to know more about his process. Getting into his chair in front of Lucas''s desk Lake waited for him to start talking which only happened once everyone else had left the room.
"Did you take anything from the Temple, and if so you need to tell me how and why so I can hand over a fake who knows the details." Lake was floored; he had never expected this to be what Lucas wanted to talk to him about. It was probably a good sign that he wanted to cover for him though.
Lake didn''t think telling the truth was a good idea though so he said. "No." With the hope this was what Lucas wanted him to say. "I didn''t think you would know what i was talking about but I hope you don''t mind if I search your room. I know it''s rude, but this has the potential of being a big problem for the guild, so I can''t just take your word for it."
Lake had no problem with this because he had kind of assumed they already did this whenever he wasn''t around. It was part of the reason he kept everything he shouldn''t have in his secret second bag his skill Booster Bag gave him ess to. "Go ahead."
Lucas nodded, and said. "Sorry again, I know you don''t have it from how the Temple described what they were looking for, I would be able to feel it if it was in the guild." Lake nodded and said, "Why are they even asking?" He knew but he was just pushing his luck because he felt it was about time to see if Lucas could tell when he was lying.
"They said that one of their guys saw me get out of a cart yesterday with their main suspect." Lake guessed Lucas didn''t think it could have been the guard as all that left was him. "Ok, so why would they say that?" This was misleading enough that he felt it was definitely a lie.
"People try to create friction between us and our clients all the time. This is nothing new, and it will blow over in a few days once something more importantes along." The way Lucas just answered the question like it was legitimate made Lake think he probably couldn''t tell he was guilty or lying.
This was a good thing to know for when in the future when he was guilty and lying. Getting up, Lake asked. "Is it alright if I go get lunch?" Lucas nodded, so Lake headed towards the elevator. "Why were you able toe up with such an obvious idea and no one else was?" Lake guessed the fact Lucas had noticed this as well made him smart as well.
"Someone had to be the first one, why not me?" This was a lot more eloquent than what he had nned to say to Millie, but he guessed he was just good under pressure. "Lake, I have another thing I need to talk to you about." Lake looked back confused but when he saw Lucas''s face he realized Lucas had just decided to tell him something, and he hadn''t been messing with him when he said he could go to lunch.
Chapter 129: Opinions Pt.2
Chapter 129: Opinions Pt.2
Returning and sitting in his seat, Lake gave Lucas the I''m ready look and waited for Lucas to say whatever seemed to be so important to him. "I don''t know how to break the news I''m about to tell you to the guild and since you''ve shown the ability to spin ideas pretty easily and since you''re one of the few who already know about the giants you''re the best person for me to ask."
When Lucas said giant Lake instantly understood what he was about to be told and why Lucas was having a hard time with breaking the news to everyone else in the guild. It would be a lot easier to just wait for it to happen and let everyone figure it out like that. Why risk causing a panic a few days early when you could just let it happen naturally.
There was a reason to break the news early though; what woulde after the panic. If Lucas was the one who told them he would be more trustworthy as a leader and if they were blindsided they would start to doubt Lucas''s game n for the war. It was the annoying game people like Lucas had to y because they were in power, it didn''t matter what it was or what caused it, everything was your fault.
"You already know you have to tell them, so you just need help on how to phrase it?" When Lucas confirmed by nodding, Lake started to think how he would handle something like this. Quickly finding something he should ask about before he put any more thought into this, Lake asked. "Is there only one gianting?"
When Lucas nodded again Lake said. "Then you don''t really need to worry about it. The Temple already has a n to deal with it, so all you need to do is spread that fact alongside the fact that the giant ising." Lucas seemed to think it was a good idea but Lake could tell it wasn''t enough.
"What''s your problem with this idea?" Lake wasn''t attached to this idea so if there was another problem he wanted to know so he could work around it. "Your idea will only work on the lower members of the guild; the higher ups will want to know where I got the information about the Temple before they believe it."
Lake saw the problem, Lucas was saying he couldn''t just say something with no proof and expect everyone to believe it. The problem for him was his proof was actually what he had just lied about, or at least it was his source of information. When he had stolen the dagger the Insider had stopped him from taking the rest of the weapons by showing him they were powerful enough to stop the giants he had just seen.
In the vision Lake had seen the weapons used to fight against an equal amount of giants so the Temple should have no problem against one. "Well I''m assuming you received the news of the giant from the Temple when you sent people to them to ask for information, so why don''t you just do it again? This time with a more directed question."
Lake was sure Lucas could get the Temple to say they were confident about the uing battle because it would make them look bad to say they weren''t. "That''s a good idea but we don''t really have time for all that because the giant will most likely be here today." If the giant was arriving so soon, why did the Demon Worshipers even pull back in the first ce?
It would have made more sense to him if they just stayed here and waited for reinforcements but he was sure they had their reasons. Lake realized Lucas was waiting for him to say something, so he said. "In that case you should just go with my first suggestion because even if none of the higher ups believe what you tell them they will be shown, possibly as soon as tonight, that you were telling the truth."
Lake was sure the giant would waste no time doing what it was sent to do, which was killing the Holy mage''s that were protecting the city. He did wonder why only one was on its way when he knew for a fact that there were at least two and most likely a lot more than that. "So you really don''t see a better way?"
Lake understood this question meant all he had done was reaffirmed what Lucas had always nned to do. "Sometimes there isn''t a good choice." In situations like these the best you could do was make sure you didn''t make the very obvious bad choice which was inaction in this case.
"Sorry, I''m only good for ideas when there aren''t a million people holding me ountable." This was true in a way because the way he usually handled things no one even knew who he was, so there was never any repercussions unless someone found him. Thinking this made Lake start to wonder how they had found him at all.
Someone had actually told Lucas he was the person who had stolen from them which was true but no one should have been able to track him down because of Trespasser. This meant something he had been worried and careful about had actually happened. He had been tracked using an item he had taken.
Since the usation hade from the temple it made sense they had been able to track the dagger through some method he didn''t understand. This meant he would need to ditch it and this meant he needed to leave the guild for a while so he could take it out without Lucas knowing he had lied about being the person who had stolen it in the first ce.
If he was going to do this, he needed to do it now before the giant got here and the fight started. He and Lucas seemed done with their business so Lake guessed he could go ahead and ask to leave for a while. "Lucas, would you be alright with me going outside the guild?" Lake technically was a field agent, so he could leave whenever he wanted without asking, but he was pretty sure if Lucas heard he had left the guild right after their meeting where he had been asked if he was guilty of a crime it would make him suspicious.
Him asking Lucas''s opinion first would make it seem whatever he was doing was above board. "You can if you bring some guards with you. I wouldn''t call them strong, but if you get into trouble out there they''re really good at buying you time to run." Lake almostughed at what Lucas said because it made him remember Joy trying to do just that when they had been attacked by Nelg.
"Ok, how do I get some guards?" Lake knew this would probably make a lot of people think there was a problem since the guards would be watching him, but Lucas had literally said how to get around this problem. Just get into trouble and when the guardsid down their lives to let him run, he would be alone.
He would be able to get rid of the dagger on the way back to the guild easily and then his problem would be gone. It was too bad that he had never been able to use it though, he had been so excited when he had taken it not to mention all the work that had gone into actually getting it in the first ce but his anonymity was more important, and he couldn''t let the fact that someone was able to track him just slide.
"Just head to the third floor and ask for five guards, oh and don''t bring any that you care about." Lake understood Lucas was saying he shouldn''t bring Joy since there was a good chance they would run into trouble. But the fact that Lucas knew what he was doing was so dangerous and was letting him do it anyway without a single question made rm bells start going off in his head.
Lake could just look at it as Lucas keeping his word about letting him go out whenever he wanted but Lake knew he shouldn''t just ept something like this just because there was a simple answer like there was now. He should operate like this was the worst case scenario of Lucas using this as a test to see if he actually did have the dagger and was trying to dump it.
This meant he was going to have to keep the dagger because someone who couldn''t prove he had the dagger even though he did was a better opponent than Lucas who believed him but couldn''t be sure, especially since he lived in Lucas''s house.
Lake realized he was being stupid right after he said this to himself; he could just dump the satchel after cleaning out everything other than the dagger and moving it all to a new bag. He had been meaning to get a new bag soon anyway so he could probably make this seem like a normal outing to the cksmiths guild to do just that.
"Just making sure before I head there, is the cksmiths guild safe?" Lake was asking because he knew not all guilds had decided to stay neutral like they had and he didn''t want to end up kidnaped and ransomed back to the guild. Not when that had already sort of happened before when they had to pay the Assassins guild after he had identally defended himself.
"Why do you want to go there?" Lake could tell Lucas hadn''t expected him to go to another guild in a time like this but that was a good thing for him. You always wanted to keep someone who might be trying to test you on their toes. "I need to get a few upgrades to my equipment because it isn''t that unlikely I''ll be fighting at least in some capacity soon. I also want a new bag that''s more suited tobat, this one''s a little annoying sometimes because it takes too long to rummage through it."
"Well if you really need new stuff there isn''t really a way around that." Lake thought the way Lucas sounded as he said this was a little unsure, but that didn''t mean anything was actually going on or that he was being set up it just meant Lucas was unsure about the validity of his purpose to go into town.
"Ok well I''ll need some money. That''s how this is usually handled right? Anytime someone who lives in the spire needs to go outside of the guild to get something they need, you give them the money to do so, correct?" Lucas nodded, and went over to a small safe that was in his office. "How much do you need?"
The way Lucas said this made it sound like you could just abuse this system which you could kind of if you asked for things and let the guild decide the price of what they got for you that was how he had gotten this armor he was wearing and most of the weapons that were on him and in his room but it was different if you asked for money and when to get what you wanted yourself.
You actually had to get proof of how much you spent and bring it and whatever was left of the money back and that was only the case if Lucas approved your request like he had just done for him now. "I don''t n to spend too much so 10,000 will probably be enough." This might sound like a lot but for the guild it was nothing.
A few secondster Lucas brought him a medium sized bag of gold. "Thank you guild master I''ll be back as fast as possible." Lake headed straight towards the elevator so he could go to the third floor and get his guards. He needed to hurry so he wouldn''t end up getting caught up in the battle that was about to happen.
Chapter 130: Errands Pt.1
Chapter 130: Errands Pt.1
Stepping out onto the street, Lake said to the guard who was standing in front. "Do your thing, but try not to bother me while you do it." He did this because he figured they would be in charge of the other four for this mission, as they liked to call it.
He would usually be nicer, even if he was just talking to guards, but he had just been told they couldn''t spare a cart for him because all of them were running goods that had been sold. That left him walking to the cksmiths guild. He saw the guards seemed to understand what he wanted as they fell in line behind him.
He nodded and started down the street about half the speed he could move without using burst. This should be the right speed for the guards to be able to keep up with him if they had stats like Joy''s. Using his skill A Thief''s sense he could tell there were quite a few eyes on him and he wouldn''t be surprised if some of them were the people that could track him using the dagger.
This was the reason he was mad about having to walk. If he was in a cart they would probably do what they had done yesterday, and just watch but since he was out in the open they would be able to see how vulnerable he was. He guessed he should have been nicer to the guards, after all they would be the ones to die, not him.
Lake couldn''t really stop it from happening at this point, all he was saying was if he had been given a cart they wouldn''t be in danger of dying. Slowing down slightly after a few seconds because it seemed one of the guards was slower than he had hoped, Lake got to the, now empty, main road through town that all the guilds other than the Alchemist guild were built on.
It was weird to think about all the people who had been evacuated to the capital only for it too to be such a mess. This had made less sense as he had thought about it, but now that he knew there were actually a bunch of underground shelters built that the people who had decided to stay instead of running were now calling home he understood why it had turned out like that.
He wondered what it must be like in those bunkers he assumed the king built for the people to hide in. Like how much food was provided and how long they could stay down there? because he assumed with the use of magic the bunkers could probably grow their own food and had a simply of water.
That really just left them with security to worry about. The level of panic had been quite high the day before everyone had gone into hiding, so it was probably pretty rowdy down there. Not to mention he was sure the Demon Worshipers would break down the doors the moment the Temple failed to protect them so they could turn them into undead for the Demon Lord''s army.
This would make the level of unrest crazy and hard to deal with from a management perspective. "Guh." Lake snapped out of what he had been thinking about to turn around to see why one of his guards had made such an odd noise out of nowhere. Seeing one of them on the ground, Lake guessed it meant he was under attack by one assant, or whoever they were working with didn''t understand timing.
Pulling his knife Lake got into a fighting stance and tried to look around to see who was attacking them. He knew he hadn''t been targeted yet because his skill The Sight hadn''t kicked in yet so he was pretty calm and not about to run until he saw if he could win this fight. Not seeing anyone, Lake got close to the guard to inspect the wound.
This would tell him if it had been a stealthy melee attack or a ranged one from something like a bow or spell. "Guard me while I help them." Lake figured he might as well use this opportunity to save their life as well since he would have plenty of time to pour a potion into the wound as he looked at it.
It would probably make his guards actually like him as well because if he was them he wouldn''t like him after how he had talked at them earlier. It wouldn''t mean they wouldn''t still do their jobs of protecting him but being nice had unintended rewards down the line sometimes.
Getting close to the guard on the ground, Lake saw a wide gash in their neck that reminded him of what one of his attacks would leave, meaning it was probably a knife which meant he needed to get ready to fight a battle of speed. Getting ready to pour some potion on the guard''s neck, Lake heard another attack, or the noise the guard made as they received an attack.
It had happened behind him so he hadn''t seen anything so he asked one of the still living guards as he poured the potion. "Did you see them?" Not getting a response Lake looked up to see it hadn''t just been one guard this time but all four who were slowly falling, first onto their knees before t onto the ground.
He guessed this would mean all four of them were either dead or slowly bing that way. "It''s messed up to just kill them before we even get a chance to talk." This was honestly how he felt because there really hadn''t been a reason to make Lucas mad at him like this. He could already see what he was going to say when he got back with five less guards than he had had when he left.
With no response to his statement, he guessed this was going to be one of those quiet fights where there were no interesting points of view shared between the twobatants. It was too bad those fights had always been his favorite when he read books. He shouldn''t give up just yet though because maybe they would change their tune once he found them.
They were probably pissed and would be happy to tell him about it once they weren''t hiding anymore. "Okay, let''s get this started because we both know there are bigger things happening today than this." Lake of course was talking about the giant that could be here at any moment and if he was right about this person being sent by the Temple they would know about this as well.
Feeling The Sight kick in Lake knew his taunt had worked and did his best to get his eyes on the person who was attacking him, or the attack itself if they had switched to ranged weapon. Not seeing anything, Lake switched his guard to his neck and jumped upwards because it was a weird move and he felt they wouldn''t be expecting him to do it.
Once he was in the air he did something he wasn''t supposed to do ording to Joy, and started to cast Fly. It was dangerous to use Fly when you had no way to stop yourself from falling if the spell got disrupted, but he didn''t n to use it to Fly away, so there was little chance of him falling from great height.
Getting the spell up and running, Lake Instantly used it to dive back towards the ground as fast as he could. His n was to make it seem like he was about to run so whoever was attacking him would think he was the average thief who would always run from a fight, so when he instead came back down, he would run into the person who would be trying to stop him by diving in after him.
Feeling himself barrel into someone and a sharp pain in his chest Lake knew his n had seeded about as well as he could have hoped. He had been stabbed, but the person who was attacking him was now in his hands even if he couldn''t see them. Wrapping his hands around them, Lake felt another sharp pain this time in his back.
Not really having a choice and because he didn''t know how you were supposed to handle fighting someone who you couldn''t see, Lake activated Burst and used one of his hands to find the person''s arm. Once he had the one he was sure had the knife he just did an exaggerated pulling motion with all his strength.
He figured if he ripped their arm off they wouldn''t really be able to stab him anymore but however he was fighting was too tough and the only result he got was a gross popping noise he guessed hade from their shoulder. Lake heard a muffled scream and not being the kind of person who would give up he pulled on their arm again till he felt the feeling he was after something being torn loose.
Looking at what was in his hand because it didn''t feel heavy enough to be an arm, Lake saw a sleeve that he assumed would be from their Temple robe since it was white. He found it funny that someone who specialized in stealth would wear white but he had bigger problems. The person was free again and from the amount of blood around that had clearlye from him he needed to heal himself, but he was sure as soon as he tried to he would receive a knife in the neck.
This meant he might actually need to run before he died in some dumb fight over something he didn''t even want. He just hoped him almost ripping their arm off gave them the same idea or at least made it easier for him to do so. Activating Burst again Lake started to run, it wasn''t a good look, but there was nothing wrong with saving your life.
Chapter 131: Errands Pt.2
Chapter 131: Errands Pt.2
After a few steps Lake could clearly hear someone following behind him and it seemed they might have a way to actually move faster than him even if it was a little loud. This meant he needed to rush the heal. Getting his potion out, Lake just poured some into his mouth, and got ready to intercept whatever attack had to be heading towards his back at the moment.
Spinning Lake just swung his knife out towards where he heard the footsteps, which was literally right behind him. He hadn''t expected this attack to actuallynd and it didn''t, but it had been more of a defensive thing just to keep them from being able to stab him again. "Listen, I understand why I''m being attacked at the moment, but I didn''t do what you think I did. I''ve been set up to make the Temple attack the Alchemist guild."
This was clearly a lie but depending on who it was actually attacking him it might make them pause. Not being stabbed, Lake continued. "I''m Lucas''s right hand man, why would I take a dagger I can''t even use then keep it on me?"
Lake didn''t know this line would have probably worked if they were actually able to track the dagger.
Sadly Tiff was tracking the Thieves guild badge and had actually been wondering why no one at the Temple had been able to track the dagger at all. It didn''t make any sense because the ce they kept the dagger normally was specially designed to hide the aura of the Holy Weapons, something that shouldn''t be possible for the person who had stolen it.
This was one of the reasons she had suspected the Temple was lying about the theft in the first ce, but this thief had just kind of said they had the Dagger on them and thought that was how she was tracking them. This meant they had something she cared more about than the Dagger itself, a way to hide it.
This had always been one of the biggest problems with her n to go on the run, the fact that she would be tracked constantly by both the Temple and the Demon Lord''s forces. It was a good thing this person was a thief because it meant she could probably hire them if she had the money the other thieves had said they would give her if she killed this thief.
It would be easy to lie to them, she just needed to offer to work with this thief to screw over the other ones; it was something every thief understood. Undoing her invisibility Tiff said. "Would you like to work for me for a while?"
Lake saw a woman appear right next to him which instantly confirmed what he had been thinking about the identity of who was attacking him. Not only just the fact that they were with the temple either this was the woman he had seen looking up at him the other day while he had been inspecting the city.
Not missing this chance Lake instantly marked her in case this was just a trick, and the fight wasn''t actually over. "What do you mean work for you?" Lake was fine working for the Temple as long as he didn''t end up in the middle of a war zone, the way he saw it this might just be easy money.
It would also probably help with the fact he was now definitely caught for stealing the Dagger unless he somehow killed everyone who was watching them at the moment. Any of them could be this woman''s backup. He was sure if he tried to silence them they would all scatter making it impossible for him to get them all, or know if he had killed the right ones.
"Let''s go somewhere less open to talk, you can pick the ce." Lake appreciated that she had passed him the initiative because it showed they were probably about to actually have a serious discussion about working together; it could still be a trap though so he said. "Don''t turn invisible again or I''ll have to get serious."
He was of course talking about his poison that he had refrained from using up until this point because he didn''t want to give it away before he was sure he would hit them but the only time that had been possible both his hands had been full making it impossible to uncork it. It gave him an idea though, something he could get the poison out of hands free with just the power of Poison Control.
If he made a poisonous cork it would probably only take him a few minutes to actually make this idea a reality. It was so obvious the fact he hadn''t thought of it till now could only be attributed to hisck of battle experience. It was so obvious that he might need to be able to use his trump card when he couldn''t reach it.
"Whenever you''re ready." Lake took this to mean they were agreeing not to try anything, and that they thought he was taking too long to start their journey to somewhere private. "Alright let''s head this way, I want to see if any of my guards are still alive before we get down to business."
There was no point in letting them bleed to death if they managed to survive till now. Thankfully because of how fast both of them were, their fight hadn''t been very long even though a lot had happened, and Lake found all of them were still alive even if it was just barely.
The first guard who he had already healed was perfectly fine and Lake was afraid they would wake up at any moment, so he motioned for her to follow him away from them. If they woke up they would see him talking to the person who they would correctly assume had almost just killed them.
He was sure that news would make it back to Lucas and he would unfortunately have to lie to make it seem like he was just protecting himself by talking to someone who could kill him if he didn''t cooperate. Lucas knew he could be persuasive, so he was sure Lucas would ept that he had talked his way out of a life or death situation, but why let him know at all if he didn''t have to.
Finding a good ce after running until the amount of people who could see them dropped to a minimum. Lake stopped and walked into a small business that had a broken open door. This was probably the best they could do because being alone was unlikely with this many people out gathering information while they could.
With them being inside however, if they wanted to hear what they were saying they were going to have to get much closer, so he was sure they would understand the risk associated with that and decide to move on. "Alright what kind of deal were you proposing?" This was going to be good, he just knew it.
"Well first I''ll need the dagger back." This was a problem, Lake knew there were still people outside who would be able to tell something was up the moment he pulled the dagger out so he said. "Not now, let''s wait till we''re alone for real." Lake could tell by the look on the woman''s face she was fine with that and it made him realize he still had his face covered and he could use this opportunity to change it then he would introduce himself as someone who wasn''t Lake.
Switching to Jon Lake said. "My name''s Jon by the way." And took off his helmet. Lake didn''t actually care about who he was talking to but he was sure they would and him telling them would make him seem more trustworthy while he was actuallyying the groundwork to lie his way through this problem if it ever became one.
The woman pulled her hood down so he could get a better look at her face even though he had already been able to see it and said. "I''m Tiffany." Lake nodded and said. "Ok I''ve agreed to hand over the dagger, so is that all, or do you actually need more from me?"
This was going to be the hard part for Tiff because she needed to convince Jon to work for her even though she didn''t technically have the money to pay him yet, but there was one thing she knew she could tell him to make him mad enough to work with her, but it would give away the fact that she couldn''t track the dagger.
There were a few problems with him knowing this, the main one being he might decide to keep the dagger and ditch the badge she was using to track him because she wouldn''t be able to find him any more. This meant she needed to lie while making it sound believable and convincing enough that there was grounds for their cooperation.
Picking her words carefully Tiff said. "I was told by the Temple to find the Dagger, so I started where anyone who was looking for something that was stolen would, the thieves guild. I didn''t need their help but I figured you''d be there and while I was looking around to see if they knew anything about you I got an interesting offer. 100,000 to kill you, and a better, less finicky way to track you."
Tiff thought this sounded believable but what she didn''t know was Lake could tell when people were lying and he wasn''t happy. He did n to keep this fact to himself though and y along because he could tell where this was going, he was going to get part of this 100,000, and he nned to make sure he got all of it but he needed to actually pay attention to what she said so he knew which parts weren''t true.
"I don''t believe they have any intention to actually pay me though but I have some information that I can use to ckmail them into giving me it, and I''m sure they will be more than happy to y along if they think you''re actually dead. Once I have the money I''ll hire you to hide us from the Demon Lord."
Lake stopped her here because he didn''t know what made her think he could do something like that. He wasn''t going to say he couldn''t because she would probably lose interest in working with him but he was pretty sure he could get more information without directly asking what she wanted. "You said us, how many, and who are they?"
This made it sound like what she wanted from him had limits so he hoped she would exin her n he had been added to in her mind already. "I don''t know but there wont be more than four others and there''s a good chance it could be only me." This didn''t really give him anything he didn''t already know so he asked. "And how long do you want my services?"
"How expensive is your time?" Lake didn''t have a number set because he couldn''t even do what she wanted from him so he said. "Lucas pays me a thousand a day and that''s when what he has me doing is safe." Lake stopped here because he knew he had made his point. If she didn''t say something he liked he was done here.
"As Long as your skill or whatever you use to hide stuff is good enough, what I want from you, will be safe." This was what he wanted all along or at least enough that he could put it together. The dagger that he was hiding on his person, she couldn''t tell he had it and she wanted to do what he did to it on her and he guessed her family that she would be bringing with her. There was a problem though he didn''t think he could store people using Booster Bag
"Who are you running from, and what are you trying to hide from them, that they will be using to find you?" Lake thought this sounded like something someone who could actually do this would ask, but truthfully he just wanted to know to see if it was actually safe or not to work with her.
"We''ll be hiding from the Demon Worshipers the Demon Lord sends after Holy Magic users like us and for what you''ll be hiding the Aura anything that interacts with Holy Mana gives off like you''re doing with the dagger right now." Lake nodded and said. "We''ve probably already spent more time than we should have talking, but I have one more question. Why are you running?"
It didn''t make sense to him that she would want to leave the Temple when everyone knew the Temple was the only ce that could keep people like her safe. "We''re going to lose, at least the city. I personally think we''ll win the war, but me and my friends won''t be alive to see it."
Lake had been right to ask the way she looked right now told him everything he needed to know about her, and at this point he was pretty sure it would be easy to take the money after they had it because he was dealing with someone who didn''t have any other options than to trust him when he said he would help her.
It was too bad she had offered him money before asking for help because he needed the money bad enough that he was willing to go through this borate n to get it. If she had just said she needed help he would have just said no and she wouldn''t be about to get screwed over by him.
She would have never done that though because she thought he was just a normal thief who always wanted money, so that was how she opened the dialogue between them. It was a lesson in not showing your cards too early even if you think it''s your only option. Looking at her, Lake said. "How are you going to convince them I''m dead?"
Chapter 132: Forced Pt.1
Chapter 132: Forced Pt.1
The n had actually been pretty easy for them to hash out. Tiffany had said with his badge and what she nned to tell them when they tried to renege she was sure she would walk out with the money. Lake decided to just finish what he had actuallye out to do which was buy new equipment while he waited for her.
They had made ns to meetter if it was possible and if it wasn''t they would do so at their first opportunity. That would be when he would hand over the Dagger and she would pay him. Then the next time they saw one another would be when he was going to hide them. Thatst part would never happen, but she didn''t know that.
It was a good n and he made off like a bandit while doing nothing; which he was pretty sure was the definition of made off like a bandit. Lake patted himself on the back where he had been stabbed not that long ago and thought about the fact he was technically going to get revenge by doing the same to her.
He hadn''t thought about that till now, but if he ever had the chance to tell her why he had betrayed her, he would say that was why he had done it. He could picture it, her finally tracking him down after all her friends had died because he hadn''t shown up. Her screaming at him as she tried to kill him. Then finally he would drive his knife through her heart and as shey dying she would ask him why, and he would say, because you did it first.
It would most likely never happen because what were the chances she would survive that long without his help, she would be dead long before he had to kill her and even if she did survive he would have made the million by the time anyone could track him down. The only reason anyone was able to this time was because he had made it easy by rushing things when he had plenty of time.
He had been in a rush to leave the vault because he thought whoever it belonged to could be on their way back and once he had it in his bag he hadn''t wanted to take it out because of its strong aura forcing him to have it on him at all times. That wasn''t what he meant by him rushing though, he should have taken more time to get to know the ce before he broke in.
Seeing he was at the cksmiths guild Lake saw there were actually quite a few people here. He guessed they were open for business today as well and people weren''t letting that go to waste. Stepping inside he couldn''t help but think about how the effort to get his money was going.
...
Tiff knocked and a few secondster the same greasy servant opened the door. Tiff didn''t even need to say anything before she was let in and led down the stairs. Once they were in the basement she was led down another set of stairs that led to the shelter under this house just likest time.
She didn''t feel the same going down the stairs this time though. Last time she had been nervous because she didn''t know what to expect. This time she knew exactly what was going to happen even if she didn''t know what the results would be. She wasn''t nervous, she was scared.
At least she knew the thieves would feel the same about the possible fight and it might make them just give her the money with no threats ever even needing to be exchanged. Sadly it was more likely they had set some form of trap and she was currently walking right into it. They had plenty of time to do so so she didn''t see this going down any other way.
Reaching the same metal door that was the entrance into the room she had spoken to the thieves inst time she saw it was closed. She didn''t know why it was closed but the fact it wasn''tst time and now it was, made her think she was right about them trying to kill her once she entered.
The servant stepped forward and opened the door for her so taking a deep breath she stepped in to see there was now one less thief in this room then there wasst time. Tiff wasn''t dumb so she didn''t take this as a fact and instead assumed the other thief was probably here as well just hiding.
If that was the case they had cheaped out on the trap either because they were cheap or out of necessity, there was a war going on after all. It would have been really hard to get an Enchanter out here toy some traps so they probably just settled for an ambush. "I''m here for the money."
Tiff thought this was the best way to start because if she said she had killed the target that was all the information they would need to get rid of her. As long as she didn''t confirm it she could drag on the conversion to a point where she would be able to say everything she wanted to before they tried to kill her.
"Did you take care of our problem?" Tiff didn''t answer and said. "Let me see the money you promised." The atmosphere in the room tanked as soon as she said this because everyone knew they never had intended to actually pay her. She was afraid that they wouldn''t have the money though.
There would definitely be some around here somewhere, there was no way people as greedy as them would ever not keep a good portion of their money around so it was ready to go whenever it was necessary for them to leave. "Let us see the tracker." Tiff was happy they had just reaffirmed how important the tracker was because it was the whole reason she was confident enough toe here at all.
They had asked her to keep the news that there was such a thing to herself because it made their guild look bad and it would make thieves in the guild think they couldn''t trust their badges. She hadn''t kept this secret she had told Jon the guild was able to track people she just hadn''t said how.
Her n was to tell them if they didn''t give her the money and let her leave her friend would spread the news to every person he could so she was pretty sure they would rather spend the 100,000 she was asking for. She could probably ask for more to be honest, but she didn''t want to push her luck.
"How about you show me the money then we''ll trade." Tiff couldn''t believe she was actually doing something like this, she was doing it out of necessity, but it didn''t change the fact she hadn''t stopped to think how bad of an idea it was, and the feeling of being unprepared for an hostile negotiation was making her start to panic.
It had already started though so it was toote for her to just take the dagger from Jon and return it to the Temple. After a bit of whispering between the two thieves that were in the room one of them finally said. "Give us the tracker or we''ll just take it."
Tiff nodded, not to what the thief had just asked of her, but to the fact that she had been right that the offer of money had always just been something to lure her back here after she was done with what they had asked her to do. The fact that they had made the vague threat that they would take the tracker instead of just killing her and taking it made her think their n was to stab her in the back as she left, so it kind of confirmed she was going to be dealing with them instead of an actual magic formation designed to kill/trap you.
Deciding to make it obvious that she guessed their n Tiff decided it was time to drop all pretenses and said. "Is your friend getting my money, or are they just standing right behind me?" Tiff didn''t really understand how to sound threatening so she felt her attempt was a little t but it got the point across.
Not wanting them to attack before she got the rest out she continued. "We both expected this so we both prepared for it; give me the money and let me leave or my friends will spread the news about the tracker to every thief still in the city." She hadn''t actually told any of her real friends because she didn''t want them to know what she was doing, so the only person who kind of knew about it was Jon and she had never told him this was the n, so she was lying, but they wouldn''t know that.
After a few seconds of silence which Tiff took as the thieves realized she had them in a position where they had to pay her, she finally heard something. One of the thieves wasughing a disgustingugh that made her picture what they must look like under their armor. Feeling uneasy that they wereughing instead of paying her and sending her on her way she asked for the money again.
"Just give me the money so I can leave." As soon as she said this theughing stopped, and with no whispering between the two like usually happened before they said anything she heard. "That won''t be happening. We don''t care if the rumors spread because they already have, and guess what, no one believes them. We just said what we said to make you think you had leverage when you didn''t, so you would bring yourself and my tracker back when you came to get the money."
It took Tiff a second to even understand what had just been said to her. After she understood they had very much fooled her to get her toe back with the tracker she only had one question. What was the point in them wanting her dead? If they didn''t care about the rumor they weren''t killing her to cover its existence out of fear she would tell people after she left.
There was something else going on, and it was tooplicated for her to even try to figure out what they were up to. She also didn''t have time to worry about it because the one thing she thought would keep her safe ended up being bait. Activating her skill Tiff headed for the door, she knew it wasn''t really going to hide where she was in such a narrow tunnel but it was better than nothing.
After taking about twenty stairs Tiff felt something hit the back of her head. It didn''t make her lose consciousness but it did make her feel dizzy and fall to the ground. Trying to get up she found both her arms and legs had lost their strength leaving her unable to fight off the person who started to lift her off the ground.
"She''s still conscious, finish the job and get her in a cell. On.." This was all she heard before another blownded on her head.
Chapter 133: Forced Pt.2
Chapter 133: Forced Pt.2
Stepping out of the shop, Lake inspected his new chest piece and backpack set. It was pretty obvious why he had only bought a new chest piece and left the rest of his armor the same, so far every attack that had broken his skin had been aimed at his body. He had also been punched in the face but that hadn''t gotten through his armor just smashed his nose.
Plus he had seen this chest piece that had a backpack designed into it meaning he would be getting a new bag like he wanted while getting better defense for his body. It was also ck something he had been wishing his armor was for a while now. It was the perfect item for him and it had been right around the amount he had, so he wouldn''t have to give much back to Lucas once he returned to the guild.
It was also the best deal as far as he was concerned because while he had been looking around it seemed if he was going to just buy a new bag spending 10,000 was overkill and getting a new bag and a chest piece separately would have been more expensive meaning he would''ve wasted some money if he wanted to get stuff that was the same quality as thisbo piece was.
What he was saying was he was happy with his purchase and while he couldn''t see the level of the piece himself the person who had sold it to him said it was level 24, 9 whole levels above hisst chest piece, and the satchel had turned out to be made from leather that came from a level 3 monster, so not exactly what he would call sturdy.
As he headed towards the ce they said they would meet if they had time, Lake went ahead and checked where the mark he had ced on her said she was. After looking around he finally saw it. It seemed she was underground, Lake didn''t know what that meant though because he was sure most ces one could go at the moment were underground.
Like he couldn''t use the fact she was underground as a sign she was meeting the thieves because she might be meeting someone else first or after she had already met the thieves. She did work for the Temple and he was sure they had plenty of underground bases. The thing was he wasn''t worried about her betraying him.
When she had told him why she was trying to run she had been telling the truth so unless she had suddenly changed her mind about wanting to live she would be doing exactly what she said she would. Seeing as she wasn''t anywhere near the ce they were going to meet up at, Lake decided it didn''t make sense for him to waste his time waiting there.
He couldn''t really think of anything better than going to check out where she was so that''s what he did. The way he saw it, if this was actually where the thieves with all the money were hiding he would want to know where that was because it kind of sounded like a ce where he might be able to find a million gold.
Now wasn''t a good time for him to break in but maybe in the future he coulde back. Actually he guessed he didn''t know if now was a good time or not, it would depend on what he saw when he got there.
Walking right above the mark Lake looked around to try and guess which building the entrance to whatever underground structure she was in would probably be in. He knew this part of town pretty well considering he had spent a good portion of his time as a thief here because this was where the thieves guild office he had been to was located.
It was only a few streets over from where he was now, and it made him sure Tiffany was meeting with thieves. Not being able to guess which of the buildings it was, Lake decided he could just wait to find out. Once Tiffany came out he could mark the right one and be on his way.
Finding a good ce he could watch the whole street from without being too noticeable, Lake knocked some trash off of an old barrel and sat down. He saw this as an opportunity to switch the contents of his satchel over to his new backpack. He couldn''t get the dagger out but everything else would be easy to do, and it would make it so he could dump the satchel at any time if the need arose.
Getting everything organized in his new bag, Lake tested out his ability to reach back and grab the right thing to see if it was faster than his old method of having to rummage through his satchel to find it was indeed faster even if he did think there could still be some improvements to his speed.
This wasn''t the bag''s fault though he had bought a backpack on purpose with the intention of getting a toolbelt custom designed in the future. A backpack was more for being able to carry a lot at once, not for use during a battle; that was what the belt would be for and the reason he hadn''t bought one now was when he had had the idea he also knew exactly where he could get one.
He had seen a lot of the exact type of belt he wanted inside the Alchemist guild, guards, servants, and even the actual Alchemists were wearing them. This made him think it would be a waste of money to buy one here when he could probably bet an Alchemist belt at the guild.
This would allow him ess to his potions, the things he needed the fastest and most often in an instant. This also made Lake remember he needed to spend some more time making poison. When he had been making his trump card he had used spider venom as the Catalyst without really thinking about the fact it would make his poison corrosive to meat.
This was a good thing if he nned to use it on his enemies but his original n had been to make something that could heal him while killing others and he was kind of scared to test if his skill would reverse the corrosive effect if it was to get on his skin. He would still gain more health than he lost if it didn''t reverse the effect, but he was pretty sure he would still lose his ability to fight from the pain of his skin being dissolved.
He needed something he could cover both himself and his enemies in during times where he didn''t think he could win through normal means. He suddenly thought of something he hadn''t thought of since he had met Master Donna for the first time, cursed poisons thatsted forever.
He still wasn''t skilled enough to actually attempt this but it was something he had been working towards when he first arrived at the guild. He had stopped having it as a top priority when he had found out how much time he would have tomit to Alchemy to be able to ever actually make one and at that time he wasn''t really that interested in learning Alchemy.
His original n had been to escape as soon as possible so the whole time Lucas had been telling him about the permanent poisons he had been thinking it would never end up happening because he would have already moved on. Now it kind of felt like he might be at the guild for the rest of his life so he was pretty sure he would end up making a permanent poison eventually.
He remembered he needed something from a vault to do it though and as far as he knew the only person who could open the vault was master Donna and he remembered seeing her getting into a cart to leave on the day the war started so Lake would need to talk to Lucas to see if she was even still avable to him when he would need her.
Seeing someonend in the street he was watching, Lake started to focus on what he was actually doing at the moment. When the person stopped in front of a building and knocked, Lake didn''t waste any time and marked them. If they were going to where Tiffany was he would be able to tell if the two marks got close to one another, and he would know which building held the entrance underground.
When he saw the door open, Lake knew he had made the right choice in marking them right away because the person who had knocked was gone in an instant. Watching the mark head down it wasn''t too long before the new mark was right next to the one he had ced on Tiffany.
Happy his n worked, Lake marked the building and was about to leave when he saw the two marks start to head upwards at a fast pace. Since they were on their way out Lake decided he might as well stick around to see where they went next. He thought maybe he could follow them to another secret base or on the off chance these two nned to ambush him he would actually be the one in the position to catch them off guard.
Chapter 134: Forced Pt.3
Chapter 134: Forced Pt.3
The moment the door opened Lake got a brief moment to see what was really happening before the person carrying Tiffany disappeared. Lake could still kind of see them because of the marks but he could tell they were moving at what was probably the natural max of 100 Agility. This meant this person was strong but not strong enough to get their hands on an Elixir.
He guessed they could possibly be holding back but now wasn''t really the time someone would hold back just cause. Even the people who didn''t know about the giant were working under the assumption the Demon Worshipers could be back at any moment so everyone was in a hurry to get things done.
This made him think he was looking at their max speed and that he could chase them down if he wanted to. The thing was he didn''t see a good reason he should, it was clear Tiffany was in over her head and she hadn''t seeded in getting the money which was really all he cared about.
With the added bonus that the fact no one was stopping them from taking her made him think she had been working alone so with her gone there was a good chance no one else knew where he was yet meaning if he hid the dagger somewhere he could keep it without anyone being able to find him.
They might be able to find the Dagger using the same method Tiffany had used to find him, but so what, he didn''t think anyone would be able to get it out of the secret space Booster Bag made so they would think it was a decoy if they ever found it. There was a problem though and it was what always forced him to do things when he didn''t see the reason, the Insider.
It was clearly telling him he should go after Tiffany for whatever reason so not waiting till it literally twisted his arm Lake gave chase. After spending some time with the Insider Lake had grown to think it had more experience than him because he didn''t think it could actually tell the future and it seemed to be able to get pretty close.
He saw that as the wisdom that came with being however old it was so he was sure this chase would end with him gaining something/stopping something bad from happening in the near future. For all he knew the only reason it wanted him to do this was Tiffany could use Holy Magic which meant she was rted to the side the Insider wanted him to back because he hadn''t been shown a vision this time.
As he was trying to make up the distance between the two of them Lake could tell there were way less people watching him now than earlier. He guessed he was past the time where most people had decided it would be safe to be outside and when he thought about it he agreed if he hadn''t been attacked by Tiffany earlier he would probably already be back at the guild.
Feeling like it would be a good idea, Lake turned on Mute just in case the person could hear what he was about to do. Once it was on, Lake started small and tested to see if Mute canceled the sound his magic made by speeding up a small amount of Wind mana in his hand.
Feeling the rumbling the mana made as it went past its normal limit but not hearing the normal noise it made, Lake decided it was ok and cast Fly. Like Joy said, Lake didn''t use it to soar after the two of them, but instead used it in small bursts in a hope to add some much needed speed to this stalemate.
The two of them were going almost the same speed so this was the only thing he could think of that might make him slightly faster than he was while using Burst. It didn''t really seem to be helping though at least not enough to notice. He thought the problem was he had stopped speed training after he had learned Fly because he hadn''t thought he needed it to be any faster than it already was but now he saw he could run faster than he could Fly.
It seemed he needed to get even better at controlling the speed principle if he wanted it to be useful in the way he was trying to use it now. With there no way for him to know how much time he had left before this person got to where they were going, Lake needed to make up his mind fast on if he should just continue the case the way it was now or risk an attack.
If he let them get to where they were going there was a risk he wouldn''t be able to get inside, or no, he could definitely get inside eventually, but there was a chase he would be tote so he guessed an attack was actually the safer option in this situation and he had confidence he wouldn''t hit Tiffany because he saw this as the perfect situation to use Poison Control.
He could see his target clearly and since he had fine control over the poison he would easily be able to make sure he only hit the person he was aiming for. Opening the bottle Lake got a small amount of poison out before closing it again. He wanted to check if he could move the poison forward fast enough for it to be an attack that would actually be able to keep up with the person he was chasing.
Poison Control was a weird skill because even right now when he was running at his top speed the small amount of poison was hovering right in front of him like he wasn''t even moving. It was keeping up with him without him really having to do anything to make it happen other than wanting it to.
With it working like this there should be no problem with him being able to attack with it even if it was going to move much faster than he could. Aiming for the person''s hand, which was the only exposed skin he could see, Lake shot the poison forward at a speed that would make up the distance between them in an instant, to see it miss.
It was fine, he knew he was taking a risk when he had decided to attack and to be honest he hadn''t really nned for it to work in the first ce. He was sure loads of people had skills that warned them when they were under attack, kind of like how he used The Sight to do so. It activated when he was inbat so the change was very noticeable and told him he needed to dodge.
Kind of like it had just done. Seeing a blur that was unnoticeable to him before The Sight kicked in, Lake dodged the unarmed attack that was aimed at his neck. After the attack the person was close to him so Lake tried to use the Poison he was still controlling to go for the persons back while heunched a knife thrust towards their face.
Lake didn''t care which of the two attacks actually hit because either would be lethal but sadly they were both dodged at the same time as the person tossed Tiffany at him and twisted in an odd way before slipping between the two attacks. Lake still had control of the poison though so he shifted its direction slightly before Grabbing Tiffany and getting her out of the way.
Lake knew the person had been nning to use Tiffany to block his view long enough tounch a counter attack but, Lake was still able to see them, or at least where they were, becasse of the mark on them. Knowing where the attack would being from and what the attack was going to be were two different things though so instead of trying to block, Lake retreated back while getting Tiffany into a better position on his shoulder.
The fact that he had Tiffany might make it seem like he had won but Lake saw it for what it was, a burden. Whoever he was fighting had a lot of experience in fighting over prisoners because now Lake would be the one who couldn''t use one of his arms because he was trying to keep his friend safe and one this disadvantage cost him this fight his opponent would take Tiffany and leave.
Lake wasn''t friends with Tiffany though, so he just dropped her on the ground and got ready to defend. She would probably find this rude but the way he saw it she was unconscious, so he would have to tell her for her to ever know, and he wasn''t going to do that.
Chapter 135: Fair Fight
Chapter 135: Fair Fight
Watching the mark he had ced on the person he was fighting zoom around Lake guessed whoever he was fighting was used to moving like this until people lost sight of him and that would be when he would attack but that wasn''t going to work on him and it seemed the person figured it out pretty quickly.
Seeing they had stopped and were looking directly at him, Lake said. "How important is this to you?" Lake thought this would make the other person actually think about the battle that was about to happen and hopefully realize they didn''t have time for it. Sadly the other person didn''t say anything back so Lake got his poison sk out again.
He just uncorked it though and waited for them to make a move because after he used this move he was sure not only would they wish they would have left when he had implied they should but they would be on the ground with only a few seconds left to live.
His confidence using Poison Control was really high because of all the time he had spent using it when he was helping Na brew so even though this would be the first time he had done this he knew he would be able to. As soon as Lake saw the person make a move he instantly shot the poison out of the battle into a thin wall in front of him.
This would block both of their abilities to see each other if Lake didn''t have a way to always know where they were and just like he expected the other person tried to move around to his side while they couldn''t see each other. He had known this would happen because this was what he would do as a fighter who focused on speed.
The small windows of time where your opponent lost sight of you were the most valuable but Lake actually knew exactly where they were and where they were going so he just shot out a small amount of poison towards their target, his side, in the hopes it wouldnd on their hand/any exposed skin but even if it didn''t the moment any stuck to them Lake won.
It would be extremely easy for him to seep it through their clothing and any small gaps in their armor and it was to sticky for them to get it all off of them fast enough for it not to happen. After his attack Lake saw the mark start to move backwards, and because he could feel the poison he was controlling like it was something he was holding in his hand, Lake could tell they were retreating because some had gotten on them.
Smiling, Lake got the poison that was blocking his view back into the bottle and put his focus on the stuff that was on them and it became much easier to do so when he saw they were trying to strip off the armor the poison was on. He had expected this, but seeing how close their hands were to the poison made him shake his head as he started to spread the poison out from its original position, but it was a lot harder to move than he had expected.
It was still enough to make them realize they had lost if they didn''t stop this from happening so instead of trying to undo their armor straps Lake saw them just tear through them and pry the piece of ting off of their armor. It seemed he had been too modest in the amount of poison he had shot towards them, and it had made it hard for him to move around once it was actually stuck to something.
This stuff was extremely sticky and it seemed once it made contact with something he would have to fight against its stickiness if he wanted to move it across a surface. It was fine he was learning as he went so mistakes like these were bound to happen, he would just make bigger and more frequent attacks from now on.
This attack wasn''t for nothing either because now there was a huge hole in their armor that would increase his chance of making contact with their skin. It also gave him a bigger target than their hands to aim for so getting the poison back out Lake split it into three. He could probably control more than this but not well and he was pretty sure it would affect the rest of his actions if he put too much focus into attacking.
Sending the first of the globs at them Lake waited for them to dodge before sending the second and reversing the first to attack from both sides and when they were able to dodge both of those he sent the third in. Once all three were in a constant in and out pattern Lake Started to get fancy with the shapes of the globs periodically stretching them towards the person as they dodged.
Seeing they were being overwhelmed, Lake put out long arms of poison out of the tree globs in every direction to make a cage at least in the way it looked and mmed it in on them. It worked and he got a sizable amount onto the armor on their arm that had been a little slow as they dodged through one of the many but small gaps in his attack.
It was enough though because the stuff that was on their arm wasn''t separate from the giant glob that had formed from who he had mmed everything in on them. It was still attached by a thin string that was forming as they got further from the attack. This was being caused by the texture of his poison that was almost like a thick glue.
He saw it as someone pulling back a rubber band and he used this visual to m all the poison towards them like a slingshot. It hit them like a cannonball andunched them towards the closest wall where it stuck them to it like a giant booger he had just flicked at them. That wasn''t the worst part for them though he could see they were covered and that included their skin.
The melting had already started and he could see where it was touching them the skin had already be something that looked more like vomit than flesh. It was gross but surprisingly he didn''t hear any screaminging from them and it wasn''t because they were dead he hadn''t felt any Exp yet so they were dealing with the pain of what he guessed would be considered being digested by the spider venom in his poison.
Right when he expected them to be finished off by the poison because it had already been a few seconds which would be long enough for the poison to start damaging them, Lake went to switch his job to something he hadn''t ever leveled up before to get some new skills when he saw a blue sh.
Looking up Lake saw his poison was gone and there was now a blue sphere of water swirling around the person as they charged at him. He hadn''t expected this attack which was probably exactly why the person had waited so long to get rid of his poison if they could so he didn''t really have time to make a solid defense.
He wasn''t even holding his knife at the moment so He just used his bare hands to defend himself. The person he was fighting seemed to like unarmed attacks as well so this new phase of the fight was hand to hand. It was only a few exchanges when Lake realized he was outmatched by them when it came to skill.
Not being able to keep up with their hand movements, Lake took a hit to his chest. Not a punch either they were using their hand like it was a knife and it might as well be one because he could tell it went through his armor and into what he guessed would be his lung. He thought this because he felt an uncontroble urge to cough and when he did he saw blood spew out of the holes in his helmet.
Not having the luxury of even trying to get his potion out to heal Lake activated two skills Fast Hands and after he knew his opponent was caught off guard he used Crunch and cut the arm that the hand in his chest belonged to. This was a huge blow to someone like them that used an unarmed fighting style so even though one of his internal organs had just been pierced he was happy with the exchange.
Not retreating back like his opponent clearly wanted, Lake pushed forward while using a skill he hadn''t used yet, Summon Hands. Feeling Mana start to leave his body in a really controlled manner he had nothing to do with, Lake found he had two new hands and used them to reach back into his bag to grab his potion while he did the samebo attack he had just used to cut off their arm but towards their neck.
Once he had his potion to his mouth Lake lifted his helmet with the other arm that wasn''t holding the potion so he could feed it to himself. "Jogahh." They had been moving back from him, but at the current speed his hands were moving his sh had still made a pretty good gash into their neck even if it didn''t decapitate them and while he knew this was his chance to finish the fight Lake stopped.
The person had clearly just said his name even if it had been interrupted by his attack, when they saw his face as he lifted his helmet. Of course his current face was Jon''s, an assassin he had killed in the past, but the fact that they knew that name at all made him think finishing them off wasn''t worth the trouble. There was a good chance this person was in the Assassins guild and he would have to pay a bounty if he killed them.
So instead of finishing them off Lake did the opposite and spilled some potion on them. He didn''t watch them to see if they got better, but instead went towards Tiffany on the ground and picked her up. As soon as he had her he left so he could use the small amount of time it would take for the person he had almost just killed to heal to get away.
He hoped the confusion it would cause them to see Jon alive after being told he was dead would make them just give up and there would be no chase because he needed to get Tiffany to somewhere she would consider safe even though he didn''t know her very well, and get back to the guild.
It was hard to describe but he felt like he was out of time and needed to get inside the guild as soon as possible. As he ran Lake looked down at Tiffany, he wondered if the Insider was going to say anything to him now that he had her because it was the one who had wanted him to save her in the first ce.
Chapter 136: Thanks
Chapter 136: Thanks
Getting Tiffany into a building and setting her down on the ground Lake looked at his potion then around to make sure no one was after them. He couldn''t feel any eyes on him or see the mark that he had ced on the person he had been fightinging towards him so he refocused on Tiffany and got her head up.
Feeding her thest of his potion to see if it would wake her up, Lake cursed the stupid Assassins guild for making such an effective counter to people killing their assassins. He had used his precious potion to heal an enemy and now he had to use thest of it on someone they were trying to kidnap.
After he thought of kidnapping Lake remembered someone he had met in his short amount of time inside the Temple. He couldn''t remember her name but she had been Mimi''s friend and she had said the Assassins guild had been trying to kidnap her because she had a skill that erased her presence.
It was a simr skill to the one Tiffany had that made her invisible so maybe this was more evidence he had just been fighting an assassin since he had literally just stopped them from kidnaping her and it was something they were known for. It made him think he had made the right choice in not killing them at least.
That was if they weren''t faking their distress like they had been when he thought he had killed them the first time. Now that he thought about it, that was probably true, so him pouring his potion on them had been aplete waste because that weird blue spell they had used had also healed their wounds while getting rid of his poison.
Lake was pretty sure it had been Water magic but he didn''t understand why a Water spell healed or destroyed his poison. He guessed it could have been a custom spell but he didn''t know anything about Water magic yet so he couldn''t be sure. "waaa." Looking down Lake saw Tiffany seemed to be moving around, and he was pretty sure that had been a yawn, so he got ready to ask where she wanted him to take her.
Once she finally opened her eyes and started looking around he could tell she was calm enough for him to start a conversation so he said. "Tiffany, are you able to get yourself back to the Temple?" If she waspletely fine now he was just going to leave her and go since there was no reason she would need him.
"Jon?" Lake guessed he should have probably started with who he was because she had been knocked out while he had rescued her so she wasn''t caught up with what was going on but he really didn''t want to take the time to exin what had happened. "Yep." Lake didn''t say anymore than that to make it obvious he wanted to know if she was fine.
"Why are you here?" After she said this Lake didn''t have time to say anything because she seemed to figure out what had happened and she asked. "Wait, did you save me?" Lake nodded and said. "It was just a chance thing, I saw them carrying you, so let''s end this discussion here. We need to get off the streets. Can you walk?"
"I don''t know, let me see." After she said this Tiffany got to her feet and after she took a few steps she said. "I''m good but do you have any Stamina potions, mine''s close to being gone." Lake kept his thoughts on having to use more of his potions on her to himself and got what she asked for.
She drank a good amount of it before she gave it back to him. "Your potion gives away the fact you work for the Alchemist guild." Lake could tell this wasn''t advice and she was justplementing the quality of the potion so he didn''t respond to what she said and turned to leave as he said. "I''m leaving bye."
As far as he was concerned they were done for good since she didn''t have the money and the only reason he had saved her was because the Insider wanted him to so unless it told him why it had made him do it they would probably never meet again. "Wait." Lake looked back to see Tiffany had something she clearly wanted to say.
This made him realize he still had the dagger so he went to pull it out when he heard. "Thank you." Lake nodded. He guessed he did deserve a thank you for what he had done and it seemed she didn''t care about the dagger at the moment so he left before she could get over her appreciation for him and ask for it.
As she watched Jon go, Tiffany couldn''t help but think she should go after him. It was obvious to her that the Temple didn''t want her around and Jon had turned out to be a good person that just had a rough exterior. There was no way around the fact that he had saved her and been too humble to even admit it not to mention he had been embarrassed by her thanking him.
He had already disappeared into the distance though so she needed to think about what to do now that she was alone. She had just been kidnaped, and even though she had gotten lucky and been saved, who was to say if it had been a chance thing and not set up with the permission of the Temple. She had heard the meeting where they said they should rece her with her own ears so she couldn''t put it past them to let this happen.
It was possible that she would be set up like this again if she went back now and especially if it was empty handed. Tiffany smacked herself as soon as she realized Jon still had the dagger. It was true they had nned to hand it over at a specific time which was when she paid him which she couldn''t do anymore.
Tiffany fell to her knees as she realized she would never be able to get enough money to pay him now that this n had failed. "DAMIT!" She couldn''t help screaming, just earlier today she thought she had everything she needed to get away from this farce of a war but with this failure it was over.
Looking at the sky that was in front of her Tiffany couldn''t help but wish she had her thoughts together earlier when Jon was still here because maybe she could have been of use to him and possibly earned his help instead of buying it. She had a valuable skill even if she couldn''t use it for too long or stay out in the open for long periods of time without being targeted by the Demon Worshipers.
She guessed this was still true even if she was just doing jobs for herself to earn money. It had been what she did before the Temple took her in when she had been on the run. Stealing was pretty easy when no one could see you and as long as she kept her face hidden when dealing with the Thieves guild they wouldn''t know who she was or care who she was enough to look into her.
There were a few problems the first being she only knew a couple of thieves and they happened to be the ones who had just tried to sell her and the other problem was the city was closed down at the moment and that included the Dark Guilds so she wouldn''t be able to find anyone else that would buy stuff from her.
There was also the problem that everyone had probably taken the valuables they could carry with them down into the shelters and hidden the rest so she would have a hard time finding anything worth selling in the first ce, or the fact that it didn''t matter if you were invisible when no one was in the buildings you were breaking into.
She realized she was being stupid because she was overwhelmed by the idea of what she should actually be doing right now, returning to the Temple. It was fine for her to be out here during normal battles but what would happen when the giant got here wasn''t going to be a normal battle.
She would be fine at the Temple even if she couldn''t trust the higher ups because she would be with her friends who had her back and the higher ups couldn''t risk upsetting them by making it obvious that she was supposed to have gone missing today. She just needed to be on guard to make sure she was never alone for a long period of time.
That would be a problem though because when the giant got here the other members of the 23 would be sent out to fight and she couldn''t go because she didn''t have the dagger. This meant she would need to make herself scarce when the fight was going on so it wouldn''t end up with her being gone when the others got back with it looking like she had run away.
Chapter 137: Bad Guys Work Hard
Chapter 137: Bad Guys Work Hard
The three looked like they didn''t care at all about the news they had just been brought by their servant. It was true, they had already been paid by everyone involved so they didn''t care if the Assassin guild failed to bring their new property back. "Go away." The tree of them watched as the servant closed the door and as soon as it was the whispering started.
A few secondster they had reached a consensus that there was nothing worth leaving their shelter over. It was true there was good money to be made if they went and recaptured the girl from the Temple but they would just leave that to the assassins guild. Manpower wise the assassins were number three in the city at the moment because the Demon Worshipers weren''t here, so they had plenty of people to send after her.
They did want to know who had attacked the assassin who hade to get her from them though because it could lead back to them and someone who wasn''t afraid to fight the Assassins guild wasn''t the kind of enemy you wanted knowing where you lived. People like that usually had strong backing or were crazy people who had a lot of personal strength.
All the dark guilds had to deal with people who sought revenge on them or random good samaritans so the odds of it being a rogue agent they would never hear from again weren''t zero but that probably wasn''t the case so they needed to decide how to increase the security of their bunker which hadn''t been in the original n for this bunker.
All they really wanted when they had built it was for it to be deep enough that it wasn''t in danger of being destroyed and for it to be as cheap as possible because they didn''t have any conflict with either side and were expecting to be left alone until the war was over where they would use the fact they were the only thieves who had stayed in the capital to be the new de facto rulers as far as the Thieves guild would be concerned.
But now it seemed they might not get through this as cheaply as they hoped. Once they all reached this conclusion the whispering started again and a few secondster they had decided how many guards they needed and who they would hire them from. All three of them fought how you would expect so they decided to get ssic warrior types because it would synergize well with what they could do to a target that was distracted by a bunch of loud brutes.
Now they just needed to decide when it would be a good idea to bring these new guards here without them being killed on the way here and where they would live in the bunker. It was pretty small with there only being four rooms, this one, and their respective private rooms so it seemed they would be turning thismon room into a bunk for the guards.
They were all in agreeance so there wasn''t really anything else for them to talk about so they all headed back to their private rooms to get their share of the money they would be spending on this. It was a good thing they had made money earlier today or none of them would have been so willing to make this purchase.
...
In another shady room also in the capital there were four people at a table all inspecting the body of a man for any damage that would cost them to repair. After a while one of the four gave an order. "Turn." As the naked man turned it revealed a small circr scar which caused all four of them to look down at the papers in front of them.
As they read all four of them looked disappointed and the one who had told the man to turn said. "It''s an old wound that''s already been paid for by the royal family four years ago. It seems whoever 214 fought with used a high quality potion to heal him because there is no new damage other than the arm which is cheap to regrow. That makes the only losses what we paid for the girl and the life saving charm used during the battle for a total of 56,000."
None of them seemed happy with this number and a few secondster one of them said. "We should round the number up because they haven''t approached the guild yet to pay their debt." All four of them nodded, this was a good point because it seemed like they were going to have to track down whoever had done this themselves and that could be expensive.
"Ok the final bill will be 100,000 to be paid within a week and if the debt is unpaid we will reconvene to talk about the new price." All four nodded and finally started to write down the new information into 214''s file once they were done one of them said. "Get dressed and go to the sketch artist to make the wanted poster we will be handing out to the search squads."
214, or Gin, what he was actually called, got his clothes and left the room as fast as he could to do what he had been told. He was in disbelief that he had actually been able to keep a secret from the guild. When they had asked him the first question of, Do you know who the person who attacked you works for, Gin had been able to say no without the Loyalty curse activating because he truly didn''t.
Jon used to be a member of their guild but it was clear that was no longer true because not only did the guild think he was dead Jon had been able to attack him something that should be impossible for any Assassin of the guild. All this meant Jon had done something they all thought was impossible, escape, and was now doing what they all dreamed about, Getting revenge on the Assassins guild for enving them.
It was also very obvious Jon had be much stronger in the time he had been gone because his number while and at the time of his death was in the 700 making Jon much weaker than him to the point where Jon would have never been able to beat him in a one on one like he had done.
Thinking back to the odd skills Jon had used during the battle, Gin couldn''t help but wonder what jobs they hade from and what rank Jon would be now if he was still in the guild. Gin didn''t think it was enough to make it in the top 100 but he bet Jon could if he was to get his hands on an Elixir so he could raise his stats over 100.
When they had been fighting it had been very obvious they both had the same stat in Agility because they had been moving at the same speed unless one of them used a skill to gain a momentary advantage.
Getting to the sketch room Gin sat down and got ready for the extremely long process of listing every detail he remembered about who he had fought and thanked the gods there was no way the sketch artist would get close enough that they would recognize Jon.
...
Jenson Looked at the horizon and smiled. It wasn''t hard to see a figure asrge as that one from a distance. They had finished their preparation work for Domare less than an hour ago and it seemed everyone had executed the n perfectly because everything had lined up just like it was supposed to.
Looking back at the giant piles of bodies they had spent thest day forming, Jensen couldn''t help saying the final number onest time. "Six." Six was two more than the original n had called for so tomorrow was going to be an even bigger stomp than they had hoped.
Sadly it was going to postpone their ns by a day because even the Mighty Domare would have a hard time forming six new giants in a day, but the final result would make up for that. It did make him a little jealous though, he only needed to kill two more holy mages for his next promotion and that was going to be hard to do if he was fighting next to 7 giants.
He would be getting credit for doing a good job here though so maybe it would be enough to equal a promotion. He thought there was a good chance because he had been awarded for his idea to make the bodies walk themselves out of the capital and now he had surpassed the amount they had asked for by 50%.
Feeling the ground start to rumble Jenson got himself ready for the booming voice of Domare that would soon enter his head. "It''s too many but it''s what I expected from you. We''ll need an extra day if we want to actually use all of them." Jenson nodded but didn''t say anything. He didn''t need to because these were orders not them having a conversion.
He was also happy Domare agreed with what he had thought already because it showed how skilled he was in nning even if he wasn''t going to get credit for ever thinking it. Turning around Jenson saw Domare was already getting ready to create the first giant and marveled at the cloud of mana that was forming around them.
He felt extremely lucky that he was going to get to see this happen six times in the next day. Well he guessed it wasn''t actually luck, he had worked extremely hard to get this opportunity it was only luck that it had worked out. "Were you able to spread the news that there was a gianting sessfully?"
Jenson hadn''t expected this question so he jumped slightly and said. "Yes, and we were able to use that news to cover the moving of the bodies as a retreat so no one will be expecting our attack to have more than one giant."
"Good and I can see you took care of everyone else who knew just like you were told." Jenson nodded and looked at the piles closely to see figures dressed exactly like him. This had sadly been an unavoidable step to make sure no one would betray them because their curse master had died during battle so there was no other way to guarantee everyone here was loyal with them being newer members that could have easily been spies.
Jenson stopped worrying about that and focused, the giant was almost done forming which meant the part he really wanted to see was about to happen. It hardly ever happened so he needed to savor the moment he got to see his god even if it was only a small part. Seeing the cloud form and the middle open, Jenson''s eyes bulged as he stared at the mouth that emerged to say. "Domore."
Jenson covered his ears when the new giant''s name was said. After thinking about it he nodded, it was a pretty good onepared to some of the ones he had heard in his time serving the Demon Lord. Jenson couldn''t wait till he was in a high enough position to hear the reason the Demon Lord started all the giants names with the same three letters because he was sure there had to be a reason.
Chapter 138: Back In The Guild Pt.1
Chapter 138: Back In The Guild Pt.1
Getting tired of waiting, Lake turned around and headed inside. He was sure he wasn''t the only one making this decision either with the sun starting toe up. He was annoyed but it wasn''t that big of a deal to wait 10 hours for something that never ended up happening. Looking at his servants he said. "I''m going to sleep now, feel free to do the same."
He was sure they would set up a rotation so there would always be someone out there who would wake the rest of them up so he didn''t even bother giving them the order. Lucas had told everyone about the giant yesterday while he had been out getting his new stuff from the cksmiths guild so everyone was anticipating the fight that was going to happen and that included his servants.
Walking to his bedroom area Lake stared at his old satchel that was sitting on his table as he got into bed. He had ended up keeping the dagger so it was going to bother him every time he saw it until he found a good ce to hide it.
He wasn''t too afraid of Tiffany telling anyone about him or the fact that she found the dagger because he was sure she didn''t want to get rid of her only chance at getting away but he had no way of knowing if other people could use the same method she had used to track him down.
As he closed his eyes he assured himself that she would cover for him and that he wouldn''t be hearing from them anytime soon so he could stop thinking about it and just go to sleep.
...
Opening his eyes naturally after getting as much as he wanted, Lake guessed the fight had never kicked off. It was a good thing because it gave him another day to do what he wanted after work. "Work." Lake couldn''t help be less happy as he remembered there was stuff he had to do but became slightly less aggrieved as he remembered where he was doing it.
There was always something interesting going on in the masterb so even if his repetitive work had be annoying and boring he could keep himself busy by looking at what other people were working on. Getting up and going to get his bag, Lake realized he was going to have to wear his chest piece if he wanted to take his bag everywhere like he usually did.
Lake shrugged, it wasn''t that hard to get it on so there was no point in focusing on the one bad thing about this new bag. Plus you never knew when you would identally get stabbed so being safe was never a bad thing. Once he had his armor on, Lake walked towards the door only to be stopped by one of his servantsing down from their room.
Looking towards the balcony Lake saw another one wasing in so it seemed he had just happened to be leaving when they were changing watch. Since he had two here he guessed he might as well do something he had forgotten aboutst night. "Can you guys look into getting me one of those belts I''ve seen people wearing around the guild."
"Yes Sir." Lake nodded and walked out of his door. Getting to the stairwell he cast fly and less than a minuteter was at the top of the spire, well not quite the top. He always walked thest ten because he didn''t think it would be a good idea flying through the barrier like thing that covered the top ten floors.
Getting to the Master Lab door Lake got his badge out and stuck it to his chest and walked in. He had been granted ess by Na on his first day so this was nothing new to him but this was the first time he had done this and beenpletely alone after entering. Looking around to make sure he was actually alone, Lake couldn''t help but to think about the vault.
He stopped himself before he could actually consider it though. He would never be able to get inside the vault so there was no reason to even go over there because all it would do was make him look suspicious if somebody walked in. Not to mention there was literally going to be an execution in the next few days because somebody had stolen from the guild. He didn''t want to be added to that because someone saw him trying to open the vault.
After waiting a few minutes Lake left the Lab and headed towards Lucas''s office. If there was anyone who could tell him why the masterb was empty it would be the guild leader but he doubted he would have to ask because he thought the masters would probably be there when he got there.
After flying all the way down to Lucas'' office Lake found it too was empty. Stopping because he realized what might be happening, Lake used the mark he had on Lucas'' amulet to see where he was. Seeing Lucas was just in the next room over, or Lucas''s bedroom, Lake thought maybe he was right and in the minute it had taken him to get from his room to the masterb the fight had started.
Running over to Lucas'' room, Lake knocked and a few seconds Later the door was opened by one of Lucas''s servants. Lake didn''t let them say anything and asked. "Is the fight happening?" The servant looked slightly confused and said. "No it isn''t." Lake hadn''t been expecting this answer and asked. "Where''s everyone at then?"
"I don''t have an exact answer but I would guess they''re all on their balconies waiting for the giant or asleep because they stayed up all night." After he heard this Lake remembered that no one in the spire had to do anything so the fact no one was working just meant they didn''t feel like it right now because they didn''t want to miss anything.
"Ok I''m sorry for bothering you." After he said this the servant quickly closed the door and Lake assumed they ran back outside to stare at the city with the rest of the guild. As he walked back towards the stairwell Lake wondered how often something like this happened, and then he wondered if it was like this in the whole guild or just in the spire.
Lake vaguely knew there were normal members that also worked here. They were on the lower floors and he thought they were probably still working even if they didn''t want to. Switching the direction he was going, Lake went towards the elevator. He had been curious about the rest of the guild building for a while but he had never bothered to really look around because the guild was just too big and half of the ces he would end up finding were going to be empty.
This ce had originally held so many more people than it did now when it had been the Mages guild. Riding the elevator down to the first floor, Lake headed towards a ce he had kind of seen before, it was a room next to the cart area of the guild where they prepared the items they were sending out.
He figured he could just follow the items that wereing into this room back to where they came from to find the people that were responsible for making the items they sold. He could probably just ask but this seemed like it would take up more of his time and that was part of his goal. He would get to work studyingter but right now he wasn''t really in the mood for reading.
Right afterke walked into the room with all the packed itemske saw people that were working getting things into carts. It seemed the guild was still conducting business while they could but he wast here to watch this so he looked at one of the people that had just brought some stuff here and followed them out of the room.
Entering a hallway he had never seen before Lake saw it kept going for what seemed to be a mile and there were countless doorways that had people walking in and out of them carrying what he assumed were ingredients to make whatever potion was being made in that particr room.
Wanting to see if everyone of these doorways led to ab, Lake started to look through the doors as he walked down the hallway. He quickly found that most of these rooms were being used for storage or empty and only a small minority were actuallybs, he also saw a few rooms that had nts growing in them but there weren''t that many.
He wondered if these were nts that didn''t keep very well after being harvested so they were growing them near to where they would be used. He thought that would probably be something they did but he guessed it could be that these nts were used often and were easy enough to grow that they just did it here so they would always be on hand.
Getting further down the halfway Lake started to see closed doors and looking further down the hallway he saw past this point there were guards actually guarding the rest of the hallway. Lake wasn''t afraid of the guards though so he just walked over to them and asked. "Am I allowed to pass?" And held up his badge to show them who he was.
"Yes sir." Lake nodded and walked past. Since the doors were closed he went up to the first one and opened it. Stepping inside Lake saw something he hadn''t seen in a while: Alchemists his age. Well that wasn''t exactly true because of Millie but he never saw her do any Alchemy and she was more of a chef in his opinion because all she did was cook food.
Walking in Lake was only able to take one step before someone stopped him. "Are you the new guy?" Lake was about to say no because he was sure saying yes would lead to work but the Insider stopped him. It wanted him to say yes for some reason and he guessed the reason was pretty obvious when you took its name into ount.
"Yes." Lake didn''t give any more information because when you were answering a yes or no question with a lie all the extra stuff you wanted to add to make it more believable actually did the opposite. "You''re kind of early." Lake just shrugged, being early wasn''t a bad thing so he didn''t see a reason to make an excuse.
The only thing he really needed to worry about was the fact the actual new person could be here at any moment, but that was fine, his lie wasn''t malicious so he could just act like it was a joke when they got here. "Ok well you''ll be recing Dena when her shift is over so you can just spectate until it''s time for you to take over."
Lake nodded and went to where the man was pointing, when he got there he looked at the woman he guessed was the Dena he would be watching until whoever he was pretending to be got here. Lake couldn''t fathom what the insider wanted from him in this situation. All this lie had done was make it so he could stand here quietly until the person got here which was just a waste of time as far as he could tell.
Lake focused on what Dena was doing. He might as well finish what he had been doing in the first ce when he came in here, which was seeing what normal members did all day. He guessed this was the best chance he could ever hope for to get insider knowledge without them knowing he was from the spire.
Chapter 139: Back In The Guild Pt.2
Chapter 139: Back In The Guild Pt.2
As Lake watched he quickly found out what they were doing in this room. They were brewing stat potions, and by that he meant the ones that actually gave you permanent stat increases when you drank them. It didn''t seem too hard but it definitely exined why this room was guarded.
Like he said it didn''t seem hard but the amount they were making was a lot higher than he would have expected. Back when he had learned of potions that could give you stats he had also been told they were a rare resource that you had to be lucky to get your hands on but it seemed the guild had a source because there were crates full of monster cores in this room.
He also noticed they were brewing each core into a different number of potions so he was guessing the cores varied in power and they were doing this to make each potion give you exactly one stat point, so if a core could give you four stat points it ended up as four potions.
It seemed all you needed to do was appraise the core and change the amount of liquid you used for the brewing process. Like he said this was an extremely easy job and he was sure these Alchemists hadn''t been chosen for their skills but instead for their trustworthiness.
Whether that trustworthiness was natural or they had all agreed to the Loyalty curse was not something he could know without asking because most of the time people who were cursed didn''t seem like it or at least that was what the book he had been working his way through said.
As he watched Dena he saw her start to look back at him every time she finished a batch and he wondered if she was doing this because she was getting close to finishing her shift and was hoping he would step in now so she could leave. He didn''t though. Even if he could do this job with no problems because he didn''t want to be in the middle of something when he was asked to leave.
After a while Lake saw the door open and someone dressed like the rest of the people in this room came in, he didn''t mean they had the same outfit, just the same color robe which was white like the one he wore. Figuring this was probably the person he was pretending to be, Lake silently watched as the same person who had stopped him stopped the new guy.
"Who are you?" Lake watched as the new guy passed his badge to the guy who seemed to be running thisb and said. "I''m Laen, I was told toe work here starting today." As soon as the new guy said this everyone in the room turned to look at Lake. "I lied. I just wanted to see what you guys were doing in here."
Lake just told them the truth because if he was to pretend to be the real Laen he would just waste more time for nothing. It would probably be kind of funny to get into an argument but he had no chance of convincing them he was Laen because he didn''t have any evidencepared to the actual Laen who would have a guild scroll with his name on it.
Now that he was discovered Lake just tried to leave. He didn''t have a reason why he did this so he wanted to avoid any questions on his motives because he would have to lie again and he usually only lied when there was something to gain from it. "Wait, who are you?" Looking at the guy who had stopped him on the way in and now when he tried to leave Lake sighed.
It looked like he was going to have to answer questions to be able to leave. Lake could understand he probably looked suspicious to this group since he was doing something that could really only have one motive, which was snooping. So telling them what he could probably have said from the beginning and skipped all of this Lake said. "I''m Lake, I''m a member of the spire and I wanted to look around the rest of the guild."
After he said this all of them started looking at each other without saying anything. Lake could tell they were surprised he was from the spire but they had reacted to his name as well and it made him wonder if this meant his name was well known in the guild. He wouldn''t be that surprised if that was the case because there weren''t that many people in the spire so he was sure the normal members gossiped about them like they were celebrities from his old world.
He knew how boring a regr day could be so he was sure any information about the most important people in the guild made the rounds any time any of it leaked and now that he was thinking about it he had heard plenty of people talk about Millie whenever he was in the cafeteria.
Now that he had thought of this he wondered what the people of the guild thought of him. He was sure there wasn''t that much about him going around yet because he was still new and all his contributions were just ideas that other people were taking care of so from the outside it would seem he hadn''t done anything and wasn''t involved.
"You can stay and watch as long as you want in that case and I''m sorry about questioning you and what you were doing." Lake nodded to what the man said and asked. "What''s your name?" He could tell his question scared the man and Lake assumed the man thought he was about to get into trouble but he still answered. "My name''s Bill."
Lake nodded and said. "Well Bill have you heard of me?" Lake knew this question sounded like he was flexing his status because he was mad about being questioned; he was fine with that because he was sure Bill would quickly realize Lake wasn''t mad and was just curious about what information about him they had heard about him.
"Yes Sir you''re the newest member of the spire only joining around two weeks ago and about a week before the war started again." Lake nodded, both of those things were true but neither of them really said anything about him as a person. If this was all they knew about him he could see why his name had never been mentioned while he had been eavesdropping.
"Is that everything you know about me?" Lake could tell that they knew something else but didn''t want to say it because as soon as he said this Bill looked at the other people in the room. Lake guessed this was one of the few things pretending to be a normal person could have helped him with but he had been a little slow to realize he should have been using this opportunity to ask about himself.
It wasn''t like he was hiding his face or anything so as people started to figure out what he looked like he wouldn''t be able to do what he was doing now ever again without changing/hiding his face. "Forget I asked." Lake let Bill off the hook and left heading for the next room. Now that he understood there was actually something to gain by pretending he wasn''t Himself and that there was a time limit he wanted to know what the thing Bill wouldn''t say was.
Opening the door to the next room over Lake saw it was full of nts and that there were only two people here. When he walked in neither of them said anything to him so he figured it was prettymon for Alchemist toe in here to get some of whatever this nt was. Walking over to one of them, Lake said. "This is my first time in here. Do I just get what I need or am I supposed to ask one of you?"
Lake knew this made him look like an inexperienced person but that was kind of what he was going for. If he made it obvious he didn''t know what he was doing one of them would probably help him and that would give him enough time to talk to them and maybe gossip. "I''ll get what you need."
After the guy said this, Lake realized this was going to lead to him wasting whatever he had the guy pick because he didn''t actually need it so he said. "Alright, how much do you think I should get to make just one potion?" The guy looked at him like he was wasting his time and said. "One leaf will probably be enough."
Lake nodded, the nts did have pretty big leaves so he could see why the guy would say that. "Ok, which nt is the lowest level in here?" Lake asked this while looking around like he couldn''t tell the short nts would be what he was looking for. The guy pointed and said. "That nt over there is only level eight."
"Alright, that one is fine." After Lake said this he followed the guy towards the nt and right when they started the harvest Lake said. "You hear about that new person in the spire?" This was the best he could think of to start a conversation about himself. "No, what''s their name?" It seemed to work but it also told him he might have picked the wrong person to ask; they didn''t seem to even be aware of him.
"Lake, they joined this month." Lake tried to see if maybe he could jog their memory and they just hadn''t heard a lot about him but after he said it the guy looked at him with a weird face that made Lake realize there was a chance he had just made himself look like a sad loser because this guy might have recognized him as soon as he walked in.
They had probably only said no to his original question because they thought there was someone even newer than him because he recognized him as the new guy everyone already knew about so they had probably thought he was going to tell them about someone who had just joined today but instead Lake had just said his own name.
If that was what had just happened he could already picture there would be a new piece of info about him being a weirdo who went around trying to pretend he wasn''t himself. He had already been caught doing it twice today so there was a good chance one of them would tell someone.
It looked like all he was doing today was destroying his own reputation and he still didn''t know what people were saying about him. Deciding he might as well try to use this situation to his advantage, Lake needed to figure out if he had actually been caught. "You know I heard he''s really handsome."
After he said this Lake smiled really wide like he was joking around and that he knew the guy knew who he was. When the guyughed Lake knew he had been right and the guy did know who he was. "So, what have you heard about him?" Lake winked after saying this; he was hoping the guy would realize what he wanted and y along.
It was a weird interaction but Lake still thought it would be more likely to work than justing out and asking because he was pretty sure all these people would be to scared of offending him to tell the truth but with him acting kind of silly there was a good chance this guy wouldn''t see him as a threat.
"I heard he''s dating one of the guards." After Lake heard this he dropped the nice face he had put on and he could tell it scared the guy but Lake wasn''t made he was just disappointed. This was themest gossip and after all the work he had put in and irreversible damage his reputation would take once word of his odd behavior spread this rumor was a let down.
"Is that really it? Everyone else I had asked wouldn''t tell me and made it seem like it was something bad." The guy seemed to realize Lake wasn''t upset that his big secret was out and said. "It''s the first news about you that spread after you joined so it was probably made into a bigger deal than it actually is."
After the guy said this he leaned in to whisper. "You know a lot of the guys in the guild get it." Lake knew exactly what this guy was trying to say. He had also noticed a lot of the scrawny men here liked big women like Joy but he wasn''t one of them. She was almost a foot taller than him and it just wasn''t something he liked but he could handle people thinking this about him because he had actually been the one to spread this rumor to begin with.
He had done it so Solomon, who had clearly been attracted to Joy, wouldn''t try and ask her out because Millie Liked Solomon and Lake didn''t want the person who cooked the best food in the world to be too upset to cook. Of course Solomon was gone now but he could alwayse back and it was too much effort to spread the truth.
People would be unlikely to believe the truth anyway so he would have to make it seem like they had broken up but then it would be weird when they were seen together after the breakup and people would think they were back together. What he was saying was there was no way to stop this rumor and he doubted anyone was even talking about it anymore so there was no point.
He guessed there was one nice thing about this whole situation though and that was this guy he had just met. If he ever needed more information like this he could juste to this guy and he would be able to get an answer. Lake marked him and reached out for a handshake. "I''m Lake. I know you already know that but whatever."
As the guy shook his hand he said. "I''m Triv." Lake finished the handshake strong and said goodbye. He had wasted plenty of time already so he needed to go back to his room and start reading. He was almost through the book on fire magic so he might be able to get started on his training in the next element before he went to bed if he read hard.
Chapter 140: Rumble Pt.1
Chapter 140: Rumble Pt.1
Lake was silently sitting at his table reading the book on the fire element. With Fire being a moreplex element that had more principles than Wind the book was taking longer than he had expected. Each principle had its own method of training so it was taking him time to memorize each of them well enough that he wasn''t going to have to reread the book.
At the moment he was trying to wrap his mind around the method to train the heat principle. It seemed like how the Wind element was set to a certain speed naturally Fire was set to a certain temperature. There was a difference though depending on what the fire was burning that set temperature could change but that happened after you used it to cast the spell.
Also the heat and burning principles were different things and there was also the spreading principle that let the fire find new things to burn. These three principles made up the basic structure of fire and they were also the main three you had to train to make your fire spells stronger.
He also found that there was an extreme version of the spreading principle that a lot of people seemed to be naturally inclined towards that made their spells more explosive than normal and it seemed he was one of these people because he had unlocked the second tier of fire attack spell before he had ever trained with fire.
He had found the fact he had unlocked Fire st odd at the time but had never given it any thought because he had been trying to level up as quickly as possible at the time but reading this he still found it interesting when he had read it because it made him realize there were already two principles he seemed to have some affinity with: The solid principle and the explosive principle.
As he was trying to refocus on the method you were supposed to use to gain better control of the heat principle, Lake heard a voice from the balcony. "Sir, it seems to be starting." All three of his servants were currently out there and it seemed what they had eagerly been waiting for was finally here. Putting his book down, Lake rushed outside and looked out towards the city.
...
Tiff was silently sitting in the corner of the training room watching the other members of the 23 train in the use of the Holy weapons they had all been chosen to wield. Usually she would have been part of this as well but there was a differencepared to how they used to train and what they were doing now that they had the actual holy weapons they had all been trained to use.
With her not actually having hers she had been told to sit out by their handlers so that was what she was doing. She was fine with this because this gave her more time to n what she was going to do once the expected giant actually showed up.
Someone in her situation would usually just hide here during the battle but she didn''t trust the temple enough and wanted to make sure nothing happened to her while the other 23 were out fighting because them being here was the only thing keeping her safe.
Her n was to sneak out during themotion that would happen during the beginning of the fight when everyone was scrambling around and then she was going to stay in an empty building until the fight was over. This n made her feel useless because her friends would be out risking their lives and she would be doing nothing but she had confidence they could win this one.
They had kept the actual number of how many of them there were secret well enough that the Demon Lord seemed to think he could win this battle with just one giant so her friends should be able to kill it and still not reveal how many of them there actually were here. So far they had only revealed three of the members of the 23 and none of them had shown how strong they actually were so the Demon Lord had underestimated them heavily and they hoped they could use this as a strategy to draw out how long it took them to send a force they wouldn''t be able to beat.
The newest number the Temple had for the amount of giants the Demon Lord had in his army was 56 so if they made it obvious that the Temple had trained a force of elite Holy mages that numbered 23 the Demon Lord would send like 40 of the giants to just wipe them out. It would be a strain on the Demon Lord''s army to have that many giants in one ce but she was sure the Demon Lord would still see it as the best move.
Looking at what time it was, Tiff saw the sun would be going down soon which meant they would switch from training to preparing for the fight soon and she needed to make sure she got to go with the others to the prep room even if she wasn''t going to be getting equipped with their armor. She was sure the handler would try to say she should stay out of the way but Tiff was going to pretend like she wanted to spend as much time with the others that she could.
Tiff had found out a long time ago if all of them stuck together about something the Temple would fold so they wouldn''t upset the 23. A few minutester the handler gave the exact orders Tiff had expected and all of them moved towards the door to head towards the armory. Just like she expected, the handler tried to stop her from following them by saying. "The Higher ups want to see you."
This was such an obvious lie but Tiff didn''t even try to point out why because the others trusted the Temple so much they would never see it so instead she said. "It can wait tillter. I don''t want to miss seeing them off because I''m in a meeting."
After she said this she tried to move past the handler but felt them grab her arm but she wasn''t the only one who stopped when this happened. All 23 of them looked at the handler like he should know better at this point and after a moment she was let go and they all went to the armory.
Tiff had expected it to go like this because they all had promised to always stick together after the first time the Temple had tried to rece her and this was the only time any of them ever showed anything other than 100% loyalty to the Temple and it was the thing that gave her any hope that she could talk them into leaving with her.
It made her think some of them might choose her over the temple and the war once she had what she needed to keep them safe while they were on the run. It was still unlikely though because the same thing that made them so loyal to her was what she would have to fight against to make them leave.
That was the thing with good people like them; they didn''t just do what was good for them like everyone else and they would always risk their life for others even though they were worth more than the people they saved. "Do you think the attack will actually happen tonight?" Tiff looked up to see two of the three swords were talking about the same exact thing they had been all ofst night.
"I don''t know at this point there''s no way to know if it''s even true to begin with. The source of the information was unreliable and now that it turned out to be wrong I''m starting to wonder if the demon worshipers spread it themselves just to cover their retreat." When Greg said this it really bothered her because with all the time she had spent thinking about why the giant had never shown yesterday like it was supposed to she had never even thought of this possibility.
The fact Greg was saying this clearly having not even put that much thought into it really just highlighted how much better he was at warfare and why the temple had chosen him to be one of the three swords.
Of course she knew she was being silly to be mad at him for being smarter than her but it was just how she felt and you couldn''t really control that. The only thing you could control was your actions and she never treated him badly just because she was jealous of him even if he made it hard sometimes.
Greg was one of the few in the 23 that didn''t really seem to care about the bond between them and she was pretty sure it was the same reason he was such a good general, he was cold and calcting and unlike the others he saw them as a military group which was what the Temple wanted them to be so Greg was obviously the Temples golden boy.
She used Golden Boy because she had heard a lot of the Temple higher ups calling him this and with an obvious reason, he was perfect and the best at using Holy magic which was golden. A prettyme nickname but she still wished it was hers, she had mostly grown out of the part of her life where all she wanted was the approval the other members got from the temple but you never really got over the problems you had when you were a kid, even if you could fool yourself into thinking you were over it.
Sitting down to watch the others be fitted into their armors. Like usual Dawn got done first and walked over to her. They both wore light armor so they always got done first and they always talked while they waited for the others to finish and it seemed Dawn wanted to continue the tradition.
"What do you think the higher ups wanted from you?" Tiff was pretty sure all they wanted was for her to be away from the others so they could get rid of her and make it seem she had run awayter when the others returned but Tiff knew better to say this so she said. "They probably want to know why I didn''t go and look for the dagger today."
Dawn seemed to agree and asked. "Do you have a reason?" Tiff could tell Dawn didn''t mean anything by this question and was just curious so she said. "I ran out of leads, I n to go out again after the battle to see if there''s any more thieves kicking around when the dust settles."
Tiff hated lying to the others but sadly she had done it so often at this point that she didn''t even have to think to say something believable. It had started after the first time she had told the others they needed to leave and she had seen how much the others didn''t like what she was saying. That had also been when she had gotten the reputation of being a runner that she was sure the Temple nned to use when she disappeared.
"Maybe the temple will have more people to spare to help you look after the battle." Tiff nodded but didn''t say anything because she knew that wouldn''t be happening. She knew the temple had other people looking for it already and they had her doing it by herself because they wanted her to be as valuable as possible.
Right when she was going to try and change the subject Tiff heard the activity in the hallway outside start to increase and a secondter someone came into the room. Knowing what they were about to say, Tiff pulled Dawn into a hug and said. "Goodluck tonight." Right after she said this Tiff rushed out of the room. As soon as she was in the hallway Tiff disappeared and headed to where the soldiers would be getting ready.
The person who had walked into the room was one of the higher ups she didn''t trust so she couldn''t afford to actually listen to what they were going to say to the other 23 members before they went out to fight. She needed to leave now while the others were still here. It would be easy to slip out with one of the scouting groups.
Chapter 141: Rumble Pt.2
Chapter 141: Rumble Pt.2
Tiff was right and she had no problems following the scouts outside right past the guards she was sure would have tried to stop her if they were able to see her. Now that she was outside she nned to go find somewhere to hide right away but stopped when she heard one of the scouts say something.
"Do you know why they''re having us go in the direction the giant came from?" This question didn''t seem to be that important but Tiff wanted to know because she thought it would give her an idea how long this fight might be because the scouts were clearly being sent to try and find any hidden forces that might join after the fight had already started.
"I''m not sure I was told to send back runners whenever I saw anyone approaching the city." All the temple really knew was that there was a gianting but that didn''t mean it wasn''t going to bring anything else with it. They were expecting the army that retreated a few days ago toe back as well but no one had been able to confirm if this was the case yet.
This was probably what these scouts were being sent out to do and if that was the case it made her kind of want to follow them. Scouting missions always put an emphasis on safety because the scouts needed to be able to return to be of any use and they were usually pretty stealthy so there was a really small chance it would be any more dangerous than hiding in some building that could get struck by a stray attack; it would also make her feel better about doing nothing while some of the others were out fighting.
Making up her mind without overthinking what she was doing, Tiff started to follow the scouts. It wasn''t too long before she finally saw the giant. It was hard to tell at a distance but Tiff wouldn''t be surprised if it was 50 feet tall but that was the only detail she could see because it had a ck robe thatpletely covered it from head to toe.
It was steadily making its way towards the city at a good speed which she was sure was just a fraction of how fast it could actually move and she saw this as the first sign it had brought an army with it even if she couldn''t see them because she thought maybe it was giving whatever army that was following it a chance at keeping up with it.
They weren''t tasked with dealing with the giant though so the group of scouts moved to go around the giant at a good distance. It would probably take them a long time for them to get behind it and start scouting but there wasn''t really anything they could do about that; if they got too close they would all instantly die.
...
Seeing the giant Lake was trying to tell if it was the same one he had seen that day in the forest and after he remembered he had never had the mind to mark Domare or the one he had seen created Domana he just went ahead and marked the giant that wasing towards the city but as soon as he did he realized all he had done was mark its robe because he was unable to see its skin with it beingpletely covered.
This meant if the giant ever changed its clothes its mark would lose effectiveness and there was no way for him to know so this was a waste of time. Whatever, he didn''t see how knowing where what he had heard referred to as a demigod could ever be valuable information. Seeing the giant was going to take a while to actually get here, Lake thought he might as well see where Tiffany was.
He knew she worked for the Temple so he wanted to see what she was doing now that the giant was here. Seeing a mark appear in the city, Lake watched it as it moved towards the giant, well not straight towards it as he watched it he could tell she was going around it. Lake wondered if this was her running away like she had said she wanted to but he doubted that was the case because he was sure she would be going in the opposite direction.
That meant she was probably using her ability to turn invisible to gather information for the temple. Or at least that was what he would expect the temple to do with someone like her. It would be stupid to send someone with such a good skill for spying into a direct fight and risk it killing them.
After watching the mark for a while Lake finally saw some movement from where it said she was. It seemed she was in a small group that was doing its best to not be noticed because he had only seen them for a split second as they passed over a road. They were doing a good job and he was sure they would have no trouble staying unnoticed once they got into the farnd that surrounded the capital.
The fields had been abandoned and so their contents were more overgrown than normal and it would provide perfect cover to them as they ran. Hearing a knock that he had been expecting, Lake turned and said. "I''ll get it." And when to let Millie in. He had been waiting for her toe over ever since the giant had been spotted and the fight hadn''t started yet so he wasn''t afraid of missing anything while he let her in.
After he let her in they both rushed back onto the balcony and he told her everything he had seen so far. He had noticed that not everyone could see the fights as well as he could and Millie was definitely one of those people. She probably didn''t have the highest Perception and he was pretty sure it was kind of dark at the moment even though he could see perfectly well with his night vision one of his skills gave him.
After he showed her exactly where the giant was currently by pointing it out, Lake asked. "Were you able to get any new students while the fighting wasn''t happening?" He knew Millie wasn''t exactly happy with her current students so he wondered if she had been able to find any that wanted toe work for her and if so where they came from because the town waspletely empty of normal people at the moment with them all either hiding underground or in the wilderness.
"No, I asked Lucas but he said the carts were busy and he had already gotten the best that were in the guild. You know that''s really all that''s avable at the moment." Lake was sure Millie had told Lucas that she wanted chefs this time and had still been told to deal with what she already had.
It was a bad time to be recruiting new people at the moment anyway and he was sure Lucas thought that as well with them needing to worry about finding them and if they were actually going to be loyal. "Well maybe we''ll have more time after this battle to look." Lake didn''t believe what he had just said; he was sure it would be the exact opposite in reality.
Thest two days would probably be thest peaceful days the city would see for a long time and like him thinking this was the que Lake saw barriers around the city re to life. This was the first time he had seen any other building use a barrier and from the locations he knew most of them were either owned by the king or one of the guilds.
It seemed they understood they would lose anything that wasn''t protected now that the actual fighting was going to start. From what Lake understood about this world Demigods were the strongest fighters and therefore the most destructive and to be any stronger you had to ascend to be a god and at that point you weren''t really allowed to be down here with the mortals anymore.
From what he had heard demigods varied in power though so it wasn''t like he was about to see the limit or anything. He was pretty sure the giants just barely made the cut to be called a Demigod because the Temple was just going to use normal people that had special weapons to fight them.
Lake really didn''t know though he was just assuming the Demon Lord wasn''t giving every giant a massive amount of divinity because from what he had heard it was rare and Lake was sure the Demon Lord didn''t have that much to spare even if he did have a reputation of stealing divinity from a bunch of Demigods.
Seeing something happen around the giant Lake said. "The giant''s getting ready to cast a spell I think." In the time it had taken him to say this a massive cloud of mana had already gathered and Lake was sure he knew what was about to happen because he had been subjected to it before and when he saw the mana start to spread towards the city he knew he was right.
The giant was using the same blinding spell that had been used on the forest that day. It didn''t seem like it was going to reach all the way up here though but that didn''t mean he could see into the city anymore it now looked like the guild was floating above an abyss. "That sucks. I wanted to be able to see what was happening."
Lake was sure everyone else was thinking the same thing he had just said but Millie said. "The Holy Mage won''t just let that happen the whole time I''m sure it won''t be long until they dispel it." Lake nodded she was probably right, he had forgotten not everyone would be as useless as he was when it had happened to him at that time he would have died if he hadn''t gotten lucky and got his hands on that weird disrupter thing that had let him see in a small space around him.
...
Looking Back at the city Tiff didn''t know what had just happened. Almost as soon as they had made it out of the city a huge ck cloud had engulfed it. She knew it had been the giant that had done it but she didn''t know why it would do something like that. It didn''t seem to be an attack and would soon be destroyed by one of the 23 so it was just a huge waste of mana as far as she could tell.
Seeing the other scouts start to move again Tiff got over what she was seeing and went back to what she hade to do. As she ran all she could think was she had made the right choice in following the scouts because if she had stayed she would probably be panicking at the moment.
Chapter 142: Spectator Unfriendly
Chapter 142: Spectator Unfriendly
As he looked at the now dark city waiting for something to happen, Lake noticed there was a difference between this situation and what he had seen while in the forest. There had been a wall made from Unholy magic that kept people froming in and out of the forest and as far as he could tell there wasn''t this time.
Less than a second Later there was a huge rumble that sounded like thunder and while he didn''t know what had caused it he could assume it meant the fight had started even if he couldn''t see it. Silently cursing the giant for blocking his view Lake wished the Temple would hurry up and dispel the dark mist.
This was going to be the most boring thing he had ever sat through if it was going to be like this all night. After about another minute of random loud noises Lake finally saw something pierce out of the dark mist. It was a person wearing white armor and they had a small cloud of golden mana and as they flew up and away from the dark mist Lake saw the golden mana start to form a shape.
Lake knew enough about magic to know this was them forming a formation and he assumed it would be used to clear the ck mist. It seemed the giant wasn''t just going to let it happen though because almost as soon as Lake had seen the Holy mage rise out of the mist he had also seen a massive hand that was clearly going after the mage.
After the Mage had made it far enough away from the ground where the giant would no longer be able to grab them, Lake saw rust colored bolts start to fire from the hand towards the mage. The mage easily dodged around all the spells and after a few seconds of this Lake saw the Holy mage hold up the nowplete formation.
After the mage released the formation upwards Lake had to cover his eyes because it was like the sun itself was now hovering in the middle of the city. It was so bright Lake could still see it with his eyes closed so he used his hands to cover them even further before crouching down behind the railing of the balcony.
"Damn, Millie, are you ok?" Lake had his potions with him like always so he was going to offer her some if her eyes had been singed like his had. "No." Lake nodded and used one of his hands to reach back and get his potion. Pulling the cork Lake took a swig and handed the rest to her after he found her hand.
"Is this a healing potion?" Lake nodded but remembered there was no way she would be able to see what he had just done so he said. "Yes." Once Millie finally took it from him he heard her say, "oops" So he asked. "What happened?"
"I spilled most of it, I didn''t realize the top was off already." Lake decided to just let Millie handle whatever was happening over there and risked opening one of his eyes to see if the blinding spell had ended yet. Being able to tell that the brightness had at least faded, Lake slowly peaked over the railing until he was standing.
Lake noticed right away the ck mist and the mini sun were gone and said. "You guys can open what''s left of your eyes." Lake said it like this because he had a skill that actually strengthened his eyes so he was sure everyone else had more than slightly singed their eyes just now.
Taking some time to look at what had changed while they hadn''t been able to see the city Lake saw there were now huge parts of the city that had been ttened. He had expected this but that wasn''t what he was actually looking for. "Where''s the giant?" Lake said this more to himself because none of the others had gotten back up yet so they would be unable to answer his question.
After Lake finished looking in every direction that he could he looked straight up into the sky. He knew the temple tried their best to draw strong enemies up into the sky to fight so he thought that was probably why the giant was no longer standing in the city. It didn''t take him long to see the giant flying upwards after what looked like a small golden light at this point.
Lake couldn''t help but giggle a little at what he was seeing because the giant looked a little silly as it flew. It had its arms straight out and its hands were open. It was almost like it was pretending to be an airne like he had seen kids do in his past life. He could just imagine it doing ne noises as it quickly gained altitude.
"Why are youughing?" Lake looked back to see Millie finally had her eyes open and was looking at him like he was crazy. When he saw her he started tough even harder, her eyes looked like she had been crying for hours. They were red and swollen and it seemed her face was now slightly sunburnt.
Not wanting her to think he was nowughing at her he quickly pointed out the giant for her but it seemed she still didn''t get it because she said. "Why is that funny?" Lake didn''t know how to exin it to someone who wouldn''t know what a ne was so he said. "It looks stupid flying." And ended the exnation there because he wanted to watch it fly in front of the moon.
After the most majestic thing he had ever seen ended, Lake looked back to see Millie''s face was done healing and she looked normal. He was about to ask if the potion was done because his servants still needed some but Millie''s face suddenly looked shocked and Lake saw her cover her eyes again.
Turning around to see what had happened to get such a huge reaction from her Lake was just in time to see the golden light disappear from the sky and all that was left was seven giant figures. It seemed he had just missed the best part, the twist by turning around. "Man, I really can''t see what''s going on anymore."
...
Tiff hadn''t been looking back every few moments and had been focusing on the mission she had given herself but a massive golden sh was enough to make the scouts she was following stop and look back, so she had an opportunity to stop and check to see if they had just destroyed the darkness spell the giant had used.
They were already pretty far and the fields they were currently running through was making it kind of hard to see the city so she couldn''t tell if they had or not but that didn''t really factor in when it seemed the battle had moved to the sky.
Watching the giant use what seemed to be a really sophisticated method of flying that wasn''t Wind magic to chase after one of the other members of the 23 Tiff nodded. They had all been taught to lead the fight away from any popted areas to minimize losses so it seemed they had the fight under control enough that they were sticking to their training.
Once the giant was far enough away that would be when Dawn, who was an archer, would help whoever had been chosen to go up into the sky most likely one of the three swords kill the giant. If the fight went ording to the n they would only need two of them to finish off this lone giant without suffering any huge damage to the city of their forces.
Tiff was relieved everything was going well and went to follow after the scouts that had started to move again when she saw something terrible. Out of nowhere six more giants had appeared and were now surrounding the golden light that represented her friend. Before they could retreat Tiff saw one of the giants rush in and while she couldn''t tell what kind of attack had been used or if it hadnded she saw the golden light was now missing.
Tiff was about to lose her mind when she saw a giant golden wave radiate outwards from where the initial sh had happened and she calmed down. This was a pretty good sign that they were still alive even if she couldn''t see them. Holy magic was extremely hard to use because the Holy goddess was dead at the moment so it wasn''t something you could really do if you were on the verge of dying because you needed extreme focus even if you were holding one of the blessed weapons.
Hearing the other scouts start to move again Tiff gave up on whatever she had hoped to do in following them and just kept her eyes on the sky. Tonight''s battle had just turned from slightly dangerous to there being a good chance some of the 23 were going to die. She needed to get back to the city and try to get Jon''s attention.
She was sure he would be watching the fight and even though she could no longer track him because the thieves had taken the tracker back when they had kidnaped her she was sure if she was able to get his attention he would give her back the dagger and maybe even help her. He had done it once already after all.
Chapter 143: Unexpectedly Important
Chapter 143: Unexpectedly Important
Tiff was returning to the city much faster than she had left it because she was moving at her own speed which was much higher than that of the scouts she had been following. She was also moving in a straight line because there was no longer a giant she had to avoid in the middle of the city.
Getting to the city Tiff made herself invisible and dashed over the first wall then headed towards the Alchemist guild hoping Jon would actually be there. She was pretty sure he lived there full time and now wasn''t exactly a time someone would want to be out and about so she hoped once she got close enough and turned off her invisibility he would see her no problem ande give her the dagger like he said he would.
Getting outside the Alchemist guilds barrier Tiff headed towards where she had been watching the Alchemist guild the other day because it was the closest she could get to her mark when she had still been tracking Jon. She had spent most of a day sitting here the other day waiting for him toe out of the guild so she could ambush him but it wasn''t a good hiding ce if you weren''t invisible because she was literally standing on the roof of a huge building.
Turning off her invisibility and making herself as visible as possible Tiff just hoped Jon was actually watching the fight and took a second to look down at the city because she was sure most people would be looking straight up into the sky now. Looking up into the sky herself now that she had time she saw that the temple had given up on the trying to hide how many of them there was n because at a nce she saw 11 dots of golden light that were members of the 23 and there were also attacksing from the ground that was giving away even more of them.
Actually the temple had probably just been unable to get the others under control before they all rushed out to help however was in the sky and almost been killed. The other members had most likely all reacted like she would have if she had had her dagger which was instantly joining the fight before she received her orders.
In the time it would have taken for the new orders toe down, whoever was up there fighting all alone could have died. She was sure the temple was going to be mad at them allter for this but the fact that one of the three swords hadn''t been killed would probably lessen how mad they were and if they were lucky the temple would agree with their decision.
As she watched she had to say it seemed the 23 hadn''t all rushed out so their exact number was still hidden which was what the temple wanted at most only 17 of them seemed involved at the moment which was close to the two of them per one giant rule the temple had set for this fight.
As she watched the current bnce of this battle Tiff had to say it seemed it was under control. She could tell the 23 were having a hard time actually getting their attacks tond but that was also true for the giants and with there being more of them that meant even if only 10% of their attacks werending it was slowly whittling down the giants.
It seemed what the temple had said about the effects of Holy mana on undead had been true. It seemed they did in fact have a huge advantage element wise which was weird because the Demon Lord had literally just flipped the principles of the Holy element to make the Unholy element.
When you first heard something like that you would think the elements would be even and cancel each other out. This must be the fact that the Holy goddess was an actual god even if she was currently dead and the Demon Lord had yet to ascend. And you saw this in the way the two elements reacted when they shed the Holy mana erased the Unholy mana and while it weakened in the process there was still enough to deal significant damage to the giants when they were unable to dodge.
It was almost like they crumbled which reminded her of the early days of their training when the temple had shown them an undead for the first time to show them what they would be fighting against. It hadn''t been a giant or anything just a normal undead and their handlers had shown them how tough undead could be by cycling through different spells and elements and while a few had been able to kill or damage the undead at the end the handler had called Greg forward to use a holy spell and the undead had instantly returned to what it was supposed to be which was dust.
Undead had the opposite of what normal creatures had in them that gave them life and it was what kept them together and allowed them to exist in the first ce, a lot of people called it unlife but tiff had always thought that sounded weird; Holy mana obliterated unlife because it held principles that granted life/healed normal creatures.
This life principle hadter been used by another god to make the Life element they would champion to be a god of this world but it had originally been part of the Holy element. Of course the Life element wasn''t as effective against undead because it onlybated one principle the Unholy element had instead of all of them like the Holy element did.
Also, the Life temple didn''t really ever get involved in battles other than to heal people that had been injured so they were mostly considered neutral. Notpletely neutral though because they were clearly unable to heal the army of undead the Demon Lord used to fight so only humans benefited from their help making it that the life temple helped them more than they did the Demon Worshipers.
The Life temple also attacked anyone that entered what they called the Life domain so that was something else that made them not exactly neutral. Tiff thought it was a dumb stance to take but the Life temple wasn''t the only temple that was neutral so maybe they knew something the Light Temple hadn''t bothered to tell them in fear it would make them all abandon the war.
She couldn''t really think what that big secret could do to change the fact that the Demon Lord killed a lot of people though. The Demon Lord was clearly a bad guy so the fact that so many of the gods chose to stay neutral in this war was weird to her. Of course, even her ability to find secrets probably wasn''t good enough to learn what was going on in the background between gods.
Snapping out of what she was thinking about Tiff threw her arms up in the air and whan "Woo." One of the giants had just started to fall from the sky and that was something worth celebrating because unless these giants hade tomit suicide that meant the battle should end soon with them retreating before they lost anymore of one of the strongest things the Demon Lord had going for him in this war.
Looking back at the Alchemist guild Tiff reactivated her invisibility, she hade here to get her dagger so she could join the battle but that was no longer necessary and it didn''t seem like Jon was going toe out to meet her no matter how long she stood here and waved her arms around like an idiot.
The most likely thing to happen was actually her getting noticed by some of the Alchemist guilds guards and it causing an awkward interaction between the Temple and them. She could just picture the Alchemist guild asking the Temple why they had sent a person to wave at them the whole battle.
And she now had something more important to do anyway. The giant that had died in this battle wasn''t a normal monster. It had some Divinity in it, even if it was just a small amount. That meant the goal of this battle had just changed to what she had been trained for harvesting the kills they got.
She was the perfect person for this job because any corpse that had divinity in it became a target for every person that was around. All you had to do to harvest the divinity was get your hands on the core, so it because a true treasure even if you didn''t have ns to use it on yourself and she was the best of the 23 for this job because she was the least effective of them in battle and the sneakiest so she could harvest the giants core and the other giants wouldn''t even realize she had done it if she did a good job so in their efforts to reim the divinity that hade from the Demon Lord they would open themselves up to more attacks.
If they were lucky this would lead to another giant dying in the ensuing fight over the devine core. There was one problem though her stealth wouldn''t work on something like one of those giants without her dagger not with how high their stats were they would literally be able to see not only her but the ability itself.
She hadn''t seen it herself but people or things that had Perception over 100 had what people called God Eyes this wasn''t a skill just the effect of perception getting to the next level. This gave them the ability to see things like skills given from jobs when they were activated if the person they were observing wasn''t divine themselves.
That meant she wouldn''t be able to be sneaky this time but she was still pretty sure she could be the first to the body. It was falling and all the people in the sky were chasing it while fighting and the fact that they were fighting made them too slow to be the first to it. So it was between everyone on the ground and she was very fast with her Agility at 130 with all her skills that affected her speed activated.
Racing towards where she thought the giant would Land Tiff beat it to the spot with her being faster than something could fall. As soon as the giantnded on the ground sending up a huge amount of dust Tiff ran towards the body with her sorry excuse of a dagger to start the harvest. Using imbue to coat the dagger with Holy mana, Tiff started to dig into the giant''s chest in the search of the core.
Because of the dust she didn''t know how much time she had till the others would be here or if she was the only person currently trying to dig into the giants body but with her use of the holy element she was the only person here who wouldn''t be digging through the flesh of a demigod with nothing but her brute strength.
Quickly getting into the rib cage Tiff saw what she was there for and remembering what she had been taught in preparation of this process Tiff made sure to grab the glowing rust colored core with covered skin. She wasn''t really in danger if she didn''t do this but a divine core wasn''t really something you should spend long periods of time in contact with as a mortal.
Now that she had it she didn''t waste any time in going to the one ce she had truly been trying to avoid until the other members of the 23 returned, the temple. With something like this in her hands she was in more danger out here than at the temple because she didn''t believe for one second the giants wouldn''t be after her now that she had it and even if they did give up on retrieving the core in her hands and decided to retreat she wasn''t going to risk a look over her shoulder to look.
Chapter 144: Probing Attack
Chapter 144: Probing Attack
Lake could tell the fight was about to end when the giants started to head away from the city because he understood the concept of running away. Stepping into his room he thought about what he had just watched, the fight itself had just been a lot of the two sides throwing huge attacks at each other or at least that had been what he could see.
He was sure there had been other things going on like them using skills and all that but he had been too far away to really notice anything like what skills they had been using to change their big ass attacks. It kind of reminded him of something like how battleships would probably fight just shooting the biggest guns they had until they either won or they sunk.
Of course the best part had been when one of the giants fell from the sky after being hit with a head shot that he guessed had instantly killed them. He had to say those giants ended up being a lot weaker than he had expected. It was like they didn''t expect such heavy opposition or maybe they weren''t that experienced.
He had seen one get made in the past so he guessed those ones he had seen in that battle were newly born which made themck battle experience to the point where they had kind of just sat there and took attacks. It could have also been that it was just hard for them to maneuver their big bodies well in the air.
He had seen the pose they had chosen for flight and maybe looking that stupid was out of necessity to increase their mobility enough that it wasn''t a death sentence for them to fight in the air like that because he had noticed a lot of the golden lights had been moving fast enough were they had been flying circles around them.
Oh that was another thing, there ended up being a lot more holy mages in the city than anyone had expected. Lake had kind of known because of the vault he had broken into but it had never been confirmed until now. When that had been revealed everyone on the balcony other than him had gone crazy like they had just seen a miracle.
Well he guessed they had, in a world like this miracles were everywhere because the gods and what they were doing was very apparent it was actually somon that it made him wonder what passed for a miracle here. In his world people freaked over something like toast having a picture on it because that was really all you could hope for but here he guessed a god giving you a Legendary job was probably a miracle.
If that was the case he was praying for a miracle over here, who didn''t want a job that gave all Legendary skills, he had found some of his Legendary skills were actually better than some of the Unique ones he had gotten. Fast Hands was Legendary and so was Decrypt and Detector. Detector could literally find things that he didn''t even know existed with its only downside being it had kind of a short range.
"Lake I''m going to go home." Lake looked up from whatever he had been looking at while he had been thinking and said. "Goodbye." He was happy Millie never really stuck around after the fights ended because he felt like they didn''t really have anything to say to one another and it would be kind of weird if they just sat at his table and looked at one another until it was his bedtime.
Looking at what time it was he decided his day was over. The fight had been kind of long and while he guessed he could go and try to start his Fire practice he didn''t think he was ready yet and if he went now it wouldn''t be that long before he started to feel tired. The best move would have been to continue reading the book but he had too much on his mind with the fight that just happened and he felt like he would have a hard time focusing on what he was reading and would have to just reread it again tomorrow.
That meant all he had left was to eat. He hadn''t really had that much food today because he had just never thought about it and that was weird because usually that was his top priority. It was possible he had just had too much yesterday and since he had never started to feel hungry till after he was in his room and he hadn''t felt like it was worth his time to go back down right after he had gotten to his room so he had just had a slice of bread today.
That meant he could eat another slice without it messing up his appetite for tomorrow and he wouldn''t have to go to bed on empty. Going to the kitchen part of his room, Lake pulled out his bread from the box thing he kept it in and sliced a piece off for himself and went over to his table to think some more thoughts while he had his snack.
...
Jenson had been told to stay here until the fight was over and on the off chance all of the giants died Domare wanted him to return to the closest group of Demon Worshipers and lead them to report how many Holy mages had been involved in the fight that had just taken ce. That hadn''t happened though so his new goal was to just go to where the six giants who had survived were.
Once he was there he would follow Domare until he was told what his next mission would be. He could guess it would probably have something to do with organizing the forces they would be sending to take out the biggest gathering of Holy mages he had ever seen. If they hadn''t been fighting against the Temple who were responsible for protecting Holy mages he would probably have a hard time believing how many there were.
In his twenty years of being a Demon Worshiper he had only seen eight and out of those eight he had killed four which was how he had earned his rank that had allowed him to work so closely to Domare. Not many people actually understood how important Domare was.
Domare had been the first giant that was given the ability to make more of their kind, before that the only one who could make the giants was the Demon Lord himself and that wasn''t the only thing that made Domare special, Domare was the oldest surviving giant from the time when the Demon Lord hadn''t had as many of them so he put more into each of them.
Jenson didn''t know what it was but there were rumors Domare had a Legendary Job and he believed it 100%. In his time surviving under Domare he had seen them do some wild things and the way they gave orders made you think they could see not only their future but what could have happened if you made a different choice.
It wasn''t an all the time thing and there seemed to be certain conditions that had to be met but the number of times he had seen Domare solve problems before they could happen made him wonder what had happened during this fight. Domare had seemed confident in this fight so something had made it so Domare wasn''t able to see through the temple''s defenses like normal.
Jenson stopped thinking about it because he had just found the giants. Domare seemed fine which wasn''t surprising but the rest of them were in rough shape. One was even missing an arm which he hadn''t seen happen so it must have happened as they were retreating, it wasn''t really a life threatening injury for a undead though so there was no reason to worry about it, Domare would be able to heal the others as soon as they regained their mana.
Since Domare had been the one who made them they were technically undead under their control meaning Domare could heal them like any necromancer could to the undead they had under their control. Necromancer was one of the new jobs the Demon Lord had just allowed people who met the requirements to start unlocking and Jenson was a big fan.
He had been quick to get it because he had already maxed out the Unholy Mage and Dark Mage jobs so all he had to do was enter one of the Demon Temples and he had been lucky enough to get it. "How Many?" Jenson snapped back to reality and quickly answered Domare''s question.
"I detected 21 of them right after you all revealed yourselves and that was the most I detected at one time so I think that is probably pretty close to the actual number." Jenson had been hiding close to the city during the battle fulfilling the role of a scout to help make sure Domare didn''t need to worry about anything other than fighting and like he said earlier, be ast resort messenger if anything went wrong and they were all killed.
"Were you able to get anything in the short amount of time you had the Mage in your hand?" Jenson wouldn''t usually dare to ask anything directly like this but it was kind of important because with their lose this had be more of a probing attack to get information about the enemy and he knew one of Domare''s odd skills that he hadn''t seen any of the other giants use only worked if Domare was able to hold them still and he had seen Domare try at the beginning of the sneak attack instead of killing the mage Domare had used the opportunity to grasp them.
The mage had been able to escape using an attack but that didn''t mean Domare had failed to get any information first. "No, the mages wield blessed armaments." Domare stopped talking for a few seconds after saying this and Jenson could tell it was because they were about to use a spell.
After a few seconds of Domare gathering mana, Jenson saw the wounds on the other giants start to disappear, ending when the one giant regained its arm. After all of this Domare stood and said. "Time to return." With that order all of them followed Domare away from the city, not sure when they would return.
Chapter 145: Master Mandis
Chapter 145: Master Mandis
The next day Lake didn''t worry about rushing off to work as soon as he woke up like normal and instead took the time to talk to his servants about the belt he had asked for. He understood they had been preupied with the giant that wasing because he had had them out on the balcony the whole time but he still wanted to know how it wasing along.
"Yes sir we put in your request and were told it would be a few days." Lake didn''t understand why it would take so long for a belt so he said. "Why so long for a belt, surely there were a fewying around."
"No sir, they''re amodity so all the ones in the guild at the moment already have owners, we''re waiting on more to be sent to the guild by the cksmiths guild. If we''re lucky it will happen today." Lake nodded with approval and did the only other thing he needed to do before leaving and stepped out onto the balcony to see what the city looked like today.
"To his surprise he saw people and he got excited that there was some sort of truce or something but after getting a better look he saw these people were clearly hired by the king to clear the roads of all the debris fromst night that had started to make it kind of hard to travel in a cart around the city.
That was the other thing he saw, carts. It was clear that today was being treated as a safe day where there wouldn''t be any big battles. It made sense afterst night Lake was sure both sides had fallen back to make ns. Now that they both knew what they would have to face, Lake was sure they would take the time to gather bigger armies.
Seeing the carts also made him realize what the servant had meant when he said he could be getting the belt today, it was unlikely that Lucas would waste this opportunity to get more supplies in and make money by trading what they didn''t need. It also made him realize he should go and get done with work as quickly as possible.
This might be hisst chance to level up before the war became devastating and he was stuck inside until it was over. Now that he could no longer go into the dungeon, time outside had be a realmodity. After Lake thought this he rushed towards the Master Lab, once he was inside Lake saw some of the masters were actually working today.
He didn''t see Na at his normal position though, looking around Lake eventually saw Naing out of the section of the Master Lab that had books and desks. Walking over to him, Lake just made it known he was here and let Na say whatever he wanted. "Lake, good to see you. You''re a little early today but that''s fine, follow me."
Lake did what he was told and silently celebrated the fact that Na seemed in a good mood today. It wasn''t like Na was ever unpleasant to him or anything but when he was annoyed Lake had a hard time getting any information out of him and that could be annoying when he didn''t know what he was doing or what was going on.
After Lake followed Na for a while he could tell they were going to be working on something new today and it seemed he would be helping more than one Master today. They were quickly approaching one of the other masters who seemed to be organizing ingredients and equipment.
Once they got there Na handed the other master the book he had been carrying and said. "I found it, Julien had it." Lake saw the other master''s face as he turned to take the book and knew who it was instantly. Lake had spent a lot of time looking at this man while being in the Master Lab. It was the guy who was always injecting things into monsters/corpses.
"Of course he did, I''m sure he knew we were going to need it and went to get it to pretend he was using it, tell me did he ask for something to let you use it?"
"Yes, he asked to see my recipe for Siclilly fertilizer."
"What an annoying man, at least it seems hiszy ass is going to be doing something soon." Lake felt like he shouldn''t be listening to this because they were most likely talking about one of the other Masters so he cleared his throat and said. "Excuse me, masters." And tried to walk away but he was stopped by the new Master saying. "No it''s fine we''re done. Come back here so I can introduce myself."
Lake did as he was told and turned back around to face the Master. "I''m Master Mandis, I''ve seen you looking at me a few times so I''m sure you know what I do here in the guild." Lake quickly said. "My name''s Lake, and I only vaguely understand what you do, I''m still inexperienced."
"Well, most of my time is spentpleting requests for specialized poisons, say there''s a outbreak of a certain type of monster somewhere they can pay the guild and I''ll make a poison that their hunters can coat their arrows and such in that will make any small wounds they inflict lethal, It''s considered a luxury service so it''s expensive but you''d be surprised how many jobs I get."
"What about the rest of your time?"
"Torture, I''m in charge of making things like truth serum and pain multipliers and other luxury goods we sell, Its for people who cant just curse someone and make them tell you whatever you want. That''s also closer to what we''ll be doing today." After master Mandis said this, Lake realized what they were doing and asked. "Are we getting the stuff for the execution ready?"
"That''s right we were told to find a way to make this execution as cheap as possible while making all these pansies happy, oh, not you, I''m not criticizing your idea or anything I just don''t think it should be necessary." Lake agreed with this and said so. "I agree. It seems kind of silly and I would have never even suggested it if it wasn''t for the fact that that meeting was dragging on, I mean we all have things to do and I was hungry."
Mandis seemed to think what he said was funny and asked him. "You couldn''t get the food out of your head huh?" Lake nodded, he had been standing right next to Millie so it was pretty much all he could think about and the fact he didn''t care about what the meeting was about at all made it much worse."
"Alright let''s get to work." Master Na seemed to have had enough of their little bonding session and snapped them both out of it. "Lake, read this section right here ande help once you''re done." Na opened the book they had been talking about and pointed to a section that was printed in red.
"Yes Master Na." After he said this the two Masters got to work and that left Lake to read the book. He was only a few words in when he had to stop because what he was reading scared him. He then quickly remembered that poison didn''t work on him as far as he knew, and continued to read.
''Dice poison shares some simrities with all poisons that interfere with healing: Extreme pain, and it''s easy to cure if it''s known which poison was used but they still need to have the correct type of antidote. The way Dice poison differs from the others is the method it uses to kill, it causes barriers of tough ck scabs to form in any type of wound that need to be removed before the wound can properly heal. It also interferes with the regrowing of limbs which is where it gets its name. Any limbs regrown while inflicted with Dice poison will be malformed and usually useless. Dice poison also stops the person afflicted from bleeding out so it''s usually used in live capture cases but can still be fatal if the wounds are to the neck, head, or organs.''
Lake quickly finished the description of the poison and read the ingredients and process to brew the poison. It wasn''t tooplicated and only had four ingredients for the simplest version which was the version they were going to use for the execution. Walking over to Na Lake saw he wasn''t currently doing any actual Alchemy and was just setting up the equipment so he said. "Master, I''m ready to help."
"Ok go over there and make nine doses, when you''re done you cane and watch us work or you can head home, you''re only responsible for the poison me and Mandis are making everything else because your skills won''t really help since it''s not poison."
"Yes Master Na." Lake had never made a dose of something before, it was much smaller than a normal potion so all he needed to do today was make one potion then split it up into nine small containers. This wasn''t the level of work you would expect to be happening in the Master Lab but he wasn''t a Master so he was perfect for this job.
Getting the four ingredients, three nt and one monster, Lake filled a cup with water and dumped everything in all at once. He wasn''t being reckless; this was literally how you made it. After a bit of stirring he was done. The effect of this poison was from the monster ingredient that came from a type of worm that had really hard ck scales that you ground up and added so the nt ingredients were just to make the potion stable enough that you could store it for long periods of time.
They were low level and he didn''t even have to use Poison Control to make sure the poison didn''t fail. Lake was sure the only reason Na had had him do this part was because it was so beneath him Na would have felt embarrassed to do it himself. Lake shrugged and quickly poured the nine doses and brought them over to Na who seemed to be about to start with whatever they were doing.
"I''m done, Master." Na didn''t stop setting up and just pointed at a small leather case Lake could tell was specifically made to hold the small ss bottles he had just filled. Sliding them into ce, Lake said. "Master, I''m going to go now." Lake was sure Master Na probably didn''t care if he stayed or not but Lake felt it woulde off as rude if he didn''t say bye.
"You don''t need to worry abouting to work tomorrow, I''m sure you can guess but Lucas will be announcing the execution today and it''s scheduled for tomorrow so no one will be here." Lake nodded and left after he was able to wave bye to Master Mandis. After that he went towards Lucas''s office to ask to go out.
Chapter 146: Outside Again
Chapter 146: Outside Again
It hadn''t been hard to talk Lucas into letting him outside without guards after Lake told him thatst time they had been more of a burden than a help without a cart. They were just too slow to be of any use to him and him having to heal them had used up a good portion of his health potionst time after he had fought with Tiffany.
Lake hadn''t said anything about anything that had happened after the fight with Tiffany because he didn''t want Lucas to know but he had told him about the fight itself and Lucas had said him worrying about the guards wasn''t what they were for and you were just supposed to leave them and runaway but Lake made it clear he was too fast for the guards to keep up with him so him going slow with them just increased the odds he was attacked.
After he said this Lucas told him to do whatever he wanted and to go away because he was busy. So after making a quick stop to refill all of his potions Lake had headed out alone. Once he was on the streets Lake didn''t stay in town to level up and instead went towards the edge of the city.
There was no longer anything he could steal so it would be a waste of time to try and level up in town and Lake had heard of a new source of Exp that was near town, bandits had apparently be extremelymon in thest week and Lake had heard some of the cart drivers talking about it while he got some food to bring with him from the cafeteria.
Lake had found people gave good Exppared to the low level monsters you could find scarcely around the capital so bandits were his best bet if he wished to raise his strength without doing something like asking Lucas for some potions that gave stats.
Lake knew people frowned upon that form of getting stronger because it kind of ruined your potential because once you maxed out your stats you could no longer gain any new skills. The only people who relied on potions to gain stats were those who were afraid ofbat and untalented people who couldn''t unlock jobs no matter what they did.
Lake had kind of had a problem unlocking a job so he could understand how annoying it could be especially for people who had a hard time every time. So far the only job he had tried a bunch of times and failed to get was Enchanter, Enchanter was an Epic job though so of course it would be hard.
Epic was the highest you could unlock naturally because if you wanted a legendary job you had to be lucky enough to get one from a god. Lake didn''t see himself getting in the good graces of a god any time soon so he wasn''t even thinking about Legendary jobs yet. "There we go."
Lake stopped because he saw a cart that looked like it had been attacked at some point up ahead on the road. Turning on Mana Vision Lake started to move forward slowly. He doubted he would find anything this close to the capital and this cart robbery had probably happened a few days ago but you never knew, maybe there were some bandits dumb enough to stay this close to the biggest war zone in the world.
Getting to the cart Lake didn''t see anything that was big enough to be a bandit so he started to move as fast as he could again. He had plenty of stamina and stamina potion so there was no reason to hold back, time was more important at the moment anyway. After a while he started to get to a more wild part of the area around the capital.
Trees started to appear and soon he was close to a small forest. This seemed like the kind of ce people would live if they were breaking thew so Lake went towards it with Mana Vision activated. It wasn''t long before he saw some cores but they were all clearly just normal small monsters and such and while he wanted to kill them it would take too much time for each one and he would probably get less than 10 for each one.
Humans gave hundreds of Exp and because of how people were there were usually a lot of them together. That being said this forest was prettyrge so it might take him a while to find any and he might finish looking to find it was empty all along. He was still going to do it though because the next ce he thought might have bandits was pretty far away and he had no interest in going back there.
...
Tiff was having a hard time keeping herself awake at this point, she had been in a meeting ever since sessfully bringing the divine core back. She understood it was important but she didn''t understand why the members of the 23 needed to be here. They were all tired after the fight and now they had to sit here and listen to the higher ups of the temple make a decision on what to do with it.
Plus the Temple head was actually here because of how important a divine core was so in the end whatever she decided would be what would happen so this meeting was more the other higher ups trying to convince her to do what they thought made the most sense. So far the three ideas were to sell it, let Greg have it, and for the Temple head to use it herself.
Tiff thought the best idea was to sell it because she knew the temple had problems with money sometimes and being a demigod wasn''t usually as good as it sounded. There were some benefits but it didn''t give you an instant increase in your stats or anything, you still had to slowly gain the stats you wanted by leveling up.
One of the nice things about being a demigod was you usually had an easier time unlocking jobs though so it didn''t take as long as reaching the max for mortals usually did plus once you passed 100 in a stat you had a much easier time killing things to gain Exp. That being said, the amount of jobs you probably had to level to reach the max for a demigod was probably ridiculous even with those advantages.
Each point of divinity raised your max by 1000 in each stat so at one divinity point you could have 1100 which was a number she doubted she would ever reach in her life, she doubted there were even that many Demigods who had reached that kind of number in any of their stats that was more like something a god would have.
"Alright that''s enough." Tiff looked up to see the Temple head seemed to have finally made up her mind and was about to tell them what they were going to do with the core. "The n I''m leaning towards is trading this to one of the God of Lights'' subordinate demigods in exchange for their help in battle or giving it directly to the God of Light himself in exchange for a Legendary job."
Of course the Temple head decided topletely ignore all the ideas that had been discussed for thest few hours and just decided to think of her own. Tiff would be annoyed but it seemed the rest of the higher ups liked these two options as well. That meant the rest of this meeting would probably go pretty quickly as they decided between the two options the Temple Head had given out.
If they decided on the Legendary job thing there was a good chance there would be more meeting to decide who would receive the job though so she hoped they went for the Demigod that would help them in battle. That would also make all of the members of the 23 safe instead of just the one who got the Legendary job.
"I''m going to hold a vote instead of making the design myself, hold up your hand if you want to trade for a legendary job from the God of Light." Right after the Temple Head said this almost every hand in the room went up including most of the 23. "I figured that was the one you all wanted, since that was over 50% of the room that wins the vote."
Tiff wasn''t surprised most of the people would be thinking about the fact that they had a chance to get the job which was a dream to most people, also the fact they wouldn''t have to worry about the Demigod leaving once their agreed upon amount of time was served was probably a big boon to the people who were actually nning the war because whoever got the job would stick around forever.
"That was the best choice anyway from what the oracle says, all the demigods are busy helping the God of Light look for the Demon Lords hiding ce anyway so I doubt they would stay for more than a few battles. Ok we''ll reconvene once I see if this is something the God of Light will agree to to decide who should receive the job. Goodbye."
With the meeting finally over Tiff looked towards the other members of the 23 and waited for them all to get up and start to head to their rooms to get up and follow behind Dawn. She wanted to ask Dawn about the exact details of the fight because while she had watched it she had been far away and too busy to look the entire time.
"Dawn, how''d all those Giants appear like that?" This was the main thing she wanted to know because if the giant could all do that they were going to have to be more careful from now on. "We''re not sure, but Greg said it was probably a skill used by the giant he was fighting that teleported them from close by. If that''s the case it''s probably a rare skill not too many of them have so I wouldn''t worry about it too much if I was you."
Before Tiff could ask another question Dawn said. "Good job getting that core back. I couldn''t believe it when I saw you carrying it, I mean, I know it''s what you were trained for but I figured you would have sat this one out because you don''t have your weapon." Tiff couldn''t help but blush when Dawn said this.
As someone who had always wanted recognition as a child she found it embarrassing now that she got any. "I was close to where itnded so I didn''t really do much." Seeing Dawn''s door Tiff quickly said bye and headed around the corner. As soon as she was out of sight she turned invisible and snuck inside one of the rooms she knew she could use to hide while she slept.
She had a room but she didn''t feel safe while she was in there so she always hid before she went to sleep inside the temple "Tiffany good work today." Tiffany was slightly startled when someone spoke to her while she was invisible but calmed down when she saw who it was. Deactivating her invisibility Tiff said. "Thank you Temple Head." After she said this the Temple Head walked away leaving her alone again.
It was a short interaction but it had been nice to talk to the Temple Head directly again after all this time. Tiff hadn''t seen her since she was selected to be in the 23 and was sure the Temple Head would be off doing whatever she did that kept her busy all the time as soon as this whole divine core thing was over.
Going back to what she had been doing Tiff quickly found a nice ce to sleep in a stuffed storage room. As she tried to fall asleep she couldn''t help but wonder what the legendary job was going to be like. Greg was the obvious choice so she was sure she would get to know everything about it as he showed it off in the future.
Chapter 147: Forest People
Chapter 147: Forest People
"Finally." It had been about forty minutes since he had entered the forest in search of people to kill and while he hadn''t yetpleted this goal he had found something rted to it. It was arge clearing that had very clearly been used as a camp. He could tell because the ces where there had been fires were still pitch ck and there were a few ces where paths had started to form from people repeatedly walking in the same ce.
That being said they were gone now but the fact they had been here until recently made him think he might be able to follow their trail. He had never tried to do something like that before but he felt like it would probably be better than just running around the forest randomly. Plus if there had been a lot of them here they had probably left a pretty obvious trail to where they went.
Doing a quick loop around the old campsite, Lake found a trail that headed deeper into the forest and one that went in a direction that led him to think it went towards the road he had just been on. Figuring either could be the right one to follow, Lake just went down the one that led deeper into the forest.
If he was wrong there was no harm done and he could just go to the road to continue his journey. It didn''t take long for Lake to see something with his Mana Vision three cores next to each other up ahead. It wasn''t as many as he had been hoping for but three people might be enough Exp for him to max a job depending on the multiplier of said job.
And he knew the perfect job if he was going to be killing humans, switching his job to Ripper Lake rushed towards the cores until he got his eyes on who he was about to attack. The thing was they were clearly not bandits, it was an old man holding a staff which probably meant the old guy was some form of mage and two children who were probably his grandchildren. All three were sitting on a log and the old guy was telling the two children something.
Lake didn''t really want to kill children so he stopped his charge and slowly walked into the clearing, once the old mage saw him Lake said. "I''m looking for bandits. Have you seen any around here?" As soon as Lake said that the old man started to stand, Lake could tell this wasn''t an easy action for this old man and it made Lake wonder how the three of them had made it so far into the forest.
"Yes we have seen some bandits, but they left in the cart they stole from us."
"Which way did they go?" Lake was sure he could catch the cart if this had just happened. "They took the road that''s directly next to this forest. Me and my Grandchildren didn''t feel safe just sitting on the side of the road so we came into the forest to hide." Lake gave the old guy a thumbs up and ran towards the road when he heard a distant yell.
"Wait." Guessing the old guy wasn''t done talking, Lake returned and said. "Sorry, do you need something?"
"Would you return our cart if you''re able to catch them?" Lake gave another thumbs up and was about to leave again when one of the kids started pulling on the old man''s long wizard beard. "Pop-pop I''m humgry." Lake looked at the small child and wondered if it knew it was trying to manipte him or if it just came naturally to something that couldn''t take care of itself. He couldn''t deny how much he wanted to give them food after hearing how the kid mispronounced hungry.
"Sorry to be more trouble, but do you have any food you could spare, just for the children is fine." Lake had more food than he could probably eat because he had taken some meat and a full loaf of bread. His n had been to eat half the loaf with his meat and save the rest forter in case he wasn''t able to make it back to the guild tonight but now that he thought about it, giving them some of Millie''s food would probably be worth the loss.
Reaching into his bag Lake grabbed the loaf and tore it into uneven halves, keeping the smaller one for himself Lake handed the bread to the old man. "Thank you, um, may I know your name?" Lake had no problem with them knowing who he was, so he said. "I''m Lake."
"Well thank you I''m Grundam and these are my grandchildren Solis and Frandar." Lake almostughed when he heard the little girl''s name but he kept it in and said. "Go ahead and give the kids the bread then tell me more about the ones who took your cart." Lake was no longer in a hurry so he thought he might as well get some more information while he was here.
Grundam quickly split the bread and said "Don''t eat too much, we need to save some forter in case the bandits ate what was on the cart already." After Grundam handed the bread to the children he turned to tell Lake about the bandits when he heard what sounded like wild animals eating.
The sound was of course the children going into a feeding frenzy from the effects of the magic bread he had just handed them. "No! Wait! What are you two doing!?" Lake didn''t say anything and just watched as the old man tried to keep the kids from eating it all. Once he had failed he turned to Lake and said. "I guess they were more hungry than I realized."
Looking at the old guys embarrassed face, Lake nodded and said. "It seems so, so back to the bandits." Lake wasn''t going to tell the old man what he had done because now that he thought about it the old guy would probably be mad that he had given him weird food for the two kids so Lake decided to just pretend like nothing had happened.
"There were seven of them. They said they didn''t want to hurt us, they just wanted the cart. I told them They were free to get in and I would let them ride for free but they insisted so I let them have it. I''m guessing they wanted the food and our luggage and didn''t need a ride away from the city."
Lake nodded and remembered the number, seven was enough to max out two different jobs if he was careful to do exactly what the Exp bonuses said to. He had his bow so he could get all the bandits off of the cart and shoot them in the face for 10X Exp and once that job maxed out he could rip the rest of them apart with his hands to get the 5X Exp from Ripper.
That would be four new skills of the Unique or Legendary rank plus whatever stats he would earn. Getting ready to leave again Lake turned to go when he stopped and thought of Treasured. If he was to use this on the three of them there was a good chance one of them would care enough about the cart right now that he might be able to know where it was.
"Would you mind letting me use one of my skills on you? It sometimes helps me track down items that were stolen."
"Go right ahead, do I need to do anything for it to work?" Lake nodded and said. "Yeah just think about your cart and take off anything you''re wearing that can interfere with skills."
"Ok I''m ready." Lake noticed the old guy didn''t take anything off so Lake assumed he didn''t have anything like a ward ring on and activated Treasured. As soon as he used it he saw a mark appear on the little girl and guessed that meant she was his most treasured person. That left ce and thing, so he turned to look back at the city to see a mark in that direction.
Lake assumed that would be his favorite ce, most likely his home, so that left item. Doing a full circle Lake eventually saw thest mark and after looking at it for a few seconds he could tell it was definitely moving. "Alright I''ll do my best to get your cart back to you before tomorrow but if I fail you should start picking Whanto to fill yourselves."
Lake really only said thatst part because Whanto was such a funny sounding word and he liked to say it, plus he had seen a few patches of it on his way into the forest so there was plenty for them to eat if they started to starve because he was unable to bring the cart back for whatever reason.
Heading back out onto the road, Lake tried to measure how far away the cart was but all he could really tell was it was in range of his feet and that there was no way they were going to be able to outrun him.
Chapter 148: Cart Battle
Chapter 148: Cart Battle
Lake was making good progress chasing down the cart, he was pretty sure he would be able to see them soon and them having stopped after a while of him chasing them was probably the reason he had been able to get as close as he was. He was a little worried about why they had stopped though.
There were good reasons they could have stopped but he felt like there was a good chance something had happened to the cart that had made them abandon it. If this turned out to be the reason that meant he would not only have to return to Grundam with the bad news but he would have to go looking for some more bandits after spending so much time looking for the ones he was currently after.
Cresting a hill, Lake finally made eye contact with the cart. Like he already knew, it was motionless on the road and he could also tell there were no longer any people anywhere near it. Once he finally got to it after checking the surroundings for people using Mana Vision Lake saw whatever had been pulling the cart was also gone.
That meant the cart was useless and unless he found the seven people who had taken it before they ate the horse or whatever those three people he had spoken to earlier were going to be living in that forest for a long time. After looking inside the cart to see if anything was inside it, Lake started to look around for any signs of where the bandits had gone.
Finding some tracks that lead away from the road, Lake started to follow them but looking in the direction they went he couldn''t really see anything other than a small hill. As he was following the tracks he started to see a few animal tracks every now and then that gave him hope he wasn''t toote to save the cart puller.
Getting close to the hill, Lake slowed down and approached while using Mana Vision. "There we go." Lake could see cores moving around on the other side of the hill so he sped up slightly and got ready for the fight but as he was getting closer he started to see more and more cores. Once he was standing right next to the hill there were around thirty cores and all of them were up and moving around.
It wasn''t really a problem though it was just with this many people the fight would be a lot harder to control even if they were all weak, some would probably get away as well and with this many there was a chance there would be someone who was as strong as he was. Wanting to get a look at them, Lake crept up the hill and peaked over to see families eating.
There were seven families sitting around a big fire as meat roasted. When he saw the meat Lake knew he was toote and the cart pulling animal was dead. Going back down the hill, Lake started to think about what he should do next. When he had set out to kill bandits he hadn''t really thought about the fact they would probably have families and if he wanted to kill them it would have to be in front of their children.
A lot of people would probably think Lake was a cold blooded killer if they had seen everything he had done in the past but that would be because they had never seen a real cold blooded killer; he was at most a regr killer and he really only ever did it when it was necessary. Like when he was attacked or the person was going to die anyway and he might as well take the Exp.
Deciding that he might still be able to get something out of this, Lake walked around the hill and said. "Are you the seven who stole that cart out there?" Lake''s n was to antagonize these seven into attacking him so he could defend himself into leveling up. "No we wouldn''t do that." Turning to the one who had answered, Lake said. "You''re lying, you''re literally eating their horse or whatever it was."
After Lake said this he could see all the people who weren''t part of the theft start to question where all their food hade from. That wasn''t what he was after though he was hoping for a more violent interaction not just him yelling at people who had been feeding their families so he said. "That''s it, you''re under arrest."
Pulling out his knife Lake said. "Come over here and receive your punishment." Lake was implying a death sentence to make the people think they had no choice but to fight back but instead the man said. "Arrested for what, I didn''t break anyws and you''re not even a royal guard."
"What do you mean you didn''t break anyws you stole a cart from someone."
"I didn''t steal anything, we asked the guy for the cart and he gave it to us." Lake guessed that was technically what had happened but that was a misleading way to put it. "Why would he give you his cart, he needed it to get away, you clearly used force to get it, that makes it stealing."
"No. All we did was ask." Lake was done with this argument and said. "Well in that case he wants it back, bring him his cart and I''ll go away."
"No, it''s ours now he can''t have it. Plus how would we even get it back to him, we ate the horse."
"So it was a horse after all." Lake had been pretty sure but there hadn''t been any evidence that it wasn''t something like a donkey. "That''s right and we ate it so go away." Lake had lost this battle so he left and walked back to the cart. Once he was there he looked at it for a moment before he started to walk away.
He didn''t have the time to drag it back to Grundam and he had already wasted like an hour on this mission he had been given. He also thought that even if he did get the cart back to Grundam it would just end up being stolen again especially if it still had its horse so then not getting it back was for the best. They would be happy in the woods surrounded by food and family.
...
After a while of running down the road Lake saw another group of treesrge enough to be a forest and headed towards it. It was demoralizing to have to start all over again but he had learned from the mistakes he had madest time. If he saw any people who needed his help he would just ignore them.
It didn''t take long for Lake to find evidence of people in the forest. There had clearly been arge encampment here in this forest but likest time they were already gone. There was a big difference between this encampment and thest one though. He could clearly see cart tracks here and while all they told him they were using the same road he was to travel that meant this forest was empty and he could move on.
Plus with how fast he was these days he was starting to get far enough from the capital that there would start to be monsters he could kill while looking around the woods for people to kill. He was probably already a third of the way to the capital wall and if it was his goal to get there he would make it before nightfall.
Getting back onto the road, Lake started to run again before stopping because he felt a little hungry. There was no reason to not eat something as he moved so after getting some of his meat out he started to walk at a normal pace. As he was walking, Lake couldn''t help but wonder what the odds were of him being robbed now that he was looking like a normal person who was just taking a walk.
He had been pretty good about using Mana Vision on his surroundings while he ran but he was going so fast there was a chance he had missed a few robbers that had been waiting by the road for people toe by. They had probably missed him all well because most people couldn''t see him when he was moving at his top speed.
That being said, what were the odds he had missed all of them? What was more likely was most people had already made it away from the capital and the few he had found were just stragglers who had been unsessful in their attempt to leave the capital for whatever reason.
Looking ahead, Lake finally saw something that wasn''t just more road or wilderness; it seemed he had found a town and since he was heading there anyway he might as well see if there were any people out and about. He was heading away from the direction the armies hade from so he felt there was a good chance he could find someone to talk to and if he was lucky he could ask them about bandits or monsters he could kill.
Chapter 149: New Town
Chapter 149: New Town
Lake didn''t just barge into the town on the off chance there was something weird going on there. And he felt like this was a good decision because as he got closer he saw there were quite a few people walking around on the streets like there was no danger of anything happening to them.
He had purposely gone in the opposite direction to where all the smoke could be seen on the horizon of the capital so he guessed this ce might just still be normal but he felt the more likely thing was that this ce was currently upied by one of the two sides of the war.
The easiest way to figure out which one was what kind of clothes were being worn by the people on the streets but so far he was yet to see a robe let alone one of a color that would give away who was currently running this town. That being said, there were still other things he could use to figure out If it was the Temple of Light or the Demon Lord''s army.
The easiest thing to notice was that there were living people here from what he had heard that wasn''t really the Demon Worshipers style. Of course these people could be Demon Worshipers themselves and weren''t wearing the normal outfit they normally did. Deciding he needed to get a better look into the town, Lake headed for a nearby tree and started to climb.
His n was to see what guilds this town had in its center because if he could see if they were still running he would know the town was most likely fine. He might also get lucky enough to see a Temple of Light here and if he did he would know this town was definitely fine for him to enter, it would also exin why these people were acting like they were safe.
At the top of the tree Lake was able to see the center of the town well enough that he could see a crowd of people there and just Like he had hoped there were people in white robes there, that being said there wasn''t any signs of an actual temple, just the members. It was enough for him though, and he quickly got down and started to walk into town.
As he was walking towards the center of the town Lake couldn''t help but think he could use these people to earn Exp by stealing stuff instead of killing but he decided to hold off until he understood the situation here better. Thest thing he needed was to end up being caught pickpocketing because he hadn''t realized there was someone on the Level of Lucas keeping the peace here.
Plus the two jobs he had been hoping to level today couldn''t really be leveled up through theft only kills. Getting into the center of town Lake took a few seconds to look at the Light Temple troops standing in the center of the town square before looking at the guild buildings people were lined up in front of.
Like normal there was both a Adventures and Fighters guild and it reminded him that he had meant to find out the difference between the two. He guessed now was a good time so he walked over to one of the people in line in front of the Fighters guild and asked. "What''s the difference between the Adventures and the Fighters guild?"
After he asked Lake remembered why he had never asked in the past back then he had been afraid to look like he didn''t know anything about this world on the off chance someone got suspicious of his background but now he really didn''t care. He was a lot stronger now and he also knew people knew about people from other worlds even if it was rare so even if they did find out he would be just fine.
"The fighters guild focuses on people fighting other people, the Adventures guilds about fighting monsters. There''s also a Hunters guild but that''s more of a food thing like the Farmers guild."
"Does that mean there''s jobs for hunting bandits inside?" The man nodded and said. "There are but you need to be a member first." It seemed the man had taken him asking to mean he wasn''t a member which was correct. "What''s the joining process like?"
"There''s a few different testing methods you can choose from usually but at the moment there''s no test. The guild needs as many members as it can get at the moment so all you need to do is go in and ask to join. It''s that line right there." The man pointed at a shorter line next to the one he was in and Lake went to join it as he thanked the man for the information.
After about a ten minute wait Lake was at the desk and he repeated the same thing he had heard three people who had been in front of him say. "I would like to be a member." A second after he had said this he received a badge and was asked to sign his name, after that was over the person behind the counter said. "These are some missions a lot of beginners like to take but if you are confident you can step into that line to get something that pays better."
Lake took a nce at the piece of paper that they had pulled out to see they were mainly guard jobs that paid five gold a day and a few escort jobs that paid slightly better depending on how long you were on the road. Both offered a bonus for any fight you got in but Lake was after something that paid better so he turned them down and went and lined up in the long line.
It was long but it was moving pretty quickly so he wasn''t too worried about the amount of time he was wasting by doing this. It would be worth it in the long run because he was sure the missions would tell him exactly where he needed to go to find Bandits. Then not only would he finally be able to start earning Exp but he would get the money from the mission as well.
He wasn''t sure how much to expect but any would be better than the none his original n would have gotten him, plus he could keep whatever money the bandits had so if today went well he might be able to make a dent in that one million gold he needed.
After waiting through the line Lake eventually got up to the desk that had all the missions posted around the window. He already took the time in the line to go through the different posted missions and had pretty much made up his mind there was only one thing he didn''t understand and needed to ask about.
"Hello, how does this difficulty system work?" Next to every mission there was a thing that said how hard it was but he didn''t understand the system. The mission he was thinking about taking said its difficulty was 90. It was pretty highpared to some of the other missions that were posted but nowhere near the highest that was 220."
"It''s the estimated stat total of each enemy you''ll be fighting, but be careful you''ll be heavily outnumbered if you n to go by yourself so don''t think you''ll be ok just because yours is a little higher than that." After Lake heard this he decided he could probably handle more than just 90 and chose a mission that was at 160.
Clear out the ck Cave Bandits
Difficulty 160
1,200 per head
Estimated number of bandits 17
Lake chose this one because he had night vision and if he was to kill all of them it would give him 20,400 gold. Plus the thing said it was close so if he was quick he might be able toe back for another mission. Pointing to the mission he wanted, the Lady behind the counter gave Lake a look and it seemed she thought he could handle it, she said. "Ok here''s a detailed map, and don''t worry about bringing any proof of how many you kill just bring the leaders head, you wont get a bonus if there''s more than posted."
Lake thought that was unfair so he asked. "Why''s that?"
"I know that''s how it works at the adventurers guild with them asking for ears or noses or whatever from the monsters you kill so they can pay you for each one you kill but the fighters guilds always had trouble with people bringing back extra hands from any corpses they just happen across so we just go off of the number the scouts say there are at the location. The information is pretty fresh so you don''t need to worry about there being that many more than it says here and you know the bandits die all the time so you might have less to kill than it says here."
Lake was satisfied with this answer so he said thanks to thedy and left. Once he was outside he opened the map and started to figure out where he needed to go. He had never used a map before so it took him a second but once he found out which road he was on he quickly started towards the cave.
Chapter 150: Black Cave
Chapter 150: ck Cave
After a while of following the map Lake found andmark that wasbeled head towards the forest and over the river on the map. It was bolder that was easily identifiable because it was split in two and Lake guessed it had been like this for a long time because it was called split rock.
Lake wondered if someone in the past had just been bored while they walked down the road and saw the rock and said to themselves. ''I wonder if I can cut that in half.'' He guessed it could have happened because of a bet as well. If so he wondered how much money had been won.
Walking straight into the forest it wasn''t Long before he found the river the map had told him to cross. Looking at how wide it was, Lake decided to just jump over, it wasn''t moving very fast or very wide so on the off chance he failed he would just end up swimming. Like he expected he had no problem getting over so he looked at his map and read the next instruction.
All it said was to go the same direction as the river was flowing until he saw the cave then it had a picture of what the cave looked like from the river so there was no way he would miss it. Lake didn''t just walk out in the open right next to the river and instead went up into the forest slightly so they wouldn''t see himing.
With there being 17 of them he was sure they would have at least one person outside guarding the entrance. Once he was in the trees he activated Mute and Mana Vision so no one would hear himing before he saw them. After that he started walking.
The map didn''t say how long it took to get ces, probably because some people moved much faster than others so he didn''t really know how far away it was.
...
It ended up being a bit of a hike but he could now see the cave''s entrance. It looked a little different than how it was drawn on the map but only because it seemed the bandits had taken the time to build up some fortifications around the entrance. But like the woman at the counter had said, it didn''t seem too much time had passed since thest time a scout hade here because the fortifications weren''t done.
There were a few holes in the wall and what he guessed was going to be a watchtower didn''t have a top on it yet. That being said the craftsmanship looked pretty good and all the logs were fit together nicely and were shaved down like you would expect to see in a town. He bet if he was to leave ande back in a few more days the cave front would look like a house than a hole in a rock a bunch of bandits were living in.
He bet they had stolen a bunch of lumber off of one of the carts they had raided and were trying to put it to good use; at least he thought that made more sense than one of them being some kind of builder that could make processed lumber out here in the middle of the woods but in this world you never really knew.
After watching the ce for about ten minutes Lake finally saw someonee out of the wall that was blocking a good portion of the front of a cave and head out into the forest. This was what he had been waiting for because he thought it would be kind of silly to just walk right in when he could stay out here for a while and pick a few of them off.
It would make it much easier on him when he did finally decide to go inside if he had already killed a few of them. Plus this person was wearing a massive cloak so he would be able to impersonate them extremely easily once they were dead and he had their core. Making sure his job was on Ripper, Lake started to move behind the Bandit.
Mute was doing its job and Lake had no problem getting right behind them. There was a problem though he didn''t want their cloak to get covered in blood so that just left him the option of breaking their neck but he had never done that before and he was afraid that if he did it wrong he would just end up pulling their head off or maybe even not being able to do it.
It was unlikely but there was a chance this person had really high Endurance and their neck would be stronger than his arms. He doubted it though so he activated Burst and wrapped his arms around their head and twisted like he had seen in movies. A really gross popping noiseter Lake eased the body onto the ground while he savored the feeling of Exp after all this time Lake started to remove the cloak. [Level Up] [Level up] [Rank up]
Once he had it off he pulled it over his armor and pulled his helmet off and put it in his backpack. After seeing how bumpy it made him seem he took the helmet back out and decided he would just leave it out here and get it once he was done inside. Now all he needed to do was retrieve their core and he could head inside.
He wasn''t going to do that here though, it was going to make a mess and he didn''t want to have to worry about one of the other banditsing out here to go to the bathroom and finding their dead friend who they had just spoken to inside the cave. It was really the only way he could get discovered so picking up the body Lake headed away from the cave until he found a good ce to hide the body.
Pulling out his knife Lake used Mana Vision to core the person quickly and rolled their body into the small ditch he had found. He threw some leaves over them and then used the core to turn into them. After that he pulled up his stats to see his progress from leveling up and what his new name was.
Name: Millon Haldor
Race: Human Lv.10
Job: Ripper Lv.6 ( 123/320 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 100
Stamina 100
Mana 530
Strength 53
Endurance 15
Agility 77
Dexterity 87
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 117
Lake was slightly confused when his eyes went over the mana part of his status but he quickly remembered the ne Lucas had given him when he had helped him look for those stolen Elixir Lake had meant to return it but it seemed he was just too good of a thief and he had stolen it by ident.
The truth was Lucas probably just didn''t care about it that much and just let Lake keep it on the off chance they would be doing something simr in the future. He didn''t really have the time to keep thinking about this so Lake dropped his helmet after marking it and started to head back to the cave.
As he was walking towards the cave Lake could feel how excited the insider was about this and he had to agree. Other than when he had pretended to be a Demon Worshiper for like half an hour and pretended to be that Alchemist for 10 minutes he had never really done anything the Insider really liked.
It liked stealing as well but deception was really what it was all about, and him infiltrating this cave was the first time he was really doing anything super deceptive that had any stakes to it. Usually the only time he was deceptive was when he was talking to someone and he tried to say what he thought they wanted him to say so they would like him more.
The worst thing that could happen when he did that was they realized what he was doing and they stopped talking to him, if he got caught this time he might get surrounded by an unknown number of people and while the odds were he would be fine you never knew. He was new to fighting still and against that number of people he might lose or get severely injured enough that he wasn''t able to make it back to the guild.
But like he said it was unlikely and he wasn''t really that worried about it. Getting back to the cave, Lake started to walk at the speed the person he had just killed had been when he had first seen them. It was a small detail but why not be thorough in a situation like this. Who knew one day someone might notice something like that if he wasn''t careful.
Passing the wall Lake saw there were actually two people standing guard behind it and was happy he hadn''t just tried to rush in because fighting these two would have probably made enough noise to alert all of them. "Hey Millon what took you so long."
This was clearly a yful question and not the guard wasn''t interrogating him so he said. "It was stuck." Getting augh from the guard Lake continued into the cave. After a few steps inside he could see why it was called ck Cave. He had originally thought it was going to be really dark inside and that was definitely true but he was pretty sure it was more from the fact that the stone on the inside was a dark ck color.
It kind of reminded him of the dungeon and how the stone got darker and darker as you went further in but he could tell this stone was just ck and it had nothing to do with magic. This wasn''t something he needed to worry about either way because not only could he see in the dark but he could tell there was a torch burning up ahead.
Chapter 151: Bandit Buddies
Chapter 151: Bandit Buddies
Walking into the lit room or whatever you would call the cave version of a room. Lake instantly started to count how many people were in here. It wasn''t a hard job to count to six before any of them started a conversation with him. "Millon, tell Stev we can''t leave the cave until the sun goes down. He keeps saying there are more carts during the day and it''s safer because the carts thate by during the night have more guards."
"What we''re doing seems to be working alright, why change now." Lake had more to say but he didn''t want to over do it. For all he knew the person he was pretending to be was usually silent. Lake had decided to not use y the Part because he didn''t want to, that was pretty much his only reason.
He knew it would help him blend in but he really didn''t n to stay in this cave for long; he was just waiting for a good time to strike, like if they were to split up or something. He also wanted to see the exact number he was facing so far he had confirmed eight; the two at the front and the six here.
Using Mana Vision, Lake started to look around to see if he could spot any other cores through the walls of the cave. There was another doorway in this room that led deeper so he guessed the rest of them were down there, but it seemed the cave went deeper than he had expected because he didn''t see anything with Mana Vision. "I still think we should go out now. The carts holding people are the only ones that have any food on them, all we''re going to get tonight is more stuff we can''t use or sell."
"We have plenty of food, you''re just tired of eating bread. Now''s not the time to get picky with what you have to eat." After he heard the person called Stev say that they were mostly stealing junk they didn''t need, Lake started to look at some of the stuff in the room with them. The only useful thing he saw was a boat he guessed they used to cross the river.
They probably drug it inside to hide it and a few of them were using its benches as seats so he guessed it doubled as furniture then there was a lot of lumber like the stuff they were using to build out front so he guessed there must be some lumberpany that passed its stuff through the road they were robbing people on.
Lake wondered if that had been thepany that had put the bounty on these bandits in the first ce and if that was true lumber was a lot more profitable than he would have expected. The twenty thousand these bandits had on their heads was no small sum because most people made only a few gold a week from farming.
It was possible there was another source of the money though like the king or maybe the guild itself had a source of revenue to raise the money they paid out to its members. He couldn''t really think of what kind of business they would have though, so it probably came mostly from the king and the businesses that were being affected.
"Alright let''s get the boat ready. They''re probably almost back from buying the armor by now." When Lake heard this it made him realize he was currently here with only part of the bandits and the others weren''t too deep for him to see they were gone. That meant this was probably the best time for him to start killing.
Seeing them all start to line up on either side of the boat, Lake lined up behind them and started helping them carry the boat out the front of the cave. He had eight people to kill because he was sure there would be enough of amotion for the two people out front toe to look what was going on but he wasn''t worried about making a mess this time so it would be extremely easy to kill all of them especially with them having their hands full and he was already right behind them.
Lake wasn''t going to take any risks though so he quickly used Summon Hands and then used Fast Hands. With his two regr hands Lake reached forward and broke the neck of the guy directly in front of him. [Level up] Then he used burst to rush forward to the next two people on his side of the boat and used Crunch to decapitate them both with the two of his left arms while supporting the boat with the other two. [Level up]
He was moving so fast that the first guy''s body was just about to hit the ground and with the two heads barely leaving their necks the guys on the other side hadn''t noticed anything was happening so using his two right arms that were still holding the boat stable to throw the boat upwards, Lake slipped under it.
Popping up on the other side of the boat, Lake quickly killed all three of them in a simr fashion to the first three. Sadly he didn''t level up from thest three and ncing at how much more he needed to level ripper to nine Lake knew the two out front would be enough, and he was sure they wereing because not only could could he hear them running towards him on the stone of the cave Lake could see them with Mana Vision.
Deciding he would rather go to them than the other way around Lake kept Burst going and ran forward. One of them was slightly in front of the other so Lake gave them the ol one two but he leveled up on the one. It seemed these guys gave between 200 and 400 with the 5X he was getting from using his bare hands to kill people. [Level up]
He was alone now so he went ahead and opened his stats to see what his strength was now. He could add the 15 in his head but he still wanted to see it to admire how much stronger he had just gotten in thest few seconds.
Name: Millon Haldor
Race: Human Lv.10 ( 3/10)
Job: Ripper Lv.9 ( 234/2560 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 100
Stamina 100 ( 75/100 )
Mana 530 ( 490/530 )
Strength 68
Endurance 15
Agility 77
Dexterity 87
Perception 83
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 123
He had killed nine bandits and leveled up five times in thest half hour, he just hoped the seven that were left were enough to max out Ripper. He would be really bummed if he didn''t end up getting any new skills today. He was pretty sure it would be fine though he might even have a bandit left at the end to use to level up Archer a few times.
That being said he needed to find the rest of the bandits first. These six had clearly been bringing this boat to the river to help them across so he guessed he could just go to the shore and wait. He wasn''t sure if he should bring the boat with him though. If he tried to pretend to be there to pick them up they would most likely drop their guard but he had a better idea that involved the boat.
Picking it up, Lake brought it down to the shore with him and pushed it across to the other side hard enough that it went up onto thend on the other side. After that he found a good ce and hid. He figured when they got here they would see the boat and use it to cross and he could just do the same exact thing he had done this time and kill them all from behind while they carried the boat back up to the cave.
...
The guy who said they would be back soon ended up being wrong, it took about an hour. This meant he had about five more hours until the sun started to go down. That meant he would soon decide if he was going to return to the guild tonight or not but that was forter. Right now he had five bandits to deal with.
It was two less than he had expected but by the looks of the five that did return they had run into some trouble on their shopping trip. He wasn''t going toin about someone doing his job for him though even if it kind of messed up his hopes of getting the next two skills from Ripper.
Hisst hope for that to happen was for the bandit leader to be worth more Exp but he doubted that would happen. Lake marked them as he saw them all get into the boat and hastily start to row it across. It seemed whatever had happened to them had them in enough of a hurry that they didn''t even question the empty boat or where their friends that were supposed to be in it were.
Once they were across the five of them didn''t even bother picking up the boat and just left it where it was and started to run to the cave. Lake didn''t want them to see the mess he had made and freak out and run because he would have to waste his time tracking them all down so he swooped down behind them with Mute and started to break necks.
The only one who noticed him long enough to make a sound was thest one. They made a n sound and Lake assumed they had been trying to say no. Done Lake didn''t worry about cleaning up any of the bodies and removed the cloak while heading to his helmet. Putting his helmet back on Lake returned to the cave to start the looting process and tried to not think about the fact he didn''t level up.
Chapter 152: Cave Gold
Chapter 152: Cave Gold
As Lake walked back to the cave he couldn''t help but wonder what kind of money he would find inside. He knew he was probably being a little optimistic but he was hoping it would be around the amount the Fighters guild was offering for them. It made sense to him that they would be worth around the amount they had stolen from people.
Of course most of what they had taken was probably not money, so that was why he thought he was being optimistic. Stepping into the cave Lake took a few steps before he saw something that hadn''t been here thest time he walked in. There was a bright golden light in the tunnel. Thest time he had to walk for a while before he saw a light.
After about a second of thinking about what it might have been, Lake realized what it was and rushed forward. Seeing three of the bodies surrounded by golden light, Lake started to celebrate. He never remembered Intangible Loot existed because most of the time it didn''t do anything.
It also took a while to show up after he killed anything so with how fast he was now he was usually gone by the time the bodies started to glow but it had really helped him this time. He only needed a little over 100 Exp to get Ripper to the max level so with three bodies even if one of them didn''t give him Exp he was going to get his two new skills.
Not wasting any time Lake swiped his hand through the golden lights until he heard the noise it made whenever he leveled up. [Level Max] He still had another body left so he quickly switched his job to Archer and got thest one. [Level up] With that he opened his stats to see what his two new skills were.
Name: Millon Haldor
Race: Human Lv.10 ( 5/10)
Job: Archer Lv.5 ( 67/160 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 100
Stamina 100 ( 93/100 )
Mana 530
Strength 73
Endurance 15
Agility 79
Dexterity 91
Perception 86
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 126
Skills:
Ripped (L) Lv.1
Raise your Strength by 40 for one hour.
(Cost: 50 Stamina)
(Can be activated a maximum of three times at once.)
Grip Strength (L) Lv.1
When unarmed your Strength is added to your Dexterity.
Lake quickly read both skills then went and reread Ripped because he had never seen a skill have a limit to how many times it could be activated at once before. It made him wonder if his other skills that had a cost to activate like Summon Hands could be used more than once at a time as long as he had the mana for it.
Well he definitely had the mana for it so he went ahead and activated Summon Hands, then once they were done forming he did it again. When another two arms started to weave themselves out of mana he realized Summon Hands was way better than he had thought. That being said he didn''t know how well he would be able to use six arms at once.
That wasn''t really something he would even think would be useful unless his real arms were cut off first. That seemed to be something that happened quite often in this world so maybe a day woulde where he needed to use Summon Hands to rece his real ones.
Getting back to what he was actually here to do, Lake made a mental note to look at the bodies outside onest time before he left and went into the room he had spent time with the bandits in earlier. Using Detector, Lake set it to look for gold and started ripping the tops off of the boxes that were in the room.
Like he expected there was nothing valuable in this room so he walked into the doorway that led deeper into the cave. After a while Lake found a room that had some ces for people to sleep and Detector lit up a few ces in the room. Digging through the junk Lake started to find small bags of gold here and there and with the way the bags felt Lake could tell there was also jewelry inside.
Most likely all of it had been taken off of the people that had been on the carts they had stopped in the past. It was all his now though so good job bandits. Finished digging through this room, Lake continued deeper into the cave and found a room that he thought had probably been created through the use of magic because the walls were smooth.
As soon as he stepped in Detector started to go off and it led him to arge wooden chest in the corner of the room. Lake gave it a good inspect before he opened it just to make sure it wasn''t trapped or anything but when he saw it was just a normal wooden chest he opened it to see three blue bags inside.
After lifting the first bag out Lake saw there was more stuff under the bags but he stayed focused on the bag. Opening it Lake estimated there was about 1000 gold on the inside so with all three bags being the same size he guessed 3000 was his big haul from today''s looting.
He would probably be excited if it wasn''t for the fact he had the number 1,000,000 in his head at all times plus this was a smaller amount than he had expected. It was still better than nothing and he still had the rest of the items in the chest to look through and some of the gear the bandits had been using hadn''t beenplete trash so he could probably take some of that with him back to the guild.
There had been a counter to sell used weapons and armor at the Fighters guild so it would be worth it for him to grab some before he left. After getting the blue bags into his bag Lake started to go through the rest of the stuff in the chest. Unsurprisingly there was more jewelry and he quickly added it to his bag before going through some of the weirder things.
There were a couple cores from monsters and a small knife that was clearly a showpiece and not for fighting because it was encrusted with jewels. After taking those, Lake quickly grabbed thest things that were in there, it looked like rocks but after looking closer he realized it was ore and from the shade of the rock Lake was pretty sure it was found by whoever made this room as they did it.
He didn''t know what kind of metal it was but if it was worth something he might as well take it. With the chest looted, Lake quickly went through the rest of the room and when he didn''t find anything he started to leave the cave. He stopped to grab two of the nicer swords from the dead bandits and went outside.
Walking over to the five bodies from the ones he had killedst Lake saw none of them were glowing and started to try and figure out which one was the leader. He had killed them all instantly so it was kind of hard to find out which one was supposed to be in charge. He was just kind of assuming it was one of the ones who had been out ''buying armor'' for the rest because that sounded like something the bandit leader would be in charge of since it dealt with money.
He felt like a bandit wouldn''t trust their underlings enough to give them arge amount of money so they would end up doing it themselves. After giving the five of them a good look, Lake picked out the one with the best armor and took off their head. It was kind of gross to look at so he took some clothes from the others and wrapped the head up.
Feeling Like he was fully loaded, Lake decided he was done and started back towards the guild to get his money. It was a bit of a walk so it gave him time to think about what he had learned during this. The first thing was he could have taken a harder mission. These guys had been way weaker than him, he could have killed 100 of them with little effort.
It made him want to take the hardest job they had up there just to see what it would be like. It was 60 points higher on the difficulty scale than the one he had justpleted and while he didn''t remember the exact details he was pretty sure the reward was around 45,000 so even if it took him a whole day it would be worth it for the Exp.
This thought made up his mind on if he was going to go home tonight or not, there was no point in him going home and then rushing back here again tomorrow just to do a job he could start today. He also had the day off tomorrow because of the execution so staying out was fine.
He didn''t really care to watch the execution anyway because the only interesting part had been the fact they were going to do something like that to living people and after his idea to fake it all he would see if he went back was corpses il around as they were tortured. That didn''t sound that fun to watch to him. It was almost like how some people didn''t like wrestling because it was faked.
Chapter 153: Fighters Guild
Chapter 153: Fighters Guild
Lake was pretty sure there was a separate counter inside for people returning to receive their rewards so he didn''t line up behind the people outside and went inside. Walking over to an empty counter, Lake asked. "Is this the line to turn in missions?" Lake could see the man behind the counter eyeing the bloody bundle in his hand as they answered. "Yes,e with me."
Following him into a back room the man asked "Which mission are you here to im?" as soon as the door closed behind them. "Um, the ck Cave bandits." The man nodded and said. "I''ll be right back. I have to get the scout that found their base to confirm the identity of the head. I can also get those swords to the appraiser if you''d like."
Lake nodded and handed the two swords he had brought back with him to sell then asked. "Does the guild buy jewelry as well?"
"I can have it sold for you if you wish but you might have to wait a few days for the money to be ready. A lot of people just prefer to sell stuff that the guild doesn''t buy themselves. There''s a good ce in town I would rmend if you don''t want to wait."
"No, I''m fine with the wait." Lake nned to leave for another mission as soon as possible so he didn''t feel like stopping at another shop if he didn''t have to and he needed to unload himself to make more room in his bags. Pulling everything out that he was sure would count as jewelry which included the jeweled knife Lake handed the sizable ball off to the man.
When the man left the room Lake set the head down on a nearby table that had clearly seen its fair share of gore and sat down to wait. A few minutester the man returned with a new person Lake assumed to be the scout and was expecting for them to ask to see the head so he stood to unwrap the head to hear. "Sir, I''m sorry to inform you that the mission you are here to im has already beenpleted."
"What do you mean?" Lake wasn''t stupid so he understood what they were saying. He just wanted more information so he could try and prove he had done what was required of him to receive his money. "About an hour before you arrived we paid the bounty to someone who had the head of the leader of the ck cave bandits."
The scout who had yet to say anything chipped in at this moment with. "I would like to see the head you brought to see if I recognize it, if I do I''ll ask some questions to get to the bottom of what has happened for you." Lake nodded and led the scout over to the head. Lake let them take it from there because he didn''t want to touch it if he didn''t have to.
After the scout looked at the head for a while he said. "It''s definitely one of the ck Cave bandits but not the leader. Ok first question: were you alone when you went to kill the bandits?" Lake nodded. "So you didn''t have anyone with you on the hunt."
"No, I was alone the whole time." Lake wondered if they were asking him this to see if there were others that could back him up on his story, but sadly for him there were not. He guessed they could have also been asking to see if there had been a mix-up between he and his friends on which head they should bring in but he thought that was unlikely and he was now part of an investigation.
He hoped the investigation was for him to get what he was owed but there was a chance he was being investigated for head fraud now. "Ok, and when did you ept this mission to kill the ck Cave bandits?"
"Probably less than four hours ago." Lake didn''t like how this made him sound because he doubted that was long enough for them to believe he had killed 15 people but the fact he had a head hopefully backed up his ims of him being the killer. "Ok and how many did you kill in that time?"
"15."
"And the mission was for 17, so you just thought 2 of them had been killed before you got there?" Lake nodded and said. "Yes, I was told I just needed to bring the leader''s head and to not worry about evidence of all the bandits I killed so thest 2 didn''t seem that important."
The scout just nodded and didn''t pay attention to his very obviously annoyed tone and said. "Ok, so the way I see it there''s 2 possibilities: one your telling the truth and the person we paid headhunted the leader and left the other bandits alive, which is against the rules, or you took the mission earlier today and when you got there you found a bunch of bodies and thought you could get paid if you brought us a head."
Lake was starting to get pissed and for a second thought about wiping this building clean of people before taking his money but decided to just take a passive approach to this. The truth woulde out but it was too bad it had to be at the expense of his time. "I would suggest you get the person you paid in here and find out."
After he said this he took a seat and waited for them to get the person in here. "Since you''re a new member I would like to inform you that there is a chance we might not be able to get them here today or ever so you might want to go about your business. We''ll inform you when we''ve made a decision on the matter."
After they said thiske guessed it made sense the person who had taken his money wouldn''t just be sitting in the lobby. They would probably be hiding somewhere until they knew if they had gotten away with this so-called headhunting. If this problem was prevalent enough for it to have a name it did make him wonder why the guild kept the turn in the one head method so he asked.
"Why does the guild only ask for the one head?"
"Well we found carrying every bandit''s head back was a pain for the members so we switched to right hands. We kept right hands as the method for a long time but we found the fact that we couldn''t identify the bandits by the hands people brought in a big problem especially since you can''t trust people who kill for money not to kill for money. I''m sure you understand what I''m saying."
Lake did, he was sure they were having a simr problem to headhunting with people bringing in hands they had taken from any random people they had killed and disappearing before the guild realized what had happened. "You''re saying the head is just the best method you have found so far even if it has ws."
"Yes, that is correct. Now that we''re done with that, here is your money for the two swords." Lake could tell by the size of the bag it wasn''t that much and instead of taking it right away he said. "Do you guys hold money for members, like an ount or whatever."
"Yes, would you like to open one?" Lake nodded and pulled out all the money he had on him and said. "All this please."
"Alright follow me, and feel free to take your head if you would like." Lake didn''t and followed behind the man until they returned to the desk he had first talked to him at. After that the man asked for his badge and told him the total for the ount here at the guild, 3,654, and informed him he could withdraw at every guild branch.
Lake nodded and lined up to get a new mission, his first had ended in a disappointing manner but there was still plenty of money to make here. As he waited he took the time to look through the missions to see if there were any new ones he might be interested in.
There were new ones but nothing worth more than the 220 difficulty one so he didn''t really even consider any of the new ones. When he finally made it to the counter he told them which mission he wanted and the person just shrugged before handing him a map.
Bandits in the mountains near Gwind Lake
Difficulty 220
1,500 per head
Estimated number of bandits 30
Looking at the map Lake noticed there was a bit of a journey to get there so he went ahead and started towards it. It wasn''t aplicated journey and all he needed to do was stay on this road until he saw mountains which meant he could run if he wanted and he chose to to save time.
Chapter 154: Increased Synergy
Chapter 154: Increased Synergy
Like the map said, after a while of running on this road he started to see a mountain in the distance so he stopped and looked at the next direction. It said he could just go towards the mountain and he would eventually find a massiveke that would be at its base. It sounded pretty easy so Lake got off the road and started to run towards the mountain.
After passing through some trees Lake saw the Lake glittering in the setting sun and stopped to think about what he should do tonight if he was going to sleep out in the wilderness. He wasn''t really worried about it but he knew sleeping outside had a level of danger associated with it and he would probably need to find a good ce to do it that wasn''t just out in the open.
That being said it wasn''t really something he should try to find now, he first needed to find the bandits base then find something close if he didn''t end up going in tonight while they slept. Looking at the map for the next step, Lake read that he was looking for a wooden fortress that was on the side of the mountain facing theke.
There was also a note from the scout that said to be careful because the bandits were all over the ce on the mountain and didn''t just stay inside their fortress. Lake saw this as a good thing though because it would make it easier for him to get an identity that would allow him to blend in; he would just need to make sure to hide the body really well.
Plus depending on how many he found just out and about he might be able to kill off a good portion of them before he even went inside. Of course he would need to be careful not to kill too many because it would give away the fact that he was out here killing them. Thest thing he would want is them to be on high alert when he tried to walk inside and say something like he was the first person to return all day.
They would be heavily suspicious of him if something like that happened. He didn''t think they would suspect him of being someone else wearing theirpanion as a disguise but they would probably think he was responsible for the others disappearances. So to be careful he should probably not kill more than five before he went inside the fortress.
After he got to the other side of theke, Lake started to be more sneaky and activated Mute and Mana Vision as he crept up the mountain. All he needed was to find one of them and he would be good to go so his goal wasn''t to find the fortress just yet. That being said, if he did find it before he was ready to go in that would save him timeter.
...
Seeing a core that looked to be the right size to belong to a human, Lake started to head towards it slowly. They weren''t moving very fast so he didn''t need to either to catch up to them. Once he could see them, Lake saw they were carrying water back to their base and he decided this wasn''t the person he wanted to Impersonate because it might mean the other bandits would think it was weird that he wasn''t doing his job.
Plus they would probably spill the water when he killed them so he would have to refill it before he went inside. Lake just put a mark on them and let them continue their work. With this he would be able to find where the fortress waster if he still hadn''t found it.
Lake didn''t just go back into the forest randomly though he stayed behind the guy carrying the water hoping they woulde across other bandits as they got closer to the fortress. He felt this was a better way of finding an eptable person to impersonate, maybe someone who was wearing a coat or something he could use to hide his armor so he didn''t have to leave it out here.
After a while Lake started to see footpaths that made him realize they must be getting close to the fortress and soon after that he saw it. Wooden walls made from logs that had been driven into the ground around a sharp bolder striking out of the side of the mountain. The boulder stuck out at an angel and the bandits had built buildings under it giving them a stone roof to their wooden fortress.
In Lakes opinion it was pretty good for a bunch of bandits but he felt he would rather have stone walls and a wooden roof if it was him. Having found the fortress, Lake quickly marked it and started to look around at the bandits he could see to try and find a good one to Impersonate. Of the 11 he could see from his vantage point Lake decided three of them were wearing things that would allow him to keep his armor with him.
Now he just needed to wait till one of them came out here to where he could get them. He was fine with the wait though because he could use this time to pick off some of the ones who went out before the ones he was waiting on. If he was lucky this would allow him to max out Archer before he went inside.
The next job he was going to level up would be Mugger and once that was level ten he would have all his Unique jobs at level ten meaning he would need to unlock more to keep getting stronger and he had an idea of a good one to get next, Bandit. The only problem was he would have to meet its unlock requirements which were kind of a pain.
That being said he had a lot of luck when it came to unlocking criminal jobs so he doubted he was going to have as much trouble as the book about jobs he had read said he would. He would probably only need to rob a few carts and live in the woods for a few days to get it. And Bandit led to another job called Highwayman once it was maxed so it would be worth it to unlock it even if he did have to live in the woods.
The only problem was the time it was going to take, if it took too long he would have to give up and return to the guild so they wouldn''t think he was dead. That wasn''t actually the best reason for why he should return before too long, he felt if he was out here too long and the war resumed he would be unable to get inside the guild until it calmed down again.
That might seem like a good thing but Lake knew the Alchemist guild was truly the safest ce to be even if it was in the middle of a war zone. Especially since the Demon Lord had shown some interest in him. It hadn''t happened except for one time but Lake had heard the voice while he had been in the dungeon so it wasn''t impossible that it would happen again while he was out here.
...
After a while Lake finally saw a bandit leave the fortress and head out into the surrounding forest. It wasn''t one of the ones he was after but they were all technically the ones he was after so he was still going to kill them. Getting his bow ready, Lake snuck up behind the bandit until he was only about a foot away.
It shot through the back of the bandits head like he wanted and Lake felt the Exp and heard the three dings that told him he had leveled up three times. [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] Picking up his arrow that had gone through the bandits head and then the body before it could make too much of a mess Lake started to run away from the fortress to hide the body.
Finding a cliff face that would be perfect, Lake threw the body off. Now even if they found it they would think the guy might have just fallen off and with the amount of damage the rocks below did they would have a hard time seeing the arrow hole in his head with it being exploded everywhere.
Getting back into the trees, Lake found a good ce to hide and pulled up his stats to see if any of them had passed 100. He knew some of them were getting close so he wanted to see if he had gotten the skill you got when a stat hit 100.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.10 ( 8/10)
Job: Archer Lv.8 ( 398/1280 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 100
Stamina 100
Mana 530
Strength 73
Endurance 15
Agility 85
Dexterity 103
Perception 95
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 126
He saw the skills page shing and saw that his Dexterity had passed 100 so he quickly opened it to see what he had gotten.
Increased Synergy (U) Lv.1
If your Dexterity is higher than your Agility or Endurance they be equal to your Dexterity.
If your Agility or Endurance is higher than your Dexterity gain a bonus to your Dexterity equal to the difference.
Lake would have preferred an ability like something he could activate for a fight but as far as passives when he had to say this one seemed pretty good. Especially since his endurance which was at 15 was now effectively 103 and his agility which was 85 also got a huge but less drastic increase to 103 as well.
He then turned his attention to the name of the skill itself Increased Synergy, Dexterity had always seemed weird to him because it seemed to do something simr to both Agility and Endurance but it only affected your hands instead of your whole body like the other two did. That being said it did seem like they stacked naturally with Dexterity, Agility and Endurance all affecting your hands at once so that exined the name of the skill.
Now that he thought about it Strength wasn''t something Dexterity ovepped with because Dexterity didn''t seem to make your hands any stronger, just tougher and faster. He wondered why that was, why was strength different to the others? He was sure there had to be a reason and guessed he would have to ask a god if he ever had the pleasure of talking to one he could trust.
After Lake got done thinking about his new skill he turned his attention to an old one and looked for it in the list.
Grip Strength (L) Lv.1
When unarmed your Strength is added to your Dexterity.
His strength was 73 so did that mean if he was to put his bow away his Dexterity would increase to 176 which would then increase his Endurance and Agility to 176 as well and if that was the case what would happen if he was to then use Burst?
Burst (U) Lv.1
Doubles the effect of the Agility and Strength stat.
Consumes Stamina (1 per hour)
Would his agility effectively be 352 at that point and if so how fast would he be and then what would happen if he was to use Fast Hands?
Fast Hands (L) Lv.1
Your arms and hands move five times faster.
Consumes Stamina (1 per second)
Lake stopped thinking about it at this point and wondered if he would be able to kill someone like Lucas with abo like this, or what about those giants he had secretly been afraid of since he had met the one named Domare. Surely he could kill it if they were to meet again, he had seen the fight from the other day and he had to say the giants didn''t really seem that strong and all he would be worried about if he was to fight one was the weird skills Domare had shown off.
It had been able to see through his Impersonate skill and had even said his name and then had just let him go after they had made an offer to him to get him to join their side. It had been a creepy experience that had been in the back of his head since but now he wasn''t sure he needed to worry about it anymore.
Realizing he should probably get back to the ce he had been watching the fortress from so he didn''t miss any of the other bandits that left, Lake turned around and started to run back. After a few steps he realized how fast he was moving, which was the same as his old top speed; the only difference was he wasn''t using Burst at the moment.
Chapter 155: Here He Come
Chapter 155: Here He Come
Climbing a tree that was near the fortress Lake found a nice branch to sit on and started to check where the three people he wanted to impersonate were at. Seeing only two of them he started to get excited and quickly checked where the third was. Seeing they were just inside the main structure, Lake calmed down and settled in for the long haul.
After a few minutes he started to wonder why he was even bothering with this. Surely he could just rush in and have no problems finishing them all off before they could do anything to him. He might have some problems with dealing with them once he was inside depending on what it was like in there but he couldn''t really imagine they had anything like a trap that could kill him in their caveman fortress.
Unless they were dumb enough to just have the whole ce rigged to explode if anyone tried to break in. That was apletely ridiculous thing that no one would ever do so he didn''t need to worry about that happening. He was about to jump down and start when the insider stopped him by showing him a reason he should wait.
He needed to get headshots to get the 10X Exp on Archer so he wouldn''t be able to use Grip Strength while holding a bow. He would still be faster than he had been but he wouldn''t be able to go his top speed like he wanted to. In that case he should just wait till he had maxed Archer to rush in with Mugger as his set job.
It was technically a more efficient way to do this even if you factored in the time he would have to spend in this tree. Him leveling his Unique jobs was more important than his time, so he would go in once he had maxed Archer and thankfully with its 10X Exp bonus he would only need to kill like two or three bandits before he was done.
After a few minutes Lake saw the water bandit going towards the gate and got ready to jump down to follow them when he saw another bandit heading out as well. Lake wasn''t going toin about two at once he just hoped they weren''t going to go in the same exact direction because he didn''t think his bow could handle him pulling it back as fast as he would need to to kill them both with headshots before one of them could make a noise that might alert the others.
After the two walked out of the gate he saw them start to head in different directions and went after the one that wasn''t getting water first because he felt like the one getting the water would be outside for a long time and the other person could only be out for a few minutes to pee.
After he followed them for a while Lake jumped down and did what he liked to call the guaranteed headshot. [Level up] Getting the body and the arrow Lake carried them a bit off into the woods and left them there. It wasn''t what he would call a thorough job of hiding the body but he no longer nned to spend a lot of time here so it was unlikely anyone would find this body except for him when he came backter to see if it was glowing.
With that done Lake looked for the mark that was on the water guy and went after him. After a few seconds of chasing him down Lake prepped his bow for the guaranteed headshot and got right behind the bandit. Releasing the arrow Lake felt the Exp but didn''t hear the ding so he sighed and kicked the guy''s body into the surrounding brush.
Not being able to see the body from where he was standing, Lake decided it was good enough and headed back towards the fortress. Getting back to his tree, Lake checked his stats since he had the time to see how much Exp he had missed the level up by.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.10 ( 9/10)
Job: Archer Lv.9 ( 2158/2560 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 100
Stamina 100
Mana 530
Strength 73
Endurance 15
Agility 87
Dexterity 107
Perception 98
Intelligence 114
Charisma 23
Free stat points: 126
Lake was slightly annoyed when he saw his Exp was only a little off but got over it when he saw what his perception was at. That meant he would be getting three new skills on this next level up. He was also going to Rank up but he didn''t really care about that. He just wanted these skills.
...
After a while Lake started to regret killing the water guy because no one wasing out to pee. He felt if they had gotten more water they would be out here right now. That being said there was no way to know, maybe everyone he had killed was going to go poop and they had a ce to pee inside.
It could also be because the sun was officially down now so none of them wanted to go into the woods anymore. It was a little ridiculous to be afraid of the dark where he came from but here it made perfect sense. It did make him wonder if they were trying to figure out why three of them hadn''t returned yet though.
That would be what he was thinking if he was one of them, he would be getting scared, not for the ones who hadn''t returned though, just himself, he would be thinking someone was stalking them and would being for them as soon as the sun set, and with the sun down that would be exactly what he was going to do.
All but three had headed in after the sun set so he should be able to sneak in and kill one of them, finishing Archer, and then he would switch to Mugger and kill the rest of them. Once all three of the lookouts were dead he would stop and look at his new skills before heading inside the building.
Hopping down from the tree Lake set his bow up and slowly crept under one of the guards that was looking over the wall. He knew this was risky but they were in the middle of the woods at night and it was probably pitch ck for anyone who couldn''t see in the dark. Once he was directly under them he jumped slightly and released the arrow right below their chin. [Level up] [Rank up]
Lake then grabbed onto the top of the wall with one hand and onto the now dead bandits leg with the other so Mute would silence it falling over. Once it was down he pulled himself up and set his job to Mugger. The other two lookouts were looking out so they wouldn''t expect his attack since he was Inside.
Running up to the first of the two of them Lake just broke their neck from behind andid the body down. [Level up] [Level up] He could have let it fall because he would have made it to thest lookout before it hit the ground but that would have only saved him like a second and there was no reason to risk someone on the inside hearing the body mming into the ground.
Rushing the next lookout Lake killed them in the same way to thest. [Level up] With him being done with the lookouts Lake went and hid behind some junk that was on the ground and pulled up his stats. He wanted to see what his new skills were before he went into a real fight.
Name: Lake Fuller
Race: Human Lv.11 ( 3/10)
Job: Mugger Lv.7 ( 27/640 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 110
Stamina 110
Mana 540
Strength 79
Endurance 15
Agility 89
Dexterity 111
Perception 101
Intelligence 114
Charisma 32
Free stat points: 135
He didn''t spend long on his stats and instantly pulled up his new skills.
Retrieval (U) Lv.1
Summon anything you had in your hand back to your hand.
(Cost 5 Mana)
Magic Arrow (L) Lv.1
Lets you infuse some of your mana into arrows so you can control it in air.
Lake stopped after the first two so he would actually remember themter because he was pretty sure they were about to be overshadowed by whatever this next one was. It wasn''t like these were bad; he could see uses for them but the skills he got from stats seemed better than the ones he got from jobs usually.
Observer (U) Lv.1
Nothing can stop you from essing somethings information.
(allows you to see hidden details)
After reading the skill he started to wonder why whoever had made it had bothered to add the bottom part. He didn''t know for a fact but he was pretty sure a lot of work went into these unique skills so the fact they had taken the effort to rify made him think he wasn''t understanding how strong this skill was.
That made him think he should test it out. Pulling out his knife Lake Appraised it.
Chapter 156: Blurred Vision
Chapter 156: Blurred Vision
As soon as he inspected his knife a stream of information started to appear in front of him. Everything about the knife from the amount of monsters and people it killed to its level. This was new to him because from what he knew you needed to be a cksmith to see the level of equipment like you needed to be an Alchemist or a farmer to see the level of a nt.
He guessed this was what it meant when it said he could see hidden information. That being said he already knew everything he needed to know about his knife so he quickly stopped paying attention to all the information popping up in front of him and got ready to clear the fortress.
He was unarmed so his Strength was currently being added to his Dexterity so both his Agility and Endurance were at 190 or at least as far as he knew. He was just assuming skills stacked like that either way he was going to be extremely fast when he activated Burst and while he didn''t really understand all the interactions between his skills that were going to happen he felt he would be too fast to be able to control it so he decided to hold off on using thisbo inbat until he had time to get used to it.
He was pretty sure being too fast would be a bad thing so holding back felt like the right choice to him. Taking his first step towards the door, Lake took a second to use Mana Vision to see if he could tell what was going on inside. His guess was they were all in bed but that didn''t mean they would be asleep yet.
He didn''t think it would matter if they were up or not though so he turned Mana Vision off and started to run at the door. Lake tried to open the door with its handle but his hand kind of just passed right through the door and then the rest of him did right after. He quickly realized he was moving too fast to interact with something as weak as mundane wood in any way other than destroying it and it seemed his reflexes were slightlycking when he was going this fast.
It wasn''t to the point where he couldn''t control himself but he could tell his Perception being as low as it was was making it hard to see what he was doing as he was doing it almost like he was looking at his own after image. His hand had been through the door before he had realized what was happening because it had been further forward than he had realized.
That being said he was sure The Sight would help him once he got into actual battle. It increased his Perception by quite a bit so all he needed to do was start fighting. Doing his best to distinguish what was in the room he was now in, Lake saw a bed with a person in it and adjusted his course to pass right by them.
As soon as he was close enough he drove his hand into their face like a spear and was sessful in killing them even though likest time his hand hit before he was expecting it to. That being said he could tell The sight had activated because everything had just be less blurry.
Moving to the next bed Lake was able to see a bit better and able to see what the inside looked like. There were people sleeping everywhere in this first room and he was sure there would be more once he passed through the next door. That being said he was sure these were the lower level members and the more important ones would have their own rooms further into the fortress.
After killing two more of the twenty or so people in this room Lake heard the level up ding and he didn''t stop and continued to move around the room killing everyone in it and after seven he heard it again. That meant he was already at level 9 in mugger and this next level would grant him another two skills.
After killing thest 11 that were in this room, Lake went ahead and pulled up his stats while he added up all the bandits he had killed here so far. There were 6 outside and now he had killed 21 inside meaning if the information he got was correct there should only be 3 left. Turning on Mana Vision, Lake looked into the rest of the fortress to see what looked like 5 cores.
That meant the number had been off slightly or they had gotten some new members recently and after thinking about it he bet that water guy had been one of the new ones and that had been why he was doing grunt work. It didn''t really matter though he was happy for the extra Exp even if it didn''t look like he was going to need it.
Race: Human Lv.11 ( 5/10)
Job: Mugger Lv.9 ( 2345/2560 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 110
Stamina 110
Mana 540
Strength 83
Endurance 15
Agility 89
Dexterity 111
Perception 101
Intelligence 114
Charisma 38
Free stat points: 141
Turning to look at the stats he had pulled up, Lake was happy with whatever it was he had gotten from leveling up Mugger twice and then put them away. Lake took the time to open the door then walked in. He saw a small hallway with three doors he guessed led to the personal rooms of the leaders of this band of bandits.
Using Mana Vision onest time he saw there seemed to be two people in the room on the left and on the right and the center room only had one person. That would probably be the leader whose head he needed toplete this mission if he had to guess. Opening the door on the left, Lake silently slipped in.
He wasn''t really worried about being seen since all the lights were out so he just slowly walked over to the two people in the room and one at a time he ripped their heads off. He didn''t want to damage the heads themselves so he had to make sure to kill them in a way where the head was fine and they didn''t make any noise.
He had noticed in the past when he broke peoples necks they sometimes made some gurgling noises and it could take a while for it to stop and he didn''t want that to happen this close to the bandit leaders room. So even though tearing a head off seemed like it would be louder with the effects of Mute active it made no noise other than the dripping sound the blood made after it soaked through the straw mattresses the bandits were using.
Setting the two heads down, Lake looked at the [Level max] message he had gotten after he had tore the second head off and took the time to switch his job to Brawler but didn''t look at his new skills. Walking to the next room on the other side of the Bandit Leaders room Lake did the same thing to the two inside and earned 7 levels in Brawler and another rank up.
Brawler had a 4X on unarmed kills so he had earned around 400 Exp for each bandit he had killed with his bare hands. That being said it was unlikely the leader would give him the thousands of Exp he needed for thest three levels so it seemed Brawler was going to be his job for a while.
With the four of them dead all he had left to do was kill thest one and loot and he could leave. He wasn''t tired yet and he wanted to see how fast he was on the run back to the fighters guild so he nned to find a room to rent for tonight and then do some more missions tomorrow as soon as he woke up unless he saw a cart on the way to town of course.
If that happened he would try and unlock Bandit so he would have another Unique job to level. Opening the door to the leaders room Lake saw it was dark inside as well and went inside. The bandit leader wasying on a bed in the middle of the room but that wasn''t what he spent most of his time looking at when he first walked in.
It seemed these bandits were quite a bit more sessful than thest ones he had killed. He had kind of already known this from the gear they were using but this room really struck the point home. There was stuff everywhere in this room, boxes, chests and weapon stands all full to the brim with loot.
Snapping out of it Lake focused on the bandit who was probably worth more than all the stuff in here put together and took a step towards the bed. Stopping because he felt a slight pulling at his ankle, Lake looked down to see a thin rope stretched across the floor. It was clear he had walked into a trap but he couldn''t figure out what had happened.
Looking around Lake found where the rope led under the pile of junk near the door and bent down to look without moving his foot any. He was afraid it would go off as soon as he took his foot off of the rope, like some kind ofndmine, so he had a bit of a hard time getting a good look at what the rope was connected to.
It ended up being a small bell and Lake guessed it hadn''t worked because of how Mute made it so he couldn''t cause noise in any way. Reaching over and grabbing the bell out of its little hiding ce, Lake set it down and started to scan the room for any more traps. He didn''t see any so he doubted there were any more. With his Perception being over 100 he could see extremely well especially when he wasn''t running.
Walking over to the bed Lake Went with the best method of preserving the head and plunged his hand through the man''s neck until he felt his hand go through the spine. Lake saw the man''s eyes open and could tell the man was panicking but with his spine severed he couldn''t move his body so after a while the man died from blood loss which was also the name of his skill that had made it happen so fast. [Level up]
With that done Lake just left the head there to let it drain as much as possible and turned his attention to the room. If he started looting now by the time he was done he could take the head and go and see if any of the bodies were glowing.
Chapter 157: Looting The Fortress
Chapter 157: Looting The Fortress
Lake looked right next to the bed first. There was an armor stand that he was guessing would be what this bandit would have been wearing if had attacked during the day but now it was just a nice decoration. It was too bad it was so big because he would have probably taken it with him to sell if he didn''t think he could make more by taking a lot of smaller items.
He was about to start digging through the rest of the stuff when he remembered one of the new skills he had just gotten. Pulling up his stats Lake went through the list and realized he had new skills to look at first. Not only that his strength had actually broken 100 so he was about to have an awesome skill.
Race: Human Lv.12 ( 4/10)
Job: Brawler Lv.8 ( 345/1280 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 120
Stamina 120
Mana 550
Strength 101
Endurance 15
Agility 89
Dexterity 119
Perception 101
Intelligence 114
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Skills:
Debilitate (L) Lv.1
Your next strike will stun the target and have a chance of knocking them out.
(The higher their Endurance the less of an effect it has.)
(Cost 20 Mana)
Item Sense (L) Lv.1
Shows you the most valuable item in a radius around you.
Only works on items you don''t own.
(Scales off of Perception)
The first two were obviously from Mugger hitting ten and he didn''t spend much time on them and read the ones from hitting level 1 in brawler.
Barrier (G) Lv.1
Create a shield from your mana that scales off of your Dexterity.
Cost: 10 mana
Echoing Strikes (R) Lv.1
Unarmed attacks deal 30% damage when blocked.
It was almost getting to the point where it didn''t even make sense for him to carry weapons anymore. He guessed this was what happened when you started to focus on simr jobs like how he had done with Ripper and Brawler. They were both jobs that focused on unarmed fighting and the fact he just happened to have really high Dexterity was just making it seem like he was someone who wanted to fight unarmed.
The truth was he thought swords and stuff were cool so he guessed he would need to diversify to other weapon jobs if he was to ever use one again. After making sure he would remember these skills even existed by reading them a few times he then looked at the skill he got for hitting 100 in strength.
The Best Stat (U) Lv.1
90% damage reduction from targets with lower Strength.
After Lake read this he wondered why he would care about damageing from people weaker than him he would rather have the opposite where he took less damage from people stronger than him but after reading it again he realized someone''sbat strength didn''t alwayse from the Strength stat.
A lot of people focused Agility or Intelligence to fight, meaning their strength would be neglected like his Endurance was. He guessed this skill would make it so a mage would do less damage to him with magic or a Ranger would have a hard time piercing him with their arrows. That being said this seemed more like a skill you would get from Endurance but he guessed one of the past Insiders had been a meat head to the point where they hadn''t thought of this.
That was the exact kind of person that would name a skill The Best Stat when talking about strength. Now that he was done with his new skills Lake found the one he thought could help him with his current situation.
Retrieval (U) Lv.1
Summon anything you had in your hand back to your hand.
(Cost 5 Mana)
This had been an Archer skill at some point so he was sure it had been called something like Arrow Retrieval or something like that and it had just let you recall your arrows but now that one of the past Insiders had gotten their hands on it it was much more. Every time he read it he realized just how crazy it was.
Anything he had ever touched could be summoned so all he needed to do was touch all this loot and summon itter to sell once he got to town. He was about to get to work when he realized just how crazy this skill was for someone like him who stole things. He could just go into a store and touch stuff and summon itter after he left.
It was too bad he hadn''t gotten this skill earlier he would have already made the one million gold he needed in all likelihood. After touching the twenty or so weapons that were in the room and every piece of armor he could find he went to the boxes and chests and started to open them. Bag after bag of gold to the point where he realized all he was going to have room for in his bag was gold and it was a good thing he had Retrieval for the other stuff. He couldn''t sit here and count it so he just packed it away before moving on to the weirder loot that was in the chests. The first thing was a pile of about a hundred cores and after touching a few of them he realized these were all cores that held stats. These were worth a lot even if he had no intention of using them as he was touching them so he could use Retrieval on themter Lake realized a weak point of this skill.
There was no way he would be able to remember each of theseter and to prove his point he turned his back and used Retrieval. Feeling a small amount of mana disappear and a small amount of weight in his hand, Lake dropped it and tried to do it again but couldn''t remember what anymore of them looked like well enough to summon them.
"Fuck." After a few seconds he got over how mad he was and tried to think of a way to get around this. What if he was to write down what all of it looks like? Lake instantly forgot that idea and tried to find a better one that wouldn''t take longer than just running back and forth a few times.
"If I put them all in a bag can I then summon the bag?" This made sense to Lake because if he couldn''t that would make it so he wasn''t able to summon something like a potion. It probably had something to do with how he thought about it. Like if he thought bag just the bag would show up but if he thought bag of cores the bag and all the cores would show up.
Wanting to test his theory, Lake touched the chest they were all in and turned around. Using Retrieval caught the chest as it appeared in his hand. Just from the way it sounded as he bnced it in his hand he could tell it had stuff inside it and he rejoiced as he set it on the ground.
Opening it up, Lake saw all the stuff inside it and started to pack the chest full. There was a lot of loose loot he wanted to take with him so he needed to pack it all away so he could leave. As he was working Lake saw a light start to bloom in the room and looked to the bed. The body had started to glow a golden color which meant he was sure all the bodies that would had by now since he had killed the leaderst.
He was almost packing the three chests he was going to use to take all the small stuff so he just went back to work; he would worry about getting his Intangible Lootter. When he was done with the small stuff Lake looked at the weapons that were on stands around the room and after thinking about it grabbed a pelt that was on the bed andid it on the ground.
After that he started to fill it with weapons and once he had all of them in it he rolled it up and summoned it to make sure it would work. It did and he caught the heavy bundle beforeying it down back where it had been on the ground. With that he was done and could move on to getting the head ready to go.
Getting his knife out, Lake got the head off and gathered the Intangible Loot and after holding the head put it down to see if he would be able to summon itter. When it appeared neck hole down in his hand Lake grimaced and set it on the bed. It was still better than having to carry it all the way back but he went ahead and wrapped it up so the next time he didn''t have to feel the neck hole again.
...
Lake was walking down the mountain after getting all the Intangible Loot from all the bodies that were glowing. He had sadly gotten a extra stat point in Strength from Intangible Loot which he hadn''t wanted but what could you do he had been able to get Brawler to level 9 though so that was nice that meant he would get two more skills that would probably make him even better at unarmed fighting with the next level.
Race: Human Lv.12 ( 5/10)
Job: Brawler Lv.9 ( 137/2560 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 120
Stamina 120
Mana 550
Strength 104
Endurance 15
Agility 89
Dexterity 120
Perception 101
Intelligence 114
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Now all he needed to do was get to town and sell all this junk. Thinking about how much he could get, Lake got excited. It was starting to feel like he would finally start making real progress on thest Insider mission he had toplete to get to the first level. It was crazy to think he wasn''t even level one and he was already so strong.
What would he be able to do when he hit level one. He was sure it would have something to do with his Unique skills and the golden writing and if that ended up being what it was he couldn''t wait to start changing skills to suit him better. Skills like Retrieval and Poison Control had shown him how you could take something that wasn''t originally useful to someone who was a criminal and turn it into something that was.
That being said he wasn''t sure if he had any skills that had much potential yet because he hadn''t leveled up many jobs that weren''t Unique already. Rogue was a good one to start with he guessed, he had been kind of surprised when it hadn''t already been tampered with so he guessed he would be the one to fix that.
Getting to the bottom of the mountain, Lake looked out across theke he would have to cross to get back to the road and had a sudden thought. "Can I run on water?"
Chapter 158: Fleet-footed
Chapter 158: Fleet-footed
After a few seconds of thinking about it Lake was sure he could just unsure if it would be on his first try. The only thing he thought was a downside to him trying and failing was getting wet but he was really only worried about the stuff in his bag so he could just take off his chest piece. Sliding it off and setting it down on a branch, Lake decided to take his helmet off as well.
He wasn''t worried about it getting wet but the thought of being underwater while wearing a close fitting helmet sounded panic inducing. It could also fall off if he was to fall and he would have to go down and get it which sounded like a pain so he might as well avoid it ever happening.
Setting his helmet on a branch next to the one holding his chest piece, Lake got into a starting position facing theke. After a brief countdown he started running and he could tell as soon as his foot hit the water that he would be able to run across with no problems. To be honest he felt like he could slow down a bit and still do it and that made him wish he had a speedometer or something so he could know how fast he actually was.
At the moment all he had to gage his speed off of was what his stats said and because of his skill Increased Synergy his agility wasn''t actually the number it said, it was what his Dexterity said plus his Strength because of Grip Strength so 224 and that was without using Burst. The other way he could tell he was ridiculously fast was the fact that when he was moving at his top speed it was almost like everybody else had been frozen in time.
Getting to the halfway point of theke, Lake wanted to turn back to get his stuff but realized he could just summon it to him once he was across. Stepping onto the other side of theke, Lake heard a ding he hadn''t heard in a while. Looking at the window, Lake saw that he had just unlocked a new job.
[New Job Unlocked Fleet-foot]
Lake wasn''t sure about the name but he wouldn''t turn down a new job. Opening its details to see what kind of stats it gave when he leveled it up, Lake was surprised.
Fleet-foot (E) Lv.0
On level up:
Endurance 2
Dexterity 1
Perception 2
Exp conditions:
Kills on others who have the Fleet-foot job
Bonus Exp conditions:
X10 Kills on others who have the Fleet-foot job
Skills from job:
By the name he would have expected for the job to give Agility but it seemed it just gave skills that worked well with Agility. It was almost like this job was for those who had already maxed out their Agility and needed a little help to get their other stats caught up. It made him wonder if every stat had a job like this thatplimented it and what kind of skills these jobs would give on level up.
There was another thing that was odd about this job and that was the bonus Exp condition. How was he supposed to find others that had the job? It was an Epic job so it wasn''t something you would see every day and the fact that everyone who had it was going to be fast as hell there would be a very slim chance of seeing any of them.
If he was lucky he would see a blur pass as he was doing something but in all likelihood he wouldn''t see anything. He guessed that was one of the reasons it gave Perception. As he was thinking about the job he came to a sudden realization, it was kind of like a race. Not exactly but that was what it reminded him of.
He would worry about itter though he wanted to get to town so he could try and find a ce to sleep soon. Summoning his gear from the other side, Lake put it on and started to pass through the trees. Once he was on the road Lake started to run. It was pretty much a straight line so he didn''t have to hold back and for a second he considered using Burst.
The thing was he didn''t think it was safe, even going in a straight line he didn''t think he could handle it and he doubted the road could either. He would probably blow out his boots as well because of the sudden eleration so he was just going to wait till maybe tomorrow to see just how fast he was now.
...
Getting to the town, Lake started to walk towards the Fighters guild when he realized it would be kind of weird if a head just popped out of nowhere so he did it before anyone noticed him. Walking inside Lake saw the counter you turn in missions at was empty and had the same person who had helped him earlier manning it.
Walking up Lake just held up the head and the clerk waved for him to follow him. Stepping into the private room the man asked. "Which mission are you here to turn in?"
"Um, mountain bandits near Gwenke."
"Gwindke?"
"Yep."
"Ok, I''ll be back with the scout that found the fortress."
As soon as the door closed Lake summoned the chests once they were all here he summoned the weapons and the armor stand that had been next to the bed. He was sure he would get weird looks from the clerk when he returned but he doubted he would say anything. Lake had noticed people understood to mind their own business when it came to things like these.
After a few minutes the door opened again and the clerk and a scout came in. The scout wasn''t the same one who had questioned him thest time and Lake was d that was the case. Lake set the head down and unwrapped it so the scout could take a look.
"That''s him alright, I was starting to think I wouldn''t recognize him by the time someone finally killed him. I''ll go get your money." After the scout left, Lake turned to the clerk and said. "I would like to sell all of this."
The scout had been looking at the stuff the whole time he had been back and Lake could tell they really wanted to ask him about it but they refrained and said. "This might take a while, if you n to stay in the guild tonight we''ll have it all processed by tomorrow or you can wait and we''ll do our best to rush it."
"In the guild?"
"Yes we have a few rooms for people whoe back after the hotels stop taking people. It''s only a few gold for a private room." That sounded good to Lake and he reached back to get some money out while he asked. "How many?"
"Don''t worry about paying, we''ll just take it from the money you have in your ount and it''s just six gold by the way." Lake nodded and asked. "Can I go now, there isn''t really anything I need to do right, you can just put all the money into my ount." Lake was sure that would be easier for all of them and he didn''t think they would try and rip him off or anything.
"You can but I wanted to tell you we found out what happened with that job youpleted earlier you know the one where you were headhunted. It turns out a team of three set up a fake deal with the leader of that bandit group to sell them armor to draw him out and during the ensuing fight they were able to kill the bandit leader but two of them were hurt and had to go to the nearest temple to be healed so thest of the three took the head and turned it in for the reward and disappeared. They had nned on finishing the job once they were better but you got there first so the two of them are going to look for the one who ran and give you your share if they can get it back."
Lake nodded and thought back to the five bandits that had shown up at the end. They had clearly been in a fight already and had been in a hurry to get back to their cave. He guessed they had been running away after watching their leader be killed and were trying to warn the others.
"What''s my share, is it the price of the 15 I killed then they keep the rest for the 2 they killed?"
"Correct, you are owed 18,000 for the work you did on that mission. That being said, it''s unlikely they will find him and the guild doesn''t cover stolen money."
"I''m sure there''s a cool story behind that rule as well."
"Yes, we used to, but people kept pretending one of theirpanions took all of the money and we would give them more money as a recement and send people after the people who took the money and we found in the cases where we were able to track down who had it, they had all been in on the n and were going to split all of the extra money so we had to stop."
That had been what he was expecting so he just nodded and asked. "Where is my room?"
"Please follow me." Lake was led into the back of the guild building where they had five bedrooms waiting for people like him. After he closed his door and locked it he tested the bed and found it wasn''t that bad. He did end up having a hard time sleeping though and he felt it was because he didn''t have a book to read before bed. It seemed it had be a habit after all the time he had spent in the Alchemist guild.
Chapter 159: More
Chapter 159: More
Getting up and stretching, Lake looked around and remembered where he was. He then got up and put all his armor on and walked out into the hallway. Finding the door he was pretty sure would lead out into the lobby, Lake went through it and went to find the clerk he had been working with yesterday.
He didn''t have to say anything to him because as soon as their eyes met the clerk came up to him and said. "Are you having a hard time sleeping?" Lake understood the man thought he had yet to sleep because it had only been a few hours so he said. "I''ve rested."
"Well it will probably be another two hours before we are done processing everything you sold to us so feel free to leave ande back if you would like. I''m sure you have stuff you need to do in town."
"I was actually nning on taking another mission." Lake had a limited amount of time to make money so he wanted to do as much as possible. "In that case your gold will be waiting for you when you get back."
"Would you mind taking this as well?" Lake had the money from the fortress in his bag still so he needed to make some space if he nned to use it today. It was full to the brim so he would have a hard time getting anything out of it without stopping to do so. After he had handed all the money in his bag to the clerk, Lake lined up behind the few that were actually here thiste to get his next mission.
There hadn''t been any new missions posted that were worth a lot so Lake just nned to take the highest paying mission which was a 190 mission that paid 33,600. Like thest two it was more bandits but there were less and each was slightly weaker than the ones from the fortress he had just cleared out.
That was fine he had other stuff he could do today if he ran out of missions that were worth doing. He still wanted to unlock Bandit today before he went back to the guild but that needed some luck so he couldn''t just head out and do it. He would need a cart toe by and it seemed most of them were avoiding this area because of all the bandits.
That being said there were still some so he might get lucky today ande across one. Once it was his turn at the counter, Lake pointed to the mission he wanted and the clerk handed him a map to where the bandits were.
Find and kill the Nomadic Bandits near Qwenton.
Difficulty 190
1,400 Per head
Estimated number of bandits 24
The fact these guys didn''t have a set base meant he would probably find them while he looked for carts to rob since they would be doing the same thing but first he needed to get to Qwenton vige. The map said it was far but Lake was too fast to worry about that.
...
The sun was starting to rise as Lake arrived at the vige. Looking around Lake found it to be very simr to corn town but there was no one here. He wasn''t that surprised because he knew the Temple of Light had evacuated all the small viges like this one because they were unable to protect the citizens from the Demon Worshipers.
It felt a little spooky to be walking around the empty vige so Lake looked at the map where all the surrounding roads were drawn and started to head out of the vige. These roads were where the bandits had been spotted so if he did a few loops he was sure he would see something that would lead him to them.
...
After the first pass through he hadn''t seen anything obvious but he was sure they were close. He guessed there was a chance they had moved on since they were called the nomadic bandits but the newest information on them was from just a few days ago. Since he had already checked the roads Lake guessed he might as well start checking the woods and fields that were around the roads.
They had spent a good amount of time here so he was pretty sure he would find where they had been sleeping if he spent enough time looking.
...
He did find signs of life in the form of old fires where they had probably stopped to cook food but nothing that said they had spent a lot of time there. Lake found it a little odd that there didn''t seem to be any signs of them sleeping and he figured they must be using hammocks or something to sleep in the trees.
After he had thought that he had started to check in the trees that were around him and after a while he started to find a few signs he was right. It was just things like where someone had grabbed onto a tree branch with a bloody hand but it was still something.
That being said, with them not leaving obvious tracks he could follow the only way he was going to find them was if he stumbled into them so he might as well stop looking for tracks and just move through the woods as quickly as possible to cover more ground.
...
After a while he found something that told him he was close, a recently put out fire, and it made him think he knew where to find them. If they had just left they had probably done it to get to work which would mean they should be by a road. He didn''t know exactly where he was but these patches of forest between the roads were not that big so he should be able to see the edge of the forest from the top of a tree.
Once he got back onto the road he would be able to tell where he was on the map because he had already been on it once. Lake quickly jumped to the top of a tree and held on just long enough to see which direction he should go. Running towards the road he had seen Lake turned on Mana Vision and just like he expected he saw people standing in the woods on either side of the road.
He was happy to find them like this and not when they were just in the woods because if they knew what they were doing and there was a carting through here soon he could take over for them once they were dead. He started to think what he would do if the cart showed up during the battle but he quickly remembered that he could kill them all in less than a minute.
Not wanting to waste any time Lake activated Mute and appeared behind the closest bandit and jabbed his hand into their chest. Knowing he had dealt a fatal wound he went towards the next Bandit only for his attack to get interupted. The Sight had kicked in after his first attack and it had made him aware enough to notice a small bluring towards him.
As he dodged it Lake saw that it was an arrow that had been aimed at him by someone on the other side of the road. Looking to where it hade from, Lake saw someone on the other side of the road with a bow and he could see their arms moving. They were slow but the fact they were even fast enough to counter attack in the short amount of time he had stood still to attack was impressive.
It meant they probably had maxed Agility and Perception or they had been lucky enough to get some really good skills that let them perform above what should be possible for a normal person. Sadly for them it wouldn''t be enough because he didn''t have to stand still to attack. Rushing straight at them, Lake watched as they slowly knocked an arrow and pulled back the bow string to fire.
It seemed he had been right about them having maxed agility because it seemed they were moving about half of his speed but the arrow they were going to fire would be faster than him like thest one. They wouldn''t be able to get the bow aimed at him though. Circling around them Lake started to close the distance and was about to slice into their neck when he saw it.
Three more people who were moving around half his speed. When Lake saw this he couldn''t help but think the scouts hadn''t done a very good job but that made sense with how hard it had been to find these guys, and people as strong as these four would be able to stay hidden even if the other bandits had been found.
He wouldn''t be surprised if these four hadn''t been ounted for in the original estimate that had been on the mission board. He didn''t have the time to check now though, with four of them attacking him he could get hit even with how slow they all were. He was just happy not all of them were using bows.
He didn''t think he would be able to close the distance without opening himself up to an attack if he was being shot at from four different angles. That being said this gave him the opportunity to use a skill he had been wanting to use since he had seen it.
Barrier (G) Lv.1
Create a shield from your mana that scales off of your Dexterity.
Cost: 10 mana
Chapter 160: A New Favorite
Chapter 160: A New Favorite
Lake knew he was technically using the more difficult method to fight these four by not just taking his knife out real quick and using knife throw to kill one of them real quick or cast a spell like Fire st but he was kind of interested in this as more of a challenge than a fight. Using Barrier Lake saw a small shield start to weave itself out of his mana right above his fist.
Moving his hand slightly he saw the barrier moved with his hand which is what he had been hoping for. He could also tell this still counted as him being unarmed so he could see how useful this skill would be from now on if he nned to fight with no weapons which was when he was at his strongest.
Now all he had to do was see how strong it was. It said it scaled off of his Dexterity which wasn''t surprising considering it hade from a job that dealt with fighting with your hands but it did seem like an odd stat for something made from mana to scale off of. That being said he had high Dexterity so it should be good.
Stopping in ce Lake watched as one of the two people with bows finally got their aim on him and fired. Lake moved his body to the side slightly and held the barrier in the path of the arrow. There was no effect when the arrow hit the barrier and he watched as the arrow harmlessly fell to the ground.
Starting to move again so he wouldn''t get shot while he inspected the barrier to see if he could see any damage if he looked real close. After looking at it it looked like the arrow had truly done nothing at all to it so now that he understood just how strong it was Lake wanted to see if he could do anything else with it.
Lake had seen how a shield could be used as a weapon in his fight against that guy who had used that flying shield as a weapon and Lake wanted to see if he could imitate that with these mana barriers. They should be simr since this was made out of his mana in the same way mana vessels used the mana you filled them with to function like part of your body you could control.
At least it felt the same as it did with his mana vessels. Moving the shield away from his hand Lake felt like it was going to work until it started to get further from him. He could feel his connection to the barrier starting to fail so he pulled it back before he lost control of it. It wasn''t aplete failure though because this still increased his range by two or three feet and when you couldn''t use any weapons that was quite a bit.
With that all he had left to do was use it to attack to see if it was deadly, no he knew he could kill these people with it he really just wanted to know how sharp it was. He couldn''t really tell by looking at it and he remembered that the shield he had stolen was razor sharp which he had found to be interesting at the time.
By now with all the time he had wasted messing with his barrier one of the two melee bandits he was currently running around had gotten kind of close so Lake headed in toward him and had the barrier slice towards the man. Lake saw the man try and move his sword to block the barrier but he could tell it wouldn''t make it in time and it seemed the man understood this as well because Lake saw a faint light start to form around the man.
It was toote to use magic though because the shield had already reached the man''s side but unlike what Lake had hoped it just crushed its way into the man instead of slicing him in half. Caving someone''s chest in was still an effective attack but he felt it would make it more likely for them to be able to survive it.
That being said as he watched the man''s body get sent flying into the woods it seemed unlikely that they would be getting back up. Now that he knew it was an effective weapon as well, Lake wanted to know if he could make more of them, kind of like how he had been able to use Summon Hands as many times as he wanted.
Using the skill again Lake felt another barrier start to weave itself out of his mana above his other hand. He had expected that he could have at least two but three was where it would get interesting. Trying to use the skill again Lake found it did nothing so he ended the testing and just started to fight like normal.
Rushing over to one of the bow bandits Lake bashed them and when the other bow bandit used that as an opportunity to attack him he blocked the arrow and rushed them as well. [Level max] It seemed these four were worth quite a bit because he had still needed most of the Exp for level nine but he wasn''t going toin.
Switching his job to Spearman, Lake went for thest guy holding a sword and sent him flying like the rest. [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Rank up] [Level up] There was no Exp bonus because he didn''t have a spear but he wanted to see what kind of skills amon job would give him.
With those four dead Lake looked to the other bandits that were unable to participate in a fight like the one that had just happened and saw a few had actually been able to take a few steps out of the woods towards him and he thought there would probably be others that were running in the opposite direction so he should go ahead and clean them up before they got away.
[Level up] [Level up] [Level up] Lake wasn''t sure how many of them he killed but he did know it wasn''t enough to get the max level in spearman but with them all dead he had the time to see exactly how far away he was.
Race: Human Lv.13 ( 4/10)
Job: Spearman Lv.8 ( 430/1280 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 130
Stamina 130
Mana 560
Strength 115
Endurance 15
Agility 97
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 114
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Then the good part, his new skills. The first two were from Brawler so he took his time to read them because of how much he had found he liked Barrier for letting him punch things he couldn''t reach.
Wave (G) Lv.1
Send out a wave of mana that scales off of your Dexterity.
Cost: 10 mana
Barrage (R) Lv.1
Activated skillsst for twice as many attacks.
Lake read Wave a few times because of its striking simrities to Barrier but he decided he would try it in a battle before he wrote it offpletely. Barrage seemed good if it did what he thought it did. He was pretty sure it had to do with things like Crunch where it said your next attack and if that was the case he was happy to save the Mana and Stamina.
Focused Force (G) Lv.1
Skills cost 20% less while using a spear.
Spear Master (R) Lv.1
30% Increase to Strength and Agility''s effects while holding a spear.
These were the types of skills he needed for every weapon so he was happy he got started. When he maxed the job and got the next two he was sure Spear would be more viable. It also made him realize he could have just summoned his spear to him during that battle and that would have allowed him to make twice as much Exp.
He wasn''t going to beat himself up about it though because there were plenty of people to kill. All he would have to do is go back to the Fighters guild and get another one. Plus he might get some Intangible Loot if he was lucky, it wasn''t like he was going anywhere just yet he still had to find out which head he needed to bring back and get all the loot together so he could bring it back to sell.
He wouldn''t bother with the Getting all the armor but the weapons would be easy to gather. As he started to pile up the weapons Lake started to look around for something he could put them in. His best idea was someone''s shirt so he needed to find a nice big one. Sadly a lot of these bandits happened to be on the smaller side so he didn''t think he would be able to get away with one.
Getting one of the bodies up so he could get its clothes off, Lake started to hear something and remembered why he was standing on a road in the first ce. The cart he was going to use to unlock Bandit wasing.
Chapter 161: Good News
Chapter 161: Good News
Lake didn''t want to be stripping a body when the cart got here so he dropped it and positioned himself in the middle of the road. Once he was able to see the cart he could tell they saw what was on the road because they had already started to stop. Lake couldn''t help but think this was going to be even easier than he had thought when he saw them stop and was about to tell them to give him what was in the cart but they beat him to talking.
"You need any help?" Lake was caught off guard by the cart driver''s question so he asked. "Help with what?"
"Your loot, do you want us to help you get it to town?" Lake looked around at all the bodies and thought about it. He was sure all this armor would be worth giving up on the cart robbery. "Yes."
"Lads get out here and help." After the cart driver said this he got down from his seat and walked over to the back of the cart to help the four guards that were in the back get out. The four guards didn''t say anything to him and instantly got to work stripping the bandits and Lake was about to start as well when the cart driver said. "We really appreciate this. You clearing the road probably saved our lives."
"Well I''m getting paid for it, so, you know, don''t worry about it." Lake couldn''t help feeling a little awkward being thanked by someone he was probably going to kill so they wouldn''t tell anyone what he looked like. "Still don''t think we''ll try and take any of the money you get from selling any of this stuff. It''s yours."
Lake hadn''t been worried about that to begin with but he could tell the cart driver was trying to be nice so Lake said thank you and got to work with the rest of them loading the cart with all the armor and weapons. There was also quite a bit of other types of loot and Lake guessed it made sense that Bandits who didn''t have a base would carry all their stuff on them.
Either way it was all good news for him and it continued to get better when one of the guards said. "I think this guy is a Thieves guild member, do you want me to get the head off for you?" Lake wasn''t sure if the guy was saying this was the leader whose head he needed to turn in for the mission''s reward or something else that had to do with Thieves guild members so he asked. "Why, does the Fighters guild give money for members of the Thieves guild?"
"No, that would be akin to dering war on the Thieves guild, but this guy in particr might have a bounty on him through the fighters guild. That''s between the Thieves guild and whoever ced the bounty but the Thieves guild doesn''t really care what happens to its members so a lot of people ce bounties on them."
Lake wasn''t going to say no to more money so seeing the corpse he was talking about was one of the four who could sort of fight him Lake said "These three as well. I also don''t know which head I was supposed to bring back to the guild so do you think these four will suffice."
"Yeah you should be good in cases like these the guild will ask other members that witnessed the oue so in this case we''ll be able to confirm youpleted the mission." Lake nodded he remembered his first mission when he was being asked questions they had asked him if there was anyone who could back up his story and when he had said there wasn''t they hadn''t been happy.
"Plus the scout who originally found these guys should be able to recognize all of this armor we''re bringing back and with these four heads you will get you all the money for all of these bandits." Lake nodded and was happy the guild had methods to get people paid in situations like these where the bandit leader was unclear.
...
"We''re almost there." Hearing the driver call out to them Lake was relieved, He had ended up riding back with them without really thinking about how long it would take. Thankfully this cart was quick and it had only been a few hours but sitting in the back with the four other guards was kind of cramped because of all the stuff he had brought with them and the four heads of the bandits weren''t helping the atmosphere.
It had caused the trip to be in silence and while he had been able to keep himself busy staring at these four it still hadn''t been as interesting as when he got to ask people a bunch of questions. It didn''t really matter though because with them almost there they would all be able to get out and he was sure all their moods would improve.
Feeling the carte to a stop, Lake wanted to get out but he had to wait for the cart driver to open the door and get some of the stuff out of the way first. "Alright I''ll wait for you four to help our friend here. Take as long as you need." After the cart driver said this the five of them unloaded his stuff and took it inside the guild.
They were only a few steps inside when a few clerks came to help. Lake had to say the Fighters guild had done a good job training their clerks. They had been very helpful so far and it made him wonder if they were using a version of the Loyalty curse to make them like this. Either way he was happy they weren''t like the people who stood at desks in his world.
"Follow me sir." Even though he couldn''t see over the pile of armor he was carrying, Lake recognized the voice as the man who had helped him thest few times he was here and wondered if the man was like him and didn''t need to sleep that much. He guessed it was also possible he had just been too busy to get off of work because of all the stuff he had been bringing in.
It was possible the loyalty cursepelled him to finish all his work before he left; if that was the case Lake might end up working this man to death. Stepping into the head inspection room Lake just set all the stuff on the floor and looked for the heads. He knew one of the guards had them and after looking through what they had in their hands he found them.
"Four huh, Which mission?"
"Nomadic Bandits near Quinton."
"Qwenton?"
"Yep that''s right."
"Alright I''ll be right back, feel free to set all that stuff down, I''ll take care of it when I return." The four guards did as he said and soon there was arge pile of armor and weapons in the middle of the room. They had brought everything, even the crap and damaged bits of armor so there was quite a bit.
Lake wasn''t sure how much a copsed chest piece could be worth but he guessed if there was a person who could use metal magic to repair it there was no difference. "So were you out there for a long time looking for those bandits?" Lake hadn''t expected one of the guards to finally talk to him but he guessed it lined up with his hypothesis that they would feel better once they got out of the cart.
"Not really, why do you ask?"
"Your armor''s pretty dirty so I thought maybe you had a hard time looking for them, either way, you want me to clean you?" Lake understood what they were saying. He had definitely be gross over the past few days because he hadn''t found a good ce to bathe so he nodded and said. "Yes please."
"Clean." Lake had felt this before a lot of times because one of his servants did it to him almost every day but he had to say the feeling was much better this time because of how dirty he was. "Thank you." Lake was going to say something else to them to pass the time but he was cut off with the clerk returning with the scout.
"Alright lets see these heads." It seemed the clerk had mentioned the fact there was more than one head to the scout already. Lake let them do their thing and after a while the scout said. "This is him right here, I don''t recognize any of the others but I''ll look into it for you. It might take a while without their names though."
Lake was pretty sure he could find out the names if he wanted by inspecting the heads but he didn''t bother and said. "Thank you." He didn''t care if he wasted the scouts time with how bad of a job they had done on the scouting mission they had based the information for his mission on. "Alright, do you want me to add your reward to your ount or bring it here?"
"The ount please." Lake wanted to hold off on seeing how much he had made until he was done because he thought it would make it more satisfying for him. With the scout gone to put his money in the ount that just left the clerk and the four guards he didn''t end up needing. "You guys can go, thanks for the help."
After they had left, Lake turned to the clerk and said. "I want to sell all of this and put this in my ount." Lake took out the money he had got off the bandits and said. "I''ll be backter. Will all my money be ready?" Lake was nning to go back to the guild soon and he wanted to take what he could back with him in case he was unable toe back to the Fighters guild anytime soon.
"Mostly whatever we don''t have ready for you when you are back will be waiting for you the next time youe." Lake nodded and started to leave when the clerk stopped him by saying. "The branch Master has asked to see you. You don''t have to but he ns to talk to you about better jobs more suitable for people like you."
"Ok." Lake agreed while thinking it was too bad they hadn''t offered him something better till now, with him leaving soon to go home he might not have time for this. Being led to an office, Lake was let in by the clerk. "Come in and sit. I have something to tell you." Lake did as he was told while he looked at the old man at the desk.
Lake could tell this man had been a fighter at some point because of how ripped he was but they had probably retired by now because of age. Once the door had been closed the man didn''t waste any time and instantly started to talk. "I''m Master Dean. Your name is Lake, correct." Lake nodded and said. "Yes Master Dean."
"Ok, have you ever been to the Metal Domain?"
Chapter 162: It’s A Big World
Chapter 162: It''s A Big World
Lake didn''t even know what the meatal domain was so he shook his head and said. "No." And was about to ask about it but Master Dean started to talk again before he could. "Well that''s fine I just wanted to know if you had a way to enter." After he said this Master Dean opened the desk and pulled out a small scroll.
"This will get you through the gates, now to tell you what you''ll be doing there." Lake couldn''t just let Master Dean keep going because it seemed he had taken himing to talk to him as he was willing to do whatever he wanted from him. "Master Dean I still haven''t decided if I''ll be going or not, I just wanted to see what you were offering me."
"Well in that case I won''t give you this just yet." Master dean took the scroll off of the desk and put it somewhere he wouldn''t be able to reach it and then started to tell him about the offer. "A week ago one of the masters in the fighters guild branch in the Metal Domains capital sent word that Demon Worshipers have been spotted in the Metal Domain, this is a problem because the God of Metal has chosen to stay neutral in the war, but with that he also said neither side could have forces in his territory so the ones who are there are to be destroyed and the Metal Temple put a bounty on every one of them and has asked the Fighters guild to send as many strong people as we could to kill them."
Lake could see where this was going but really just wanted more information on what the Metal domain was, plus he didn''t really care that much about the mission only if it was worth his time. "Master, how much money is each Demon Worshiper worth?"
"It depends on their rank in the Demon Lord''s army but listen if you take this mission there''s a chance the Demon Worshipers wille after you if you leave the Metal Domain. You''ll be stuck in neutral territories until the war is over. You will also have to pass through the war zone to reach the gate to the Metal Domain. That being said, you will probably be able to make three or four times what you will be making if you stay here."
It was starting to sound like this was a much bigger decision and would affect more than just his schedule but he didn''t think it sounded like a bad deal. He had really only been staying at the Alchemist guild because he felt he would be safe their but it sounded like if he was to go to the Metal Domain he would be safe from the Demon Lord and his army and he wouldn''t even have to be bored to death waiting for the war to end.
There was a lot to do in the guild but it wasn''t exactly what he was interested in. "How long does it take to get there?" Lake could tell Master Dean was happy by this question because it showed he was interested and it made him wonder how his eptance would benefit Master Dean. It wasn''t really important but he was still curious.
"That would be up to you. I''ll just be giving you a map since you''ve never been there and this rmendation from the guild to allow you inside. So, are you interested?" Lake had made up his mind already so he nodded which led to Master Dean handing him the map and rmendation and saying. "Report to the first Fighters guild you see when you get there."
Lake nodded and got up to leave and as he was walking out he took a look at the map and decided he should be ready to go. There weren''t any crazy obstacles or anything between him and where he was headed so he didn''t need to stock up on food or supplies and since he was headed back towards the direction he hade from he could just stop by the guild to get more of Millie''s food.
...
Looking ahead Donny could see the gate to the Metal Domain and sighed in relief. They had been having a hard time feeding everyone thest few days and it was making it hard for those who weren''t on the carts to keep up at the pace they were moving but all of that was over now all they needed to worry about now was actually getting in.
It would probably take a few days for all of them to get in and while he wasn''t worried about himself since he had family here, he wasn''t so sure about all the people he and the others had protected on the way here. The metal domain was notoriously difficult to enter and the war had probably made it worse.
He wouldn''t be surprised if it took a week for everyone to get through but from what he had heard it was worth it for them to stay in a group because there were rumors that there was a sizable group of Demon Worshipers inside the Metal Domain at the moment and he believed it enough toe here.
He was sure he would be able to make way more gold killing trespassers in the Metal Domain than just leading refugees to various ces and even if he was wrong he hadn''t been home since his mother died and he left to train. He was sure his brother would be in their family home at this moment training with the shield he had stolen from him.
He had another reason to leave the holy domain as well. The Demon Lord had been talking to him more and more and Donny thought it was probably a bad sign for what would be happening here soon. As he was thinking about the voice Donny saw the gate open slightly to let a few hundred people and a couple of carts through before it was quickly closed again and felt the line they were in move forward slightly.
A few more groups like that and it would be their turn to start proving who they were to the guards at the gate. Looking down at his family crest he wondered what it would be like when they all heard he hade back. He was sure his uncle would try to find him but he wasn''t so sure about the rest.
Most of them had kind of forgotten about their warrior background and just started to act like the other rich and powerful families in the Metal Domain so he didn''t really have that much inmon with them. Not to mention he was sure they had finished their transformation by now so he doubted he would even look like a member of their family.
...
"Hey, Tiff, are you in here?" Tiff looked up to see Dawn stepping into her room and deactivated her stealth. "Yeah I''m here."
"They just called the meeting, let''s go." Tiff nodded and got up to follow Dawn. They had all been waiting for this so even if she knew it wouldn''t really affect her that much she wanted to know what the Temple nned to do with the divine core. Walking into the auditorium Tiff went to sit in the back but Dawn caught her arm and dragged her with her to the front.
Tiff wanted to protest but there were too many people around so she just kept her mouth shut. Making a fuss wouldn''t really make sense for a person who wanted to sit in the back of the room so no one would pay attention to them. Finding seats next to most of the other members of the 23 she looked around for the few who were missing.
She soon saw them entering the auditorium with the Temple head. It seemed they had missed the actual meeting and this was just to inform the rest of them what was going on. The four members of the 23 that were with the Temple head were unsurprisingly the three swords and Leah.
Tiff wasn''t surprised Leah would be one of the temple''s top choices because as the spear user she had a lot inmon with the God of Light himself who used a spear. That meant she would probably have the best choices for abat focused Legendary job. That being said Tiff was sure it would be Greg who would get it.
Once the Temple head was on the stage she didn''t waste any time and started. "The God of Light has agreed to grant a Legendary job but he wants to be the one who chooses who gets it so in the next few days the members of the 23 will be going one at a time to the Light Domain to the Light Temple."
The Temple head meant the actual Light Temple, not the small ones that had been built here after the Holy Goddess had been killed to help protect the few people with Holy affinity. "We''re not sure how much time we have until the fighting starts again so we n to send the first as soon as the meeting is over."
Tiff thought it sounded like the meeting was already over but she guessed the Temple Head had something else to say. "Onest thing, the missing Dagger has been gone long enough with no real leads so we are deciding to give up on looking for it. From now on Tiffany will be leading a small group that will be recing her role in the 23. It''s unfortunate but this way her training won''t go to waste. Alright the meeting is over."
It had been a quick meeting so it left her with some questions like if she was going to be sent to meet the God of Light. The Temple Head said the members of the 23 would be going so that included her but without her weapon she wasn''t really worth sending. That being said, she actually knew who had it and she had told the Temple about the fact that someone in the Alchemist guild had it before she had actually met Jon.
That being said the Alchemist guild had denied it so nothing really happened there. "Tiffany, would youe with me for a while?" It seemed the Temple head had something to talk to her about and most likely it would be about this team or whatever she was going to be leading from now on.
Chapter 163: Returning
Chapter 163: Returning
Lake had been running for about an hour at this point and he knew where he was because he had just spotted where he had found those bandits who stole the cart from the old man. He no longer cared about them but it did make him wonder how the old man and his two grandchildren were doing.
Continuing on his journey it wasn''t long before Lake found the woods they were hiding in. Going into the woods it wasn''t long before he found them. All three were sitting on the same log and as Lake got closer he could see all their mouths were stained green. It seemed they had taken his advice and had turned to Whanto to feed themselves.
Appearing in front of them Lake waved hi. "Your cart was destroyed by the time I found it and the horse had been eaten." Lake didn''t really have anything else to say and was about to leave when the old man said. "Please lead us back to the capital, I know its dangers there but we won''t survive out here in the woods."
Lake had kind of expected something like this to happen and while he found it annoying he didn''t think it would be that bad. That being said he didn''t want to waste his time so he asked. "What will you do once you''re inside the capital? You were leaving for a reason so I doubt you have anywhere to take shelter."
"Yes it''s true we have nothing to return to but it''s still better than nothing." Lake wasn''t going to waste his time leading people who were just going to die so he said. "You would be better off standing by the road and begging for a ride away from the city. You''re pretty close to a town where you''ll be able to find work and even if you have to walk it will only take you a few days."
"We would never make it this road is infested with bandits." Lake had been down this road a few times and never seen any bandits other than the ones who had taken the cart from this man and they weren''t really dangerous, just hungry so he said. "I took care of all the bandits already, you''ll be fine."
With that Lake turned to leave and even though the old man tried to stop him again Lake just kept going. He had truly given them the best advice he could and the rest would be up to them. Getting back on the road, Lake started to run back towards the capital. He wanted to get all his business at the Alchemist guild done quickly so he could hit the road.
...
After his inspection, Lake quickly entered and rode the Elevator to Lucas'' office. Once inside, Lake said to Lucas. "Master Lucas I''ll be gone for a while starting today. Would you mind telling Master Na about my absence so he doesn''t think I''m just skipping work."
"Are youing to today''s execution before you leave?" Lake had no intention of going so he shook his head. "Ok. Do you want your pay early for the road or do you want me to keep it here for you?"
"What do you mean pay?"
"Yes your sry for the month, It''s a few days early but if you won''t be here you might want to take it with you, trips can be expensive." Lake hadn''t been aware of a sry but he guessed it made sense he did work here. "How much is it?"
"Lets see, 32,800. Not bad for a first month, especially since you didn''t really make anything to sell. Do you want it?" Lake had been nning to get his money at the Fighters guild in the Metal Domain so he didn''t really need any so he asked. "Can I get it at any branch?"
"Yes. Where are you going though, there might not be a branch there." Lake hadn''t wanted to tell Lucas what he was doing or where he was going but he couldn''t help but think Lucas didn''t care with how he was acting. "The Metal Domain."
"Yes there are branch offices there so you can get the money once you get there. Your friend Nia''s there at the moment as well so you should stop by and say hello."
Nia is in the Metal Domain huh, why." Lake saw this as a good chance to get more information on where he was going. "Well it''s the perfect ce to send her with her being such a talented Enchanter because the Metal Domain is where the guild makes all the equipment we can''t buy."
Lake guessed that made sense and it made him wonder if the cksmiths guild was going to be a bigger force there than the Alchemist guild. He had always thought the cksmiths guild building was kind of small, especiallypared to theirs. "Alright It''s time for me to go. I have to get ready for the execution."
"Goodbye Master Lucas." With that being done he only had one other person to say bye to. He rode the elevator all the way down to the basement where the entrance to the dungeon was. He quickly found Joy standing where she always was. "Joy." After he said her name Lake saw her react like she always did whenever the effects of the Loyalty curse was turned up so he said. "Goodbye."
He couldn''t really have a conversation with her when she was like this so he rode the elevator up to the cafeteria and went to get some food for the road. This was what he was going to miss the most so he sat down and had a meal first before packing his bag with stuff he thought would keep for a long time.
Once that was done he walked into the kitchen and looked for Millie. Like he expected she was there telling her students what to do. "Hey Millie do you have any cheese lying around?" Lake knew she had continued her research on new food items so there were things around that he could ask for that might not be out in the cafeteria.
"There is a small amount on that table over there." Lake nodded and went to where she had pointed. Finding a white brick Lake cut a small piece off and ate it. It was clear she had made some progress with the vor and being slightly greedy he stuck the whole brick into his bag. He was sure Millie wouldn''t mind there still weren''t that many people around who liked cheese so really he was the only person who would be eating from this brick.
"Thanks Millie. I''ll see you." He got a small wave from her and with how busy she was he decided that was good enough and left the kitchen. Heading for the storage closet to stock up on potions, Lake realized he had forgotten to go to his room to see if his servants had gotten his belt yet.
Feeling toozy to go himself, Lake found a passing servant and told them to go and ask one of his servants about it and if they had gotten it to bring it to him. It would probably take a while for this process to happen so Lake could take the time to organize his bag better. He had a lot of food inside now and he wanted to be able to carry a few of every potion.
It was too bad he didn''t steal any of this stuff because he could store more of it using Booster Bag. Thinking that Lake tried to move the cheese he had taken from Millie into the Booster Bag and found he could. He guessed he had stolen it after all. With the brick of cheese in the second inventory Lake had enough room for another health potion and after packing it away he just started to wait for his servant to deliver his belt.
After a while Lake saw the servant whose name he had forgottening towards him with his belt. "Here you go master."
"Thank you, I''ll be gone for a while so enjoy your time off." After saying that Lake started inspecting his belt. It had twelve ces you could store things like bottles on it and because of the armor and the way the storage spaces had been designed you didn''t have to worry about them falling out as you moved or them getting broken.
Putting it on, Lake put a few potions in it and after doing a flip to see if they would fall out Lake was satisfied and decided he was ready to go. Lake headed for the door outside while getting his map back out of his bag so he could look at it as he ran. Once he was outside he found the right road and started to Run towards the Metal Domain.
Chapter 164: Going
Chapter 164: Going
"There it is." Lake had been starting to worry about Having gone the wrong way because the map had a town on it and he had thought he should have already been to it by now. That being said he had no ns on stopping here because he was currently traveling through a battlefield. The town was little more than a ruin from what he could see so there was no point in stopping.
...
Lake had finally reached the capital wall, this was the first big thing on the map but he didn''t think he was going to have any problems getting through because the gate had been destroyed. It was wide open so he just ran straight through and as soon as he did he saw where he was headed.
The map had his goal as a mountain range and it was sorge he could see it from here. That being said it was really far away so he didn''t know if he was going to be able to reach it today or not. The line on the map said he had about 3/4 of the trip to go still and it had taken him about four hours to get here so that meant he had another 12 hours to go.
It was fine either way; he had no problems sleeping outside tonight if he started to get tired before he got there.
...
After a while Lake passed the first vige he had seen since leaving the capital wall. It, like all the others had been burned down and it made Lake wonder why they were burning buildings. He was sure there was a reason but it seemed like a waste of time to destroy wooden buildings unless you were doing it for fun.
It wasn''t like they could really be used as a base by your enemies so there wasn''t a reason in his mind so he thought maybe he was right about them doing it for fun. Lake stopped staring at the vige and started running again and after passing a few more burned viges he finally found something big enough to be called a town.
It seemed once you were outside the capital wall the frequency of towns and such increased. Lake wondered if it had something to do with it being less safe out here so people didn''t like to travel as far or sleep outside in a makeshift camp so the towns ended up being closer together.
He guessed it could also be because the quality of the carts dropped so they were slower making these shorter distances take the same amount of time for them. He had ridden quite a few carts at this point and Stan''s cart from corn town was slower than he could walk and the carts the guild had were about half as fast as he could run.
...
Lake had been running for seven or eight hours at this point if you added everything up and he decided to stop and sit for a little while. Oddly his legs weren''t getting tired and after thinking about why he remembered his Endurace was technically in the 200''s now even if it said 15 because of the effects of Grip Strength and Increased Synergy.
Grip Strength (L) Lv.1
When unarmed your Strength is added to your Dexterity.
Increased Synergy (U) Lv.1
If your Dexterity is higher than your Agility or Endurance they be equal to your Dexterity.
If your Agility or Endurance is higher than your Dexterity, gain a bonus to your Dexterity equal to the difference.
And because of the effects of Refreshed he didn''t really need to stop to let his Stamina refill. Even after all of this running his Stamina''s natural recovery rate was keeping him full. He was really only stopping because he was bored, bored to the point that doing nothing felt refreshing.
It was making him consider trying out his top speed but he was still kind of apprehensive because he was afraid of hurting himself. Burst didn''t double anything but his Strength and Agility so his Endurance would stay the same and while it didn''t seem like a big deal if his Agility was double his Endurance there would be a gap of over 200 points.
In the past he had felt his legs feel a bit strained when he had gone all out and he was afraid a gap of 200 points would be enough to cripple him and cause him to waste his health potions healing himself of an avoidable injury. That being said he wasn''t dumb enough to go all out right away or anything but he also had the problem of his Perception being too low; even for his current speed.
That problem would get much worse if he was to go any faster so he didn''t think he could even go slightly faster without running into things and that might cause serious injuries as well. After thinking all of this Lake took his boots off and did his best to shove them into his already full bag.
Once he was satisfied they wouldn''t fall out he activated Burst. After taking a few steps Lake started to slowly pick up speed until he was going at his normal running speed and then slowly increased it further. After about ten steps Lake stopped and looked back at the cloud of dust he was kicking up.
Normally his top speed was around 236 agility, whatever speed that was, and he was pretty sure he had only increased it by 20 or 30 points there and the difference was crazy. The sound his feet were making when they hit the ground was like the biggest pping sound ever and like he had suspected going that fast wasn''t a good idea for him just yet because he was unable to process what was happening in front of him quick enough to react.
Thankfully the road was pretty smooth so it didn''t really matter where he put his feet as he ran but he could see himself tripping over something or missing a turn. Getting his boots back on Lake resigned himself to the next eight hours of running and went ahead and started running again without using Burst.
...
The sun had gone down hours ago but Lake had just kept going. He didn''t want to have to get up tomorrow and get right back to running so he had decided to push through and make it to the mountains today and it was almost over because he was now close enough to see the base of the mountain where he could see lights.
He was pretty sure they were fires and as he got closer he knew he was right because he could see people camping around a giant gate set in between two mountains. He wasn''t sure if there being other people here was a good thing for him or not but he was sure it would make it easier for him to find a ce to sleep that wasn''t the ground.
He didn''t have anything like a sleeping bag so a pile of leaves would have been the best he could do. After thinking about it more he wondered if he would be able to summon his bed from his room back at the guild if he was to try.
He had definitely held it before as he used it so he guessed it would be worth a try if he ever really needed a bed he was just worried all he had technically touched was the sheet and never the mattress but he was pretty sure it would work like how it did when he summoned a box of something. The sheet being the box and the mattress being the contents.
Getting into the camp after taking a few minutes to make sure it would be safe from a distance, Lake started to look around and noticed the gate was closed for the day and the first thing he wondered was when it would start letting people through again. Hopefully it was an early morning thing and he wouldn''t have to wait half the day because he didn''t sleep for very long which meant he would be just sitting here awake till he could go through.
After looking around the camp for a while Lake found there were really only three groups and he just chose the biggest one and tried to integrate into it. Sitting at one of the fires he just sat quietly and listened to the old man who was telling everyone else about his wife. Lake could tell by the way the man sounded his wife was dead but he couldn''t tell if it was recent or not.
He did find out though when the man said her passing was what had caused him to leave the Metal Domain in the first ce and how he had never nned toe back but now that the war had destroyed the house he had bought there was no reason for him to stay here either. Lake decided to move after he could feel his mood take a hit because of this old man''s ramblings and was able to find a better ce to sit next to a different fire.
Chapter 165: The Gate Opens For One
Chapter 165: The Gate Opens For One
Lake had been able to find a ce to sleep pretty easily, all he had to do was hang out for a while and wait for a bedroll to open up. It seemed these people had been sleeping in shifts so all he had to do was pretend it was his turn and with how fast he slept he had been up before anyone could realize he wasn''t with them.
Then came the wait, hours had passed but thankfully guards had shown up as soon as the sun hade up. It seemed the group he had chosenst night was second in line at the moment so he didn''t wait for them and directly pushed his way to the front and passed the scroll Master Dean had given him to one of the guards.
The guard took it from him and after opening it and reading what it said they said. "Thanks for waiting for us to open the border. A lot of people like you try to climb over. Open the gate!" Right after the guard said this the gate cracked open and the guard said. "Alright have a nice time in the Metal Domain."
Lake guessed he didn''t get his scroll back and walked inside to find himself in the smallest town he had ever seen. It reminded him of an old west train stop he had seen in movies. There were three small buildings and then a long road he guessed he would be walking down to reach an actual ce he could find a Fighters guild.
That being said his map ended here so he didn''t know where he should go in detail and felt he might be able to get a new map of this domain if he was to enter one of these buildings. Picking the most weing of the three, Lake found quite a few people inside and quickly realized he was inside a bar.
Not wanting to spend too much time here Lake walked over to the counter and asked the man behind it. "Hello, I''ve never been here before and was wondering if you had a map I could see."
"Since you''ve never been here I''ll tell you you should show some metal to someone running a business before bothering them." Lake could tell the man was asking for money in a way where it sounded like it was a custom here and decided to just y along even if it wasn''t true. He had an extremely small amount of money on him at the bottom of his bag and while he couldn''t reach it he could just stick his hand into his bag and summon it to his hand.
Pulling out the gold and putting it on the counter, Lake got his answer. "You don''t need a map for the Metal Domain, there''s only one road through the mountains and if you don''t stick to it you''ll be able to see it from whatever mountain you decided it was a good idea to climb."
Lake guessed this was worth the small amount of money he had paid so he turned to leave when the man added. "You shouldn''t head out by yourself, the metal domain has been having some issues with security recently. You should stay a while and find people to travel with." Lake could tell the man wasn''t telling him to be nice but was using the fact it was dangerous to travel the road as a way to keep customers here for as long as possible and by looking around at all the people with drinks it was working.
That being said he wasn''t willing to move at other peoples pace because they wouldn''t be any help to him in a fight. Stepping outside Lake started towards the road when he heard the gate start to open again. Looking back he saw it was like when he passed through and only one person came through before it closed again.
Lake watched the person do exactly what he had done and head towards the bar and wondered if their interaction with the owner would be exactly the same. It didn''t really matter to him though so he just turned around and started running.
...
Donny couldn''t help but be surprised when he saw the only other person outside suddenly disappear in a cloud of smoke but he guessed you were surrounded by people much stronger than you all the time and you would only know if they used it. He had never really focused on Perception anyway with none of his jobs giving more than a few points with ever level up so it wasn''t anything new for him to not be able to see someone going really fast.
Donny quickly put what he had just seen in the back of his mind and went back to why he hade through the gate ahead of the people he was traveling with. He had been hearing the voice for thest few hours and with the knowledge he was only a few feet from a bar he figured there was no harm with him being on this side of the gate as the rest of them got their entrance sorted.
Donny wasted no time in getting the biggest of whatever these people were drinking and sat down. He slowly took his first sip of alcohol in years and savored the vor. When he was younger this had been how he passed most of his time but he had pretty much stopped when he had gotten the shield and he had stopped for good around the time he found out who the voice belonged to.
He couldn''t afford to make any stupid deals just because he was drunk even if all he wanted to do was drink every time it happened. That being said, the vice he had turned to instead hadn''t been much better and he could tell it was going to take a while for him to get used to not needing to do it anymore.
Now that he was in the Metal domain he doubted the Demon Lord would spend as much time on him because there were probably others like him much closer to the actual fighting. He would probably only have to worry about it now whenever he killed some Demon Worshipers or if he saw his brother with the shield.
Downing the rest of his drink Donny could tell it wasn''t affecting him as much as it used to when he was younger and wondered how much he would actually have to spend to get drunk if all he was buying was this weak ale. "Are you looking for people to cross with?" Donny looked to see who had asked him the question and after he saw what they looked like said. "I''m just waiting for the people I''m with to get through."
"Is it a group we can join?" Donny had no control of who had been joining on the way here and didn''t n to change that now but he still said. "You can but we don''t have any supplies so you can probably find better people to travel with." After he said this they walked away and Donny nodded to himself that he had been right about them.
They were some of the few people inside the tavern not drinking and they were really skinny and it made him think they weren''t the best people to trust because he was pretty sure they were just looking for a meal and he was afraid they would eat a lot of the small amount of food they had left if no one kept an eye on them.
It wasn''t the biggest problem now that they were here but he was sure the food they could buy here was going to be very overpriced so they wouldn''t get as much as they actually needed so they couldn''t afford three extra people eating it. Hearing the gate open again Donny thought about going to look but there was no way it would be who he was waiting for yet so there wasn''t really a point.
The line was moving faster than he had expected but it would still probably take another day for them toe through. Feeling the gold in his pocket Donny sighed, he hadn''t been thinking earlier when he had decided toe through before them because now he was going to have to spend some gold to get ce to sleep tonight because they weren''t going to waste their time opening the gate just so he could go back out after all he did was drink at the bar.
They were very busy at the moment so his best bet would be to stand by the gate and slip through the next time it opened. He didn''t really want to go back into the Holy Domain but he hadn''t been paid yet for his current job so he really couldn''t spare the money for a room.
Chapter 166: Man-Made Mountain
Chapter 166: Man-Made Mountain
As Lake ran he quickly started to see signs that this path through the mountains wasn''t natural. His guess would be that it had been made with magic because of how smooth the walls were and the fact there were actually ces to drain water so the road wouldn''t flood if it was to rain, these two things made it pretty obvious.
Other than that the only other thing to mention was the fact he was pretty sure the bnce of mana in the air was changing and even though he wasn''t familiar with Metal magic it wasn''t hard to guess what was changing. He had never really felt the bnce change before except whenever he was down in the Dungeon so this was a new experience but he was sure he would quickly get used to it.
...
The road ended up being kind of long but it wasn''t nearly as long as the one he had run on yesterday so the trip wasn''t really even worth mentioning but the city he was quickly approaching was. The best he could do to describe it was the cksmith guild in the capital times 1000.
The whole city looked to be a factory with every building having smoke stacks spewing out different colored smokes. The only other thing to mention about the city was all the buildings were made of stone and metal and he couldn''t see any wood anywhere. It made sense people would use what they could to build but his thoughts were more on the fact this city would be impervious to normal means of invasion.
You would have toe by air if you wanted to have any chance of damaging the city because the only road to it was a narrow path through the mountains. That being said he was sure they would have a barrier to protect them from aerial attacks so it was probably impossible for mortals to destroy this ce unless all the people who lived here went mad and did it themselves.
With the front gate open Lake was able to walk straight in and it made sense with how stringent the process to enter the Metal domain was that they would just leave this gate open because whoever they needed to stop was probably already stopped or had blended in enough that they could get through this gate as well.
After a few steps Lake started to see things that answered questions that he had had since he had gotten here. The main one being if there were other races and from what he was seeing the answer was yes. There weren''t very many of them walking the streets but he was guessing they would be what he would have called dwarves in his past life but he didn''t know if that would be what they were called here.
He remembered short people being ridiculed in hisst life but he doubted these dwarves would have that problem because of the amount of muscle they had on them. It made him wonder how they would differ from him as a human but he wasn''t just going to walk up to one and ask. He was sure he would find his answer naturally as he lived here.
That being said he did have a question they wouldn''t mind answering, picking one that was well armed because he felt that they would know, Lake asked. "Do you know where the fighters guild is?"
In a deep voice the dwarf said. "It''s on tier three." Lake understood what was being said to him because he had been able to tell the city grew in elevation as you went deeper but he didn''t know if he was supposed to count from the bottom up or the other way. "Which tier is the third one?"
"Go up five and that''s the third one but if you would like to wait I''ll be going up myself soon and you can follow me." Lake didn''t want to wait on someone with such short legs to climb up all the stairs so he said. "No. Thank you." And started walking up the stairs to the next level. As he was climbing he took the time to look at the people he was passing in more detail.
It didn''t take much for him to notice the obvious difference in the amount of jewelry and armor the people here were wearing. It seemed the fashion sense here was very different and he could tell by the ornate armor it was more like clothes than meant for battle. His in and boring te armor made him stand out quite a bit but it didn''t seem like any of them cared what he looked like because they were all too busy with their work to look up.
The amount of work ethic on disy was astonishing with almost no one even stopping to talk to anyone who passed them and if it wasn''t for the constant hammering he could hear here and there he would bet this would be the quietest city he had ever been in that wasn''t abandoned.
Once he reached what he assumed was the third tier, Lake started to look around for the sign that would tell him which one of these buildings would be the Fighters guild and identally found the Alchemist guild first. Thinking about it, Lake decided he would leave that forter because he was trying to get the 1,000,000 gold and the Fighters guild was a faster way of doing it for him because while he could probably make more money at the Alchemist guild in the long run it would be a lot more work and he wasn''t very interested in Alchemy.
He did enjoy fighting though and being out on the streets was definitely more for him than reading in a library. With some more looking Lake was able to find the Fighters guild tucked away behind another building. Lake guessed it had been tucked back more to amodate the massive crowd that would be in front of it so they wouldn''t block the road like they did in other cities he had been to.
Skipping the line out front, Lake entered to try and find someone he could report his arrival to because that was what he had been told to do by Master Dean. Theyout inside was very simr to what thest Fighters guild he had been like inside but the look was very different. It was truly something you would never see where he was from.
A lot of the ces he had been to up till this point had been decorated in more of a tame manner but this ce truly looked like something you would see in a movie and the fact that the stone didn''t have any seams like it had been carved out of one piece of stone gave it an odd look.
He wasn''t here to inspect the building though so he walked up to the counter he was sure he would use to turn missions in soon and said. "I was sent here by Master Dean and told to report to the fighters guild as soon as I arrived." Lake hoped this was all he was going to need to do and he could quickly get to work and when the clerk waved for him to follow him he knew his hopes had been answered.
"The Master will be giving you your mission directly, go ahead and go inside." The Clerk tried to walk away but Lake stopped him and asked. "What''s the Master''s name?" Lake was sure there would be an introduction when he went inside but for some reason he wanted to know now. Something about the way the clerk hadn''t said it had probably just caught his attention and it was nothing.
"Masters. Everyone has gotten in the habit of just calling him Master because Master Masters sounds kind of silly. He prefers it this way so feel free to do the same when you meet him." With that Lake let them walk away and went into the room to see a mountain of a man sitting behind the desk.
Master Masters was still a dwarf though even if he was the strongest looking man he had ever seen so Lake did his best not to think about the fact his feet were probably not reaching the ground behind the desk as he introduced himself. "Hello Master Masters, I''m Lake. I was sent by Master Dean to help the Guild kill the Demon Worshipers." Lake felt like this introduction would cut their conversation length in half and allow him to get to work quicker.
"Ok I am Master Masters but I don''t like it when people call me that, choose one of them and just say that. Let me see your badge." Lake nodded and handed him his badge. After Masters looked at it for a second he said. "You''re really new to the guild so I would like to ask you what kind ofbat role you''re the mostfortable in."
After thinking about it for a while, Lake said. " I usually fight alone so I''m not sure and if it''s possible I would like it to stay that way." Master Masters started to shake his head and said. "Sorry to be blunt but I can''t trust you with a record as short as yours especially since it seems you came out of thin air so for now you''ll be working in a small group of people like you. Don''t worry though, working with others will be good for you."
Chapter 167: Assemble
Chapter 167: Assemble
Following behind Masters to what Masters had called the barracks to meet who he would be working with on his first few missions. Lake had been kind of mad at first but after a few minutes he had already gotten used to the idea of working with others. Of course he had mainly gotten over it because Masters had told him he wasn''t responsible for his teammates'' lives.
If they were to die on one of their missions he wasn''t going to be punished or anything so the main downside of being with people who were weaker than him was gone. He still hoped they wouldn''t be sharing the money evenly though because there was no way that would be fair to him.
"Ok it''s in here, you''ll be part of team eight so go in and find them." After Masters said this he left so Lake guessed he would be responsible for his own introduction. This wasn''t really a problem because he was an adult but he had just kind of expected Masters to break the ice for him.
Walking inside Lake saw there wasn''t anything telling him which team was the eighth so he just asked the first person he could. "Which team is the eighth?" Thedy pointed to the back corner where a group of four were talking while sitting on a bunk bed. Thanking thedy, Lake walked over and went to introduce himself only to be cut off by the biggest of the four.
"Are you our new member? That was pretty fast. Master said it might be a while before he was able to find someone to rece Jeppy." Lake took the opportunity that had been given to him and just nodded. He could tell with just this one sentence he wasn''t going to need to do anything other than respond to whatever they said to him.
"Well I''m Peter and this is Grendia, Julie, and Freed." Lake could tell he was meant to say his name here so he did. "My name''s Lake. Nice to meet you." As Lake was saying this he was doing his best to remember these fours names because he had always had a hard time remembering peoples names who he didn''t care about in any way.
"Well now that we are back to a full team I guess we can go ahead and look for a job. Freed, go get one from Master. I want to ask Lake more about how he fights." Freed quickly did as he was told and Peter continued talking. "I can see your dagger and bow so I can assume your highest stat will probably be Agility, but are you someone who can actually be used in a fight or just a scout?"
"I''m not a scout." Lake knew this was a weird way to answer this question but he really didn''t know how to describe himself in words people in the fighters guild would use. Lake guessed Brawler would be the best answer he could give but people would probably not believe that if they were to see how fast he was.
"Well I''m a swordsman and Grendia uses a hammer, Julies a mage, most of the time, and Freed is a Healer. We tend to take on small groups that are hiding in the city so a lot of our time is spent on reconnaissance so I was hoping you would be a scout." Lake thought about it for a second and said. "I can scout, I just don''t consider myself a scout."
"Oh good I guess." After that the conversation ended until Freed came back with a mission. "Master gave us the same old mission again. Oh sorry I guess you don''t know what the usual would be for us."
"Actually, Peter told me what you all usually do while you were gone getting the mission. It''s a search and kill mission in the city right?" Freed nodded and said. "That''s right, here you guys can look at the information." Lake was about to reach out and grab the sheet the mission details were written on but Peter got to it first and after taking a while to read it he said. "We got to go talk to someone on the fifth tier to get the rest of the information that they didn''t want to write down so let''s go."
Peter handed the sheet to the next person to read as they were walking and after a while it finally made its way into Lake''s hands but they had already made it to where they were going so Lake put off reading it because he wanted to be alert in case anything happened inside the building they were walking into.
Inside the building Lake quickly identified it as a house but it was empty other than the stone furniture that was part of the building itself. On one of the chairs near the window Lake saw a man in a ck robe whose face was covered by a ck mask. Lake had seen this exact outfit before while watching fights from his balcony on various Demon Worshipers so he quickly realized they were dealing with a spy that had probably been ced in the Demon Worshipers by the Fighters guild.
With this he understood why Masters had said he couldn''t be trusted to work alone just yet. If it so happened he was a spy from the Demon Worshipers this spy would be dead and he would disappear having done his job of running interference. It seemed his expectations of running into a dark cave and ughtering forty people in dark robes had been off and there was going to be a lot more stuff going on in these missionspared to the ones he had been taking back at the other guild.
It made him wonder if what Master Dean had said about making more money here was even true. After Lake thought this he remembered he could tell when people lied so Master Dean had to have believed he could make more money here.
Seeing the robed person holding out something in their hand for them to take Lake just wanted for Peter to go and get it. He didn''t see why he would take the risk of approaching such an untrustworthy figure if he knew someone like Peter probably wouldn''t even think about it before they grabbed it.
After a few seconds Lake saw Peter do exactly what he had just said he would and grab onto the paper. As soon as Peter had it the person in the robe jumped out the window and almost out of habit Lake braced himself for an explosion but it never came and all that really happened was Peter started to read what was on the paper.
"Three days, we have three days to find whatever the Demon Worshipers are here for or something bad is going to happen." After Peter said this he handed the paper to the person he was closest to who just happened to be Lake and he was able to read it for himself. "That''s literally all it says."
Lake couldn''t believe how bad this information was and handed it down to the next person in line who was Grendia so she could read it. "It''s good we finally know how much longer this is going to go on for. I''ve been getting tired of running up and down the city''s stairs." Lake guessed that was true but he wanted to know how they were supposed to find the people they were going to kill with info like this.
"What''s the rest of the mission? I mean do we just go back now?" Peter started to nod and said. "Yeah we need to deliver this to Master so he can start to form a n. With a deadline we''re going to need a more focused effort to find anything before whatever''s going to happen happens."
Lake nodded and followed Peter and the others out of the building and pulled the first paper out of his pocket to read since he hadn''t had the chance earlier. After he read it, Lake realized their original mission had been assumed to be a kill mission because Masters hadn''t known what the spy was going to give them.
He wasn''t worried about wasting his time though or if they were even going to get paid for this because it sounded like he had gotten here at the right time and it was about to get a lot more bloody in theing days and with the increased pressure he was sure he would be given a good mission worth a lot of money as soon as Masters realized just how much of a waste it was to stick him in a group like this and give him such small tasks.
Lake had also realized he might be able to find the thieves guild here in this city and make more money by doing what he was meant to. Back in the capital the Thieves guild had pretty much disappeared because all the thieves in the city had run to get away from the war but here he was sure they would still be active.
Chapter 168: Settled In
Chapter 168: Settled In
It was a short walk back to the fighters guild and an even shorter one to Masters office. Once they were there Lake watched as Peter gave Masters the piece of paper that said they had three days. "I''ll get to the matter of your paymentter, go ahead and head back to the Barracks for now."
Lake hadn''t expected for them to be dismissed with no questions but it seemed Masters had something he needed to do with this information that was urgent. Once they were back in the hallway Peter said to the others. "I''m hungry, so do you guys want to get some food?" Lake didn''t really want to eat anything other than the stuff in his bag but he figured if he ate it all now he would regret it.
"I think Masters might not like it if we were to go out now so we should eat here." This was the first time he had heard Julie say anything so he looked directly at her and he could tell she didn''t like it when he made eye contact. It didn''t surprise him that she was the embarrassed type because of the way she had been acting up until now but he felt like this was a weird profession for a person like her.
"I don''t want to eat here because I won''t be able to get a drink." Lake looked down to Grendia as she said this and could tell she meant she wanted alcohol and didn''t just mean she was thirsty. It wouldn''t make sense that the guild wouldn''t allow someone to drink water. "I don''t want to eat here either but I think Julie is right and we should stay in the guild just in case Master wants to call a meeting."
Lake had stayed quiet the whole conversation because he truly didn''t care what they were going to eat because no matter what it was it would probably taste like trash to him. Thankfully he would only need a few bites tost the day.
Walking into a small room Lake saw there were a few chairs and a table with some bread on it. This was the worst cafeteria he had ever seen but he had realized that people in this world ate to survive and didn''t care about the ir part of the eating experience like the people in hisst world had.
Grabbing one of the free breads off of the table, Lake tore a part of it off and took a bite to find he couldn''t even taste it. He guessed this was to be expected so he just quickly ate the rest of it and sat down to wait for the others to finish. As he was waiting he did notice that there actually wasn''t a ce to get water and it was possible Grendia had actually meant she was just thirsty.
Looking at her eating the dry bread he couldn''t really tell if that was the truth or not but he was sure he would find out in theing days if they spent any amount of time together. Once they were all done Lake followed them to where he had first met them and followed them back to the same bed.
He wondered if this was where one of them lived or if they had just gotten into the habit of sitting here while they weren''t working. "So Lake, how long have you been in the guild?" Looking at Freed Lake thought about lying but in the end thought it would be stupid to do something pointless that could blow up on himter.
"About two days." Lake knew this would make them think he was weak but he didn''t care because he was so strong that how they saw him couldn''t affect what would happen if there was a fight. "I''m surprised you''re here in that case. Are you from here?"
"No I''m not." Lake was hoping they wouldn''t ask where he was from because he really didn''t know the answer because he had never really found out what thest ce he was was called and he didn''t have to say far away. "Oh, so where are you from?"
"I''m from far away." Lake wished he had done a better job at finding out what thest territory was called as he said this but he hadn''t so there was nothing he could do. "Do you mean like from the Water Domain?" Lake nodded and made his face look like he was surprised they had guessed from the minimal information he had given them.
"What''s it like there?" Lake didn''t know so he fell back to his story of being an orphan and said. ''I''m not sure it''s just where I was born. I didn''t grow up there." Lake could tell the way he had said this made it clear that he had a sad past and didn''t want to talk about it but Peter didn''t seem to be smart enough to pick up on context.
"Is that why your name is Lake?" Lake and everyone else looked at Peter like he was the biggest idiot in the world and Julie quickly did her best to change the subject by saying. "Were you guys scared when the informant jumped out the window?" Lake knew he had been and was about to chime in so this new conversation topic would take hold but Peter once again beat him to it.
"Why were you scared?" Lake had alreadye to the realization that Peter was kind of stupid even though he seemed to be the Leader of this group as well but Lake thought it was a testament to how good they all were at their jobs since they were all still alive. Right after he thought this he remembered he was actually recing someone and while he hadn''t really thought about it till now that might be because they had died on one of their missions.
If that was the case Lake might want to figure out if Peter was actually in charge or was just the most eager so it came off that way because Lake didn''t want to have to take orders from someone he couldn''t count on. "Peter, are you in charge of the team?" Lake knew he was kind of cutting off Julie''s question from actually being answered but he felt this was more important than a hastily thought up question designed to change the subject.
After a few seconds of silence Lake was about to ask what was wrong with his question but was stopped by Grendia and Freedughing. While they continued tough at his question Julie took the opportunity to answer him. "Freed is technically the leader but it''s rare that he''ll give an order. It usually only happens if there''s a need to retreat."
Lake nodded and thought back to when Peter had told Freed to go get their mission from Masters. This had kind of made Lake think Freed was the least likely person to be in charge of the group. He guessed it was only like this because these people seemed to be friends because of how long they had been together so rank wasn''t really involved in their interaction.
After a while Freed finally stoppedughing and said. "Tell me are you relieved?" Lake just nodded he didn''t want to go into too much detail because he was sure Peter wouldn''t like being called an idiot but Lake was in fact very relieved. Lake didn''t want to ask the next question because he knew it could have a bad effect since everyone seemed to be having a good time but he still asked. "What happened to the person I''m recing?"
Lake took it as a good sign that Grendia didn''t stopughing as soon as he said this and Freed answered him. "Jeppy retired. He said he was getting too old to be worried about something like this and he didn''t want to be stuck here because he killed Demon Worshipers because he has family in the Earth Domain."
Lake found it odd how much the world had seemed to open up in just thest few hours but he guessed he had just been in a ce that was only worried about what was going on where they were. It made sense with something like a war that could end with them all dying, they weren''t really thinking about the other territories unless they were thinking about running away.
And it seemed a lot of people didn''t have the option of going to another ce to run from the war because while he was at the gate he had seen the guards checking people''s papers that proved they had the right to enter the Metal Domain. "Masters Just came into the room." Lake heard what Grendia said and looked up to see Masters had juste into the barracks.
Seeing the others stand up, Lake followed suit and stood. He guessed it was something people did out of respect so he didn''t want to be the only one not doing it. "Ok, line up. New mandatory assignments for everyone here." Lake didn''t like the word mandatory but he was fine with it in this case because he didn''t want to just sit here for the rest of the day.
Chapter 169: Downtown
Chapter 169: Downtown
After standing in line for a while with the rest of his team, Lake made sure he was able to grab the paper from Masters so he could read it first. It was just orders for them to go to the 25th tier and do whatever was necessary to find anything suspicious. Lake wasn''t sure what they meant by whatever necessary so he handed the paper to Freed.
He could see Freed''s face as he read what was on the paper and after a while Freed said. "Let''s get moving, it''s going to take a while to make it to the 25th tier." The face Freed made gave him enough information to assume they were about to cross some lines and that made Lake remember what Master Dean had said to him while he had been telling him what was going on here.
Master Dean had said the Fighters guild had been hired by the Metal Temple and if Lake assumed that they were the ones who ran the Metal Domain he could just assume they had just been given permission to do whatever was necessary in the time they had had after giving the new info to Masters.
Going to get permission was probably the important thing Masters had needed to do that had made him dismiss them almost as soon as he had read what was on the paper they had gotten from the spy. Once they were out of the guild Lake went ahead and asked about the other thing he was wondering about.
"Is the 25th tier underground?" Lake had counted and there were at most eight tiers in this city and that had led him to think they were going down into the ground. It made sense that there was a huge excavated area below them anyway considering this was the Metal Domain, he was sure there was a massive mine down there, where else would they have gotten all this metal.
"Yes we''ll be riding an elevator down for about an hour to get there." After Freed said this a few seconds passed and he asked. "Julie you''ve never been down there either have you?" Julie shook her head no but when she realized Freed wasn''t looking at her she said. "No."
"That''s not that strange, usually only the stone people like it down there."
"We''re called dwarves." Lake looked down at Grendia when she said this and made a mental note that they liked being called dwarves. "There are non-dwarves in the stone people, I think Freed was including them as well." Lake was soaking all this new information up like a sponge and almost didn''t even notice how quickly Julie had dispersed the small amount of tension that had been in the air when Freed had said Stone people and not dwarves.
"I was indeed including them. I think about 10% of the people from the Stone Domain are still human. Anyway back to what I was saying, while you''re down there you''ll find it hard to use water magic so just stay close to one of the others while you charge up your spells." Julie nodded and did as she was told by getting closer to Peter.
Peter seemed to notice this as well and when he saw Lake was looking at him he gave Lake a stealthy thumbs up. When Lake saw this he wondered if Peter liked Julie or just women in general either way he guessed they had a chance if the old adage of opposites attracting was true.
Once they had walked all the way down to the bottom tier of the city, Lake got his first chance to see the wall from the other side and as he was staring at the millions of stone blocks he noticed something. This wasn''t even the wall, it was building materials they were just storing behind it. It was a genius idea in his mind to use what would one day be used to make new homes and such as a way to thicken your walls while you weren''t using it. That being said he had already pretty much said it would be impossible for humans to attack this city in a normal way.
He was sure there were other reasons why they would choose to store them here, mainly the space that would be needed to store them. "Alright, here are the Elevators that are used for people, don''t ever try to ride the big ones because you''d be yelled at by the people running them."
Lake nodded and followed the others onto one of the empty elevators. Lake saw that the system to use this elevator was different to the one in the Alchemist guild so Lake paid attention to what Freed did to activate it. Lake saw Freed reach toward the wall where small stones with numbers on the sat on small tes.
Lake saw Freed take the one with 25 on it and ce it on an empty te next to the others. Lake saw the te go down slightly and a secondter they started to descend. From the sound Lake could tell there was another difference between the elevator here and the one in the Alchemist guild.
He was pretty sure this one was mechanical in nature opposed to the one in the guild that used magic to hover a tform up and down. After a while Lake could tell there was almost no light so he asked. "Can dwarves see in the dark?" Lake guessed he didn''t really need to ask once he saw Grendia look at him.
He could tell by the way her eyes seemed to shine in the dark that they were different to humans. "Pretty much but don''t worry it''s more like low light vision so there will be lights down here." Lake nodded and just assumed she could see him do it because she looked away as soon as he did.
He could actually see in the dark so it seemed he would have a bigger advantage than the people who called this dark hole their home but he would also need to worry about his three humanpanions'' ability to see and keep himself alert. He didn''t want them to walk into a trap because Peter couldn''t see where he was stepping.
...
Time passed slowly and enough of it did that Lake would say it would probably be about night by now if they weren''t underground but he wasn''t really worried about what was going on up there because for a while now they had been passing huge open spaces underground and because of the fact he could see perfectly he had been able to see just what was built down here.
It had answered his question about if this was truly the only city in the whole Metal Domain because every tier they went past Lake had been able to see a city a few sizes bigger than the ones he had seen above ground in thest territory he had been in. None of them were the size of the capital city he had called home until now though and it made him wonder what they were using to feed every one.
He was sure they probably had farms that grew something down here but he had yet to see any but he was sure it would be something like a root vegetable or some type of mushroom. It could also be some magic nt type he didn''t have back on his world or even some type of animal and as Lake continued to think about it he realized he had missed them arriving.
Following the other four so that he wasn''t left behind Lake saw the humans in the group holding onto a handle that helped the walk in the low light. Not wanting to stand out he went ahead and held onto it as well and after a few minutes of looking around the underground city they were in, Lake asked. "How many tiers are there?"
"There are over fifty but most of them below us are still just mines and haven''t been turned into residential areas yet. 25 through thirty are still being built and are mostly empty so I''m sure that''s why the guild thinks the Demon Worshipers could be hiding down here." Lake just went ahead and took everything Grendia said as fact since she was a dwarf and once she was done talking he asked. "Where should we start?"
He didn''t say what they would be starting in case one of the people they were passing was listening but he knew the other four would know what he meant. "Let''s go to the market and look at everything that''s there first." Since it was Freed that said this Lake just nodded and followed behind them.
He wouldn''t know where to start so he had just decided to follow them until they found something. That would be the time where he would be able to shine even if he wasn''t going to use some of his more Unique skills he didn''t want people to see.
Chapter 170: Searching The 25th
Chapter 170: Searching The 25th
Stepping into the market, Lake was able to answer his question of what people down here were eating, it turned out it was pretty much everything he had guessed. He still wasn''t sure if this was stuff from above or not though. "Lake, stay here and see if anyone leaves once we start asking questions."
Lake nodded and thought about the fact that Freed had just given him the perfect job by ident. With his skill Marks Of Interest he would be able to find every person who leftter if he wanted to but he was pretty sure he was just given a job to keep him out of the way because he was too new to actually be useful.
He had just been asked to be a lookout when he should be almost blind. After watching for a while he saw people start to thin out because of the questions being asked by the rest of his team and marked them. He was pretty sure if he looked at themter he could figure out where the Demon Worshipers were if he found a lot of them in the same ceter if there was actually any of them here.
Just because these people were leaving it didn''t mean they were involved and if they weren''t they could just be trying to keep it that way. If Lake was a normal person he would probably be spooked by the type of questions they were asking as well. After a while they had pretty much asked everyone who was willing to talk to them and Freed motioned for them to follow him away.
Lake had pretended like he hadn''t seen the signal and only followed when all of them started to walk out of the market. He was able to quickly catch up to them and once they were far enough away he heard Freed ask him. "Were you able to see anything suspicious?" Lake hadn''t really seen anything suspicious at the market itself but he did notice a few of the Marks he had ced had kind of gone towards the same area.
This didn''t mean anything because that could just be the part of town people lived in at the moment since the city was unfinished and mostly empty but he figured it was still worth going to if no one had any other ideas. "Kind of I guess, I noticed a lot of them were going the same way as they left and I figured we could go over there if there weren''t any ideas based on what you got by questioning people."
Freed seemed to think it was good enough for them to go with it because he said. " Ok, but if we don''t get anything after a while I think we should move on. It''s a bit of a loose lead." Lake actually fully agreed and said. "Alright."
Leading them to where he thought would be a good ce to start he could tell the others were a bit confused by how far he was leading them but none of them really questioned him about it and just followed. He wasn''t sure if them being so trusting towards him was a good sign or not but he did find it convenient.
This was probably the effect of people knowing others had skills they didn''t like to talk about and sometimes you just had to pay attention and try to understand what was going on. "Alright this is the area I''m pretty sure." Lake left it at that and waited for Freed to make a move but he did start to use Mana Vision to look into the buildings that were around.
It didn''t take long for him to start seeing things but he had no idea what any of it was. "I think we should knock on some doors. If there''s anything going on around here the neighbors might have noticed something." After Freed said this he looked at Lake to see what he thought. Lake nodded and said. "Let''s start with this one."
After he said this, Lake walked up to the door and knocked. He was able to see the people act normal and just walk to their door like nothing was going on that they needed to hide so he kind of slunk back and made it clear he wanted Freed to take over from here.
Once the door opened, Freed gave an introduction. "Hello. We''re from the Fighters guild and were wondering if you had noticed anything weird in your neighborhood." After he said this the door was almost instantly closed in their faces. Lake understood these people wouldn''t really understand what was at stake so they were unlikely to help.
That being said he didn''t think telling them what was going on would be a good idea because he thought it might start a panic. Lake had seen it once already back in the capital when the war had gotten close enough that people had been able to see smoke on the horizon. It hadn''t really been too bad but only because the guards had been able to keep the peace.
Just because that had been the casest time didn''t mean there wouldn''t be a riot here if word got out about the three day thing. After Lake thought this he realized he was actually in a really unsteady situation that could really affect him because of where he was at currently. If something happened that made the elevators stop working he could get stuck down here and while he was pretty sure he could still get out he didn''t want to be here if they failed to find anything.
He would probably cut and run in one or two days so he wasn''t here when the timer ran out. He guessed this meant he better at least try to find something and he just hoped all the other teams out there had the ability to do a good job in their areas. "Next house I guess." After Lake said this he moved to the next one in the line but he just went ahead and let Freed knock and watched how the people inside reacted.
...
Like what Freed had said they would do if they didn''t seem to be in the right ce they had decided to move on after about five or six houses and Lake just shrugged and said. "It was worth a shot. Do you guys have any ideas?" After a few seconds of silence Lake heard Peter start to talk only for Grendia to cut him off by saying. "We should split up. It isn''t safe but doing this slowly isn''t either."
Lake was sure people who lived here, like he was sure she did, would have this outlook because they had more at stake than someone like him who could just go back to wherever he was from. "I was actually going to say the same thing." Everyone looked at Peter and wondered if this was true but no one said anything and eventually Freed said. "Ok, but someone take Julie with them. She can''t really fight if something happens because the bnce of mana down here is so strongly skewed towards Stone and Metal."
Lake was expecting Peter to say he would but when that didn''t happen he guessed they were going to let Julie choose. When Lake thought about it he had to give Peter kudos, this was the right move if you wanted to get a girl like Julie, you never wanted toe off too strong or they would get nervous and start avoiding you.
Or at least that was what he thought and he didn''t even know if Peter was interested in Julie for real or just messing around earlier. Either way he just hoped she didn''t say his name because he wanted to be able to go all out without them seeing him because he nned to do whatever was necessary.
"I''ll go with Grendia." Lake almost didn''t stop himself from making an ''Oof'' sound in time when she said this and just hoped Peter didn''t take it personally because Lake thought Grendia was definitely the right choice for down here since she was the only one who could really see. With that decision made, Freed said. "Ok meet back at the market once you start to get tired I want us to give it our all because this is important."
Lake nodded and when he saw the others start to leave he went ahead and marked them in case he needed to find one of themter and started to walk away. Once he was unable to see any of them anymore he pulled up one of his skills called Detector. After thinking what would be a good thing to set it to look for, Lake just went with Demon Worshiper and when he could tell it was doing what he had asked of it he started to run.
Chapter 171: Cleared
Chapter 171: Cleared
Lake stayed in the residential area and began to run around at a high speed. Because of the stone nature of everything he was able to run without kicking up arge amount of dust like he usually did outside and with Mute the only way someone would notice him was if they happened to see him with their own eyes.
Once he finished running through the few neighborhoods that actually had a lot of people in the houses, Lake went up onto a roof to look for a new area tob. Lake found he was pretty close to the outside cave walls so he figured he could just head out there and slowly move his way in.
It would probably be the most efficient way to check the whole ce which he needed to do if he wanted to be sure. Once he was at the cave walls Lake started to do loops of the city slowly moving inwards as he went. After a while he had already reached the center of the city where the market was with no signs that there were any Demon Worshipers here.
Lake saw this as a worst case scenario because that meant he would pretty much be useless for the rest of today. He guessed it did give him some free time though and since he was inside a city he figured he might as well look for the thieves guild so he could start stealing things. It was unlikely their main base would be here in this exact tier but he was sure there would be at least one person buying things for the Thieves guild.
Setting his detector to look for thieves, Lake started to run around again like how he had done itst time. It didn''t take long for him to realize the problem with his current method so he stopped to set the detector to something that wasn''t amon job a lot of people had. Going with fence, Lake started over and was happy to see the skill was smart enough to know he didn''t mean the kind of fence one would have in their yard.
After a while Lake passed a house and saw a golden dot appear inside. Deciding there was nothing wrong with not saying anything to them before he brought stuff to sell, Lake went past the house like he hadn''t even seen anything and started to look for a good ce to steal things from.
After a few feet Lake remembered a skill he had gotten recently and read it before activating it.
Item Sense (L) Lv.1
Shows you the most valuable item in a radius around you.
Only works on items you don''t own.
(Scales off of Perception)
He was sure this was the perfect skill to use in a time like this and as soon as he did he saw it highlight something that one of the people down in the city was wearing. Not wanting to mug someone right now he moved on to an area with houses. He was just going to do what he normally did when he stole stuff and pick empty houses to rob and if they had something extremely valuable, good, if not whatever.
He really didn''t have that much space to store stolen stuff at the moment anyway and he was really only doing this because he had time to kill and more money was always better. After some time Lake was able to find out what the range for Item Sense was because an item showed up in the direction he was moving.
He didn''t know if it was because of the fact that his perception was already past 100 but he had to say the radius of the skill was kind of big to be of much use and after trying to shrink the radius Lake found he was unable to. That meant Item Sense would be less likely to be of use in small areas because something really valuable could be not so nearby that was making it impossible for him to judge stuff right in front of him.
That being said he was sure he could figure something out if he was to use Detector at the same time to narrow down what he was looking for and from there he could just inspect the items he was able to find to figure out what was the best. He would most likely just take whatever looked the best though for time reasons depending on the situation though.
With Mana Vision, Lake was able to see people were starting to head to bed and because of howte it was there weren''t very many empty buildings with most people already home for the day or just about to get home. That meant he didn''t have as many choices as he usually would if it had been slightly earlier but with people in bed he could just enter and as long as he used Mute and stayed away from their bedroom he should be fine.
Since he had decided he would just go into a house with people inside he chose the one item sense said had the best item. Once he was outside the house Lake used Mana Vision to make sure the item wasn''t in the same room as the people, and once he confirmed it wasn''t, he used his strength to smash the door''s lock just enough to get inside.
Lake felt an odd click as he was opening the door and instead of inspecting what had caused it he just assumed it had been some type of rm and ran away. Once he was sure he was far enough away he looked back and saw he had been right to run because the home owners were now at their door.
Lake hadn''t really put together what the mechanical nature of the elevator had meant until now. Usually when he was breaking into somewhere he wasn''t worried because he couldn''t be sensed by magic because of Trespasser but these people probably had mechanical rms that he would have to not trigger if he wanted to get inside their homes.
This and the fact that he was sure these people were going to alert the authorities made Lake think he should probably just give up for now until he found a way to get past these rms. His old method of going through the roof would probably work; the only problem with that was he was going to have to get through thick stone if he wanted to do it that way.
He knew he was strong enough he was just worried about what would happen to the rest of the building if he tried to smash a hole in the stone. Thest thing he wanted was for him to copse half of the building and kill the people inside. Having to dodge the investigation he was sure would happen would be something he would be thinking about at all times in the back of his mind and that would be annoying.
Using Marks Of Interest Lake looked to see where the others were. They were all still working and he wasn''t surprised because not that much time had passed since they had split and Freed had told them to go for as long as they could so he needed to find something to pass the time. As he was thinking he couldn''t help but think he should have read more books on elements because he was sure Earth Magic would be really helpful down here.
He could see what people could do to stone with Earth magic everywhere he looked in this city and he was sure he would be able to pass through their houses with ease if he had learned at least the basics of Earth magic. With a bit more thinking he realized he had actually learned Earth magic a bit because during his Wind magic lessons he had learned about the solid principle he was sure the earth element would be based off of.
He was actually good at using the Solid principle as well so he was sure he could fumble his way into learning Earth magic right now as he waited for the others to reach the same conclusion he had. The first step would be for him to gather some earth mana and apparently he was in a good ce to do so.
Feeling his way through the natural mana in the environment It didn''t take long for him to lock on to what he was sure was earth with what he knew about it from books. Seeing its dark brown color Lake knew he was right and once he got a small cloud of it around him he got the noise that told him he had a new job.
[New job acquired Earth Mage]
Lake switched his job to earth mage and started to gather the mana he had gathered into his hand to unlock the beginner spells. Once he had unlocked spells called Earth Wall and Stone Throw Lake moved to his next objective of trying to use this earth mana to shape the actual stone he was standing on.
Chapter 172: Rock Head
Chapter 172: Rock Head
The problem was while the magic elements and the world elements seemed the same but truthfully the magic elements just imitated the things in the world and while there was some interaction between them it wasn''t like he could move stone just because he had Earth affinity.
Lake knew there was a way though because the people here were clearly doing it to build their homes. Crouching down so he could touch the stone he was standing on Lake put his hand on it and saw his mana went in with little issue. It reminded him of how he was able to use Imbue to add an element to his weapon and it made him think he might need to use his own mana to do this instead if he was hoping to actually control this stone the way he wanted to be able to.
He would try that after this if he didn''t have any sess. Moving the earth mana around inside the stone Lake found that he wasn''t causing anything to happen to the stone by doing this. Pulling his hand away Lake then used the Imbue spell to imbue the stone with the Earth mana. Like he had expected it worked but he could no longer control the mana he had put into the stone.
He had expected this because once you used the mana to cast a spell you always lost the ability to control it. This was why he had foresaw the need to use his own mana instead. Lake had never tried to imbue something with his own mana because he had assumed it was impossible because things needed to be made in a curtain way to hold your mana.
That was what Mana Vessels were but now that he was thinking about it Mana Vessels were made to have abilities not just hold mana but if he was able to just add his mana to anything his skill Magic Arrow would literally be useless. That being said he still had to try before he gave up.
Doing his best Lake got a small amount of his mana out of his hand and used Imbue before it could dissipate. When Lake did this he felt a brief second of his mana clinging to the stone but it disappeared too fast for him to consider this a sess. Lake was pretty sure he might be able to get something to happen if he was just slightly better at controlling his mana when it was outside his body.
So far every time he had tried to do it he hadn''t been able to keep it stable and he couldn''t really even control it. Lake knew people who could control their mana very well were pretty rare so he thought maybe he was going in the wrong direction because everything here had been made in the method he was trying to figure out.
If everyone who was building these houses had to be a master at mana control he doubted this city would be anywhere near as big as it was. Once he thought this he realized something he had seen in the past might be the answer to his problem. When he had been fighting that guy for that shield he had seen them use a spell to repair their weapon.
That was an example of what he was trying to do so what he needed was some kind of spell he would need to unlock by using Earth magic. That meant he was going to have to spend some time trying to understand the element so he could train in its principles so he could get to the next level of its spells.
As he was looking at it all he could identify was the fact it had a color and that it was solid. He was sure earth would be a simple element but he doubted it would be to that level. There were probably one or two other main principles that would affect the element in a big way and to find those he would have to mess around with the mana.
Casting Stone Throw Lake watched the way the rock he had made crumbled as it hit a wall and wondered if weight would be a principle he could control. Another could be how hard it was but he was pretty sure that would be part of the solid principle. The weight thing was definitely something worth investigating though.
After a while of messing around with the mana Lake realized weight was also probably part of the solid principle as well because as you condensed something to make it more dense its weight rose as well. That meant he had been wasting his time for thest few minutes and he was still stuck at square one.
Since the solid principle was the only one other than the color he could identify after all this trying made him start to think it might actually be the only thing in the earth element but just because that was true didn''t mean it was simple because earth had a lot of different types of solids it dealt with.
Soil and stone were the main two he was sure, but there was also things like sand and he was sure someone was usingva magic somewhere with earth magic. He was sure it took a lot of practice in the solid principle to turn a rock into sand and then back into solid stone and he was sure that was what he was trying to do to get through these peoples houses.
Lake already knew some training methods for the solid principle so he could just try using those for the Earth element and see if he was able to do anything with the more dense mana he created through this method. Making the cube of mana from the wind training he had done, Lake started topress the element down and it didn''t take long for him to notice a difference between what he was doing now and when he had done it with the Wind mana previously.
The Earth mana wasn''t trying to fight him and almost seemed happy that he was doing what he was doing to it. Lake knew the mana you gathered technically belonged to the gods and sort of had its own personality but he hadn''t expected it to be so different.
As he went he saw the brown color slowly get darker and darker until it almost looked like the dark stone a lot of the buildings here were made from and not wanting to stop until he reached his limit, Lake kept going.
After a while Lake was already on the fifth round ofpression and with how big he had made the cube during the stretching part of the exercise Lake was pretty sure this stone mana was at least a hundred times what it had been when he had gathered it and he still wasn''t feeling any resistance from the mana.
At this point the mana didn''t even look like mana and instead looked like a cube of polished dark gray obsidian but since he still wasn''t at his limit he started the sixth round of stretching which he was sure was going to take a while even here because you couldn''t allow the mana density to drop as you made the cube grow in size meaning he was having to add hundreds of times the mana each second as he had for the first round.
As he was slowly filling the cube, Lake couldn''t help but think he was sure he would be having an easier time if his affinity for stone wasn''t still the lowest possible. If he had leveled Earth Mage he would have gotten a skill that would have raised his affinity by at least a level which would have increased the speed at which he would be able to gather Earth mana.
Once he was able to get the cube to full size Lake started thepression once again and noticed this time the stone didn''t seem to be that happy and he was pretty sure he could tell why with his eyes. The cube was starting to get a metallic sheen to it and Lake remembered a passage he had read in a book about how metal had been part of earth until the god of metal had ascended and made it its own thing.
Lake guessed the god of earth''s mana realized it was doing something that was technically not within its uses and wanted to stop. Lake was trying to learn earth magic at the moment so he stopped and started upressing the cube which he had some difficulties in doing but was able to get it back within the realm of stone and using a small amount of the mana he split from the massive amount he had made Lake formed it into a ball and when he heard a voice whisper a spell name to him he repeated it. "Boulder."
Lakeunched a massive rock out towards the wall he had been using to test his spells this whole time and regretted doing so almost instantly. He had been caught up in the moment and hadn''t thought about what would happen if he was to cast a spell with the mana he had condensed.
Turning to run, Lake remembered what his original purpose for doing this had been and when he heard the huge crashing sound behind him he realized just how big of a screw up this had truly been. Turning his head, Lake was able to see the boulder he hadunched had gone through the wall and was still going through every obstacle it met.
The only good thing about this was he was pretty sure the part of town he had just destroyed was pretty much uninhabited because he had run pretty far from the house with people when he had set off their rm. That being said he was sure people were on their way now to investigate what had happened.
Chapter 173: New Assignment
Chapter 173: New Assignment
Stopping only once he was all the way on the other side of the city Lake looked back to where the sound of crashing had only just stopped. He was still in a bit of disbelief at what he had done and it took him a bit longer than it should have to realize he needed to run towards it, not away. He was supposed to be down here investigating so he was sure the other four were already there and he was sure if it took him much longer they would start to wonder where he was.
Running to where the marks he had ced on them said they were, Lake found them quickly but he still said. "There you all are." Just to make it seem like he had been looking for them for a while. "Lake, good, I was starting to worry you had been attacked or something." Lake looked at Freed and shook his head while saying. "What happened?"
"We aren''t sure but it was clearly done by a master Earth Mage. Probably defending themselves from something heinous to use such force. Ok spread out, look for clues and see if there are any people trapped in the rubble." Lake just nodded and pretended he wasn''t upset he had just forced himself and the others to waste their precious time looking for a red herring.
After a while of them looking around and finding nothing Lake said to them. "I don''t think there''s anything here we can use and I don''t think we have time to go through this all by hand. We should go back to the guild for today." Lake was hoping Freed would have also reached the conclusion that they should leave this for a bigger group and they could leave and just hadn''t said anything yet.
Lake watched as Freed looked around at the huge amount of rubble they were yet to dig through and said. "Give me a few more minutes and we can leave." Lake was unsure what Freed was hoping to do with a few minutes but he didn''t question him and just waited. It didn''t take long for them to leave the scene and head towards the elevator.
Lake knew they had a bit of a ride so he went ahead and started a conversation on what the others thought had happened or if this was a good ce to continue to investigate. "Do you guys think anything rted to the Demon Worshipers is going on down here." Lake made sure to remind them of what they were actually doing so they wouldn''t over emphasize what had happened there at the end.
"Something might be going on down there but with it not actually being anything that directly points to the Demon Worshipers we should wait and see what the other teams find to decide if we should go back or not." Lake nodded and looked at the others who had yet to answer to see if they had anything to say.
After a few seconds he turned back to Freed and said. "Masters will still want to send people to investigate what happened down there right?" As far as Lake had seen no one had died in some form of a miracle but there was no way to know if that was true or not because he hadn''t been able to go through every little bit of the stone debris so he didn''t want to hereter that while they had been going through it he had identally squashed a few people and was now wanted for murder.
He was hoping by having a conversion with Freed now where he made it sound like it wasn''t important Freed''s tone while telling Masters would make Masters see it as a low priority to the guild. It was a bit of a stretch that this would actually work but it was worth a shot in his head because he had always been wary of the investigative abilities people would have with skills.
"It will probably depend on what was found by the others but I don''t think we will be able to get anything out of the rubble that will tell us where we need to go." Lake liked how certain Freed sounded as he said this and asked. "Why is that?" They all knew he was new to the guild so they wouldn''t think anything odd as they answered this question for him.
"There weren''t any real signs of a fight like I was expecting to find when we first got there so the scouts wouldn''t really be able to tell who was involved in the battle and with no bodies there weren''t any people we could investigate either." Lake nodded like this was all he wanted to know and let the conversation die.
...
The rest of the ride had been in silence and it wasn''t surprising with how tired the others were acting. Lake was sure they all wanted to get to a bed and sleep as soon as possible and that was probably all they were thinking about. He knew from experience when you were tired and had to sit still for a prolonged period of time the tiredness was really able to set in and you would be on the verge of falling asleep.
As they all stepped out of the elevator Lake asked. "Do you all live in the guild at the moment?" Two of them shook their heads but no one really said anything and they started up the stairs that would lead them to the guild. As they were walking in Lake recognized some of the other teams and guessed they had also just returned.
Once inside he saw they were going to have a bit of a wait to speak to Masters about their findings, that being said it seemed more of the guild had been involved now that there was a real threat to the city. Before he had gotten the impression that not everyone even knew about what was going on. But now, he was pretty sure the cat was out of the bag.
He saw everyone inside was talking about what they had seen or heard today while out in the city and he could tell quite a few had had a lot more happen to them today. This was a real relief to him because some of the things he was hearing made it clear no one would care much about the spell he hadunched today.
It did sound like they would be having a busy day tomorrow though but Lake was fine with that because today had shown what could happen if he didn''t have anything to do. After they waited for about half an hour one of the clerks that was going around to see if the teams had anything important to say to the Master asked Freed, and after thinking about it, he said no.
Lake guessed Freed had been listening to the things the others had been saying as well and decided what they had found wasn''t worth Masters time. With them technically reporting they had found nothing they were allowed to go and of course they all decided to go to bed. He was surprised when they all headed towards the barracks because earlier when he had asked if they lived here Julie and Grendia had shook their heads no but he guessed they didn''t want to take the time to head home.
Once he opened the door to the barracks he saw the whole ce was filled with people sleeping and it would be hard to even find a ce to sleep on the floor and it made him wonder if maybe they had to stay here because they might get a new assignment at any moment. That was probably why the two who didn''t live here were going to sleep here in this cramped environment.
Using his feet to part people just enough to be able toy on the floor, Lake closed his eyes and wished he could do what he was sure the others were going to do trying to sleep in a ce like this. It was fine though even if it did take him a while to fall asleep he was sure he would wake before the others.
...
"Wake up." Lake jolted awake and looked towards the door where he saw Masters standing with a stack of papers in his hands. Getting on his feet, Lake made sure he got as close to Masters as it seemed the others were willing to so his group could go ahead and get their mission first and not have to stand in line for an hour.
"I need volunteers who are fast to take orders out to the groups who didn''t make it backst night." It seemed this wasn''t a team mission after all so without thinking too much Lake stepped forward and said. "I''ll go." Masters clearly recognized him and while he seemed reluctant to give him a solo assignment Masters clearly didn''t have room to be picky.
"Alright,e back as fast as possible and make sure you bring them with you if they''re still alive." Lake nodded and started to read his new assignment to see his mission was more like a search and rescue because masters assumed anyone who had yet toe back had found trouble and needed help.
As he was walking out Lake saw a few others like him walk forward to receive the few other papers Masters had in his hands and went ahead and marked them and a few other people he could see as he walked out. He was sure being able to find other members of the fighters guild coulde in handy today even if he didn''t know just how yet.
Once he was outside Lake wasted no time in heading towards the elevator. The people he was trying to find had been sent to the fifteenth tier yesterday and while he was sure he would be able to find them pretty quickly he was probably going to do what he wanted today since he was alone now. He could just say he ran into trouble while he was doing the mission he had been given.
Chapter 174: Ding Dong Ditch
Chapter 174: Ding Dong Ditch
It wasn''t until he got onto an elevator that Lake realized he might not get anything done today if he didn''t do what the mission said because he might end up in a ce without any Demon Worshipers; like what had happened yesterday. He didn''t want that to happen because then he would only have the mission Masters had just given him, and he didn''t think he would get lucky enough to get another assignment where he would be alone again.
He still had hope there would be some Demon Worshipers around once he got down there though, because why were the people he was looking for taking so long if it didn''t have anything to do with the Demon Worshipers. He was going to be pretty mad if it turned out these people were just wasting time not doing their jobs.
...
After about twenty minutes Lake arrived at the 15th tier and stepped off to see a city muchrger and fleshed outpared to the one he had been in yesterday. That was fine with him though because it gave him more of an excuse if Masters thought he had taken too much time when getting back.
Making sure to set his Detector to find Demon Worshipers, Lake started to head into the city in a spiral fashion, like yesterday. After a while Lake passed a building and its basement lit up with a few lights. Lake couldn''t help but smile seeing this because it meant he had something to do that was important enough to blow his actual mission off.
He didn''t n to just rush inside though. He wanted to find the group he was here for first to see what they were doing. If he was lucky they would already be doing something simr to what he was doing, and hopefully with a real n alreadyid out that he could just join them.
It wouldn''t actually gain him anything if he just ran inside and killed these few Demon Worshipers. It would actually probably hurt their chances at figuring out what they were doing here in the Metal Domain because it''s almost impossible to get information out of dead people.
Setting his Detector to look for the members of the 17th team, Lake started to run again in a big spiral. After a while Lake finished looking over the whole city and found nothing. He didn''t know if this meant they had already left or they were dead, so he switched the Detector to look for their corpses and continued his search.
Passing the house where he had seen the Demon Worshipers earlier, Lake saw the lights again and realized he had already found where they were to begin with and he had to go inside to see what had happened to them. Turning on his Mana Vision Lake looked down and saw there were quite a few sources of mana more than the amount of Demon Worshipers. He took that to mean he would be finding arge amount of corpses once he got down there.
Lake was about to break in and try to sneak down so he could hear what the Demon Worshipers were doing but remembered there was most likely going to be an rm that Mute didn''t work on, like thest house he tried to break into. That meant his best bet was to just knock on the door.
If just one of them came upstairs and opened it Lake could just kill them, and if he was able to do so without alerting the others, he could disguise himself as them and use y The Part to blend in. It was likely that this n would fail though, but it was still his best idea.
Knocking on the door, Lake could see that more than one of the people in the basement started toe upstairs so he knew his n had already started to diverge from the best case scenario. He would now most likely have to kill three people to get inside and there was no way the others wouldn''t notice only one of the three returned downstairs. So instead of dealing with this, Lake ran away.
Lake''s new n was to just keep knocking until only one of them bothered to open the door. Lake had no problem wasting some time doing this because he found it kind of funny to mess with them until he got the result he wanted. After a while Lake saw the three that hade to open the door head back downstairs and he went and knocked again.
Once he saw that three wereing towards the door again he ran and hid like he had donest time. It took longer for them to go downstairs again but eventually they did and Lake ran over and knocked again. As soon as he did he saw a bunch of them start to run up the stairs so he got away from the door and hid.
Lake saw them all stop next to the door like they were nning to ambush him once he knocked again. Lake was sure he could wait them out though, and after about ten minutes most of them had given up and went back downstairs. He continued to wait until all of them but one had gone back down to the basement.
With just one of them by the door, Lake guessed this counted as what he wanted so he walked by the door and stopped in front of it. Lake didn''t knock though because he was pretty sure the ones down in the basement would rush up as soon as they heard it. He needed to find a way to get this one Demon Worshiper to open the door without him knocking.
The only n Lake could think of was to pretend to be a kid that was whispering to his friend unaware that there was someone waiting for them toe back. Doing his best to make his voice sound like a kid having a good time with one of their friends, Lake said. "Shh. Shh. I''m gonna do it again."
Right when he said this the door flew open and Lake wasted no time in wrapping his arms around the person''s head and snapping their neck. [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] Lake felt himself leveling up and remembered his job had been set to Earth Mage so he had just earned quite a few points in Intelligence but he didn''t have time for that now.
Taking the clothes from the body Lake pulled the Demon Worshiper''s core out and used it to turn into them. Once he had that done he put on their clothes. It was a nice baggy ck robe so it covered him nicely but he still had to take off his helmet because the robe showed his face. With that done he started to look around for a ce to hide the body.
The room was pretty in so his best choice was to put it behind the stone table. It only hid the body from one angle but it was better than nothing. With all his preparationsplete, Lake used y The Part and felt himself disappear into the back of his own head as something else started to move his body.
Lake disliked using this skill because of the way it felt but it was made for situations like these. He figured it would be wasteful to not use it. With his body doing its own thing now he had the time to open his skills and stats to see what was new.
Name: Rol Tudor
Race: Human Lv.13 ( 9/10)
Job: Earth Mage Lv.5 (89/160 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 130
Stamina 130
Mana 560
Strength 115
Endurance 15
Agility 97
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 134
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Lake wasn''t particrly happy that his Intelligence had gone up by so much; so he went ahead and switched his job to Spearman so he wouldn''t end up gaining anymore if he ended up fighting the other Demon Worshipers that were here. With that done Lake went ahead and looked at his two new skills.
Earth Control (R) Lv.1
Increases affinity for Earth to Low.
Stone Flesh (R) Lv.1
Endurances effect is increased by 10% when mana is full.
Seeing this Stone Flesh skill, Lake wondered if this would be a good candidate for him to change in the future because with an effect like that he could easily make it much stronger if he was to just change a few words. "Rol why have youe back already?" Lake looked up from his skills, doing his best to see what was going on past his eyes and heard a voicee from his body to answer the question.
"It was just a kid." Lake was happy to see his body say what he was sure the person he was pretending to be thought to be the truth because they had died with that being what they had thought. "You got rid of them?" Lake could tell his identity had be slightly confused when it was asked this question, but it eventually nodded.
Lake found the way the identity was acting kind of strange but when he thought about the way y The Part''s description was written it made sense. The identity was acting exactly how someone who couldn''t remember what had happened would in a situation like this and his expectation for it to just lie its way through this interaction had been wrong.
"Ok,e help us then." Lake felt his head nod and saw himself start to walk deeper into the basement. It didn''t take too long for him to get his eyes on what he assumed were the group he had been sent for and he couldn''t help but wonder how they had ended up dead in a basement with no one outside noticing.
Chapter 175: Gathering Information
Chapter 175: Gathering Information
Lake did his best to see as much of the basement as he could while his body was walking deeper into it. It was clear that this basement had be some form of prison but he could also tell all of the prisoners were just bodies thrown into various cages and cells. Lake didn''t know why they were keeping dead people prisoner but he was sure he would find out if he spent any time here.
After walking to the very back of the basement, Lake saw three people in ck robes standing over a table that had a body that had all of its flesh stripped off of its limbs and face. As his body walked closer Lake started to worry about the work he was going to be helping in. What would happen if he wasn''t actually capable of doing some of the things he was expected to do.
For example if whatever they were doing involved using Unholy magic would his body be able to do it. He technically had an affinity for it but he had never used it before so what would happen if he tried to use a spell he didn''t know. Sometimes spells need some preparation to actually unlock them.
Lake decided to just calm down because he didn''t see any of them doing anything other than cutting away at the muscle that had been exposed on the corpse''s face. Seeing his arm reach out and grab a de of its own, Lake guessed he was just going to do what the others were doing and that meant he could just pay attention to what they were whispering about.
His hearing was good enough to catch the subtle words they were exchanging while they worked on the face but it didn''t really mean anything to him because it seemed to be technical gibberish rted to whatever pieces of flesh they were shaving down and after they worked on the bit they had just named they would say if they had done a good job on that bit or not and move on.
Lake found their behavior creepy but at least it was interesting to watch because it seemed whatever they were doing took a very long time and after a while he found himself starting to lose his ability to pay attention. He had his ears open though even if he wasn''t watching what was going on and after some more time he finally heard one of them tell him to bring the skin over.
Lake felt his body start to walk after it set its knife down and looking out through his eyes he saw himself walking towards a small pile of what he guessed was the flesh from the body. Lake was able to feel the cold wetness of the skin as he lifted it but at this point he had kind of gotten over what he was feeling with his hands because of the work he had been doing over the past hour.
Bringing the flesh over to the table with the others, Lake saw them start to spread it out before they started to line it up with where it hade from. Once they had it lined up perfectly they all lowered it down till it perfectly covered the portions that had been skinned but while they had done a good job in lining it up he thought it looked terrible.
It was so obvious that there had been massive trauma to the areas they had just covered and even the flesh they had just put back on was the wrong color. Lake guessed as it had sat out it had drained most of its fluid or something because it was a different, more sickly shade than the rest of the corpse.
"Put it away and let it heal, we''ll inspect our workter." Lake felt his body start to follow the order and it made him wonder if he had used Impersonate on a grunt. It would make sense that an unimportant person would be the one who had been told to stay upstairs and catch the person knocking and Lake saw him being unimportant as a good thing.
It made him being used for anything important less likely but it also meant he would be less privy to any important info he might want to hear. But, he was actually starting to wonder how important any of these people were to whatever the Demon Worshipers were doing here in the Metal Domain.
They kind of felt like they were just doing their own thing because he had yet to see anything he could see destroying the city in a few days. None of them seemed like they were in a hurry either, which didn''t match what he would expect from a bunch of people who only had a few more days before they pulled something big.
It was too bad he couldn''t just walk over to one of the others and start asking questions like he wanted. If none of them seemed like they were important soon he would just kill all of them but one and ask them questions. He wanted to find out which of them would know the most before he did start killing though.
So far his best guess would be one of the two who had told him what to do but there were others who stood out to him as people that might actually be in charge here. Out of the nine Demon Worshipers he had confirmed to be here there was one who was quietly sitting at a desk writing something into a book and Lake felt like that was leader behavior if he had ever seen it.
Lake was going to pass by the desk apparently because the ce he was going to store the body was near the front of the basement so Lake quickly formed a n and deactivated y The Part. He continued to carry the body but pretended to trip as he passed the desk. Once was on the ground, Lake reactivated y The Part and waited for the man behind the desk to say something to him.
He figured he could figure out what kind of role they yed here by how they reacted or how they sounded if they spoke. Lake saw his body start to react to him being on the ground right after he reactivated y The Part and he could tell the body was scrambling to pick up the corpse off of the floor.
Then as it was doing this his body looked back towards where it hade from andpletely ignored the person at the desk and continued doing what it had been before he had made it fall. This told Lake the person at the desk wasn''t the person he was after and the real leader was the person who had been telling him what to do while they had been working.
This meant he could move on to the next part of the n which was him killing everyone but them and then asking them questions/bringing them back to the guild as a prisoner if he thought they were a good enough source of information. He wasn''t just going to start now though because he wanted to get close to a few of them first so he could take out most of them at once.
Once the body was ced in a cell he started to walk back to the table in the back where he had been working and he was going to start attacking soon but he wanted to see what they were about to do first. Once he returned to where he had been while they were working he wanted for the person who had been telling him what to do to notice him again.
They were cleaning the tools they had been using and it took them a while but once they were done they said. "Go get the next one." Lake wanted to see the beginning of the process so he let himself do what he had been told. Once the corpse was on the table Lake watched as the main Demon Worshiper started to peel off the face of the body.
Once it was off it was handed to him and the same went for the skin that came from the arms and legs. Once he had all of it he went and ced it down in the same ce he had retrieved the other pile of skin from earlier and he walked back and was about to grab a knife when the leader said. "What Are you doing? This one''s you. We need to take your measurements first."
Lake knew he wasn''t really getting anything out of this but he still yed along and let his body get measured by the people standing next to him. As they measured they would call out numbers and while he couldn''t see it he was pretty sure the man at the desk was writing them down forter use.
After a while they stopped and Lakes'' body was about to get to work when he deactivated y The Part and was about to start killing them when he realized he would be missing a really good opportunity to make them mad first. Pretending like he was still just one of them he used his knife to start making cuts like he had done earlier but doing an obviously terrible job.
Chapter 176: Unanswered
Chapter 176: Unanswered
It didn''t take long for the others to have enough of Lake''s shoddy work and start saying things to him about it. "Rol, why are you cutting so much off?" Lake didn''t know what he was doing so he wasn''t really that sure what his sabotage was doing to the end result they were after but he was sure taking chunks off wasn''t what they wanted or good for it.
"I''m making it like me." Lake could tell what he had just said had confused everyone around him enough that they didn''t know what to say back so he just took the chance to keep working. After a few cuts Lake could tell the leader had had enough and was about to intervene to put a stop to him ruining their muse so Lake said. "I don''t think you guys are working very hard."
None of them had been doing anything but watching him with dumbfounded looks on their faces since they had noticed his odd behavior so he knew if said this it would probably provoke a strong reaction from them. "You messed it up so there''s no point. Go get another body." Lake looked at the leader and could tell they were only a few seconds away from yelling.
"I don''t think you know what you''re talking about." Lake watched the fury take over the leader''s face and it seemed he had crossed a line because everyone who heard him say this, which seemed to be all of them were rushing towards him now. "Alright get him in one of the cages. There''s something wrong."
Lake was surprised this was all it took for them to get a whiff of him, but this turned out to be less of a waste of time than he had thought. With them all rushing towards him he got to see how fast all of them were and he realized he wasn''t in any danger in that sense and when he thought about it it made sense that they were mostly mages.
But for whatever reason none of them were about to cast any spells from what he could see. He guessed they didn''t want to kill him and just nned to grab him and stuff him into a cage like they had been told. Lake wasn''t going to let that happen though so he got ready to throw a punch and used a skill he had been wanting to try since he got it.
"Wave." Lake watched as a blue wave of mana shot out of his fist and realized what kind of attack it was. [Level up] [Rank up] It was like a shockwave that made it so Brawlers would be able to hit a wide area with their fist but he could also tell he shouldn''t have used it in such a small area because not only had he made a mist of the five he had hit with the attack the roof was copsing.
Lake was pretty quick to react and was able to retreat back towards the wall and get the person he had wanted to question out of the way as well. Once he was as far back as he could get he looked back and saw the roof was still copsing towards them. Lake didn''t do anything right away and waited till he knew the roof was going to copse down onto them and used Wave again but this time aimed it upwards.
The rocks headed towards them went the other way but not for long with them running into the stones above them and then alling down at him together. Not knowing what to do, Lake just threw another punch and then another when he saw the brute force was working and the stones above them were forming into a dome and getting thrown away.
After five punches Lake remembered his skill Barrage and stopped using mana for every punch. After a while Lake found that pretty much all the stones above them had been flying and that he could climb out of the hole as soon as he dealt with the one Demon Worshiper he had saved.
Turning Lake grabbed them before they realized they weren''t at danger of being squished anymore and after thinking about what he should do Lake used another skill he had yet to use before. "Debilitate." Lake saw them drop to the ground after he used it and threw them on his shoulder before heading towards the edge of the crater he was now standing in to climb out.
It was a bit difficult because with them on his shoulder their ass and legs were dragging on the stones the whole time but he was able to get out after a while and the scene he saw once he was out made him realize he had identally destroyed part of the city again. It wasn''t as bad asst time but he had still destroyed the street and covered a couple of homes in stone debris.
But, it seemed the people who had been on the road previously had run before it had gotten too hectic so there weren''t any obvious bodies around. This was really just a lucky thing but he had no time to think about it because he needed to get this Demon Worshiper back to the guild before they woke up and he had a long elevator ride so he needed to go now.
...
Lake had taken the time he had on the Elevator to fix his identity and his appearance. He had also realized he had idently forgotten his helmet back in the now copsed building but this was no problem because he just summoned it to him and wore it so he looked exactly like he had when he left the guild other than the new dent his helmet had acquired from having a building fall over on it.
The walk back was extremely short for him and before long he was standing outside the guild with his new information source on his shoulder. Walking in the front door it didn''t take long for one of the employees to notice what he had gotten his hands on and run over saying. "We got a live one." Lake found this funny but he didn''tugh because he was still trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing with the man he was carrying.
The clerk hadn''t given him any instructions, just said a funny line that told everyone else what was going on. "Where should I take him?" Lake saw a bunch of people start to run down one of the hallways while pointing so he followed them until he reached a small cell. Lake could tell right away that it was magic in some sort of way but he didn''t know just how sessful it would be in its purpose if the guy was to wake up.
He guessed that wasn''t really his problem though and he threw the guy in while saying. "I need to talk to Masters, can you watch him?" The five or so people that were still there nodded so he started to walk to Masters office. Lake knocked and then opened the door when he heard Masters voice tell him he could.
Seeing Masters Lake just told him a quick summary of what was going on. "I got a Demon Worshiper downstairs in the prison cell." Masters got up quickly and ran out of the room towards the prison cell so Lake followed and once they were there he joined Masters in staring at the sleeping man.
"How''d you get one alive?" Lake nodded and was about to start basking in his aplishment when Masters asked. "And why did you bring them?" Lake was surprised when Masters asked this because he had assumed Masters would be excited about interrogating them so the fact this wasn''t his first instinct probably meant there was some reason they couldn''t. "He was still alive so I thought I might as well. You want me to tell you about the mission while we wait for him to wake up?"
Lake had expected Masters to ask almost right away so the fact it hadn''t happened yet made him think he had forgotten about it entirely because of what he had brought back instead of the team he had been sent for and Lake wanted to lead the conversation in that direction so he could mention the mess he had made earlier naturally. "Well I assume since you ran into Demon Worshipers that they''re dead, right?"
Lake nodded and said. "Yeah they are, but you still want to hear the details, right?" Masters slowly nodded and said. "Sure, butter, I need to deal with him first." As Masters said this he pointed at the Demon Worshiper who seemed to being to. Lake wasn''t worried about it but he could understand why Masters would be since he was in charge of this guild office.
Lake wouldn''t like it either if there was an unknown threat waking up in something he owned either. "You want me to knock him out again?" Lake figured this would be the easiest way to deal with this but Masters shook his head no and said. "We might as well see if he''ll be of any use now that he''s awake. It''ll just be a waste of time to prolong this."
Lake didn''t know what Masters meant by this but he was sure he could figure it out if he just watched. As soon as the Demon Worshiper woke up he was on his feet and at the bars looking them in the eyes. Lake was able to see it but he was sure some of the others had just seen him standing all of a sudden and been startled by the sudden change in the situation.
Looking at Masters Lake waited for this test or whatever he was going to give this Demon Worshiper but before anything happened he heard a thud. Looking back into the cage where the sound hade from, Lake saw the Demon Worshiper was now on the ground and it was pretty obvious they were dead, even if there wasn''t any form of injury he could see.
It was something about the eyes that just told you they were dead. Turning to Masters he asked. "What happened?" Masters gave him a look that told him that he had expected this and said. "The Loyalty curse allows you to kill yourself at any time. It''s one of the reasons getting information out of people is so hard."
Lake knew about the loyalty curse already but hadn''t really thought about it because of the spy he had met the other day that had infiltrated the Demon Worshipers. It had made him think they weren''t really using it on many of their members but he guessed he had been wrong and the spy had somehow gotten past the mandatory curse.
"All I did by bringing him here was lose Exp." Masters seemed to think that was funny because Lake heard a bit of an exhalee from his nose before he said. "I wouldn''t worry about it too much If I were you, plenty of them in this city apparently." Lake nodded to this and was about to ask if Masters was free now but he was beaten to it by Masters saying. "Let''s go to my office so you can tell me what you saw."
Lake nodded and followed him back up the stairs and figured he might as well look at his stats before he forgot to see how close he had gotten to maxing out Spearman.
Race: Human Lv.14
Job: Spearman Lv.9 ( 245/2560 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 140
Stamina 140
Mana 570
Strength 116
Endurance 15
Agility 98
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 134
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Lake hadn''t really thought about the fact he had yet to hit 100 in Agility and get his next skill from doing so. This was a crazy thought with the fact that he was already feeling too fast but maybe he would get something that affected him in a way that it didn''t just make him faster.
Lake didn''t really get too much time to think about what the skill might do though because even though Masters was having a bit more trouble going up the stairs because of his legs than he had when going down they had already reached his office.
Chapter 177: Rooftop Talk
Chapter 177: Rooftop Talk
The meeting hadn''t taken very long and the only detail Masters had been vaguely interested in was when Lake had told him how they had been shaving down the body''s features for whatever reason but since masters hadn''t known why Lake guessed it would just stay a mystery for both of them.
Lake had lied a bit about how he had been able to get close enough to get this information and even capture someone who could kill themselves in a millisecond but Masters hadn''t acted like he had noticed so it was fine. Once he had told him everything Masters had said he would send someone who knew how to investigate into what had been happening there and told Lake where his team was so he could go join them.
That meant he had another elevator ride to look forward to but he didn''t really mind because as far as he could tell his team mates were working on something important. Yesterday''s search had found a few hot spots that the guild was now focusing its efforts on and that meant he would be in a ce where he could get some actual work done.
...
Stepping off the elevator Lake took in the 21st tier, it was the same size as thest city he had been in but Lake could tell there was a lot more going on here. The streets were packed and Lake didn''t think it was for a good reason that would be helpful to the guilds work. The most likely reason was the word had gotten out about what the guild was doing here and it had caused the people to panic.
The thing was, the people who were on the verge of rioting were mostly dwarves so he wasn''t really as freaked out as he had been when people his size had been doing it because he felt like he could just step over them if they were to start causing a problem.
He knew this was just him looking down on them because they were funny to watch run around with their short legs and that they were actually just as dangerous as any other person but people couldn''t help what they found funny and sadly he had a pretty mean sense of humor.
It had gotten him in a lot of trouble when he was younger because adults didn''t like it when kids made fun of people but there had been one good thing toe of it, he knew how to keep his actual thoughts to himself and just say what others wanted to hear. He still messed with people at every chance though so he hadn''t learned all the lessons he could just yet.
Following the marks he had ced on the others Lake quickly found where they were and when he saw them crouched on top of a building Lake knew they were busy and that he shouldn''t just sneak up on them because they might make amotion and give themselves away to whoever they were watching.
Landing behind them Lake said. "What are you guys up to?" Lake saw that he had startled them like he had thought he would but they hadn''t done anything that would have given them away. It seemed they had been through a few stake outs so they knew how to keep their voices down even if something unexpected happened.
"Get down." Lake was standing behind them so as soon as Freed saw who it was he made him get down onto his stomach like them to stay out of vision of the street below. Lake crawled up to the edge to see what they were looking at and was about to ask to confirm what he suspected it was when Freed asked. "How''d you find us?"
Lake could see why Freed had a problem with him being able to find them like he had because they were in a ce a normal person wouldn''t have been able to see no matter how hard they were to look. "It took a while, but I just happened to see you as I was passing over." Lake decided to just me it on luck because it wasn''t really something people could deny.
With that out of the way Lake asked. "What are you guys doing?" He vaguely knew but he wasted specifics. "That house there is suspected to have Demon Worshipers inside." Lake still didn''t understand why they were just watching the house and not going in so he asked. "How long do you n to watch?"
It was worth remembering that they had less than two days till whatever they had been warned of happened. This meant they couldn''t just wait here all day and they needed to actually get something done. "We''re still trying to confirm we''re in the right ce so we''re waiting until one of them leaves so we can force them into a fight and see if they are a Demon Worshiper or not."
Lake thought it was a bit clunky to do it this way but he could understand the n. If they attacked someone who ended up being innocent they could always pull back and end the fight, but if the person was a Demon Worshiper he was sure the fight would give it away. But, with him here there was no need.
"I can find out real quick if you would like. It will only take me a few seconds." The range on Detector was pretty short so Lake would have to get closer to the building they were looking at but it was better than spending all day here. "Do you have some sort of scouting skill?" Lake nodded and said. "Yeah."
"Ok, go ahead." Lake gave Freed a thumbs up and started to climb down the building they were on until he was back on the road. As he was walking towards the building he wondered if he should have just told Freed that he had used a skill to find them after all because he had just said he had a skill that could be used to find out if the Demon Worshipers were inside anyway.
Being caught in lies was never good even if they were small and no one even cared. He didn''t really want people to think he was secretive and was just happy he had no ns to have any sort of long term rtionship with them. Once this was over he was sure Masters wouldn''t care if he took on solo work and if they failed he would be leaving after telling Nia she should split as well.
He was sure Lucas would find him not helping her annoying if he was to return alive without her and having someone like Lucas mad at him would probably be bad for his future of hiding inside the Alchemist guild if he ever needed to. Walking past the building Lake made sure Detector was set right and as he was passing noticed there was a simr situation going on below the street here asst time he had found Demon Worshipers.
It seemed they were partial to making basements their hiding ces and it made perfect sense to do so if you needed arge ce to work here in the city. By expanding your basement under the road you could make a pretty sizable space to work and since you were a few feet of stone underground the noise of people passing over all day was probably not that bad.
But, now that he had confirmed there were in fact Demon Worshipers here all he needed to do was tell the others and they could start their attack so turning around Lake made his way back to Freed and the others and said. "There are over ten of them and they are right below the road."
Lake made it sound like he hadn''t been able to tell the exact number of them to downy his skill a little but he could tell he had still surprised them with how fast he had been able to do what he was sure they had spent hours on. They got over it quickly though because he was sure they were under the impression that he had some legendary skill that made him really good in this one area like he was sure they would be in others.
Joy had told him once that most people who leveled up jobs eventually got at least one Legendary skill so he was sure at least one of his team members had one and it was possible more than one of them did since he was pretty sure they were considered elites like he was; whatever that meant.
"Alright in that case, what do you guys want to do?" Freed asked them how they wanted to proceed and the only thing he could think of was to just go in. He could sneak in if he wanted but there was no way he could get the others inside and there wasn''t much of a point if they were just here to kill them.
Now that he knew there wasn''t really a point in capturing any of them alive that meant the only way he could gain information was to take the identity of another member and stick around until one of them said something important but that took too long. He would rather just kill as many of them as he could until tomorrow and hope he got the right ones.
Lake was about to say they should just rush in when Grendia started to talk. "We don''t really have any way other than just fighting our way in and we have just been given orders to kill any Demon Worshipers wee across so there isn''t really anything to discuss."
Lake was happy she hade to the same conclusion he had but it made him wonder why Freed had even asked if they had all known this and after thinking about it he realized it was because of him. Freed had probably realized Lake was someone who might have a better way to do what they were about to do but Lake really didn''t so he said. "I agree, we should just go."
After he said this, Freed nodded and said. "Peter, do you want to go first this time?" Peter started to nod and said. "It''s finally my turn to die huh." Lake could tell this was a joke but under the circumstances he was sure the others thought there was actually a real chance of this so no oneughed and instead just got ready to get down so they could rush the building.
Chapter 178: Breach Pt.1
Chapter 178: Breach Pt.1
Lake was walking in the formation near the back right next to Freed and Julie with Grendia in front of him and Peter at the very front. If you were to see it you might think they were trying to guard him but in all actuality it was just the formation that made the most sense for them.
He was an unknown so they hadn''t put him in a strategic position and had just decided to leave him in the middle but he was pretty sure someone like him would be used as a forward scout in a team he had been part of for a long time. He hadn''t been with them for long enough though for them to know where he should be used in a team and with this team he didn''t think the rest of them were even necessary but he was about to see.
Once they were at the door Lake saw Peter take out his sword and after raising it above his head Peter shed it downwards towards the stone door. Seeing the sword slice through the door, Lake started to raise his expectations of them. He knew slicing through stone without it shattering couldn''t be easy even if it was only a thin piece being used as a door.
The sword itself must also be of high quality and that meant Peter had been able to afford it with the work he was doing for the guild. Taking the first few steps in it wasn''t long before Lake heard the people inside responding to what they had done. All the Demon Worshipers were down in the basement so they weren''t in a real fight yet but as soon as they found the staircase down they would be dealing with 14 Demon Worshipers and there were only 5 of them.
Lake saw the only door in this room was also closed so they only had one option to go deeper and Peter seemed to have no ns to stop here and directly sliced through it as well. As the top portion of the door fell to the floor Lake saw that they were about to enter a narrow hallway which meant only Peter would be able to fight if he was to go first with his big frame so Lake said. "Grendia go first, I''ll back you up."
Grendia was short enough that he would be able to fire spells over her or even switch with her if he thought she was going to sumb to the enemies they were about to be fighting. As they went into the hallway Lake started to charge his mana with stone because he thought it was the best choice he had.
Switching on Mana Vision Lake told the team. "Don''t worry about any of the doors in the hall. There aren''t any people in them." Once he said this they quickly passed through the whole hallway and after Grendia smashed the door at the end of it they saw the stairs down and the people climbing them.
The ck robes gave away their identities and even though he knew it wasn''t the best time to think about it because of the battle he couldn''t help but wonder why they were wearing them inside their own base. Surely there was no point and being dressed normally would be of great use if someone was to somehow see them.
The only use he could think of was the fact it would keep them from getting covered by blood if they were ying with corpses here like they had been in thest ce he had seen Demon Worshipers in their natural environment. Getting his spells ready he saw a brown sh form around Grendia as well and he heard her say. "Stone Control."
Right after she cast this spell he saw the stairs in the staircase start to move almost like they were the waves on top of an ocean. Lake smiled as soon as he saw this and not just because all the Demon Worshipers fell onto the ground but because she had just done what he wanted to learn how to do.
He was going to have to ask her about itter but for now he needed to start killing the Demon Worshipers she had flopping around in the staircase. Aiming for heads, Lake started using Stone throw over and over again until all of them had their heads smashed and he knew they were all dead from the amount of times he had felt himself gain Exp.
"They''re dead, we can go down." After he said this the stairs stopped moving and Grendia said. "Didn''t think you were a mage." Lake shrugged and said. "It was faster than pulling out my bow, and It''s not like it''s hard to get as much earth mana as you want down here." She nodded and started to climb the stairs down.
He and the rest quickly followed behind her and it seemed she had purposely left the staircase slightly widened because they had a bit more room to spread out on the way down. At the bottom of the stairs they found a metal door that had been built into the stone and while he was sure they had a few ways to deal with this he said. "I''ll do it." And moved in front of the group.
Using Crunch Lake slit the door from top to bottom near the middle before he tried to kick it in. His foot passed through it like it was nothing and remembering the effects of Barrage he pulled his foot back out and kicked at it again. This time the effects of crunch had worn off so he was able to kick it and send it flying into the room inside.
Lake didn''t look back to see the others because he didn''t have time because with the door gone the fight was on. He had been able to see a few robed people as soon as the door was gone and it was extremely dark inside the basement so he didn''t want the others to be surprised by the attacks he was sure would be thrown at anyone who came through the door.
Using a skill he felt was perfect for a situation like this Lake used Barrier twice and like he expected the soft blue light the mana shields put off lit up the insides of the basement and gave them a way to defend whatever was being cast by the Demon Worshipers inside. "Unholy bolt." Only one of the three who cast a spell said the name of it out loud but he could tell that they were all probably the same spell by the way they looked.
Using his shields Lake blocked the three spells and then moved his shields aside to cast three spells of his own. Sending three stones at the heads of each of them Lake was able to hit only one of them and feeling the Exp he knew he had killed the one he hit but the other two were now hidden behind cover.
Lake took the time to say. "I''m going in." Before he rushed into the room heading for the first of the two hiding. Lake still had Mana Vision on so he knew exactly where all the Demon Worshipers were at in the basement and knew he didn''t have to worry about any sneak attacks from any of the ones deeper inside.
He didn''t know what they were doing but they were clearly getting something ready while the others bought them time and with how fast they were running around in the next chamber he knew they saw it as urgent so he wanted to get there before it was done.
Hopping over the short barrier the Demon worshiper was behind, Lake was able to use one of his two barriers to crush them and then used the other to block the spell that hade from the other Demon Worshiper that had seen him as he was jumping over.
They had already attacked him so they didn''t have time to cast another spell before he was already on them. Using both barriers Lake hit one into their head and the other into the chest. [Level max] Lake didn''t really have any time to think of the job he wanted to switch to so he chose Earth Mage so he wouldn''t waste any Exp and said. "Grendia, can you make us a different entrance into the next room?"
Lake was worried about a trap or something so he wanted to enter the room in a way the people inside wouldn''t suspect and when he heard Grendia say. "Yep." And one of the walls next to the door they needed to enter start to change shape, he got ready to pass through as fast as possible.
As soon as a passage big enough for him to enter formed he held up his two shields in front of him and ran towards the passage. There were still six alive inside so he nned to give the others a chance to kill something so he just ran into the room and even though he needed to focus on the battle, what he saw once he was inside almost made him stop to take it in.
Chapter 179: Breach Pt.2
Chapter 179: Breach Pt.2
Lake did his best to pry his eyes away from the mass in the center of the room and after identifying which of the six Demon Worshipers looked the most important ran towards them. Lake was trying to keep his speed around what one would expect from someone who had maxed out their Agility so he wasn''t able to make it all the way to them before a few of the Demon Worshipers fired spells at him.
Most of them were the same old spell the ones outside had used on him so he had no trouble blocking them but there were a few mixed in that were clearly a level higher than the others. They were all mixed in anding from different directions so Lake just tried to block them the same way as he was the smaller ones and after the first one he could tell he couldn''t keep doing it that way.
His shields had held up just fine but the force behind the spells he was blocking had almost knocked the shields out of his range of control. He had survived the barrage though and was already to the main Demon Worshiper, who oddly hadn''t tried to attack yet. Lake was happy he noticed this in advance because he was sure the trick he would have stumbled into if he had tried to attack right away would be life threatening.
Pulling away instead of finishing the attack run he had nned, Lake saw the others were already in the room and running towards the other Demon Worshipers in a group which left him the boss to fight without having to worry about the others casting spells towards him. He still would probably think about it though because he was really hoping to get through this without any of the others dying.
He was hoping if they all came back alive they would tell masters about how strong he was and masters would give him a solo mission of great value so as he was fighting he needed to keep an eye on the others. With his n to just rush kill the boss now too risky, Lake just decided he would cast a few spells first to see why they hadn''t moved this whole time.
It was odd behavior for someone who was in a fight and Lake wanted to make them move around so he knew they weren''t up to something that involved whatever was in the middle of the room. Shooting a few stones, Lake was surprised to find that the Demon Worshiper still didn''t move until the spells actually hit what seemed to be a barrier in front of them.
Finding that they had something protecting them from outside attacks, Lake took a second to look back at the rest of his team. He was happy to find that they had already taken down two of the Demon Worshipers and were making good progress towards the third so he didn''t think he needed to worry about them after all and he could just focus on getting through the barrier.
Lake didn''t think just walking up and touching the barrier was a good idea so he looked at the rim of it where it wasing from the floor. The circle around the edge seemed important so Lake grabbed his knife and used Crunch on it before throwing the dagger at the circle of what he was assuming to be enchanted stone.
Lake watched as his knife hit the stone and passed through it like it was nothing and once he saw the handlepletely disappear into the ground he realized what he had just done. That knife would probably keep going deeper and deeper because of the effects of Crunch and he was about to be angry when he remembered he could just resummon it to himself real quick.
Once his knife was back on his belt Lake inspected to see if his attack had actually destroyed the Barrier or not. The Barrier was normally invisible and was only visible when it received an attack so Lake threw another stone using Earth magic. Seeing the stone smash against the barrier he knew he had failed but he didn''t know why he had failed or what the right answer would be.
Either way it was time to just use crunch on the energy part of the barrier to see what would happen. Pulling his knife again Lake used Crunch again because he wasn''t sure if the Earth spell he had just used had used the second Crunch he got for free because of Barrage and threw it at the barrier.
Seeing it bounce off Lake was actually kind of happy to see Crunch wasn''t all powerful even if it wasn''t a good thing for him. It meant barriers used some way other than Endurance or armor to block attacks and it made him curious what it was. Maybe since it was magic it was based off of how high the person who made its Intelligence was, kind of like how his barriers he could summon from a skill he got from Brawler were based on his Dexterity.
That would mean if he wanted to break it easier he would need something that ignored Intelligence but he doubted attack skills like that were verymon. Lake gave up on dealing with the guy behind the barrier and decided to see if he could just destroy the thing in the middle of the room instead.
He felt like it was a risky move but he doubted it was worse than letting the Demon Worshiper do what they wished with it. Resummoning his knife once again Lake sent it flying for the ball of wriggling flesh in the center of the room and hoped it wouldn''t cause it to explode or anything if he was to destroy it.
Seeing his knife once again fall to the floor after having hit a barrier, Lake couldn''t help but think he was stupid to expect that he could just attack whatever the moving flesh was without having to worry about any form of defense, especially when he had already seen a barrier in this room.
With this he was out of ideas that weren''t just him going up to the barriers so he could inspect them closely. He also was starting to feel like he was running out of time because the Demon Worshiper had started to produce a corona of Unholy mana around him and the same went for the flesh so not knowing what else to try he turned around to the others and said. "Run away."
They were still in a fight but he was about to do something he had considered to be a mistake thest time he had done it underground. It was the only thing he could think of and he was pretty sure it would put an end to what was going on in this room.
Seeing the others take him seriously and retreat, Lake gave them as much time to get as far from the underground as he could and used Wave. The shockwave that spread out from his hand cracked everything in the room it passed but he didn''t feel like it was enough to copse this room so he did it again.
Seeing rubble start to fall, Lake noticed whatever he had done had affected the barrier around the Demon Worshiper and it made sense since he had been aiming in that direction that it would be the first to fail. He was actually hoping what he was doing wouldn''t undo the one around the flesh because it was moving and as far as he knew it might just attack him if it got out.
He was pretty sure it had something to do with the undead even if it had a different form so if he looked at the undeads behavior he had seen so far he felt like that was a rational thing to expect from it. Looking at the roof''s condition Lake decided one more Wave would do it and hopefully crush the Demon Worshiper in the process since they had lost their protection.
As soon as he unleashed the attack he saw the stones that had made up the ceiling start to cascade down as it copsed outwards and he turned to run. He was hoping with his speed he would be able to still make it out of the basement before he had to turn and punch his way out like he had had to dost time he had caused a copse.
Making it to the entrance he had had Grendia make, Lake started to pass through when the noise he was using to gauge how close he was to being crushed stopped all of a sudden. Turning his head while continuing to run, Lake saw something he didn''t understand. The room was back to how it had been before he had tried to make it copse.
Stopping and turning Lake saw the Demon Worshiper was looking at him with a hateful re and Lake knew why. Even if they had been able to keep themselves from being crushed the ritual or whatever they had been trying to do using the flesh had been interrupted and they would have to start over and based on how long he had had to try and break into the barrier Lake was sure the process was extremely long.
"Why are you looking at me like that? You''re the one doing what they shouldn''t be." Lake could tell his words had no effect on the Demon Worshiper so instead of trying to harass them into making the first move he decided he might as well go ahead and start the fight. The others were no longer around so Lake went ahead and used the fastest speed he could while still being able to control himself and rushed the Demon Worshiper.
Lake felt his foot hit nothing when he should have made contact with the stone and looked down to see he had somehow walked into a giant pitfall. He had felt a simr feeling to this back in his old life when he had missed the bottom stair of his home''s staircase. As he was falling he started to gather wind mana but found it was taking a while longer than it should have.
Before he was able to gather enough mana to cast Fly, Lake felt himself collide with the bottom of the pit, Lake was about to jump out when he felt something that at first felt like water m into his sides. His mouth had been partially open so once a bit of whatever it was hit his tongue and he tasted it he realized it wasn''t water but dirt and that he was now buried under 20 or so feet of dirt that the Demon Worshiper was controlling.
Chapter 180: Buried
Chapter 180: Buried
Lake didn''t let the panic set in and just kept a cool head as he tried to start to climb his way upwards. Lake could tell right away that the Demon Worshiper was doing something to the earth around him to make it frictionless or at least he couldn''t get it to provide enough support to use it to move upwards.
Once he realized he couldn''t move and he was starting to run out of breath he couldn''t stop himself from getting a little scared. Thankfully he hadn''t stopped gathering Wind mana and he now had enough to try and use Fly. He wasn''t sure what would happen if he tried to fly under ground but he needed air.
Getting the Mana spinning Lake cast fly and felt himself move but he wasn''t really able to get very far before the area around him opened up again. Lake was able to see in the dark so he could see that he was now in a sphere and when he reached the top of it he felt it was stone. It seemed the Demon Worshipper was able to tell he had been making his way out of the earth and changed the form of imprisonment.
Lake was sure this would work on normal people because there weren''t many who could get out of this while still struggling for breath. He was able to breathe now but the air in this bubble seemed to be thin, probably from the way it had been created underground. Lake had the perfect n though.
He had identally done what he needed to do now earlier when he had thrown his knife into the ground after using Crunch. Using Mana Vision Lake looked for the Demon Worshipers core Grabbing his knife Lake used Crunch and threw it towards the core.
He threw it as hard as he could so it hit the Demon Worshiper almost instantly and then Lake put his mouth up to the hole he had made by throwing the knife to get the stream of air that was nowing to fill the bubble he was in.
There wasn''t much that made it through before the dirt refilled the hole but it was better than nothing even if you ounted for all the dirt that he had just gotten into his mouth. That being said he had been able to get enough of a breath to start digging. The Demon Worshiper had been hit but Lake hadn''t gotten any Exp yet so they weren''t dead so he needed to dig his way out before they got back into the fight.
Lake didn''t have anything designed to dig so he just pulled his sword and started to hack at the ceiling above his head. He knew it probably wasn''t the best idea to dig straight up but he didn''t have time to worry about burying himself. Once a big enough chunk of stone fell, Lake climbed on top of it and kept going.
The stone he was standing on shifted a few times as he was using it to get at the ceiling but he was able to keep his footing and keep digging. Once he got through theyer of stone the Demon Worshiper had made around him Lake got out of the way to let the loose dirt he had been drowning in earlier start to fill the space he was in and once there was enough that he could no longer move he started to climb his way through it upwards.
The dirt was loosely falling all around him and he had to constantly stomp downwards to make his way upwards but with how strong he was the loose dirt couldn''t stop him now that the Demon Worshiper had stopped controlling it. After a while he felt his hand hit open air and quickly dug his face out so he could breath.
Not being able to really breathe the whole time had been the worst part of this experience and he was happy it was over. After a few deep breaths Lake got the rest of him out of the ground to see there was no one around. It seemed the Demon Worshiper had cut and run after being injured but Lake considered this to be a sess because he was alive and they had stopped the ritual that he was sure would have ended in the others dying and him having to run away.
With the demon Worshiper gone Lake was left alone with the thing in the center of the room but he didn''t go up to it to see what it was and instead went for the exit. Going up the stairs Lake used the marks he had ced on the others to see where they were. They hadn''t gone very far and once he was outside he saw they weren''t alone.
He had known they weren''t the only team here on this floor and it seemed the others had gone for help and he was sure it was because of what they had heard while they were running away. "Lake you''re ok." Lake nodded to Freed and said. "The Demon Worshiper I was fighting got away but the thing is still in the basement. What should we do?"
Lake didn''t think just leaving it would be a very good idea so he thought asking someone with more experience was a good idea. "Is it still moving?" This was a good question and while he hadn''t taken a good look as he was leaving he had seen it and he was pretty sure it was, which meant it was probably going to be a real hassle to do anything about it.
"I think it was when I left, but I didn''t stick around for too long after the Demon Worshiper got away." After Lake said this, Freed turned towards the group that had gathered and said. "We Need someone to go tell Masters we have something here that needs investigators." After he said this a few of the people in the group volunteered to ride the elevator back up to get the people at the guild involved and Freed nodded saying they could go.
As they were watching them leave, Freed said. "Lets just set up a perimeter for now. I don''t think it''s a good idea to go down there till we have someone here who could kill something like that with magic or at a distance." Lake thought he probably could if someone told him how to get rid of the barrier but he was all for letting someone else do it for him.
After they spread around the house to watch it from all angles to make sure no one went in or out, Freed came over to him and asked. "So what happened after we ran?" Lake had no problems telling Freed what he had done because it made him sound like a hero so he told the truth. "I used a skill to copse the roof on the Demon Worshiper behind the barrier because nothing I had was affecting it in any way and it was the only thing I could think of to stop him frompleting whatever it was they were doing."
Freed nodded and said. "Yeah we really didn''t have the time to drain the barrier in a normal way. You made the right call if you don''t care about surviving." Lake looked at his dirty body and guessed Freed thought he had had to dig himself out of the copses and said. "The copse was actually stopped by the Demon Worshiper though once the barrier was down. It seemed they were an Earth mage and were able to control the stone to rebuild the room. All this dirt is actually from an attack they used on me before they ran."
Freed nodded and said. "So you didn''t just copse the room onto yourself, you were able to get away and that was why you used that method. In that case I guess it was a good n all around. Nothing wrong with using a brute force method when necessary. I remember this one time back before I came to the Metal Domain I took a mission to kill spiders inside a cave and instead of going inside to fight them we used a nearby river to flood the cave."
Lake looked at Freed as he was telling the story and guessed the fact they were having a conversion like this Freed was starting to see him as one of them. He was ttered but he would have rathered if Freed started to see him as someone to look up to. Once the story of killing the spiders was over Lake asked. "What were the other groups doing before you went to get them?"
Lake knew there were probably other groups of Demon Worshipers here on this floor and wanted to know where because he was sure the Demon Worshiper that had gotten away had went strait there and he hadn''t thought to put a mark on them so he couldn''t just know where they were when ever he wanted.
"They were doing simr stuff to what we were before you came along and told us that there were Demon Worshipers in the building we were watching. Don''t worry we''ll get to it before the day is over." Lake nodded and looked around at the others they were now working with to guard the building and wondered if they would be ok with him skipping out now to go after the one that got away.
Chapter 181: City In Need
Chapter 181: City In Need
Lake was getting tired of waiting, turning to Freed he said. "I feel like they should be back by now." He didn''t actually think this because he had ridden the Elevators multiple times and it took a while. He was just saying this to see if he could waste time locating other Demon Worshipers while they were waiting for the people who went to the guild toe back.
"It shouldn''t be much longer." Lake had expected for Freed to say something like this so he said his prepared line. "I''m gonna go out and check the city for the rest of the time until they get back. I''m worried something might happen while we''re all here." Freed seemed on board with this n of his and said. "I''ll get you a map that has some hotspots for you to check."
Freed had seen what he could do earlier so Lake was sure now that he had offered Freed was excited to see what he found. Freed came back after a few minutes of talking with other team leaders with a hand drawn map that told him where he should go. Lake took it from him and said. "Thank you."
Lake nned to look everywhereter but he didn''t have as much time as he would need so going to these few ces would have to do for now. As he was reading the map, Lake realized the first ce was extremely close to where they were now and it made him think the one who got away probably went here.
Since finding them was his whole reason to be looking at all, Lake went straight there and used Detector to look for them. Walking past the building Lake didn''t see any marks made by Detector so he switched it to just look for all Demon Worshipers real quick so he could mark this location off of his map if there was nothing here.
Seeing nothing around Lake knew it didn''t mean there was actually nothing here because the base could just be empty now or much deeper than thest few so out of his range but he doubted that would be the case since such an important thing had been only about twenty feet under ground in thest base they had raided.
Looking at his map again Lake nned out how to get to the next location and did his best to follow the hastily drawn map and while in route saw something he hadn''t expected. Detector lit up someone walking on the street. Lake got excited because he felt this had a good chance of being the Demon Worshiper that had run earlier just in in clothes so Lake went ahead and marked them.
He had no way to confirm this though so after following them for a while to see if they were heading in the direction of any of the marked areas on his map he moved on to continue what he was doing. Once he was at the next location Lake did a walk by like he always did and while he didn''t find a bunch of Demon Worshipers underground like he had at the other locations he found this house did in fact have a few inside.
He wondered if this just happened to be where they lived on a day to day basis and had no idea if he should even bother to kill them. If they were just living here in this territory with no nefarious ns of their own they didn''t seem that important but at the same time it wouldn''t really take him very long to get rid of them so there wasn''t really a reason not to.
They probably did have bad things they were a part of as well, he just didn''t think it looked that way from how they were acting currently but everyone needed time off he guessed. It did make him wonder why the guild had been able to get their hands on where they lived though, like where had the intel came from that had led them to check out this ce.
He guessed one of the spies had just found out that some of the Demon Worshipers came here at times and handed the information over without knowing what was here. Looking down at his map, Lake went ahead and marked that this location had something to do with the Demon Worshipers and moved on to the next closest.
A few streets over he was still inside the residential area of the city and outside of the next building that was marked on the map. Like the first ce he had gone to he saw nothing with Detector so he quickly moved on to the next ce. This next location was the first on the map that wasn''t just a house and from the smokestacks on its roof it was pretty clear it was some sort of smithy.
In a ce like the Metal Domain it wasn''t weird that the Demon Worshipers would have at least one or two ces to make equipment but when Detector found nothing and Lake was able to see that there were people inside working he wondered if this ce was just selling things to the Demon Worshipers and not actually part of their n.
He wasn''t nning to run inside and start using them of this though so he looked at his map and moved on to the final location. It was another business but as he was arriving and walking around it to let Detector do its thing, Lake saw someone who he recognized, it was the Demon Worshiper he had seen on the road earlier.
They slowly made their way up to one of the buildings on the street he was on and he watched as they walked inside the building. Once they were inside Lake used Detector and after they left his range he switched to the mark he had ced on them earlier to see them descending way further down where Detector''s range could ever hope to reach.
Lake couldn''t help but smile, if it hadn''t been for them he would have missed this entirely but now he wouldn''t have to worry about not knowing if this was an actual ce the Demon Worshipers were using and trying to sneak inside to see without freaking anyone inside out. Marking this location, Lake started to head back towards the others.
He had killed a good amount of time by doing this and he would be able to pass the rest by talking to Freed about the things he had found. Returning Lake saw that they were still waiting for the people who had gone to the guild to get help so he found Freed and started up a conversation.
...
Donny looked up at the stone city and couldn''t help but wonder why they had made the top tier taller. A lot of the important human families lived there so it was probably a status thing and had no real use but he did think it made the city look better at a distance. The next thing he noticed was the amount of unrest in the city.
Usually the people of the Metal Domain were very calm and worked hard so seeing them make any noise told you there was something bad going on in the city. It seemed the situation had be more serious in the time it had taken him to get here. Realizing this made him feel sort of bad about the fact that the only reason he hade to help was for money.
This was where he had grown up so the fact that he hadn''t really cared made him realize just how much he had changed since he had left home and wondered what the other members of his family were doing about this. If he had never left he was sure he would be with a few of his cousins as they cleared out the infestation that was the Demon Worshipers and while that seemed like what he really wanted if he thought about it there was something he had always wanted more.
Because of all the training he and his father had done together Donny had spent a lot of time listening to what his father said about the shield and how it was made as not only a test but a training method for those who had the potential to be subordinates of the God of Metal and before he had even realized the test in the shield was all he really cared about.
Being power hungry wasn''t a good thing and it had led to a lot of bad decisions that at the time he hadn''t thought were that big of a deal but eventually all of them had led him to bing a person of interest for the Demon Lord and had really changed his life for the worse. Donny''s mood was starting to fall so he decided he should stop thinking and get back to work.
Looking at the only other member of the Fighters guild that was with his group Donny said. "I''m going to the guild are youing?" Donny had learned by now not to expect any words as an answer and just decided that she didn''t look like she was mad at him for talking to her as a yes. With them here at the city their mission to protect people was over so they could go to the guild and get their money but he nned to actually just start helping with whatever was going on.
Chapter 182: Reunion
Chapter 182: Reunion
Stepping into the guild Donny took in the chaos and couldn''t help himself from saying. "Fuck." It was one thing for the normal people to panic but the fact that the people who were supposed to help keep them safe were also starting to lose it was a bad sign. He wasn''t the person to get them to calm down though so he just needed to find whoever was in charge to get something to do.
As he was waiting to talk to one of the clerks he couldn''t help but hear what some of the people were talking about. He was hearing a lot of bad news at once and he started to understand why people were starting to freak out about how many different things were going on at once. He could tell part of the panic was because of ack of manpower because a lot of the people reporting were asking for backup only to be told to wait.
From what he could tell there were over ten groups here looking for backup so it was pretty obvious what his first assignment would be. Once he got his turn to talk to the clerk Donny said. "Hello, we just arrived and are reporting for duty." Usually the Fighters guild was pretty loosemand wise but in times like these every member knew you did what you were told.
"Um." Donny watched as the clerk looked around for a few seconds before saying. "Let me see your badges." Donny and the archer girl both handed over their badges and once the clerk looked at their identities they said. "Go ahead and pick one of those groups over there to join."
The clerk clearly didn''t have time to list all of the jobs they were perfect for and had just left it up to them to find their own. Donny looked back to make sure the person he was with was still with him because sometimes with how quiet she was he found it hard to know unless he looked. With her looking at him he decided she was still with him so he went over to the groups looking for members.
"How many do you all need?" Donny was hoping they could find someone only looking for two people so he could go ahead and get to work. There was no point in trying to help out the ones who needed too many people because he would be here all day. Donny got a bunch of answers to his question at once but he zeroed in on the one who was saying they just needed people that could help seal some Unholy abomination.
Donny wasn''t particrly good at magic but he was skilled in mana control because of his years training with the shield. "No Holy magic users around right now?" Donny was joking when he said this because of course there weren''t. That was the reason they would be trying to seal it and not just kill it.
"What''s your team to seal it like?" Donny needed to be sure he wouldn''t be redundant before he offered to join because if they already had someone who could weave the formation they didn''t need him. "We have someone who can use Life magic and someone with Antimagic so we''re just looking for someone to helpy the formation."
Donny nodded because he had assumed that''s what they needed because people like him were too rare to find just walking around. Most people who were any good with mana were Masters in guilds so you would have a hard time getting one toe on demand. "How big is the formation?"
This was another important detail because if it was too big he wouldn''t be able to do it without help. "I was told it won''t be that big but I don''t know. I didn''t actually see the monster and I don''t really know anything about formations." Donny nodded and decided he might as well try. He didn''t have any better choices anyway.
"Alright I can try toy the formation. I''ve done it before so we should be fine." Donny had never sealed an actual threat but he had practiced it a few times because it was a good way to see where you were with mana control. Of course he was pretty sure his skills had regressed slightly since he lost the shield because he was missing a constant way to train.
To train now Donny had to sit still and slowly weave his mana into shapes and he didn''t really have the time for that and he didn''t think he would any time soon so this could be seen as a good chance to freshen his skills. "Give me a demo." Donny could understand why the man would want to see his skills before they headed out so he waved his hand and made three basic formations.
These showed that he was at what a lot of people knew as the third circle and would show that he was more than capable toy a formation to seal a monster. Donny was actually capable of doing the fourth formation but he didn''t like to broadcast something like that. "Ok lets go." Donny nodded and as they were heading out the door made sure she was following him to see she was.
...
Lake and Freed had run out of things to talk about at this point and Lake was starting to wish he had spent more time on his recon mission but finally he saw the people they had sent returning and told Freed. "I see them. It looks like they brought three new people." Lake didn''t really remember how many had gone back to the guild but he didn''t remember three of them being here earlier.
That being said he recognized one of them. He had met her almost as soon as he had gotten to this world because she rode the same cart he had to go hunting. He remembered she wasn''t a nice person though and he didn''t remember her name so he wasn''t going to say anything unless she did first.
The other two who were new to the group were just ssic armored fighters so he didn''t know what their faces looked like. He was sure there would be an introduction though so there was a chance the two dudes could be the brothers he had met on the cart as well but he would only know if they took off their helmets.
...
Looking at the group he was now a part of it didn''t take long for Donny to notice something about one of the helmets one of them was wearing. It was the same exact helmet the thief who had stolen his shield had been wearing so it was something he would never forget.
Usually he would think this was just a coincidence because it was a pretty in helmet and a lot looked simr but his brother had been the one to hire the thief so them being from the Metal Domain made sense.
Donny tried to keep himself from getting too excited right away until he confirmed it and started to look at their other equipment. The first thing he looked at was the chest piece but it wasn''t the same so he moved on to the next thing which was the sword.
It was the same sword and that was enough for Donny to start celebrating in his head. He had been wanting to find this guy again so he could hire him to retake the shield for him so the fact he had done so was great.
But that wasn''t the best part, he knew this guy was a secret thief so now he didn''t even have to pay him and could just ckmail him into getting the shield for him. This was great news for him because he wasn''t doing too well at making money just yet and all he needed to do was make sure the guy wouldn''t just kill him to keep his secret.
Donny had fought him twice before so he knew they were pretty equal in terms of strength so as long as Donny had one or two other people with him he should be fine to confront this thief. "I''m Freed, and this is Lake. I''m leading the group that will be going to deal with the Unholy flesh butke is the one who actually dealt with it the most so he''ll be telling you what you need to know before we go in."
...
Lake hadn''t really been expecting to give a speech so he just told a faithful recount of what had happened so far. After that the seven of them that were going down to deal with itid the n and Lake wasn''t very involved in this part because apparently they were going to do something he knew nothing about to deal with the flesh but he was going to go still so he guessed he would get to see it first hand.
Chapter 183: Sealing The Flesh Pt.1
Chapter 183: Sealing The Flesh Pt.1
Walking into the building Lake had more time to look around this time and noticed if he wasn''t able to see through walls he would have never been able to tell what the basement held but that was probably the point. It wasn''t like making a home look normal was that hard you just needed to live in it and make sure there wasn''t anything weird out in the open.
The only thing that was actually impressive was the smell. No blood stench was detectable to him and his sense of smell was pretty strong these days so he guessed there was a way to make certain smells disappear without getting rid of the home''s unique smell. He was pretty sure someone who knew what they were doing would notice this as well if they were here investigating because usually the small things were what people forgot to hide.
It seemed the Demon Worshipers here had been very thorough in making sure to cover all of their tracks but in the end the guild had still been able to find where they were so it showed just how valuable having your people infiltrate other groups was. It made him realize why there were so many spies in every guild he had dealt with.
It had been one of his first experiences here in this world when Nelg had tried to kidnap him for the Assassins guild and he had never really stopped thinking about the fact that almost any person he met while inside a guild could actually be working for a different guild. It was too bad he couldn''t just go around asking people if they were traitors without them getting mad.
"Lake looked over to Grendia and Freed the two of his original group who were part of this mission to seal the flesh and couldn''t help but think they were trustworthy but he knew it was just because he had been throughbat with them and seeing them kill Demon Worshipers made you think they couldn''t be one themselves.
The truth was you never knew what people were willing to do to trick you if they thought it was worth the effort and it wasn''t like Demon Worshipers were particrly afraid to die from what he had seen. He was pretty sure it had something to do with their religion worshiping the god of the undead so dying was probably a good thing to them.
That meant their spies would have no problem killing their own to keep their cover so he couldn''t really just judge others by their actions and would actually need to ask them. It wasn''t like they would know he could sense lies so they would just y it off and think they had gotten away with it.
"The flesh was behind a barrier so if it''s still up we''ll be able toy the formation before we deal with the barrier." Lake could tell by the way Freed said this that there was a good chance that the barrier would be gone by now. He could see that because apparently they had a certain amount of energy before they turned off by themselves so he was sure the Demon Worshipers hadn''t made itst much longer than they had needed.
Once everyone was ready, Freed asked. "Grendia, do you want to go first this time?" Grendia gave Freed a look that said I''m not crazy and said. "Lake should go first because of that shield." Lake guessed she wanted him to do something simr to what he hadst time they had gone into this room so he said. "I''m fine with going first."
After he said this he went ahead and summoned two barriers and was about to go in when Freed said. "Just call back whether it''s still in the center of the room or not once you can see it." Lake nodded and said. "I should be able to tell before I even get into the room so be ready to follow me.
After he said this he took the first step into the basement and started towards the hole they had used to get into the final chamberst time. Looking into the hole Lake could see the center alter still had the flesh atop it and called to the others. "It''s still there, you guys cane in now."
Lake could understand why they hadn''t wanted toe into the dark basement until he saw where it was because if it was able to move it might have been able to get out of this hole and into the other parts of the basement. Once the others made it to him, Freed asked Lake. "You want to test the barrier from here before we get closer?"
Freed was pointing at his bow so Lake said. "Sure but I''m going to use a spell because it''s faster." Lake cast a Earth spell real quick and when he saw the stone break before it hit the flesh he said. "The barrier is still intact, let''s go." He went in first and was able to tell the others were still a bit apprehensive by how far in he got before the others started to follow.
He was sure it was because they wouldn''t be able to see very well past the small amount of light that his barriers gave off. That meant they wouldn''t really be able to tell if he and Grendia were telling the truth about the flesh''s location. He wasn''t saying they didn''t trust them just that the others would be under increased stresspared to him and Grendia unless they had a high Perception.
Once they were inside Lake led them closer to the flesh than he had ever wanted to get and said. "You three are up." Lake was talking about Freed and two people he didn''t know the names of because they had never bothered to do a proper introduction earlier and had just gotten straight to work making the n.
He did know what the three were going to do though. Freed was a healer who could use life magic and that meant he was able to partially counter Unholy magic so having him here was a good thing if the flesh got out of control or if they needed to weaken it during the sealing process.
The next was someone who could use Antimagic and they would be working in tandem with Freed to do the same things and finally the one who couldy the formation. If this went well the rest of them didn''t need to worry about doing anything and they would only step in to protect the formation and the one making it if the flesh got out of the barrier.
...
"Um, your name is Grendia right?" Donny needed this area ttened so he figured a dwarf would be able to help him do this. Seeing Grendia nod Donny said. "Will you tten a few feet around the flesh?" The floor was made of rough stone so he wanted it to be nice and smooth so he couldy the formation down easier.
"No problem." Grendia was able to do what he had asked in no time and he got to work after he took a second to look at the ball of flesh moving around to get a better idea how big he should make the formation. The ball of flesh wasn''t a thing he could really tell how big it actually was because of how it grew and shrank so he just went with the biggest he had seen it get and startedying the first circle of mana onto the ground.
Once it was done he drew a basic sealing formation inside it and did the same three more times so there were four in total and once that was done he closed all of that with another circle so the four sealing formations were between two circles. The final product looked like a ring around the altar that held the flesh.
After that he made a formation that would allow this formation to use the metal mana in the environment to power itself so it would be able to hold this monster until they could find someone to actually deal with it. "Alright it''s as ready as it can be, time to drop the barrier." The best way for them to drop this barrier was to let the person here who could use Antimagic cast a few spells so that''s what they did.
After three they could all tell the barrier was on itsst legs so Donny got ready to activate his formation. When the anti mage used their next spell Donny watched as the barrier smashed and the leftover spell hit the flesh itself. Donny didn''t wait to see what the flesh could do now that it was free and lifted the formation off of the floor and shrunk it around the flesh.
The formation was already starting to work but Donny could see that the flesh was able to still move and he could tell it wasn''t defenseless just yet. Donny ducked under the string of flesh that had shot out of the ball towards his head and said. "Suppress it." He would probably need another minute or so to get it fully sealed and since he was controlling the formation he couldn''t fight.
Chapter 184: Sealing The Flesh Pt.2
Chapter 184: Sealing The Flesh Pt.2
Lake saw how fast the attack that came out of the flesh shot out and was happy the guy in charge of the formation had been able to dodge it in time. "Suppress it." Lake and the others all snapped into action doing what they hade to do. He was here to help keep the man controlling the formation until the flesh was sealed so that''s what he did.
Stepping in front of the man, Lake held up his barriers in front of them both just as the first barrage of Life and Antimagic spells hit the flesh. Lake saw the effect of the spells on the flesh almost instantly and thought it was dead because it becamepletely still for a few seconds. He was clearly not the only one who thought this because Freed had enough time to say. "Maybe we overestimated it." Before it started to move again.
The flesh wasted no time in sending out another attack at the one controlling the formation but since he was there all it did was knock one of his barriers a few feet back from where he had been holding it. He had learned earlier that strong attacks could move his barriers so he hadn''t been holding it right in front of them so it wouldn''t crash into them if it received a hard enough attack.
After that Lake and the others just kept it suppressed with a constant barrage of spells every few seconds until it had beenpletely sealed. The disgusting ball of moving flesh was nowpletely still and looked like it had been cast in metal so he and the others had finished the job and could now discuss what they should do with the sealed monster.
They couldn''t just leave it here because all someone needed to do to free it was damage the seal and it would wear off and the creature would be back to normal in no time. Lake had an idea of how to get it out of here though. "Grendia, could you raise us all to street level with a stone tform?"
If she was able to do that they would have the hardest part done and all they would have to do is get it to a big elevator to ride with it back to the surface. Once they were there they could just leave it in the hands of the guild''s people and they coulde back to deal with the other locations he had found earlier.
"I can but it''ll be faster if it''s just me and it that I have to lift up to the street. The rest of you should walk up using the stairs." Lake could understand that if they went up with her she would have to move more stone which would take her longer so he said. "You sure you don''t want any of us with you just in case?"
Lake didn''t know just how long it would take her to get to street level so he didn''t really want to leave her alone with something like this. He knew better than to just trust her because if she was a Demon Worshiper she could let it free but he was making it sound like he wanted to be there to protect her if it got free somehow.
"Yeah, you might as welle with me. I guess it won''t be much harder to get up there with just one more person." As soon as she agreed Lake knew it hadn''t really been necessary to go with her but he could just say it had been a test so he stood next to the flesh and asked. "Is this a good ce to stand?"
Grendia nodded and said. "Yep." After she said thiske heard something and when he looked up he saw the ceiling was splitting to give them a way up to the road. Once the ceiling was split Lake felt themselves start to rise and looking down he saw Grendia wasn''t lifting anything other than what she needed to.
The speed was pretty quick and before they were standing on the street surrounded by the other members of the guild that had been part of this mission. He could see the ones who hadn''t been down there with them getting closer to get a good look at the now sealed ball of flesh. "I wonder what it is."
Lake looked at the one who said this and after a while everyone came to the consensus that none of them had ever seen anything like it before because no one ever spoke up to say anything. "Alright let''s get it to the Freight elevators. Grendia can you do it by moving it on a stone tform or do we need to lift it?"
"I can do it, just help me by getting the people out of the way on the way there." Lake could understand what they needed to do for her to get this through the streets so he went forward and did his best with the others to get the panicked people out of the way so they could get through.
This part ended up taking longer than all the other stuff they had done today on this tier and it was starting to get on Lake''s nerves but eventually they got through the residential area and the streets started to have less people on them. Eventually they got to the ce where the elevators that were used to lift heavy andrge objects were at.
It took a while to get moving from there because the dwarves running it had a hard time guessing how much everything that was going up weighed so they could set the counter bnce correctly but once they got it right they all started raising towards the surface at a good speed.
At the top Freed told a few people that were with them to go get someone from the guild toe get this monster from them so they could all get back to work. The person he had sent came back very quickly with a group of people in gray robes. Lake could tell these must be people from the metal temple and not people from the guild but he was fine with them taking it from them.
In his mind he was sure they were actually a better choice to deal with something like this since they were probably capable ofying another formation if it became necessary to do so. With them showing up, Lake wondered if the situation had be more urgent and every person who could help in the city was now active in the field instead of just leaving it up to the Fighters guild.
He was sure the fact that the word had gotten out to the general poption had made sure other groups had to step in publicly so that people wouldn''t me them if anything happened while they just watched but even if that was the case he had to say he was happy they had more people helping because he was starting to feel he might have to leave soon so he wouldn''t get caught up in whatever was going to happen at some time tomorrow.
With the people from the temple taking charge of the flesh they were able to go back down to the 21st tier. Freed seemed to be thinking the same thing and he turned to therge group they had gathered over the course of the day and said. "Are you all going to stay with us? We have another lead that has some substance to it."
Freed was talking about the building Lake had seen the Demon Worshiper go inside earlier. He had told Freed in detail about that ce and they felt like it was more important than the house he had seen Demon Worshipers just living in. They had three other groups plus the few that hade to help seal the flesh so they had around twenty people with them now.
Lake felt they didn''t need that many people for what they were about to do but he wouldn''t say no if they wanted toe with them because it would just give him more people to impress in the hopes they would tell masters about him. So far he was pretty sure the four on his team were impressed with his scouting abilities so he was pretty sure Masters would hear about that and give him a mission to find more Demon Worshipers if the guild started to run out of leads.
They didn''t seem to have that problem yet though so maybe he could show off hisbat abilities a little more today and get put on a solo kill mission tomorrow. He was sure Masters would want to use every person he could tomorrow once the time started to run out. "We''re going to return to the guild for now. You five seem to have the 21st tier under control so we want to see if there''s somewhere we can be of more help."
This came from one of the leaders of one of the groups that had joined them and after he said this the other two group leaders echoed what the first leader had said and walked back towards the guild. After a while they were left with only two people who seemed to want to join them in what they were going to do now.
One was the girl he had met on Stans cart a while back and the other was the man who hadid the formation earlier. "We would like to stick with you five for the rest of the day if you wouldn''t mind." Freed smiled and said. "No problem. We might end up needing your skills againter anyway and I don''t think we''ll get lucky enough to find another person like you today."
Walking over to the elevators made for people they all loaded on and rode back down to the 21st tier. Once they got back down there Lake said. "I''ll lead the way there." Freed knew where it was but Lake had actually been there already so he was the most suitable to lead the group there.
Chapter 185: Downwards Spiral Pt.1
Chapter 185: Downwards Spiral Pt.1
Once they were there Lake turned to them and said. "We can''t really get inside without them noticing and they''re out of my range so I don''t know what we''ll be walking into." They didn''t really have a choice but he still felt like he should let them know that they might be facing a lot of Demon Worshipers inside.
Seeing their faces he could tell they were ready and said. "I''ll tell you as soon as I can sense any of them." With that he said to Peter. "I would like to go first. Are you ok with that?" Peter nodded like he had expected him to and backed off so Lake could move to the front of the group.
Leading the six of them towards the door, Lake kicked it down just relying on his pure strength and once inside he saw four doors that lead in different directions. Looking around Lake said. "We''ll check them one at a time." He didn''t want them splitting up because he was afraid some of them would run into some kind of trap and end up dead.
Starting from the left, Lake found the first rooms were just private rooms for people to sleep but the next two of them had more doors inside. This meant one of them probably led to the stairs they were looking for so choosing at random, Lake entered one of the rooms and opened the door.
Finding a staircase, Lake said. "It goes down so it''s probably where we need to go." The others seemed to agree with him so he started down the spiral stairs with Mana Vision on so he would be able to see when the Demon Worshipers got closer. As they were going down Lake started to wonder just how far this staircase went down because he was still unable to see any evidence of life below them.
"This might lead down to the city below us." Lake looked back at Grendia as she said this and couldn''t help but think she was right. It wasn''t like he couldn''t understand how useful a secret way to get to another part of the city could be if you were trying to be sneaky. He wondered if maybe the staircase had been disguised as a smoke stack bringing any smoke that might have been produced to the surface.
All the cities had them and it was the only thing he could think of that could be a staircase. It also exined why it was a spiral staircase since the smokestacks were cylindrical. With them going to the next floor down Lake said. "Do any of you know if there are any teams on the 22nd tier?"
It wasn''t important really, Lake just wanted to know if the tier they were going towards had known Demon Worshiper activity in it or not because if it didn''t there was a chance they would be walking past it and going even further down. For all he knew this could just keep going for hours and hours.
They didn''t really have that much time left so spending it all on a staircase was kind of a bad use of time. "I think Masters sent three teams to the 22nd tier this morning. You weren''t there for the meeting because you were on your solo mission but apparently the tiers in the 20s were pretty infested."
Lake was happy he had asked and said. "In that case this might not take much longer and maybe this staircase leads to all the tiers in the 20s. If so we might be able to cut off their ability to move around without having to use the elevators. We should bring it to the attention of another team when we get to the next tier."
...
Donny couldn''t help but think he might have been wrong about this Lake guy being the thief. They had been working together for a while now and Donny had to say Lake seemed like a good guy who actually cared about the Metal Domain.
He guessed it was possible the thief had gotten rid of the gear they had been using during the robbery of his shield and Lake just happened across it but it seemed unlikely that that would happen.
At the same time that was as likely to happen as him actually finding the thief just walking around. It meant he was going to be spending as much time with Lake as possible so he could figure it out with the clues and once he knew Lake for a while Donny would reveal his face to see what Lake''s reaction was to seeing his face and learning his name.
Looking back at the archer girl Donny wondered if she was going to just continue to do what he said he was going to do. He was pretty sure they were technically friends at this point, whatever that meant to her. They had also been through a lot of battles together and they had both found they worked well together he just wished she would speak so he could get her to help him get his shield back without her just getting mad he tried to talk to her.
It would happen eventually he guessed it wasn''t like he had never seen her say anything, it was just that it only happened during times of danger where she asked for rification on a detail she found important. "There''s people ahead." Donny stopped thinking about her and looked forward to where Lake had just called out to them.
...
As Lake looked down he started to worry about the number of cores he was seeing until he realized they must be people outside on the street and they weren''t all Demon Worshipers, or at least he hoped that was what it was. As soon as they got close enough, Lake used Detector to see if he was right.
"There are no Demon Worshipers, just regr people." After he said this Lake sped up and a few more loops around he found a door. "There''s a door here but the stairs keep going." This meant he had been right and this was how the Demon Worshipers were getting through multiple tiers secretly.
This was a big find but it wasn''t going to save the city just slow down the Demon Worshipers if they wanted to move from tier to tier. "Let''s stop here for now and spread the word about this before we go down any further." Lake actually had no ns to return to keep going and instead would leave it to the guild to investigate.
He didn''t think the stairs would lead to anything other than empty buildings because he didn''t think the Demon Worshipers would put anything important attached to the stairs because if someone found the stairs it would lead to multiple of their bases. Opening the door, Lake led the other out onto the streets and asked. "Do you guys want to wait here while I find other guild members or all go together to find them?"
It would be faster if he went by himself and he knew that Grendia needed the break because of the number of stairs they had just walked down so it was likely they would choose to stay here to wait for him. They could all see Grendia panting so Freed eventually said. "We''ll stay here and watch the door to the building. Maybe we''ll catch some Demon Worshipersing or going."
Lake nodded and used a normal speed to get away from the others. Once they couldn''t see him anymore he used a higher speed and started looking for guild members using various skills. He had marked a good number of guild members at this point so he ended up being able to just use that to find the first group. Stopping near them, Lake said. "Hey you guys are fighters guild right?"
They reluctantly nodded so he pulled out his badge to show them before saying. We Need some help with something. Do you know where the other teams on this floor are?" They did so Lake told them where to meet them once they had gathered the others and headed back to his team.
"They''ll be here in a while." After he said this he sat down and pulled a bit of bread out to eat. He hadn''t eaten yet and while he had better stuff in his bag he didn''t want to risk the others asking for any of it if they saw he had meat because he had a limited supply of Millie''s food and none of them would be interested in bread.
Once he ate his bread he looked and saw a well he could drink from and was about to get some water when he thought better of it. He was being paranoid but if he was the Demon Worshipers he would use the city''s water to kill people before raising the bodies as undead so he thought better of drinking anything from a random well Poison Taster or not. There were other things that weren''t poison that could kill him if added to water he was sure.
Chapter 186: Downwards Spiral Pt.2
Chapter 186: Downwards Spiral Pt.2
As Lake was waiting he couldn''t help but continue to look at the trough like well that lots of people were getting buckets of water out of. He still had no evidence that there was anything wrong with the water; he just couldn''t help but think it would be an easy way to kill a good amount of people before they realized how it was happening.
He just hoped something like that had happened before so the officials would be paying attention to the water quality in the city. Turning to the others, Lake went ahead and asked because there was no reason to keep his thoughts to himself. "Do you guys think it''s ok for all these people to be drinking this water at a time like this?"
"It''s not something you need to worry about. From what I''ve heard the Alchemist guild was responsible for making the water system in the city and they added a purification formation to the water channels. If anyone wanted to use the water to hurt the people they would have to do it one well at a time."
Lake nodded and said. "In that case, are any of you thirsty?" He stood up and grabbed one of the buckets near the well. Filling it Lake drank some before handing it to anyone who looked like they wanted any. After a while the other groups showed up and Lake saw that there were only two instead of the three he had expected.
"Only two? Where''s thest group?" He just went ahead and asked instead of trying to guess why they hadn''te. "They were in the middle of something and couldn''t stop toe. They were following a Demon Worshiper I think." Lake shrugged, he guessed 10 extra people was enough for now.
"Come inside with us we found how the Demon Worshipers are getting from tier to tier." After he said this he led them inside to see what he was talking about before he said. "We''ll need help from more people if we want to get this under control. Would you all mind sending your quick people to bring news to the guild?"
Once a few people were sent back to the guild, Lake said to Freed. "Stay here and watch with them, I''m gonna go scout out this floor for Demon Worshipers." Freed nodded and said. "Ok." Lake started to do the rounds and soon found a building that had some Demon Worshipers under it.
It was a small group though so Lake wasn''t too worried about it but he still wrote down where they were and continued to look around. He didn''t find any more buildings with Demon Worshipers in them but he did pass a small group of them on the street. This made him think about the group that hadn''te when they had called for help and Looking around Lake quickly found them following behind the group of Demon Worshippers.
He left them to it and brought the information he had acquired to Freed and the others. "Freed I only found one ce they were hiding on this floor." After he said this to Freed he turned to the other group leader who had helped him gather the other group and said. "The others were following a group of Demon Worshipers like you had thought."
Lake then passed around the location of the building he had found and said. "We should send half of us to go and clear it out while we wait for the ones we sent to the guild to return. It''s overkill to have 15 of us standing here doing nothing." He wanted them to be the ones to go do it but he would leave it up to the group to decide who to send.
While the group was deciding who to send Lake started to think about the fact the people here could be spies again because he had realized he had been being stupid when he had thought he could only find out by asking and relying on his ability to tell when someone was lying he could just use Detector to search for spies and hope that that would be what their job title was.
He hadn''t thought to use Detector because he had used it to look for Demon Worshipers next to his team a few times and it had never lit them up but he realized just because they were spying on the fighters guild it didn''t make them Demon Worshipers it just meant they were working for the Demon Worshipers or some other guild.
Switching on the Detector to look for spies, Lake was happy to find there were none here but he knew he might just be using the wrong word. Lake tried again with a few other words he knew that meant simr things to spy. Mole, Agent, Spook. Finding nothing Lake decided he was in goodpany and he didn''t need to worry about them betraying him during a fight.
"Alright I''m fine with that but you should take Lake with you." Lake looked up when he heard Freed say his name. It seemed the leaders had made a decision that involved him. "He''s your team''s scout right?"
"Yes, and he''s helpful when you first go inside because he can help clear rooms without going into them. He''s also good in fights because he has a good Defensive skill that is good for leading the way into rooms that are upied." After Freed said all of this, Lake just said. "We should just go instead of you all. Your members could be back at any moment and they won''t be happy if you aren''t here when they get back."
Lake felt like him going with them was tooplicated and their group of seven was the best to send. Plus they might end up finding something that needed to be sealed like in thest ce so they might end up needing Freed and the guy who couldy formations anyway. "You''re right there''s no need to mitch and match, you all can go, just try to be back as fast as possible."
Lake nodded to the ones staying here and gave Freed a thumbs up as they were walking away. He was happy they had found the right answer with minimal effort from him and it was because of the way Freed talked him up. Now all he needed was for Freed to do that again to Masterster and he would be able to get a better assignment for tomorrow.
Once they were outside Lake started to head towards the door while saying. "The same asst time." He meant he would be in front and none of them had anything to say about this. Smashing the door, Lake saw most of the Demon Worshipers react downstairs and start rushing towards them with his Mana Vision.
"Some of them areing up towards us. Grendia get ready to do that thing to the stairs again." Lake moved forward as he said this so they would get there in time to intercept them on the stairs because it would make killing them much easier. Kicking down the next two doors they found Lake didn''t find the stairs like he had hoped he would and this made him think maybe the way down was hidden.
This house was pretty small so he could understand the Demon Worshiper hiding the entrance a little better since there was less house to do that for them. "The entrance to the stairs is hidden somewhere." Lake said this because there were only a few ces it could be and with them all looking it should be easy to find before the Demon Worshipers burst out.
Right after he called this out Grendia said. "It''s right here." Lake saw her tear the shelf off the wall. It was the first ce she looked and she had called out its location before she showed them so he thought maybe she was able to feel the stone around them since she was able to control it. If that was true he wondered what the range was.
Running over to look down into the staircase, Lake watched as the Demon Worshipers came into view and summoned his barriers to hold in front of them. Right after he did this, Lake saw the stars start to wiggle around like they hadst time and all the Demon Worshipers fell to the floor. "Hey, bow girl, you want these kills?"
Lake didn''t really have a job he wanted to level right now so he figured he might as well let this friend from the past have the Exp. Plus this might make her less mad when he had to reask her name even though he should know it. Lake saw the girl with the bow smile slightly and felt like he had made a good choice as he saw her step forward and draw her bow.
Chapter 187: Downwards Spiral Pt.3
Chapter 187: Downwards Spiral Pt.3
Lake watched as the girl with the bow hit every shot she fired and soon all of the Demon Worshipers on the stairs were dead and they were able to head down to the basement. There was a metal door here like the other basement they had raided so Lake used a simr move to knock it down using Crunch.
As soon as the door was down Lake lifted his barriers in front of him and used Mana Vision to see where the rest of the Demon Worshipers in the room were hiding. This basement was much smaller than thest one and there were no other rooms so they were all just hiding behind small things inside.
The fact they were just hiding and not firing spells made him think of people hiding from an explosion so he figured the entrance was rigged to explode and one of the Demon Worshipers was just waiting to trigger it. Looking back Lake said. "I think there''s a trap, let''s back up some and then Grendia can make us a new entrance."
Lake didn''t know if the Demon Worshipers had heard what he said or not but they were able to get away from the door with no problems. Lake hadn''t thought about the fact that the Demon Worshipers might just trigger the trap if they heard their n to enter another way while they were still by the door.
"Alright Grendia, open a way in." Watching Grendia start to move the stone to make a way around to the side of the room, Lake used Mana Vision to see if the Demon Worshipers moved from where they had been hiding. They didn''t move even when Grandia opened the new entrance right next to one of them.
Lake started to think maybe he had been wrong about why the Demon Worshipers were staying behind things inside the room and maybe there was no trap. Walking into the room Lake saw he had been wrong and there were no Demon Worshipers left and the things he had thought were Demon Worshipers behind boxes were actually dead people or undead inside wooden coffins.
This confused him at first because Detector had shown him more Demon Worshipers down here than they had killed so using Detector againke saw it was indeed picking up the bodies as Demon Worshipers which meant these were probably undead and not just bodies. "Sorry Grendia, it looks like I was wrong about the trap."
"No it''s good to be careful and it''s not like it''s hard to use Earth magic down here." Lake nodded and remembered when he had said that to her the first time she had asked him about being an Earth Mage. "I think these are undead." As he was saying this he used Detector to make sure he was right and found they were in fact undead Demon Worshipers.
"What should we do? Can we kill them without them waking up?" Lake didn''t know the answer to Julie''s question so he said. "Undead can be kind of hard to kill with normal means should we try to seal them. It seems like overkill since there''s only four of them but there''s no way to know how strong they are."
Lake looked at the formation guy as he said this to see if it was a thing they could do. "We would have to carry all of them into one ce if you want me to seal them all at once." That seemed like a very doable n to him but Lake was afraid the undead would wake up if they were to move them.
Making up his mind Lake said. "Get out of the room I''ll move them and if they wake up we''ll all run away and fight them outside. I''ll call you once I''m done. Wait, how should I set them up to make it easy for you to seal them?"
"Stand them up in a circle, I''ll be able to use the same formation as earlier that way." Lake nodded and once the others left the room he grabbed one of the coffins and started to move it. Nothing happened with the first one but he knew that that didn''t mean he was in the clear. It was possible that this undead was just a particrly heavy sleeper.
Setting the first coffin down on its foot end Lake went and grabbed the next one. He was able to stand it next to thest one with no problems and went for the third. Like thest two nothing happened and he stood it right next to the first two. Taking a deep breath, Lake went to grab the fourth and final one.
Lake knew how luck could be a real bastard so he decided he wouldn''t get upset if he failed on the fourth one before he grabbed the coffin. As soon as he had it in his hands Lake could tell there was a difference in weight and knew that any differences were a bad sign. This undead weighed a lot less and as soon as he stood it up to put next to the other three he felt the body shift inside the coffin.
He guessed the fact that it was smaller had given it a lot more room to move around inside the box and he could tell right away from the noise that the undead hadnded hard on the bottom of the coffin. Holding his breath Lake gave it a few seconds before he started to move the coffin again and only started to breathe again when he had it in ce.
Now that he had it all set up, Lake started to wonder if maybe these Undead were in some kind of magic sleep and would only wake up when one of the now dead Demon Worshipers that had been here did something to wake them. If that was the case they would have probably been a small part of whatever was supposed to happen tomorrow but for them to really be that important he felt like there should have been more than four.
That being said he had no idea how strong they were so maybe four was enough to cause a big problem for the city. "Hey they''re set up, you guys cane back in." As the others came back into the basement he saw them all get out of the formation guys way. He got straight to work and Lake watched as he started to make the same formation again.
"With four of them it might take a while for it to work and there''s a good chance that they will awake once it gets to work sealing them if there isn''t something keeping them asleep so get ready to step in." Right after he said this the formation guy activated the formation and Lake watched him position the four identical parts of the formation he was pretty sure were the seals so one would hit each undead.
Once they were in position the formation shrank and broke through the wooden coffins so it made contact with the undead inside. The undead didn''t react even then and after a while the undead became metal statues like had happened to the ball of flesh before. "That went well. Grendia, will you get them up to the road. We need to get back to the staircase before the people from the guild get there."
After he said that he went ahead and started walking back up to the road and thinking about the various things they had found Demon Worshipers doing in the city so far. He knew he was missing a lot of pieces to their n but he was starting to think their n had been to destroy the city with 1000 different small things all at the same time.
Lake guessed doing it that way had its benefits but if that had actually been their n he felt like they were going to fail now because they had already cleared out a good number of their bases. This was making him think all these small fries were just distractions and there was something big they were missing because they were too busy with all this easy stuff.
There was no way for him to know but he felt like there was no way the Demon Worshipers would make it this easy to stop them if they actually needed to destroy this city. He knew he had a bit of an advantage in finding them because of his skills but the Demon Worshipers would know about skills and prepare for ones like his.
He had found them using a Legendary skill so other people could also have Detector or something simr and as he was thinking this he remembered a time before Detector when he had just been using Mana Vision to find things and he had stumbled upon the vault he had stolen the Holy dagger from.
Mana Vision had been able to see the things inside of the vault but the vault had blocked a good portion of the mana making it look like there were only weak things inside the vault. Lake was pretty sure if he was to look at those items without the vault in between them it would have looked a lot different.
This meant there were ways to block skills like Detector and Mana Vision and Lake was just finding the dredges that they hadn''t bothered to hide with magic. Lake had also only been to a few tiers because he had been assigned to them by Masters meaning he probably hadn''t even been near the actual ce the real danger to the city was.
Lake was sure the sun was down by now and the second day wasing to an end. This meant his original deadline of leaving once they got down to thest day was already here and if he wanted to be safe he should get Nia and hit the road. Lake wasn''t going to do that though, at least not until he had a chance to talk to Masters onest time; which, by looking at how tired the others in his group were looking, he was sure it would be soon.
Chapter 188: Downwards Spiral Pt.4
Chapter 188: Downwards Spiral Pt.4
Lake turned away from the guys the guild had sent to investigate the stairs and said. "Alright Grendia get the undead moving again." Now that they had handed the stairs over to the guild they had to deliver the undead to someone who could handle it and then they would be done for the day.
Well his team would, he needed to talk to Masters and try to get him to let him help more in the final hours. Lake had be very curious about what was going on here in the Metal Domain and he wanted to find out what was happening more than his need to leave. In his mind when he had made his n to run away a day early he had pictured the city just exploding and instantly killing everyone.
That was unlikely to be the case and he would probably be able to run no matter what happened if he was to use his full speed. Stepping onto the freight elevator Lake said. "Are you guys done for the day after this?" Lake realized he had been making his ns based on what he expected the others to do and they might want to push it tonight since they were starting to run out of time.
"That''s what I n to do unless Masters has ns for us. Either way I''m sure we won''t get much sleep." Lake nodded and could tell the others were probably thinking something close to what Grendia had said so he didn''t need to worry about changing his n. "Bang." Lake looked up just in time to feel the elevator they were standing on start to fall.
"Fuck." Lake didn''t know who had cursed but they had picked the appropriate word for the situation. Something had happened to the elevator so Lake started to charge up Wind mana so he could fly away before they crashed to the bottom of the shaft. That being said he was pretty sure they had a while before that happened so he was going to try and save the people on the elevator.
It would look bad for him if his whole team was wiped out in some freak ident when they were what was supposed to build his trustworthiness so that Masters could trust he wasn''t some spy. "Grendia, can you stop us with earth control?" Lake looked back to where Grendia had been standing before the elevator started to fall to see she was already trying to do what he had said.
She was slowly walking towards the stone wall but she was having a hard time because their speed had gotten to the point that they were starting to lift off of the elevator floor making it hard to use your feet to move. Lake was ready to use Fly though so he used it and flew over to Grendia to move her to the wall.
Lake watched Grendia ce her hands on the stone wall and a secondter the elevator started to screech to a stop. Once they had fully stopped Lake set Grendia down and saw the state of her hands when he did. It seemed the friction of cing her hands on the wall as they fell at full speed had caused her hands to be worn down to the bone.
He was happy he had seen it because she wasn''t making any noises one could take as her being hurt. "Do you want me to get a potion out of your bag for you?" Lake looked behind him to see the state of the other while he asked Grendia if she wanted him to use his intact hands to dig through her bag for her.
The only one who seemed vaguely injured was Julie but Freed was already dealing with it with his Life magic. "No point in wasting a potion on this, I''ll wait for Freed." Lake shrugged, he guessed people who didn''t work for the Alchemist guild were used to being frugal on potions.
Lake started to look around to see how far up the closest opening they could use to get out of the shaft was. They had passed a few as they were falling down the elevator shaft so he knew they couldn''t be too far but he changed his mind when he thought about them all having to climb out.
"Grendia, could you lift the tform up there using the surrounding stone?" Lake knew he had been using Grendia heavily today but she didn''t seem to have any trouble doing any of the things he had asked of her yet so he didn''t see a problem. "Yes." Lake nodded and walked over to the undead statues they had been taking up to the surface.
He had noticed the formation guy looking at them and wanted to know if everything was alright. "Is it ok?" The formation guy wasn''t done yet so Lake gave him time to answer. "It''s fine." Lake was about to walk away but he was getting tired of calling this guy the formation guy so he asked. "What''s your name by the way?"
...
Donny hadn''t been expecting this question at this time so he ended up just saying his actual name without much thought other than he couldn''t say what most people knew him by. "I''m Donald." This was his birth name but no one called him this because his dad liked to call him Donny so everyone called him Donny.
"Donald huh, so what''s her name?" Donny wished he knew but all he could say was. "I''m not sure she''s not big on talking." Lake seemed to not care that much when he said this and Donny was happy he didn''t have to exin how they were together without even learning each other''s names.
"So what do you think happened?" Donny had noticed Lake seemed to be in charge of this group or at least seemed to be the one making the ns. "It''s either retribution for what we did to their stairs, or they had always nned to knock out the elevators to make it harder for us to get around today."
Donny thought this sounded reasonable and said. "If it''s the second thing it means they want to separate the surface from the underground for some reason." Donny could tell Lake was thinking about what he had just said and felt he had said something smart until Lake said. ''Or they want us to think that way."
As soon as Lake said this Donny remembered you should never think in such a simple way in a war. There were constantly multiple levels of things going on at a time and you could never truly know if you were on the right trail. As he was thinking, Donny felt the Elevator start to rise again and heard the dwarf Grendia say. "Should I just bring us all the way to the top?"
...
Lake felt like that would be for the best if she was able to pull it off so he said. "If you feel like it." He would leave it up to her because she was the one doing it. Their pace was slow but they were able to get to the top eventually and saw a bunch of people around the elevators freaking out. It was clear all the elevators were out and the damage was bad from the smoking piles of metal that had been pulled out of some of the elevator shafts.
Lake was sure they would be able to get some form of rudimentary pulley system set up that would work until they had the time to fix them for real but he doubted the new crappy elevators would work as well as the ones that had been destroyed. He wouldn''t be surprised if they had a lower limit as well which would mean him and his team would have to travel down separately.
Lake decided to just stop thinking about it and led the charge back to the guild. The inside was in chaos but Lake didn''t mind that and wished his team a good night''s sleep. After that he used Detector to look for Masters to see he was just in his office. Lake pushed his way through the crowd and knocked on the door.
He didn''t get a response but Lake didn''t care and just pushed the door open to see Masters with his head down. Lake could understand Masters falling asleep after all the work he had done. He wouldn''t be surprised if Masters hadn''t taken a break for the past few days with all the stuff he had to do.
It wasn''t time to sleep through so Lake walked over to the desk and was about to wake him up when he heard a dripping noise. Looking under the desk Lake saw a pool of red and that was when the smell hit his nose. "Blood! Shit." Lake ripped one of his health potions out of his belt and took the top off.
Leaning Masters back, Lake just started to pour without even trying to look for the wound because he was sure it was small and would be hard to find because this had most likely been an assassination. Once Masters was covered Lake opened his mouth and started to feed the potion to him.
Lake saw Masters take a shallow breath and was about to pat himself on the back when he saw something he hadn''t thought about in a while; what seemed to be the effects of poison spreading on Master flesh. "Get in here!" Lake needed help to save Masters now and he needed it fast.
Chapter 189: Downwards Spiral Pt.5
Chapter 189: Downwards Spiral Pt.5
A few seconds after Lake yelled someone came running into the room and instantly their face paled when they saw Masters. Lake didn''t just let them stand there and stare and said. "He''s been poisoned, go get someone from the Alchemist guild." After he said this he saw the speed the person was running and decided he couldn''t rely on them to get help.
This meant he was going to have to do something himself that could solve this problem. Thankfully he had lots of health potions so he should be able to keep Masters from dying if he did something stupid by ident. His first thought was he needed to identify what he poison was so using his knife Lake made a small cut on one of the areas the poison had spread through and got some of the corrupted blood.
Inspecting it, Lake looked through the massive amount of information that came up until he found what kind of poison had been used on Masters. Lake wasn''t too interested in its name but the effects were really important because he was pretty sure he had a way to help Masters as long as they had only used a pure poison on him.
Lake found that the poison was probably an afterthought to whoever had used it because it didn''t have any crazy effects and that he could probably use Poison Control to pull it out of Masters. Getting another health potion out of his bag Lake poured some more into Masters'' mouth and started to pull the poison that was in Masters out of his veins.
It was an ugly sight with small bubbles forming on Masters flesh before popping to release the ck juice that was the poison that had been killing him butke had prepared for the damage he was causing by having Masters drink more potion before he started. Lake watched as all the ripped parts of Masters skin started to reheal only to be ripped again as he pulled more poison out.
After a while Lake had a small ball of poison floating next to him and he couldn''t believe how much he had been able to get out. There was no way there had been this much when Masters had first been poisoned and Lake guessed it had been diluted by masters blood making it much bigger now. It was probably what had given its dark color as well.
Lake went ahead and stored the gross blood poison in the empty health potion bottle he had and started to check on Masters. Masters was still asleep and Lake didn''t think that would change until the potion had a chance to fully heal the damage the poison had caused inside of him.
With the situation under control Lake started to think about how lucky Masters had been that he hade in when he had. Lake was pretty sure he was the only person inside the guild other than curtain healers that would have been able to save Masters with how bad of a state he had been in when Lake had found him.
Turning towards the door, Lake saw a group had gathered to look at what was happening inside Masters office. Lake didn''t want to leave them in suspense so he said. "He''s fine now." After he said this, Lake saw everyone looked relieved and realized some of them were probably acting. Someone had tried to assassinate Masters and it was probably someone who was still here hiding in in sight.
Using Detector Lake set it to look for assassins and saw there was one downstairs. It seemed they were using thispassion to flee the scene. Lake didn''t want to just let them go but he had no ns to actually chase them. Pushing his way through the crowd Lake was able to get downstairs and put a mark on the Assassin as they were leaving the building.
With that done Lake would be able to find themter to get some information hopefully about what the Demon Worshipers were doing. He was sure it had been the Demon Worshipers who had hired the Assassin so they should know something even if it was vague.
Going back into Masters'' office, Lake patiently waited for him to wake up or for the person he had sent to the Alchemist guild to get here with the help he had requested. The help ended up arriving before Master woke up so Lake calmed down the people who the Alchemist guild had sent because they had clearly been ready to walk in on a medical emergency.
"I already got it under control, just take your time and check to make sure he is ok." After he said this Lake looked at the person he had sent to get help because they had taken way to long but he decided to leave it alone because he was sure they had done their best and all that would happen if he reprimanded them was they would ask who he was and what authority he had to be telling anyone what to do.
Those were both good points so Lake decided there was nothing to gain from looking like a dick especially when he had probably just gained the trust and respect of the entire guild by being the one to save Masters. This was a very strong position to be in especially if masters didn''t end up waking up.
Lake had very little experience leading people but he knew he could rally an army to find and end the plot of the Demon Worshipers if he had to. "Www wat? What happened?" It looked like he didn''t need to do as much as he was talking himself up for so he stopped pumping himself up and Looked at Masters.
Lake could tell he was fully cognizant so he went ahead and told him what had happened. "You were assassinated." Lake could tell Masters was able to ept this exnation right away because he had already noticed the massive amount of blood that was on the floor under his chair. "Well I thank whoever went against the Assassins guild to save me."
Masters was looking around at the people around him as he said this waiting for whoever had saved him to identify themselves. "I got here after they had already left. You were pretty much already dead and you would have been for sure if I was just a few secondster in healing you."
Lake could tell Masters wasn''t too surprised it had been him because of how close he had been standing this whole time but the appreciation was written all over his face. "Did anyone see who it was?" Lake didn''t say anything to this until he gave everyone a chance to assume the answer was no.
Once enough time passed he said. "Its for the best, no need to harass the Assassins guild." They weren''t the type to just let something like that go so anyone who had tried to fight the Assassin would have been in debt to them from now on and would be under constant threat. Lake felt like everyone had had a good chance to see Masters and the Alchemist guilds people were done with their checkup so Lake said. "Everyone get out. Me and Masters have things we need to discuss."
Lake was using his perceived authority from this situation to get people to leave so he could have a serious discussion with Master about tomorrow. Masters didn''t seem to be about to correct his behavior either so it seemed he was going to have a private chat with him like he had wanted to.
Once all the people got out Masters turned to him and said. "What is it?" Lake could hear that Masters was being very serious about whatke was about to say and he did n to say something serious but he was pretty sure Masters was expecting him to say something about the assassination. Like he had seen something he couldn''t say in front of the other people but that had nothing to do with this conversation so Lake said. "It''s not about what just happened, it''s about tomorrow. I need to be able to get to every city tier before whatever they''re nning happens tomorrow but the elevators are out so I can''t take my team with me."
"What do you mean the elevators are out?" Lake had just assumed someone had told Masters already but maybe he had already been in here bleeding out when that had happened or maybe everyone down stairs had been too busy and just figured it was someone else''s job to deliver a message like that to Masters.
Then Lake realized maybe the person who had been responsible to deliver the message had actually been the assassin in this case. It made perfect sense to use something like all the elevators being destroyed to give them time to assassinate someone important. "All of the elevators were just destroyed by someone, most likely the Demon Worshipers."
Master seemed to not like what he was hearing and said. "I need to go see this in person. You have my permission to do whatever you want if you really think you can help us avoid tomorrow''s disaster." After Masters said this he stood up out of his chair and was heading for the door when Lake heard him whisper to himself. "I should change my clothes first."
Chapter 190: Tomorrow Is More Important
Chapter 190: Tomorrow Is More Important
Walking out of Masters'' office after him, Lake decided he should try and sleep now because it would probably be hisst chance. It would also give him a little bit of time toy out a n. He had so many different ces he had to check if he wanted to be thorough and all he had was a bit of tomorrow.
The spy they had met had told them they had three days but who knew how urate that information was. Whatever the big thing was could happen in just a few hours into today or the whole day could pass before it started. Opening the door into the barracks, Lake saw there was a bit more room today than yesterday and figured it was because there were a lot of teams that had been unable to return because the elevators were down.
There weren''t any beds open though so he still had to sleep on the floor. As he wasying down he started to think about what he would do tomorrow. First he needed to think of a way to use Detector that wouldn''t be blocked by something like a vault that was designed to block scouting skills.
That meant he needed to look for things that signified a hidden area instead of the area itself. He would need to try out a few different things tomorrow Like maybe setting the Detector to look for buildings with hidden basements. He felt like that would work but he didn''t think it was narrowed down enough and he would end up finding more than just things belonging to Demon Worshipers.
Buildings that have things hidden by Demon Worshipers in them. Lake couldn''t help but wonder if Detector could be set with such a longmand but if it could he would start with that tomorrow once he got up. He also needed to find an efficient way to cover ground tomorrow.
With such arge amount of space he was probably going to run out of time if he just went to every ce he could so he needed to forget some ces and just go to the ones that were the most likely to have something strategic for the Demon Worshipers.
He felt like the Demon Worshipers needed ces where they could get a lot of people in one ce because the more deaths there were the stronger their army would grow for the rest of their n. This meant things like big markets and residential areas. He had seen every tier had different bnces of these things but he hadn''t been to enough tiers to know where the biggest would be.
That being said he could guess they would be in the first few underground tiers because they were the oldest and therefore the biggest. He also needed to check above ground because he was sure the Demon Worshipers would have a shock force near the city''s leaders to sow chaos and slow the reaction from the city.
That would be a good thing for him to find first so it was good he was already above ground. Once he found that he would bring the news directly back to Masters for him to deal with, then he could go underground to look for the rest of the things the Demon Worshipers had nned. With his n pretty muchid out Lake decided he needed to get to sleep.
As he was closing his eyes Lake couldn''t help but wonder why the Demon Worshipers had set a date of their n that they couldn''t move up now that it had been discovered. He understood why there was a nned time but what was keeping them from just doing their n on the day that the guild had started prioritizing looking for them and stopping them.
Was there something special about the day they had chosen or was what they had nned not ready yet? He felt like it was probably them not being ready yet because he didn''t understand what could be special about a certain day. It just gave him one more thing he guessed he was going to have to wonder about until he finally found something that could answer all the questions he had umted in the past two days.
...
Tiff had just ended the training session with the new group of scouts she was leading and she had to say it was nice to be with people closer to her skill level. In the past whenever she had been training with the other members of the 23 she felt like she couldn''t keep up but with the dagger gone she no longer had a role she needed to push herself to fill in the 23.
This and the fact the war was still on pause had really made her life a lot easier for thest few days. "Tiffany the temple head is looking for you." Tiff turned around and said. "Ok." to the person who had been sent to deliver the message. Stepping out into the hallway Tiff started to head to the room the Temple head had started to use as her office for thest few days.
Stepping inside Tiff found it was empty and just epted that the Temple head had a lot to do so her not being in the office at the moment wasn''t that weird even if she had been the one to call her here. Taking a seat Tiff guessed this was what she had been doing anyway so sitting here wasn''t really any different.
After a while the temple head finally showed up and one of the other members of the 23 was with her. "Tiffany it''s your turn to go see the God of Light. Are you ready?" Tiff had kind of expected to be left out of this process or to gost so this is not what she was expecting this conversation to be about.
"Why are you sending me eighth?" Tiff knew she was probably expected to just say yes to going and then she would have the situation exined to her but she wanted to know first. "We''re sending the people who are unlikely to be picked first so we don''t have to send the person the God of light chooses more than once. Also it''s night time so sending you now makes sense since you won''t really be part of any fight that could happen."
Tiff understood the Demon Worshipers liked to attack during the night and since the Light Domain was so close to the Holy domain the Temple Head was hoping she could get there and back before daybreak when they would send people who would actually be important for when the Demon Worshipers returned.
"Do I actually need to go?" Tiff thought it was unlikely that she would be picked so they might as well just send another member now and leave her out of this. "Why wouldn''t you go?" Tiff understood why the Temple head would be confused about someone turning down a chance to get a Legendary job but Tiff would rather it go to someone who wouldn''t waste it.
One of the strong members of the 23 would be able to keep the others safe better than she could even with some new Legendary skills. "I don''t feel like I would be a good choice therefore the God of Light would never choose me. It would be a waste of time for me to go."
"Well it''s fine if you feel that way but let me tell you something about the God of Light, or just Gods in general. Sometimes the people they pick to hold their power aren''t the ones anyone would ever suspect. He''s waiting to see you and you''ll only understand why if you go."
Tiff had never really been the type of person to put her hopes in the gods because there was more than one of them and they all had their own agendas that sometimes shed so she had never been able to think that the one she worshiped would ever be able to always be right.
These were unpopr opinions for someone who was a member of a temple to have thought so she just acted like the Temple head''s words had gotten through to her so she said. "You''re right I''ll leave right away." Tiff could tell the Temple Head knew no one''s mind was changed that easily but what did it matter to her when how tiff was acting got her what she wanted.
Alright the way to the Light Domain is still clear so feel free to go straight there using the road. If you go as fast as you can we''ll expect you back in 12 or so hours." The temple head waved a farewell to her and Tiff walked out of the room headed for the door out of their base. She only briefly stopped to get some gear for the road.
She had wanted to go say bye to Dawn before she left but with a time limit of twelve hours being set she would be back soon enough that Dawn wouldn''t mind if she didn''t say bye to her first. Stepping outside Tiff took a sip of one of the stamina potions she had just picked up and started to run towards the Light Domain.
Chapter 191: Wake Up Call
Chapter 191: Wake Up Call
Lake opened his eyes and looked around. After he saw where he was he went ahead and looked at how long he had slept, a little less than three hours and he was happy he woke up now because it was less than normal for him and this gave him more time to work today.
Standing up and looking around the room, Lake saw the other members of his team still asleep. There was a good chance he wasn''t going to see them again because of what was going to happen today but they had been pretty helpful for thest few days, especially Grendia. He wished he would have done a better job about remembering to ask her about Earth magic.
It was fine he would figure it outter and maybe if they were sessful today he would be able to ask her after it was all over. Stepping out into the hallway Lake thought about finding Master before he left to have a more detailed conversion because he hadn''t really had a chance to actually talk to Masters before he ran off to investigate the Elevators but Lake decided he could leave that for after he found something today.
He would have to find Masters then anyway so this was a good way for him to save a small amount of time. Pushing his way out of the guild and out onto the street, Lake set his Detector to look for buildings that have things hidden by Demon Worshipers in them like he had nned to with no problems. Lake then started to head for the first tier of the city.
The first tier was extremely small from what he could tell so starting there and working his way down from there was a good idea in his head. Lake didn''t even get through the second tier before he got his first hit. Detector was lighting up one of the buildings he was passing so he switched to Mana Vision to see if he could see anyone inside the building.
Lake saw some people inside so he switched his Detector to see if they were Demon Worshipers. He was happy that he checked because the people inside didn''t light up. Thinking about why that might be, Lake decided to see if maybe they were undead.
The three people inside lit up and Lake decided he might want to start looking for Undead as well as Demon Worshipers everywhere he went. It was just too bad he couldn''t set Detector to look for multiple things very easily without making a carefully crafted sentence that included every thing you were looking for.
Thinking about the Undead from the other day that were also Demon Worshipers Lake wondered what made these three different. He guessed gaining the title Demon Worshiper was a choice and being undead wasn''t really something you could help. This meant the four undead from yesterday had chosen to be Demon Worshipers and for whatever reason the three inside hadn''t.
That being said they were still inside of a building that had things put there by Demon Worshipers so they were probably in on the whole plot that was going on in some way. Lake decided to just mark this ce and keep going because he really didn''t have much time or at least he didn''t think he did and he wanted to find more than three undead before he stopped to start clearing out the surface with the help of the guild.
Lake returned Detector to look for buildings that have things hidden by Demon Worshipers in them but changed it slightly to include undead by making it buildings that have undead or things hidden by Demon Worshipers in them. With Detector having no problems with amand like that, Lake realized he could probably get it to look for lots of things at once if he found a way to group them all into one sentence.
This made this skill even better than he had thought originally and it reminded him not to be too literal with what the skills description said it could do. If one read the description of Detector they wouldn''t even think you could set it to look for living things like he had been doing for the past few days.
Detector (L) Lv.1
You can set this skill to search for certain things.
(Range scales off of Perception)
He had also thought he could only set it to look for simple things but with how detailed his search setting was now that had also been wrong. He just wished Detector''s range was as big as a skill Like Mana Vision or Item Sense because it would make it a lot more certain he hadn''t missed anything.
With how it was now he was always afraid he had missed something because it had been just slightly too deep for him to see. His current goal was to be very thorough in his search so it was making it hard to not think he was doing a bad job. It was just going to have to do until he found another job that gave him more Perception he guessed.
Continuing his run to the top, Lake started to pass building after building that met his conditions he had set Detector to and he was just moving in a straight line so he was starting to worry about what he was seeing. He marked every building but started to think he should have brought a map with him so he would be able to pass on the locations to Masters easier.
Making it to the top of the cityke found himself in between multiple small castles. He guessed this ce was slightly different to the ce he hade from and there were multiple people taking the role of the king here. He wondered if they got along or were always fighting in the background.
He didn''t really have too much time to think about it because he finally reached the very middle of the city and found what he assumed was the Metal Temple from the way it looked. He had seen it from a distance as a shining tip to the city when he had first gotten to the city but this was his first time seeing it up close.
It was a very nice looking building but that wasn''t what he was worried about. Detector was lighting it up and Lake couldn''t believe the God Of Metal would allow the Demon Worshipers inside his own temple but then Lake realized who hade to retrieve the monsters from his group and he was sure other groups had sealed over the past few days.
Those Undead would be inside this temple now and that was most likely what was causing Detector to light it up. Lake was happy he had realized this because it had almost made him think he needed to give up on the city and just directly leave. It had already been bad enough with the number of ces he had found to be tampered with in some way by the Demon Worshipers but if even the temple was filled with saboteurs it was over for the Metal Domain.
He didn''t have any more time to spare so he turned to start doing a spiral down the city. It didn''t take long for Lake to pass the Guild district the Fighters guild was in and Lake stopped and headed inside. Running to Masters office Lake burst in. "Masters, I need a map of the city right now!" The situation was really bad.
Lake had found almost a hundred buildings that had met his conditions. There was no way he would ever be able to tell master every location from memory and have Masters be able to send a team to every location so Lake had to draw it onto a map if he even wanted a small chance of them stopping the city from being destroyed.
"I have one in my desk." Masters seemed to understand the urgency from Lake''s voice and pushed the person he had been talking to before Lake had burst in out of the way so he could get Lake the map. Lake took it and said. "I''ll be right back." Running back outside, Lake started to mark out all the buildings he had found in the first three tiers of the city before heading down to the next tier. Lake had given up on hiding his speed or even being able to control himself and went all out.
His feet were going so fast he was starting to crack the stone the roads were made out of and whenever he used a building''s roof to jump he left arge hole in it. It didn''t matter though because as he was marking out the buildings Lake started to realize he had been right about the fact that all the things underground had been a distraction.
The buildings he was marking were leaving a shape he could start to see as something more than just a random scattering of buildings. It was a formation or some type of magic shape that he didn''t understand. He had no idea what it was going to do but with its size he was sure it was big enough to crumble the city if it went off.
Chapter 192: The Expert
Chapter 192: The Expert
With the actual n identified all Lake needed to do now was bring this map to Masters and he was sure Masters would know what the Demon Worshipers nned to use to form and power this massive formation. Running back to the guild with the map, Lake mmed it down on Masters desk.
Lake didn''t even need to say anything for Masters to realize what the shape on the map was but he didn''t seem to understand why Lake had put it on his map. "Why did you draw all over my map?" Lake guessed a formation of that size wasn''t something one saw every day so he could understand why Masters had missed the point.
Before Lake could say anything to exin what it was, Masters said. "Are you saying we should make a ward for the city or something?" Lake could tell Masters was reading the formation he had set on his desk so Lake didn''t correct him right away and said. "Are you saying this would form a ward if it was made and powered?"
"Well that''s what this part would do but there are a few other ces in the formation that I don''t recognize. Listen, it''s not the worst idea but it really isn''t something we could do with just a few hours of time. We also would need more resources than we could request from the guild to do something like this."
Lake stopped Masters here and said. "This already exists, the Demon Worshipers set it using buildings to hide it and this isn''t the full thing but I didn''t go over the whole city because I wanted to bring it to your attention as soon as I realized what it was." Lake could tell Masters was shaken by what Lake said but he seemed to have a problem with what Lake was telling him.
"We would be able to tell if there was a formation this big being set in the city. We would all be able to feel it." Lake was about to say more details that might help Masters answer his own doubts but he was cut off by Masters asking. "How were you able to see it if it''s under the houses? You weren''t gone long enough to go into every one of these building basements."
Lake was kind of hoping that Masters would just take his word at face value because of the fact that he had saved his life yesterday but it seemed what he was saying was too far out there to ept with no evidence. Lake didn''t think they had time for him to convince Masters with a made up method so he just chose to tell him the truth, or close enough to the truth.
"I have two Legendary skills both are used in gathering information. I don''t like to tell people that but we''re going to have to trust each other if we hope to stop them. Look juste with me and you''ll see I''m telling the truth." Lake had done his best to make masters remember that Lake had saved him and therefore he could be trusted without saying it because he knew it would be more effective than saying, ''I saved your life.'' to him.
It seemed to work like he had hoped because Masters was too smart to think something like, ''this is a trap if I go with him he''ll kill me.'' This made no sense because if Lake wanted him dead he would have just let him die yesterday. "Ok Let''s go to this ce here first." Lake saw Masters was pointing at a ce near the center of the city near the Metal Temple.
Lake had no qualms with this n so he said. "Let''s go." He and Master ran out of the guild''s front door in less than a minute after they had decided on where to go, and it had only taken that long because Masters had to put on his gear. After some running, Lake started to wish he could just ask Masters to let him carry him but he didn''t think Masters would like the sound of that n.
It would probablye off as rude since the reason Masters was slow was his short legs. "Alright we''re here. What''s the n?" Lake was sure there was a reason Masters had wanted toe here first. "We need to go to the temple first to talk to their Temple Head. He''s a Master of formations so he might be able to tell what the formation does and the easiest way for us to destroy it without going to every ce marked on the map."
Lake liked the sound of that and followed behind Masters as they headed towards the front gate of the Metal Temple. Climbing the stairs Lake wanted them to run but it seemed to be ingrained in Masters that running in the temple would be rude. Looking at the guards on either side of the doorway Lake expected them to say something since guilds weren''t exactly in the best of terms with the Temples but then Lake remembered that might just be the Alchemist guild and the Light temple.
This was the Metal Temple so there was no way to know if they had good rtions with the Fighters guild unless he asked. He didn''t really need to know though because it seemed the guards understood the Fighters Guild had been hired by the Metal Temple to Clear out Demon Worshipers and It wasn''t surprising they knew since the whole city probably did at this point.
Once inside Lake was able to feel the amount of metal mana was even higher herepared to deep underground. There was also less earth mana inside the temple so it really stood out as the highest by far. Lake saw that Masters was looking towards a center pir and when Lake looked towards it he saw why.
There were about ten or so people on ropes suspended from the ceiling working with chisels on the pir making some kind of statue out of the metal. Lake''s guess would be they were making a statue of the God of Metal to ce somewhere inside the temple but they were too early in the process to say for sure, but he probably couldn''t tell even if the face had been done because Lake had no idea what the God of Metal looked like.
After looking for a while a dwarf about have the size of Masters on one of the ropes started to descend towards them and Lake asked. "Is that the Temple Head?" Masters nodded and said. "Yeah, it seems he knew we had something important to talk to him about because usually when youe while he''s working you have to wait till he''s done. I was hoping he would be more willing topromise since it''s so bad outside."
Lake guessed this behavior of the Temple Head had to do with the extreme work ethic he had seen from all dwarves and most people here in general. Lake wondered if Masters would have waited for the Temple Head in a situation like this. He said he had been hoping the Temple Head wouldn''t pull the making people wait thing but the way he had said it made it sound like it would have been worth it in the long run.
"Masters what is it? We''re kind of busy right now." Masters didn''t start talking till he had handed the map to the Temple Head. "We found what the Demon Worshipers are nning. It''s some kind of giant formation and we were hoping you could help us destroy it by painting out key parts of each part of the formation."
Lake had to say, the tiny dwarf took the news quite well or at least he didn''t change his face much and just started to look at the map. Around ten minutester Lake started to wonder what was taking the dwarf so long but eventually the tiny dwarf did look up from the map and say. "What idiot drew this? It''s not evenplete. Look here this is an imprisonment formation but because it''s iplete it looks like a ward."
Lake didn''t mind being insulted like this because he hadn''t been able to go around the whole city plus he wasn''t an expert on formations or anything so his ego wasn''t wrapped up in this like someone who thought they had done a perfect job and was proud of their work. He was really just trying to do the bare minimum as fast as he could and he was pretty sure he was killing it if you were to judge him based on that.
You couldn''t really dispute this fact either since this tiny man had been able to identify what the one part of the Formation did. "You can still help us though right?" Lake found it nice that Masters didn''t say Lake had been the one who had drawn the map and had just moved the conversation along like nothing had happened.
"I can but I would rmend you get your forces ready before we start because there''s no way the Demon Worshipers will just let us stop them. As soon as we move in on the first location every Demon Worshiper will try toy the formation before we can destroy it or stop them. We also need to worry about the fact that any good n has some redundancy and that''s also true for formations so the formation is probably set up to still do something if heavily damaged."
"Are you saying we should hit multiple ces all at once?" The tiny man nodded and said. "That would be for the best but I need time to try and decipher all of the effects this formation might have hidden in it and to do that I''ll need the full thing so send out whoever got this information again to finish the job."
Lake didn''t care if the dwarf knew it was him so he said. "I''ll get on it right away but I''ll need the map back so transfer what I already have to a new sheet." Lake was expecting the Temple head to use paper but instead he just wove it out of mana in front of them and then handed the map back to Lake.
"Good luck Lake, I''m going back to the guild to start to organize the strike teams." Master waved bye to him and started to run for the door and Lake was on his heels when the Temple head stopped him. "Try and get more information than just where it is this time. Knowing what they n to use toy it is very important. If it turns out to just be a few powerful mages it will be easier to just kill them."
Lake wished he knew more about formations so he would be able to identify the Demon Worshipers chosen method ofying the formation easier but he still said. "Yes, Temple Head." Even though he didn''t really know if he would be able to meet this request.
Chapter 193: Finishing The Map
Chapter 193: Finishing The Map
Lake rushed to where he had left off and continued what he was doing. He didn''t just run past the building after he marked them this time though and took the time to look inside them with Mana Vision. After seeing there were living things moving around in a house, Lake would use Detector to see what they were before writing it on his map.
He didn''t know if this was what the Temple Head wanted but Lake felt like maybe it would be useful. He continued like this for a while before he realized he was spending too much time on each building. He felt like he had a big enough sample size for the Temple Head to use with him checking the insides of almost 30 buildings so he stopped and went back to just marking the location on the map as fast as he could.
Before too long Lake had made it down to where the elevators were at the bottom of the city and he stopped and looked at the final product. There was now an outer border on the formation so Lake knew it wasplete and he could go back to the Temple Head now. Running in a straight line towards the Temple Lake passed through the gate and was expecting to see the Temple Head where they had left him but he was no longer there.
Lake remembered what Masters had said about the Temple Head and looked up towards the statue to see the Temple Head once again suspended from a rope chiseling away at the pir in the center of the room. He wasn''t happy that the Temple Head had started working on the pir again but he did have to say they had made great progress in the small amount of time he had been gone.
Lake had only been gone for about twenty minutes and in that time it looked like they had finished half of the work needed to shape the pir into a person''s shape. With how fast they were going, Lake wondered how often they made these statues because he had seen some statues in the city but at the pace these dwarves worked they could fill the whole city with them.
This made him think the statues were exported to one of the other Domains he had heard about in the past few days; possibly the Stone Domain. He felt like they would like something like this even if the statue was made of metal.
After some time waiting the Temple Head came down and said. "You''re back too fast to have done what I asked." This was partially true so Lake nodded and handed the nowplete formation to the Temple Head. "Mmm."
The little man started to grunt as he studied the formation and after a while he said. "There''s a bridge formation here. This means this is just a part of the Formation and it has a twin hidden somewhere close. Possibly under the city or in one of the mountains close to the city. This means we''ll still have a fight on our hands if we destroy the one in the city but since it will be more advantageous to us if the second formation is outside the city. I''m sure you''ve noticed the fact that this city is designed to withstand an invasion. That means it''s probably under us. You need to find it for us. Don''t worry about uncovering the whole thing, it will be exactly the same as this one, we just need to know where it is so we''ll know where the attack will being from."
Lake understood everything the man said except for the attack he kept referencing. He was saying it like the formation was going to attack them in some way. "What else does the formation do?" So far all the temple head had told him about it was there was an imprisonment formation and a bridge formation. Lake wanted to know the rest because there were five very obvious parts to the massive formation.
"This massive part here is a giant summoning formation. I''m not sure what will be summoned though because it''s probably something the Demon Worshipers cooked up special for us. This here is a mana siphon and since it''s so big it will be able to clear the whole city of what looks to be Earth and Metal mana. The Demon Worshipers are nning to make it so the dwarves won''t be able to use magic once the formation is active and for thisst one I''m not too sure but judging on the fact it''s over the the guild district and it looks like an attack formation, I''m sure they''re hoping to destroy all of the guilds at once."
After the Temple head got done exining to him what the formation did on the surface he started to break down some of the hidden effects he could notice by just looking at it. "This one right here, this line." The temple head was looking at him so Lake nodded to say he saw the line the Temple Head was pointing towards. "This ties the Imprisonment formation and the mana siphon together meaning if you mess with one it affects the other in this case the Mana Siphon will get stronger if the imprisonment formation goes out unless you destroy this part of the formation first but if you do that the opposite will happen and the Imprisonment formation will get stronger bing a suppression formation draining the energy of those trapped."
Lake had heard enough and said. "Thank you Temple Head but I need to go look for the other formation now." All he really needed from the tiny man was to be told where and when to attack, so him knowing all the traps hidden in the formation wasn''t really important. "You should wait till we finish the golem to leave. It will help you get under the city."
Lake wanted to ask about this golem and how it would help him but decided if he asked there was a chance the tiny man would start another long winded exnation and that would keep them from finishing so it was better to just let them get back to work. "I will wait Temple Head." Lake said this to end the conversation and went to sit in one of the pews to watch them work on the golem he had thought was just a statue.
Lake was happy that it ended up being something more important than a statue because he had been judging the people here for not understanding how dire the situation was and wasting their time but it turned out they had been helping in a way he hadn''t understood. He hadn''t realized what it was because of how different it looked to the golems he had seen Wace make because this one was just one giant piece of metal and the ones Wace had made all had moving parts and joints.
After a while Lake started to get annoyed again, even if they were helping the thing had looked done for the past five minutes and all they were doing now was polishing the golem so it looked shiny. He felt like this was an unnecessary step but he had no choice but to wait because he wanted to see it once it was done.
It was forty feet tall so he wanted to see what it would look like once it got moving and if its joints and such would bend or if it would just float above the ground in its fixed shape or something. After a few more minutes of them polishing the statue all the dwarves who had been working on the statue started to descend and Lake knew that probably meant it was done and all they had to do was make it start moving.
Lake didn''t know too much about golems but he knew they were something Enchanters made so he guessed one of them would be about to do that. Once they were all down off of the statue Lake saw all of them except for the Temple Head circle around the golem and get on their knees.
Once they were in position Lake saw the Temple Head Lift his arms and say. "Twain, the Silver Demigod, we offer you this vessel." After this short statement the statue in the center of the room started to shine too bright for Lake to continue to look so he closed his eyes until he heard a rumble he assumed was the golem moving.
Opening his eyes Lake saw the golem was still glowing in a sliver light but it was now less bright so he was able to look at it. Lake instantly realized he could no longer tell he wasn''t looking at a living being. It pretty much looked like a living person now that it was moving like one. "Alright follow it to the edge of the city and remember toe back as soon as you find the other formation''s location."
Lake wanted to know more about the golem but it was already moving so he didn''t have time to ask anything. Running behind it Lake wondered how it was going to get out of the temple but right when it was about to crash into the wall it lifted its hand and the wall split to let them through.
It seemed it was able to control Metal the way Grendia was able to control Earth. If that was the case Lake could kind of understand how the Golem would help him get down to the rest of the city. This thing had probably been built to fix the elevators or something using magic. It was a good n because from what he had seen earlier when he was mapping out the formation the people working on the elevators did not look like they were even close to having them running again on their own.
Chapter 194: Finding The Other Formation
Chapter 194: Finding The Other Formation
Lake followed behind the golem as it slowly made its way through the crowds. He was happy it was smart enough to know that it couldn''t just step on the people that were in the way but he kind of wished it would step on the ones that were too dumb to get out of a giant''s way. Sadly the golem seemed more patient than he was and it never even stepped on a single person.
He was sure one would be enough because after the first person got squished the rest would get out of the way. It ended up taking them almost ten whole minutes to walk all the way from the Temple to the edge of the city and while that might be considered a fast time it should have never taken that long for something with legs as long as the ones the golem had.
It was starting to seem every person in the city was fine taking their sweet time doing things other than him and it was probably because they didn''t get what was going on past knowing it was bad for them. If they really understood what was happening they would be in their homes staying out of the way or evacuating from the city.
Lake saw all the dwarves that had been working on the elevatore over to the golem and he could tell they knew what it was for. Lake didn''t know if they had requested it from the Temple or if they had just seen one before but he was happy they knew because they were getting out of the way to let the golem get to work.
Watching it lift all the metal scrap into the air and new things like gears start to fly towards the elevator shaft, Lake knew it wouldn''t take long for the elevators to be back up in running. As he was watching this process go down, Lake wondered if this golem would be doing other stuff after it was done here or if it would being with him to look for the other formation because he had found it very useful yesterday when he had someone with him who could move the environment around when he asked and even if this giant was only able to move metal there was still enough of it around to be a big advantage for him in a fight.
He didn''t really have any ns to get into a fight just yet but you never knew when the Demon Worshipers nned to startying the formation and once they did he would have no choice but to fight whatever they were going to summon while he ran. "You came with the golem right, are you from the Temple or did you just follow behind it because you were curious?"
Lake looked at who had just talked to him and once he saw it was just one of the dwarves that had been working on the elevators, Lake said. "I''m from the fighters guild. I''m just waiting to use the elevators once they''re back in a working condition." Lake didn''t want to give away too much information to a random person even if there wasn''t much reason to be suspicious of the person he was talking to.
He was sure there would be people working for the Demon Worshipers around because of how much attention the golem would draw over to them so even if this person was fine to tell someone might overhear what he said and put together he was important to the Temple and try to kill him.
Lake didn''t want that to happen so he made it sound like he was just a normal Fighters guild member to downy his importance. He wasn''t really afraid of the fight that might happen if he had loose lips but he was afraid of wasting time. He already felt like they were down to the wire and anything that happened to slow him down would result in him failing to actually gain any money from all the work he had done in thest few days because the city would be destroyed.
"Trying to beat the tide of people using them once they''re back working?" Lake nodded and said. "That''s what I''m hoping for." Now that he thought about it he was going to have a hard time using the Elevators as much as he would need to be able to go to every floor like he needed to.
That meant he needed to think of a way around this problem before the elevator was done. It didn''t take long forke to think of a way to check a tier without actually stepping off of the elevator and it was using the same skill he had pretty much used for everything in thest few days.
Setting Detector to look for the tier that the Demon Worshipers were nning to make a formation that was attached to the one he had already found Lake decided it was descriptive enough to find what he was looking for but knew he was going to get two chances if it didn''t work on the way down because he could change the description again on the ride back up.
"It looks like it''s almost done with that one." Lake didn''t know anything about what the golem was doing so he just took the dwarves'' word for it and said. "Alright, goodbye." Walking over to the elevator that the golem had finished working on, Lake got on and looked around to see it looked almost exactly like the ones he had been taking, just more shiny.
He guessed since the golem had reformed the metal it had lost the scuffs from the constant use they used to have. Taking the highest number weight off the wall and cing it onto the te, Lake felt the elevator start to descend. With that all he had left to do was ride the elevator until he saw something trigger Detector.
...
Passing tier 42 Lake saw a giant amount of gold pop up in front of him and he knew it was Detector trying to highlight the entire tier. He had expected the formation to be somewhere close to where he and the others had found the staircase the Demon Worshipers were using to get around but he guessed they had other ways to get around and possibly multiple staircases.
Taking the weight off of the te Lake reced it with the one that brought him back to the surface. Feeling how slow he was moving back upwards Lake started to think. He had been on the elevator for a while now so flying up the elevator shaft would get him to the surface much faster.
These small elevators had roofs though so he was going to need to get around it if he actually wanted to do so. Stopping the elevator by choosing the weight that moved it to the floor he was passing Lake got off of it while telling it to go down a floor while empty. Lake took the second he needed to charge up the mana needed to use Fly to see what was going on on the 39th tier before entering the Elevator shaft heading upwards.
He was happy with how much faster flying was and wondered if he should have just flown down the elevator shaft to begin with. If he had he could have probably saved himself 20 minutes or so of time. That being said, waiting for the elevator had been what had caused him to realize checking each tier one at a time would have taken forever and to think of a way to check the tiers without actually entering them so maybe the elevator had saved him time in the long run.
Of course the best case was him having the idea to fly right after he had had the first idea but whatever the city hadn''t exploded yet and him getting back quicker gave the Temple Head less time to study the formation and Masters less time to organize the army they would be attacking the formation with.
Stepping onto the surface Lake saw the golem had moved over to the freight elevators and that it had already finished on the ones made for people to use. The elevators were already being used and Lake could see people constantly getting off of the other elevators near him. He was sure the people who had been trapped underground were getting to the surface as quickly as possible.
He also saw a lot of people he recognized as members of the fighters guild that he had worked with in the past all headed towards the Fighters guild. It was good timing for them to get back; he just hoped they had gotten sleepst night because they weren''t going to be able to go to bed once they got back to the guild.
Slipping out of the crowd, Lake headed towards the Metal Temple to tell the Temple Head what tier the other formation was on. Then he nned to head back to the Fighters guild to let Masters know whatever the Temple Head said about the formation so they could start getting people where they needed to be.
Chapter 195: A Bunch Of Bad Choices
Chapter 195: A Bunch Of Bad Choices
Walking into the Temple, Lake found the Temple Head was nowhere to be seen so he walked over to one of the people he could see and asked. "Hello, would you be willing to let the Temple Head know I''m here?" The dwarf nodded and said. "I saw you earlier so you can just follow me. I know he''s waiting on you."
Lake nodded and followed the dwarf deeper into the Temple, reaching a staircase and going up it he was faced with a door he didn''t think he would be able to get through without crawling, so he asked. "Is this really the way?" The tiny dwarf nodded and said. "If you would prefer I can go in and get him."
Lake shook his head and said. "No, it''s fine, I can manage." Under normal circumstances he would never do something like this unless he actually wanted to but he didn''t want to stop the Temple Heads work just so he could avoid crawling. "Alright follow me." The tiny man opened the door and headed inside so Lake got down and walked on all fours behind him.
After a while they exited the hallway they were in into a room that he could stand up in that seemed to be some kind of library or possibly the Temple Heads study. The fact that the Temple Head was the only person here made him think the second option was actually the truth but he guessed the Temple Head might have asked everyone to leave so he could focus.
"Temple Head, the one you sent to look for the other half of the formation is back." Lake took the opportunity of the person talking to the Temple Head to look at the formation they had floating in the room. He saw the Temple Head had gone ahead and made the other half of the formation attached by the part he had called the bridge formation.
This made it look like there was a glowing cylinder in front of the Temple Head instead of the t formations he had seen previously. "It''s good you got back so quickly but it doesn''t really change the problem we''re in. Whoever made this formation is more knowledgeable than I am and this leaves us in a situation where we are going to have to guess a little when deciding where we should attack first. I need you to go ask Masters how many groups we have at our disposal before I can make any more progress in deciding the best way to destroy this formation."
Lake was ready to do what the Temple Head had asked but he went ahead and said where the other half of the formation was before he turned to crawl back out of the Temple. "It''s on tier 42." Lake didn''t get a reply from the Temple Head after he said this and just started to crawl towards the exit of the temple.
Once he was back outside he ran towards the Fighters guild to see it packed with people. Masters was at the front of them and was organizing them intorger groups. Lake was walking towards the front so he could talk to Masters when he heard. "Lake over here." Turning he saw Freed waving towards him and Lake waved towards them and continued towards Masters.
Masters saw himing and stopped what he was doing and said. "In my office." Lake nodded and followed Masters towards the stairs. It made sense that Masters wouldn''t want to discuss something like this in front of so many people because even if one spy was in the room it would give away the fact that they had found the Formations.
Once the door was closed Lake said. "The Temple Head wants to know how many groups we have so he can start nning where we are going to attack first." Masters sat at his desk before grabbing some paper and pen. "Here are our exact numbers and what roles they are. Tell him I was nning to split us into three but we could probably stretch to five well bnced teams if need be."
Lake didn''t even take the time to look at the information Masters had handed to him and started back towards the Temple. Once he was back at the Temple he crawled towards the Temple Heads library and handed him the paper. Lake saw that since he had been gone the Temple Head had busted out a few books and was trying to decipher the intricate parts of the formation for any secret traps that might be inside.
"Tell him to make at least eight groups and four of them need to head down to the 42nd tier but I''ll be sending out some of the Temples forces to follow each group so they won''t be by themselves." Lake nodded and started back towards the Fighters guild when the Temple Head stopped him. "Half of them are going to die during the first attack if the formation is able to form no matter if we are sessful or not because one of the ces we have to attack first is in the middle of the attack formation."
"Wait even if they''re sessful?" Lake didn''t like the sound of that and the Temple Head had said half of the people not just one fourth which was the amount of people they would be sending into the attack formation or at least that''s what he expected because they had to attack the same ce on each half of the formation at the same time for it to be effective.
"We aren''t destroying any of the parts of the formation that we attack, just destroying the parts that are hooking them together that make them do weird new things if one of them is destroyed or damaged. Once these four lines are down." The Temple Head pointed at a few lines that went between the various parts of the formation as he said. "We can move on to these four points to start destroying the mana siphon with the half of us that survive the first attack."
"Why are you saying half instead of a fourth?" This was thest detail he wanted to know before he went to tell Masters what the Temple Head wanted from him. "Well just because the others aren''t being sent into an attack formation doesn''t mean they don''t have a tough road ahead. They will still be in the center of the other formations as theye on, so I figure some of them will die as well meaning we''ll have about half of us left for the next rounds of attacks."
Lake guessed that was solid logic and said. "That makes sense but what about the summoning formation won''t that make an army of monsters we have to fight? Why are we going after the mana siphon first?" Lake couldn''t help himself, he had to ask. "The summoning formation and the attack formation are one time only so once the formation isid they will activate and then be useless so we don''t really have to worry about destroying them or the imprisonment formation. That leaves the bridge which we can''t touch and the mana siphon and most of us won''t be able to fight whatever was summoned if we cant use magic."
Lake nodded, he understood now that it was truly the only option they had because apparently you couldn''t destroy the bridge formation for some reason. "Ok, I''m going now." Lake waved bye to the Temple Head before he started to crawl again. On the way out he couldn''t help but think even with the fact that he had found the formation they didn''t really have a very good chance.
...
As Tiff was walking up the stairs to the Light Temple in the middle of the Light Domains capital she couldn''t help but wish the one she had lived in for a good part of her early life was as big as this one and above ground. Even with the light inside the Temples that makes it seem you aren''t underground hiding from the Demon Worshipers you still started to miss the actual sun.
That was part of being someone with the holy affinity though, you had to stay in the Holy Domain as much as possible to be able to train in Holy magic because it was the only ce with any Holy mana really left and all the small Light temples that had been build there were mostly underground so you just had to deal with the fact that you were trapped inside.
"Tiffany we have been expecting you. The God of Light is waiting." Looking at the light mage who had spoken to her, Tiffany couldn''t help but start to get nervous. This would be the first time she was actually going to meet the God of Light so she couldn''t help but worry what he would see during their conversation.
Tiff wasn''t dumb enough to think she would be able to keep any secrets from a god so he would definitely know that she had been trying to run away this whole time. Tiffany took a deep breath and remembered she wouldn''t be the only person he had ever met that had less than perfect goals.
She was sure even other members of the 23 he had met so far had been less than perfect. Putting on a calm face Tiff answered. "Lead the way I''m ready." The Light Mage smiled and said. "You don''t have to be so nervous, he''s very nice." Tiff guessed that was a good thing to hear about the god you worshiped and smiled back as they walked towards the oracles sanctuary.
Chapter 196: God Of Light
Chapter 196: God Of Light
Stepping into the Oracles Sanctuary Tiff could tell the amount of mana in this room was much higher than anything she had ever felt before even with her mediocre aptitude in magic. It made sense that this room would be full of light mana considering one of the most important people to the God of Light lived here.
She was sure having more Light Mana here helped the Oracle with her ability to make contact with the God of Light at any time and vice versa. When the God of Light had gone looking for Akal to get revenge for the death of his wife the Holy Goddess, the Oracle had been the only way they had been able to stay in contact with him.
"Go and sit in the circle next to the Oracle." Tiff nodded to the one who had brought her here and started to walk deeper into the sanctuary. Halfway to the Oracle Tiff started to see that the Oracle was very clearly already talking to something and Tiff just went ahead and assumed the God of Light was already here.
Not wanting to make him wait, Tiff stopped dragging her feet and went and sat in the circle of light around the oracle like she had been told to. Now that she was close enough Tiff saw the Oracle''s words were silent and it was just her mouth moving with no sound actually being produced.
She guessed it made sense that they were speaking directly into each other''s minds since they weren''t in the same room but Tiff wondered why the Oracle had her mouth moving at all if she wasn''t actually using it but decided it was probably just how the oracle had first used the skill and it had stuck till now or maybe she had no actual control over if her mouth moved or not when she was using the skill that allowed her to speak to the God of Light.
Seeing the Oracle''s mouth stop moving Tiff looked up to see the oracle was now looking at her. "Were you trying to read my lips?" Tiff wished that was what she had been doing because she was sure that would be better for her if she was to answer this question honestly by saying she was thinking it was weird that she was moving her mouth. Thankfully the Oracles tone was yful so Tiff wasn''t required to say anything and could justugh it off.
"Come closer you''ll be meeting with the God of Light personally so you''ll need to hold onto my hands." Tiff always felt like her hands were sweaty whenever she had to make hand to hand contact with someone so she quickly wiped her hands on her pants while she was getting closer to the Oracle.
Putting her hands on top of the Oracle''s Tiff was about to say something when she felt a massive voice enter into her head. The sudden noise caused her to close her eyes in surprise but she quickly reopened them and found herself somewhere new. She knew enough to know this would probably just be a hallucination but that didn''t mean she didn''t want to look around.
"Did you hear what I said?" Tiff heard the voice again but this time it was at a normal volume that didn''t make her head hurt. Tiff turned towards the very normal looking man who was now standing where the oracle had been and said. "What?" Tiff spoke to answer this question before she really thought about who was talking to her. "I said it''s good to meet you Tiff." Tiff was surprised to hear the God of Light call her by the shortened version of her name because usually only the other members of the 23 used this way of calling her.
Tiff guessed the others who had alreadye to talk to the God of Light had been saying Tiff like it was her actual name to him so he had just thought Tiff is what everyone called her. She wasn''t going to correct him though because she had no problem with him calling her this. "It''s nice to meet you as well."
Tiff wasn''t sure what she should address him by so she just held off on deciding and made her greeting as polite as she could. "You can just call me by my name." It seemed the mind reading she had been worried about had already started. "You want me to use your actual name?" Tiff wanted to make sure before she actually started calling the God of Light by his first name that that was what he wanted.
"Yeah I''ve never liked being called a god to my face. I''m sure you know all that''s different between me and you is how high our stats are." Tiff guessed that was true if you considered points of divinity to be a stat and she guessed someone who had had them for as long as the God of Light had would.
To the God of Light who could have a massive amount of Divinity it had probably lost its splendor a long time ago. "You''re not the type who likes to talk are you." Tiff realized she had just been staring and said. "Not usually." She was pretty sure she hadn''t helped by saying that and had instead made it awkward and was about to say something else when the God of Light beat her to it.
"It''s fine, I remember when I met a god for the first time. It was the God of Light of the world I was born on and I had nothing to say either, or at least nothing nice." Tiff didn''t know if the God of light had said thatst part just because or if he had been able to read all of her thoughts and knew how she felt about all gods. Either way she was sure their meeting would being to an end soon.
"Alright, Let''s get down to why you are here. You have two options: a test or an interview. If you do well you might get the Legendary job so choose wisely." Tiff couldn''t help but think she should just tell the God of Light that she didn''t want the job but realized right after she thought this that he had probably read her mind so he would already know.
"You should still try." Tiff couldn''t help but remember the Temple Head had a very simr response to when she had told her she didn''t want the job as well. "Yeah Dayna remembers everything I tell her but it''s more important to understand than to be able to recite all of the wisdom that I''ve passed down. I''m not saying Dayna doesn''t just that sometimes it seems all she''s doing is saying things she heard me say."
Tiff had never heard anyone call the Temple Head by her real name and hadn''t even known what it was. Now that she knew it all she could think about was that the Temple Head of the Light Temple had the word ''day'' in it. "Her parents were also my followers so it''s not a coincidence." Tiff was starting to get tired of having a conversion where she didn''t actually say anything and was about to choose the test to end this but the God of Light said. "Sorry, I can pretend I can''t hear what you''re thinking if you would like but it would just lengthen this for no reason."
Right after he said this the god of Light asked. "Do you actually want the test or were you just making a hasty decision because I think it''s the right choice for you personally. The interview is kind of long so it will just be more of me reading your mind after I say something." This solidified her choice so she said. "Yes."
"Alright, do you want the preamble or not?" If he didn''t just say the preamble it must not be that important so she asked. "Is it important?" The god of light shrugged as he answered. "It would be if you could remember it during the test." Tiff didn''t like how that sounded and said. "Ok let me hear it."
"Ok so you are going to hallucinate yourself in three different lives. You''ll be the same person as you are now just in vastly different situations and you won''t remember this life. I''ll be watching as well so it can be kind of embarrassing for some people once they get back but I''ll look away during times where you''re doing stuff that doesn''t really matter to the test."
Tiff understood he meant things like her having intimate moments with others and when she started to think about what this test entailed she asked. "Will I remember it when it''s over?" Tiff didn''t think she would be able to handle the emotional burden of living three lives. She would probably have children in at least one of them and when she returned to reality she would have to deal with the fact they weren''t real.
"Yes you will but it will be fake." Tiff knew only the situations would be fake. She would actually love any children she had because living a normal life in which she got to have a family was one of the things she thought about the most and one of the reasons she cared about the other members of the 23 so much; they were her family.
"I would like to switch to the interview." The God of Light nodded and said. "It''s up to you. Come on, let''s sit down." Tiff realized that at some point a table and some chairs had formed near them and after running for a full day she wouldn''t refuse to sit even if this was most likely not her real body, It felt like it was.
Chapter 197: Job Interview
Chapter 197: Job Interview
Sitting down Tiff started to wonder if the questions were prepared in advance or if they would be random. After she thought this she waited for her answer but when the God of Light didn''t answer she guessed she wasn''t allowed to know for some reason. That was fine she was sure they would be prepared in advance.
She didn''t think something like a Legendary job would be decided over a random chat. "Do you want me to let you answer like I can''t read your mind?" Tiff decided she wanted this to be over as quickly as possible so she said. "Feel free to move to the next one as soon as I think something that you think is an answer."
Tiff guessed she hadn''t even needed to say that but if she was able to find an answer to a question as soon as it was asked that would be thest time she talked for a while. "Ok. First question; What''s your greatest weakness?" Tiff found this question quiteplicated because she felt any weakness could be a problem depending on the situation so she needed to choose the one that was the mostmon one toe up.
After some thinking she had to say it was hercking talent. She had always had a hard time unlocking jobspared to the others and it made her unable to max out a few of her stats. The only jobs she seemed any good at unlocking were the ones that give Agility and it was probably because of her personality, or at least that was what most people thought decided what jobs you could unlock.
Other people said your personality just decided what kinds of things you did and those things were what made you unlock the jobs that matched you the best. Either way was pretty much the same and it had made her realize she was more likely to run from a fight if she had the option. "So is it your talent or your personality?"
It was probably her personality. She had done a bad job at dealing with most things in her life because of how she was, so it was actually what caused her problems in most cases. "Do you consider yourself an important person?" This wasn''t something she wanted to think about and the question seemed kind of mean to even ask. She had an answer though. "No."
"Why?" Her reasoning really wasn''t because she was down on herself or anything, it was just because she didn''t really think there was such a thing as an important person. The closest thing was someone who could affect your life but once they could no longer affect you they lost all importance and as long as there isn''t someone who could affect every person at once Important people didn''t exist.
"What''s Important?" The first thing she thought of was Dawn then the other members of the 23. "Your friends?" Tiff considered most of them close friends but Dawn was more like a sister, but yes, her friends were the most important thing to her. "Is that it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well usually people have more than one thing they care about."
Tiff did originally have other things she cared about when she was younger but her family was dead so her friends were all that was left. "There''s something else but you won''t let yourself think it because you don''t want me to know." Tiff was happy to know he wasn''t able to read all of her thoughts but she was sure her keeping secrets wasn''t something he was looking for in the person he would be choosing.
She didn''t want the job though so it was fine if he didn''t choose her. "You know, I''m surprised you don''t want revenge. You loved your family so much but you aren''t trying to kill the Demon Lord who''s responsible for their deaths. You think you don''t need to worry about it because I''m going to kill him, and soon. It''s good you realize the people who are still alive deserve your protection more."
Tiff gave the God of Light an unsure look after thest thing he said because everyone knew what he had spent thest three years on: revenge for his dead wife. She had heard multiple people criticize him for his absence because he could have tracked down the Demon Lord before he recovered if he had stayed.
"There was more than one reason to kill Akal but yes I did go after him because of revenge and would have even if that was the only reason. The only problem with what people say is my wife isn''t truly dead and with people like you around she gets closer to us every day. Still it doesn''t really change the fact I made a selfish decision."
"If you knew it was selfish, why did you do it?" Tiff was extremely ufortable questioning a god but he would have been able to read her thoughts even if she hadn''t said it out loud. "Akal was weaker than me but he wouldn''t stay that way for long so I chased him down before he grew too strong for me to make him pay."
"So you wanted revenge?" The god of Light nodded and said. "Yes, unlike you I couldn''t just wait for someone to get it for me." After the God of Light said this Tiff said. "Fine Revenge is important to me." Tiff couldn''t believe the God of Light had been willing to say all of that just to get her to admit it when he had clearly already been able to tell.
"What''s more important? Your friends or revenge?" Tiff had no problems deciding between the two and said. "My friends." She could tell the God of Light wasn''t satisfied with this answer because he didn''t move on right away and instead just stayed silent. She guessed he wanted her to think about it some more before he would ept the answer so she did.
No matter how she thought about it, the answer stayed her friends and eventually the God of Light asked. "Why did you try to cover up your desire for revenge? You weren''t embarrassed to admit it which is why most people try to hide things so I wasn''t the person you were trying to hide it from. Do you see it as the only thing actually keeping you in the Temple while you tell yourself it''s because you''re trying to convince the others to leave with you even though you already know they never will."
It seemed the God of Light was starting to see through her attempts to keep some of her thoughts hidden. It wasn''t surprising with the interview she was in most likely having this purpose to begin with. All the small thoughts she didn''t explore further while answering his questions were allowing him to put aplete picture of her together in his mind.
"So do you want to leave or not." This was another easy question because she definitely did. She had no interest in staying around for a war that would definitely kill her when the one she wanted to kill was too high above her for her to ever get the chance. "What''s the point of this interview if you can see everything in my head, even the stuff I''m not thinking about at the moment?"
"It''s one of the best ways to make people mad." Tiff could understand how pointing out how conflicted their inner thoughts and feelings could make someone mad so she started to nod as she listened to the rest of what the God of Light had to say.
"It''s a lot easier to look into people''s minds when they''re upset without forcing your way in. I couldn''t see everything until just a few moments ago when you finally got annoyed. It took a lot more to get you to let your guard down than the others and I was starting to think I was going to have to disqualify you because I couldn''t see if you would be a good choice or not. I already made the mistake of trusting someone I couldn''t read once so I needed to make sure." If that had been all he wanted, what was with the other option, the test he had proposed she take.
"People usually get pretty mad after they wake up and remember all the stuff that happened to them and then realize it wasn''t real. It''s too bad you saw through it because it''s a lot faster than this. "You could have just lied or not told me about the test to begin with."
"I don''t like lying, and I''ve found those that do, don''t make it very far in life." Tiff guessed this was another thing he was saying to hint at the fact he was going through her head because she lied pretty much everyday. "Is the interview over?" She was done with whatever this had been and wanted to leave.
"You don''t want to know how you did?" Tiff didn''t really because she knew she wasn''t the kind of person the God of Light was looking for long before the Temple Head had made here here. "You did pretty good. The only problem in me choosing you is that you don''t want to fight, but the only reason you don''t want to fight is because you think you''ll die. You won''t die if you''re stronger and since you want to kill the Demon Lord and save your friends you wont run unless they die first but if they die your desire for revenge will grow and you''ll stay to fight."
"That''s a lot of ifs to base your decision off of." Tiff was sort of happy that the God of Light thought she was a pretty good choice but she really didn''t agree with everything he was saying about what she would do under certain circumstances.
"Well, I mean you''re not as bad as most of the people I''ve met in my life, plus I''ve kind of already decided I was going to choose you if none of the others wowed me. When Dayna came to ask if I would be willing to give a Legendary job to one of you I had her mention some of the skills you all had and she mentioned you had a stealth skill. I''ve seen what someone can do with one sneak attack if they know what they''re doing."
Tiff knew he was talking about the death of his wife and asked. "Do you have a Legendary job like that?" The God of Light nodded and said. "I didn''t, but to tell you the truth I didn''t kill Akal as soon as I found him. After my years of chasing him I thought what was a few more weeks and I let him think he was giving me the slip when in reality I was studying his skills for inspiration while I worked on my newest Legendary job. When Dayna told me about you I figured I might as well test it with you if you were worthy considering you already know how to use stealth."
Tiff still didn''t understand why the God of Light had wanted to make a job like that to begin with because usually Legendary jobs were given to those that the God thought would make a good Demigod to be their subordinate so usually the Legendary Jobs had something to do with the gods element or how they liked to fight and being sneaky really had nothing to do with the God of Light.
"You would understand if you knew more about job creation. It takes a lot of time and they''re only so closely rted to the person making them because that''s all they know how to make. If it was possible we would all be making jobs that had nothing to do with our domain. Plus, losing Akal really slowed down my ability to gather information so I''ve been looking for a way to rece him."
"Are you saying there was something about Akal''s skills that made you think you could replicate them?" The god of light shook his head. "No, Akal just had extremely high level skills so understanding even a bit of one was enough to make a whole new job." After the God of Light said this he looked at her deep in her eyes and said. "Do you want the job or not?"
She had more questions like what the God of Light meant by extremely high level skills and how a demigod that was working for them would have skills that the God of Light would think were high level but she knew she could ask those questionster if she just said yes. "Can I think about it?"
The God of light shrugged and said. "Sure, I still want to see if the other members of your group are better choices. I can give the skill to anyone and only think you would be good because of your years of experience fighting the way you do. Feel free to head back to your friends. You will have until I meet the rest of them to make up your mind. I will also be making it impossible for you to talk about what we discussed though so don''t try to tell anyone."
Tiff nodded and could feel and see herself start to disappear from the hallucination she had been in for the past hour. After a few seconds of this she found herself back where she had been and took her hands out of the oracles. "Tell the Temple Head to send the next when you get back to her." Tiff nodded to what the oracle said and got up to leave.
Chapter 198: A Bad Plan
Chapter 198: A Bad n
Arriving at the Fighters guild Lake walked in and saw Masters talking to a small group that were separate from therge groups. As soon as Masters saw him he waved for Lake to follow him to his office and Lake did. On the way up Lake wondered what the best way to break this terrible news to Masters was.
Lake knew there was no way Masters would be on board with what they needed to do and it was making him wish he wasn''t the messenger. It would probably go much better if the Temple Head was here to introduce why this was necessary because Lake didn''t feel like he would be able to really answer any questions that Masters had.
With the door closed Masters waited for Lake to pass on the message from the Temple Head and when Lake didn''t start talking right away Masters asked. "What''s wrong?" Lake guessed Masters had been able to sense that Lake didn''t want to say what he had been told to. He didn''t really have a choice though and all he was doing now was wasting time.
"We need eight groups." Lake wasn''t even able to get the thing about the reinforcements that the Temple Head had wanted him to say out before Masters started making a fuss. "There''s no way. That will only leave a few people with any actual skill in each group; there''s no way any of them will actually seed."
"The Temple head said he would be sending some of the Temples forces to back each group up and to send four of them down to the 42nd tier." Lake wasn''t sure how the groups would know where to go once they got there but he was sure the Temple Head had that covered. "Reinforcements. How many?" Here came the questions he couldn''t answer. "I don''t know, the Temple Head was busy with the formation while we were talking so I didn''t ask too many questions."
"Well I needed to go see him again anyway. Are you staying here or are youing as well?" Lake didn''t think it would be a good move to take himself out of the action by staying here so he said. "I''m going back as well." Masters didn''t seem to like this and said. "I was hoping you would be willing to lead the team heading down to the 42nd tier."
Lake was surprised by this request but quickly realized Masters probably was thinking the same thing as he had been about the teams sent down to the 42nd tier having a hard time finding where they needed to be going without a map or anything. Lake thought about it for a second and was about to ept when he felt the Insider stop him.
It quickly showed him how bad of an idea it was for him to go deep underground at a time like this and made him realize even at his speed escaping would be very difficult if the need arose. "Sorry but I still have things I need to talk to the Temple Head about." This was true even if the things weren''t very important.
"Ok in that case you can go ahead I need to split the groups and start sending the ones bound for the 42nd tier." Lake nodded and started to walk out of Masters'' office. Once he was back in the lobby he took a few seconds to actually stop and say something to Freed and the others since they wouldn''t stop looking at him every time he passed and he assumed it was because they were curious about what he was doing.
"Hello." Lake would just let them ask instead of trying to predict the exact question they had for him. "Lake what are you doing? Is it something for Masters?" Freed asked in a low tone clearly expecting Lake to tell him something secret but Lake answered in a normal tone. "I''m just running messages around."
Lake made it sound like he wasn''t doing anything particrly important because he didn''t say who he was taking the messages from or to. "Oh, are you done?" Freed was asking this because Lake was standing here like he was going to be joining their team again or something. "No, I just wanted to say hello."
Masters had just gotten downstairs and would soon begin breaking the teams up into smaller groups so Lake wavered bye and walked outside. Heading back towards the Temple Lake looked up into the sky to see what time it was. Not much time had passed since he woke up but because of the speed at which he was running around it didn''t feel that way.
The fact that it wasn''t even noon yet made him feel like they still had the chance to get the jump on the Demon Worshipers if they were tounch the first round of raids soon and if by some chance the Demon Worshipers were still not ready toy the formation they might be able topletely stop them before any of the formations effects even happen.
This made him think he should ask the Temple Head about how long a formation like that would take toy so he could understand just how much time they would have after their first attack and when the formation activated. Stepping into the Metal Temple Lake found his way to where the Temple Head was.
Lake saw the Temple Head was still studying the formation and the amount of books that were now open on the desk in front of him had grown exponentially since he had been gone. "Did you tell Masters what I asked you to?" Lake said. "Yes and four of the groups are already headed down to the 42nd tier."
"Ok, in that case we''re almost ready to start but there''s onest problem. I found another trap in the formation and we''ll need someone to sever this part of the Formation at the same time as we destroy the Mana Siphon. The amount of timing this will take means I must go myself but we have to do it on both halves at the same time so I need you to go to this part of the Formation on the 42nd tier and wait till this lights up to attack."
The temple head handed him a small piece of metal with a formation on it and Lake could tell it was probably some type ofmunication device. "I''ll be holding the other one so when it lights up that means I''ll be moving in to destroy the formation and you need to do the same. Do you want any backup, we still have a few people we can send with you."
Lake didn''t want this job but he didn''t think he could get out of it without making himself look like a coward. He didn''t particrly care if he looked like a coward; he just didn''t want it to affect his pay at the end of this. After a few seconds of silence where Lake was waiting for the insider to tell him what he should do, Lake went ahead and started to answer since the insider didn''t seem to have anything to add.
"I don''t need any backup unless it''s someone who cany a formation." Lake still remembered the ball of flesh and the undead he had helped seal and didn''t want to arrive somewhere only to find himself unable to actually kill whatever was inside the building. "Don''t worry, all of the Metal Temples people cany a formation to some extent."
After the Temple Head said this he waved his hand and three people in temple robes came into the room. "You three work with him on the mission I just assigned him." Lake had no idea where these three hade from but they had probably been listening this whole time by what the Temple Head said.
"Also would you mind making sure I sent the people down there to the right ce. I used a map of the 42nd tier to find where they should go so it should be right but there''s no problem making sure with your skill." Lake nodded and asked. "Do you have a map I can have?" The temple head nodded and gave him a sheet of paper with some red marks on it.
"These are the ces the groups should be and this one here is where you''ll be responsible for." Lake thanked the Temple Head and turned around to his three new dwarfpanions. "You three ready?" He would give them the chance to go get whatever they needed in case they hadn''t expected to be sent with him.
He felt like the Temple Head had sprung this on him out of nowhere so he could understand if these three needed time to get ready. "We''re good to go." Lake nodded and turned back to the Temple Head to ask the question he had prepared on the way here. "How long after we start attacking will they be able toy the formation?"
The Temple Head gave him an annoyed look and said. "We don''t know because you never found what they would be using to power ory the formation like I asked but since their n was supposed to be a surprise I would say it will only take them a few seconds to fully form and activate it."
Lake could tell the Temple Head was getting annoyed at him just because of the amount of stress from trying to pick apart a formation that was above his level but it still told him he should go ahead and leave before he started yelling. "Ok you three let''s go." Lake dropped to his hands and knees and started to crawl out of the library.
Chapter 199: Undoing Pt.1
Chapter 199: Undoing Pt.1
Lake had finished his checks on the other four groups and was now waiting for the piece of metal he had been given to light up. The Temple Head said it would happen during the attack on the Mana siphon so he still had a bit of time before it happened. Lake was sure the attacks would start soon though because with everyone in ce sitting around was just giving the Demon Worshipers more time to notice them and prepare.
...
Donny looked at the others that were with him and then at the one holding the device that would tell them when to move in. "It''s hard to believe that the Demon Worshipers would dare to put one of their bases so close to the guild." The Group he was in had only had to move a few streets over from the fighters guild after they had met up with a small amount of mages from the Metal Temple to arrive at the ce they had been sent to raid.
"Not that crazy if you think they were hoping to catch us off guard." Donny guessed that made sense but he didn''t think this small building they would be attacking could really be holding enough people to go against the guilds. Even if the other guilds hadn''t sent any forces to deal with the Demon Worshipers didn''t mean they wouldn''t defend the district if it was attacked.
Looking away from the person who had the device since they had put it back into their pocket, Donny started to look around for another person to talk to to pass the time. He eventually found someone he thought might know something about Lake because of the skills they had. With skills like theirs they would be a scout or a thief and either way they should know something about a scout like Lake.
It was the person who had let them into the house they were using to hide. "Have you ever heard of a person named Lake?" Donny knew it wasn''t really the best time for him to be investigating the person he suspected of being the one who stole his shield but he had been separated from the people who could be considered to be Lake''s friends so he didn''t need to worry about him asking about Lake getting back to Lake.
"Do you mean the person who saved Masters yesterday?" Donny nodded, this fact had spread around the guild already so everyone would know who Lake was. Donny just wanted to know if they had known Lake for a long time and if they knew anything about some of his other skills or if they had seen his face.
"Yeah, have you known him for long?" The man he was asking looked around to all the people he had been talking to and they all started to shake their heads no. "No, none of us have ever seen him before a few days ago." This would make it a lot harder for Donny to ever find out anything about Lake.
It also meant he would probably need to just ask Lake himself. If Lake was the thief all he needed to do was ask about hiring Lake to do something and Lake''s answer would tell him if he was right or not. If he ended up being wrong nothing bad would really happen except there being a small chance of word that he was looking for someone to resteal his shield from his brother but his brother would already know he was going to try so even that didn''t really matter.
The worst thing would actually be him being right about Lake but Lake somehow getting away. Donny was hoping to ckmail Lake into doing the job for free so he guessed he didn''t actually need to confront Lake face to face; he could just send some letters. The problem with that was it could take a while to actually scare Lake enough to work and face to face would work right away.
Seeing the guy who had themunication device pulling it out again he and all the others in the room stopped talking and looked at them. "Alright move in. We just got the orders to move in." Donny and all the others headed for the door at the same time but he ended up being one of the first through.
Following the leader towards the door of the building they were raiding Donny wondered if the people inside already knew they wereing. Yesterday it seemed the Demon Worshipers didn''t know until they broke down the door but if this ce was really a big part of the Demon Worshipers n they would most likely have some kind of a look out or some type of defense that would keep them out.
Either way they were already at the door so he guessed he was about to find out. The person leading their group lifted their hand and sted the door off of its hinges using a fire spell Donny had seen many times before in the past. Fire st was a verymon sight for anyone who had ever been in a fight since fire magic was somonly used.
It was good to know that they didn''t just have earth and metal mages here because he had seen what could happen if everyone in a group only knew the same type of magic. All the people you were fighting needed to do was make a simple targeted ward against the element and you had no hope of breaking through.
"Stay close until we find them." After the leader said this they started casting defensive spells and only stopped after three barriers of different elements were in front of them. Donny could also use three elements so he wasn''t really impressed, just jealous because he had only gotten one element he wanted to use.
"This door in front of us has someone behind it." One of the people in the back of the line must have an earth affinity or something because they called out to the leader that they had found someone in one of the next rooms. "Ok we''ll start there." The leader didn''t directly st this door. Donny felt it was because so far they hadn''t seen anything that would make them think a Demon Worshiper was who was in the next room and instead walked up to it to open it slowly.
He had also noticed that this raid was nothing like the ones he had been a part of yesterday. He didn''t know if that was a good thing or not though. "Hello. Is anyone here?" The leader asked this like they didn''t already know the answer and when they got no answer they tried again. "We''re from the Fighters guild. We just want to ask you some questions."
With still no answering from the room the leader said. "We''re going to enter now." After they said that they positioned their barriers in front of them again and started to enter the room. Donny followed them inside and following their eyes as well he saw a person in the room corner clearly having been trying to hide.
They looked normal from what he could see of them but there was no way to know who someone was by how they looked even if it seemed to be a pretty urate method most of the time. "Come out here." It seemed the leader didn''t want to be the one to close the distance and instead wanted to have the person hiding toe towards them.
When there was still no reaction from the person in the corner of the room Donny started to wonder if they were dealing with a dead person. They also hadn''t cleared the rest of the building yet so he was worried about being nked since they all had their attention on this room and what was in front of them.
Turning away Donny asked. "Which one of you called this out?" He wanted to see if they were able to watch their backs or maybe even tell him if they had only sensed this person because they were moving before they entered the room. Seeing a dwarf step forward Donny knew he had found the right person so he didn''t even wait for them to confirm this and asked. "Was this person moving before we entered the room?"
The dwarf started to nod so Donny said. "Thank you, and would you mind keeping your eye behind us while we deal with this?" The dwarf gave him a thumbs up and said. "Already on it." Donny figured that would be the case since dwarves were so good at doing their job but he felt like he should still say it.
Turning back around Donny got the person who had taken his ce out of his way and said to the leader. "They''re faking." The leader nodded and started to creep their way towards the person in the corner.
Chapter 200: Undoing Pt.2
Chapter 200: Undoing Pt.2
Watching the leader creeping towards the person Donny decided he would just wait here. It was very obvious why someone would pretend to be dead or at least there was a very obvious reason he could think of. With this thought Donny actually started to back up a few steps whenever the leader took one.
There was no good reason they all needed to explode if there was in fact some type of trap. Once he was near the back of the group that had entered the room Donny stopped moving back because he couldn''t go any further without leaving the room and he wanted to be able to watch what happened once the leader made it to the person.
Even at the extremely slow pace the leader was moving they still made it to the person before the show dragged on. Donny saw the leader nned to just reach down and check the person''s pulse with their hand and guessed there wasn''t really a better way to get the person to stop pretending to be dead unless you wanted to attack them and risk actually killing them.
Once the leader''s fingers made contact with the person''s neck Donny could see the person''s body flinched instinctually and gave them up. The leader wasted no time in saying. "Get up, we need to talk to you." Donny saw the person finally give the act up and start to stand. "Fine, what do you want?"
The leader didn''t start asking questions right away and instead led the person out of the room by the arm. Once they were all in the front room of the house the leader asked. "Are there any other people here?" The man pointed at one of the doors and said. "My sons might be here but I''m not sure."
"Is that it?" The man became slightly embarrassed and said. "My wife is with her parents right now so it''s just us three." Once those questions were done the leader sent a few people to go look around the rest of the house to see if they could find anyone else. After a while they returned with two teenagers.
"These two were hiding in their room like he said." The leader nodded and turned to look back at the man. "Would you three be willing toe with us to answer some questions?" Donny understood why the leader would want them to hold the interview somewhere else since taking three suspected Demon Worshipers out of their hideout would make them all much safer but the three of them all started to shake their heads at the same time.
"We would rather stay inside. It''s pretty hectic out there and nice and quiet here."
"I''m sorry but we have to insist." Donny could tell the leader was holding off on really talking about what this was about so the three of them wouldn''t get scared and try to run but was making it clear it wasn''t really a request. "Yeah, we aren''t leaving our house." Donny could tell the leader hadn''t wanted to resort to force but he still gave the order. "Take them."
Donny wasn''t one of the people that rushed forward to lift the three and take them towards the door but when he saw how much of a struggle the three people were putting up he decided he might need to help after all. Grabbing one of the man''s legs, Donny helped them drag him towards the door.
Right before they could get the man through the front door he started to struggle even harder and Donny felt the leg he was holding brake. The man didn''t act like he noticed and just kept struggling even when the bone started to push its way through the skin. This wasn''t normal and Donny was about to warn the others when the man''s head passed through the doorway.
There was a loud boom and while Donny didn''t know what had caused it he felt himself get thrown backwards and m into a wall. Getting back onto his feet as quickly as possible Donny saw the man had turned into something he had seen and helped seal yesterday. It looked slightly different since it was smaller and still had some of the man''s body parts intertwined but it was unmistakable as one of those balls of flesh.
Taking his eyes off of the monster in front of him, Donny looked around to see what had happened to the other two people they had found inside the building and to see if they had also transformed. Seeing the other members of his team strewn about and two more gross masses of twisted flesh Donny decided he should probably just help the few people close to him up and find a window to jump out of.
Once they were outside he would tell them to keep him safe so he could startying a few sealing formations to start fighting these monsters. Grabbing one of his teammates that just happened to hit the wall next to him Donny saw they were out of it so he just threw him up on his shoulder and moved to the next person.
Donny was about to help the next person onto their feet when he heard a sharp whistling sound from behind him. He had heard this sound yesterday when he had been attacked by the ball of flesh so he crouched down and saw a tendril pass through the stone wall where his head had been before he ducked.
The tendril didn''t stop either and just kept piercing wall after wall. Donny stopped looking at that point and just drug the person he had been trying to help up towards the room they had found the man in earlier. Getting to the window that was in the room Donny tore all the stuff blocking it out of his way and tossed his two teammates he had saved through it before throwing himself through.
Once he was outside he saw the building they had been inside was slowly bing a pincushion with the amount of flesh tendrils that were piercing through its outer walls. It was still just three monsters though so he still had hopes in their ability to stop whatever was happening.
Dragging his two teammates away from the building Donny was about to start on his formation when he saw a few other people escape from the inside of the building. "Over here. Protect me while Iy a sealing formation." Donny called out to them since the two people he had saved were unconscious.
The People heard him and started to run towards him when they all heard. "Help me out." Donny saw the dwarf he had spoken to earlier was having a hard time squeezing through the small window because of his wide frame and the other two people that had already gotten out turned around and started to pull on the man''s arms.
Right after the two started to pull the man started to scream and said. "It''s got me! pull harder!" But it was toote the dwarf was pulled back inside by the monster. Donny could tell the two men were thinking about trying to help the dwarf still but when the dwarves screams stopped almost as soon as they began they gave up on him and ran towards him.
They stood in front of Donny and he started toy the formation. A few seconds after he had started Donny heard anotherrge boom like the one he had heard when the flesh had transformed and sent him flying from behind him. He didn''t know if it was actually the same sound or not until he saw more flesh tendrilse over the building next to them and start to intertwine with the ones that wereing from the building he had just been inside.
This kind of changed what he needed to do since it seemed whatever balls of flesh were over in another building had justbined themselves with the ones he needed to seal making it necessary for him to seal them as well. This meant he was going to need a bigger formation and that he needed to start over.
Dissipating the formation that had been on the ground in front of him Donny started with a much bigger circle this time. He had chosen to just go with the biggest one he would be able to make on his own. Getting about ten percent of the formation on the ground he heard another one of those booms from slightly further away and then another and soon they were happening every few seconds.
He was no longer able to look up but he could tell by the shadows that were passing over his formation that there were a massive amount of tendrils stretching over them and interlocking with the ones that were already above them. "We have to get out of here." One of the people he had been using as a guard started to shake him and it almost caused him to lose focus and lose control over his formation but Donny pushed him away and said. "Run if you want but leave me alone."
"Look up you idiot." The man''s pleading tone finally got Donny to pause his formation and look up into the sky. Seeing a massive rust colored wave crashing towards him. Donny realized they were already toote to stop whatever they had been sent to stop and dug into his pocket for a protection talisman his father had given him when he was younger.
"Get close to me." Donny had no way of knowing if the other people close to him would be able to survive off of his protection talisman but it was better than nothing so he might as well try. Using the talisman just in time for the wave to crash into the shield it formed around him Donny closed his eyes and prayed that his fathers gift would hold up long enough to weather the spell.
Chapter 201: Believable Failure
Chapter 201: Believable Failure
From where Lake and his Metal Temple followers were hiding they had had a front row seat to the flesh tendrils that had slowly covered the city. It was very clear to him that whatever the Demon Worshipers had been nning to do was happening and when he saw a massive wave of rust colored mana wash a section of the city clean off the map, he knew hismunication device would activate rtively soon.
"So that''s what those balls of skin were." Lake didn''t like the way balls of skin sounded but he was happy to see one of his mage friends had something to say so he asked. "You think that''s what they used to make the formation huh?" The formation had already started to activate so it was clear that had been what happened but he still wanted to hear what the dwarf had to say.
"Yeah, as long as that skin can make and hold mana it''s perfect for forming a formation and since it''s not outside of the body it''ll be much more stable than one out in the open." Lake nodded and was about to ask if they would be able to do anything to it now that it had started to form when hismunication device started to shine.
Lake looked at the ce he was supposed to attack that was now just a gross tangle of flesh and said. "It''s, um, time for us to move in." Right when he said this he felt the mana in the air start to change. He was pretty much right in the center of the Mana siphon part of the formation so he understood what was causing the Earth and Metal mana in the air to disappear.
Turning to look at his dwarfpanions, Lake could tell they weren''t doing so hot and when he guessed the reason it made him kind of question why the Temple Head had even sent them with him. Their mission had been to attack the trap part of the formation that was hidden in the mana siphon so the fact that these dwarves were useless if the mana siphon was on made no sense.
When he saw one of the dwarves start to get back on their feet Lake guessed he had counted them out too soon. "Are you three ok?" The one who had already stood up started to nod before saying. "Yeah, it''s just that was the first time in years we''ve been without Metal mana. It takes some time to adjust."
That made sense to him but he still needed to ask. "You guys can still make formations?" That was what these three were here to do so he needed to make sure. "Yes we can, but they will be less effective since they won''t have as much metal mana to power themselves."
"Can you not use another element?" Lake knew almost nothing about formations so he was really asking if sealing formations were a Metal specific thing. "We can''t, no." He had already wasted too much time since the device had said it was time for him to move so he said. "Alright well let''s still give it a try."
Lake went and opened the door that would let them get outside but one of the dwarves said. "We can just do it from here, no need for us to get any closer." Lake nodded and went to close the door but the dwarf stopped him again by saying. "Leave the door open, we need line of sight."
Lake could tell he was just in the way at this point so he just backed off and let the three of them start their formation. He would usually have stayed where he was to protect them but since the flesh had stopped moving after all the tentacles had weaved together he wasn''t really too worried about an attack.
While he was waiting for the dwarves to finish he saw that hismunicator had started to sh again. Lake had no idea how he was supposed to be able to tell what it was saying since all it did was light up so he just took it to mean they needed to hurry up. He was sure the dwarves were already moving as fast as they could though so he didn''t say anything to them about it.
After a while he saw the formation they had been making start to lift off of the ground and stick itself to the closest tentacle. The tentacle didn''t react and after a few seconds of watching Lake could tell why, the formation wasn''t really doing much to it. "Once the mana siphon goes down it will do its job better."
Turning to the dwarf, Lake asked. "Are we done here, or do you n to add a few more formations here before we move on?" He would understand if they wanted to make a few more before they moved on since they had seemingly done nothing to affect the grand formation they were trying to destroy.
"Well considering we hadn''t foreseen the fact the formation woulde in this form there isn''t really anything else we can do unless you want to risk attacking." Lake remembered the fact that what he was doing and what the Temple Head were doing needed to mirror each other as closely as possible so he decided them attacking wasn''t a good idea.
Once the Metal mana returned all the formations they set from here on would activate around the same time. This would make the effect the Temple Head wanted even if it was slightly out of order. Originally he was pretty sure they were supposed to destroy this intersection before the Mana siphon but they would have to make do with closely after now.
It was pretty clear to him that they had pretty much failed in stopping the formation so it didn''t really matter what happened to it from now on since by the time they could get rid of it they would have probably already fought off the Demon Worshipers and their new army that had just been summoned.
He hadn''t really made up his mind if he would be staying for all of that though. Turning to the dwarves, Lake asked. "Where to next?" The n needed to change since the dwarves were pretty much unable to use Metal magic now that the siphon was on so he would leave it to them. Hopefully they would want to retreat and Lake could use that chance to disappear into the chaos.
If he was able to do that he would still get credit for what he had done so far if they were able to beat the Demon Worshipers as long as he showed up again at the end and acted like he had helped throughout and just been off doing his own thing.
With how much time he had spent on this he wasn''t willing to lose whatever money he had been able to rack up under his name in the past few days even if it was looking like he wasn''t going to be able to im any of it. Thinking this Lake couldn''t help but think back to the Master who had rmended him toe here because the money would be better.
He knew Master Dean or whatever his name was had been telling the truth and hadn''t been aware of how bad it was about to get when he had told Lake toe here but he still felt like he had been tricked and it had caused him to lose money. "We should either go towards the summoning formation to try and help kill whatever was summoned or stay here and wait for the people who are going to try and destroy the mana siphon to help them."
Since Lake wanted to slip away he felt going towards the fight would be the best way to aplish that so he said. "Let''s go help fight, for all we know the peopleing to destroy the mana siphon might not even show up." Lake was alluding to the fact that there was a good chance most of the people that had been sent down here were now dead and would nevere to attack the siphon.
"Yeah, you''re right, we can''t afford to wait all day." It seemed the three of them were in agreement so Lake led the way out of the house and onto the street. Once he was outside he took a quick look at his map and headed towards where the summoning formation was.
They weren''t even able to get all the way there before he was able to see what had been summoned. He didn''t get a very good glimpse of it but he saw some ck skinned beast dragging a person into a building with a few others of its kind right behind it.
Lake didn''t like the look of them but he was happy they were monsters because he had found people were harder to gauge before a fight started so you never knew if they were weak or strong but monsters usually were all around the same strength so after he fought the first one he would know what he was dealing with.
Chapter 202: Imbue Light
Chapter 202: Imbue Light
After watching thest of the monsters pile in after the first that had the person Lake turned to hispanions and asked. "Do you know what those were?" If they did he might not have to wait till the first fight to know how strong they were. "They looked like gargoyles, but they were the wrong color."
Lake knew nothing about gargoyles in this world but he had heard of them before and from what he knew they were stone monsters that lived on churches or something like that; he wasn''t too sure about the part where they lived. "What color are they normally?"
"They are usually a gray color because of the fact that they''re made from stone or metal. Those ones were a dark ck color so they might be something we have never seen before." Lake nodded and asked the three dwarves. "Should we go after the ones we saw enter the building or move on?"
"We should try and find others before we start fighting. We might notst long alone depending on what they turn out to be." Lake nodded and started to head in the direction that the suspected gargoyles hade from. He could hear amotioning from this direction so he was sure that would be where they found other people fighting.
They didn''t make it far before they ran into more of those gargoyles. Like thest ones they had seen, these ones were following one that was carrying a body. Lake was sure they would find a nice quiet ce to eat their meal if they just stayed out of their way so he made backed himself behind the corner he had just passed.
One of the three dwarves looked around the corner and said. "They''re definitely gargoyles, but why are they taking bodies with them? Gargoyles can''t eat; they''re a type of summoned golem." Lake had no answer for this so he just shrugged and kept walking towards the noise that he was sure was others like them fighting these apparently strange gargoyles.
Once he started to get close enough to the noise to actually tell there were in fact people fighting just a few streets over Lake stopped again to let another group of gargoyles pass with a screaming man in their hands. Turning towards the dwarves, Lake said. "I know I should have asked earlier but can you three fight?"
He was pretty sure they were mages so he was afraid that they might be dead weight since the Metal mana had been sucked away from the environment they were in. "Don''t worry about us, we will do what''s necessary to make sure we are helpful in the battle. We all still have our personal reserves of mana to cast spells."
Lake had kind of forgotten that you could cast spells using your own mana for a second there and nodded to what the dwarf had said before starting towards the fight that was happening just a few hundred feet from them. As they got closer Lake saw the fight, it was just a massive amount of those ckened gargoyles circling around a small number of surviving fighters.
He was sure there had been more at the beginning of the fight because he was also sure the bodies he had seen the gargoyles carrying had mostlye from here. As he was thinking this another of the fighters was grabbed and dragged into the surrounding mass of gargoyles. By the time the gargoyle got the captive man through the other gargoyles and started to run away with them, Lake could tell they were already dead.
A few of the gargoyles on the outer edge of the swarm followed the one that had gotten someone away from the fight and once they were out of eyeshot Lake turned to the dwarves and said. "Do you know what gargoyles are weak to? Like what''s the best way to kill them?"
There was no good reason for them to join the people in the center of the gargoyles but that didn''t mean they weren''t going to join the fight and Lake wanted to know the best way for him to start killing this group that had gathered together. If he was able to get arge number of them at once it would help a lot and if people saw him do it he might get more money once this was over.
"These aren''t normal gargoyles but they should still be weak to being smashed if they are made of stone. If they''re metal you''ll need to use magic that can work on summoned creatures to get a good amount of damage from your attacks." Lake had to ask another question since he wasn''t too knowledgeable about the benefits of curtain magics over the others.
"Which magics would that be?" Lake could tell this term magics was epassing more than just the elements most people considered to be magic so he asked using this new term. "Well an Antimagic formation would probably be the best thing we could hope to use to dispel them right now but since we don''t really have any Antimagic mages around that can use formations Fire and Water will probably be the best elements to use. Water since it has a light dispelling effect which works good on golems and Fire since it can melt metal if the person using it has a decent level of control over the heat principle."
"You aren''t taking in the fact that these gargoyles are of a dark color or their origins in this answer. These gargoyles have a high chance of being tinged with the Dark or Unholy element so Holy, Light, and Life magic have a good chance of being effective against them as well." It was starting to sound like Lake had a lot of options so he just went with Light since he already had the job unlocked.
If it ended up not being effective it didn''t really matter since he was just nning to use Imbue on his sword in the hopes he might finally unlock Enchanter. Lake had kind of epted that he must not be suited for Enchanter but he was sure he could still unlock it eventually if he kept trying but for now using Imbue will just make what he was about to do to these gargoyles look less crazy.
Pulling his sword, Lake said. "You three ready?" He didn''t really need to ask but he felt it would be rude to just start running towards the gargoyles without giving these three the chance to cast their spells. After they nodded Lake used the small amount of Light mana he had built up to cast Imbue Light onto his sword.
The sword started to glow and the light it was giving off made a good amount of the gargoyles notice them and look their way. Lake was fine with that and while taking his first step towards the gargoyles he saw what looked like chains fly from behind him and wrap up the legs of a good portion of the gargoyles.
This was the spell the dwarves had chosen to use and he felt it made sense for them to help in this way since Metal, which was the element they specialized in, wasn''t particrly strong in this situation. Like this they could use their own mana to slow down the gargoyles that would have attacked them otherwise and give Lake time to thin them out.
Lake didn''t go for the ones on the ground though and chose to kill the ones that were still on their way towards them. Once he was close enough that his sword would be able to bite deep into the gargoyle, Lake used Crunch and swung towards its midsection.
He was fighting against what the dwarves had called a special type of golem so he assumed he would have more sess if he cut them in half instead of decapitating them which was what he did most of the time in a fight.
He had aimed well and his strike not only sliced through the gargoyle''s midsection but took one of its arms off at the elbow as well. Lake didn''t inspect the one he hit past that and just went towards the next one. If it ended up being that his attack wasn''t lethal to the gargoyle he would know because he wouldn''t get any Exp so he could just move on.
Slicing the next gargoyle, Lake chose to do so slightly higher up on its body to see if he would get Exp right away this time. Even if they were golems they should have some sort of weakness and he might find it if he tried different spots instead of just attacking the same spot on each of them.
Not getting any Exp Lake decided he would try the neck this time. Using crunch again since he had already used it twice and needed to Lake took the next gargoyles Head off with his next attack and still no Exp. It still went down though so he moved to the next one and decided he should split its head.
Lake felt there was a good chance that it''s core or whatever would be inside its head. Cleaving its head in half Lake was able to make it all the way down to its crotch andpletely split it in half because of the effects of Crunch. He still didn''t receive any Exp though and taking a quick look behind him and seeing the ones he had attacked still on the ground he was starting to think that there was a chance Gargoyles just didn''t give any Exp to begin with.
He wasn''t too worried about Leveling up so he just moved this possibility to the back of his mind and continued to attack any gargoyle that got close to him. As he was doing this his glowing sword was slowly getting the attention of all the gargoyles that hadn''t paid any attention to him at first so the group he was fighting was growing giving the fighters that had been fighting for their lives a chance to breathe.
Chapter 203: By Sword Light
Chapter 203: By Sword Light
Hacking into the Gargoyles Lake eventually got swarmed enough that he was able to hit multiple at a time. He saw this as a good thing even if it didn''t look like it was to any observers. As he was cutting his way out of the crowd and towards the fighters that had been in the middle of the original swarm, Lake heard another salvo of chains hit some of the gargoyles surrounding him.
While he didn''t need the help he was happy to know that he had backup if anything bad did end up happening. He had noticed that there was a distinctck of Demon Worshipers or Undead even though there should be a good number of them. He knew this was probably a bad thing for them and there coulde a time where they were attacked by another group of enemies.
After continuously swinging his sword for a while, Lake finally heard the noise he had been waiting for and took a brief second to look at what job he had unlocked. [Job unlocked Swordsman] He wasn''t disappointed in what he had gotten; he just wished it had been Enchanter so he didn''t have to think about it anymore.
Either way Swordsman would be a good job for him since he used a sword every now and then. He did find it weird that he was able to get a job from fighting something that didn''t give Exp though but maybe you could unlock a job no matter what you were doing as long as it was impressive enough and met the conditions.
After about twenty more gargoyles Lake finally made it to the people who had been surrounded and while he didn''t stop to talk to them because he couldn''t he made it obvious what he wanted from them when he turned his back towards them and started fighting the gargoyles that had started to close in behind him.
With that all Lake needed to do was slowly widdle down the ones that were left and keep an eye on the three dwarves he had left outside the circle. If it ever looked like they were in trouble he would rush out back towards them but he doubted he would need to do this since their chain spells were so good at incapacitating whatever they hit.
Lake wasn''t worried about their mana either since it seemed they had mana potions with them so they should be able tost until he finished off all of the remaining gargoyles that were here. He was unsure just how many there were in total withrge groups running off whenever they got their hands on someone but the group they were fighting had already been cut down by a third since he and the dwarves had arrived.
Cutting a few more Gargoyles in half, Lake went ahead and started to set Detector to look for Demon Worshipers. While he was in a fight, this wasn''t really the type of fight that needed his full attention since it was really just him cutting down anything that got too close to him so he could use this time to make sure they weren''t about to get ambushed.
Not seeing anything with the current setting Lake switched Detector to look for undead. This time he saw a few lights not that far from him inside some of the buildings that were surrounding the small lot that this battle was taking ce in. It didn''t take him long to put this together with the actions of the gargoyles.
If they were dragging people away and turning them into undead they were technically a force that would be able to grow in number and it made him realize why there were no Demon Worshipers around, they were probably thinking that the gargoyles would handle themselves well enough that whoever was fighting them wouldn''t be able to keep up with the undead that were constantly popping up.
When they had made this n they probably hadn''t expected that the fighters guild would already be here and were hoping by the time that the Fighters guild got here the gargoyles had had some time to build up some numbers by attacking the people living here.
It might have been one of the reasons the Demon Worshipers had chosen to put the other half of the grand formation down so deep and not in a more important tier. It was a good n with the fact that everyone that should have been down here this deep being mostly miners who weren''t particrly good at fighting unless you counted their Earth and Metal magic that had been taken from them by the mana siphon, but sadly for them they had been found out before they activated the formation so an army was here waiting for them.
Of course all of this was because of him so he hoped he wasn''t the only one who noticed how much help he had been. That woulde muchter though because now that he was getting a grasp on what the gargoyles were doing he was sure it would take a good amount of time to track and kill every enemy in the city.
Eventually Lake ran out of gargoyles that he could reach in his current position so he moved towards the few that were left on the other side of the surviving fighters. On the way around the Light he had Imbued onto his sword started to fade so Lake went ahead and recast Imbue Light hoping this might be the one that finally got him Enchanter.
It didn''t happen right away but maybe it would while he finished off the few remaining gargoyles. Getting a good strike in which he was able to damage three of the gargoyles at once Lake realized he should probably go ahead and switch his job to swordsman in case he ended up in a fight where he could earn Exp.
He didn''t really have time to read the description of swordsman just yet but he was sure it was a Common job so he would only get 2 stat points every time he leveled itpared to the four he would get if he stayed with Light Mage and with the fact that Mage jobs gave Intelligence he wasn''t interested because he would hit 200 in Intelligence in no time if he wasn''t careful.
Once that happened he would have no choice but to start considering finding a way to get his hands on divinity and he still felt wholly unready to make that decision since he didn''t really understand anything about being a demigod. He also wanted to take some time to find out what kind of effects stats had as they moved towards the high 100s.
He was sure there would be effects that weren''t normal since you weren''t supposed to be able to get your stats past 100 unless you were a divine. To him this meant he should get something that was meant for demigods if he kept raising his stats.
Cutting thest gargoyles that were standing in half Lake moved towards the ones that had been unable to free themselves from the chains and finished them off with the few survivors that still had the energy to swing their weapons and finished them off.
Once they were done he and the others started to look around in the piles of smashed and unmoving gargoyles for any that weren''t actually dead just buried. He ended up finding two that had been so tightly wrapped up by the chains the dwarves had cast during the battle they had no hope of moving and finishing them off before he realized he could use Detector to look for any that were alive by setting it to look for still functioning gargoyles.
He chose the word functioning since these were technically golems so he didn''t think living was the right way to describe them. He then remembered Detector already made the distinction between something when it was alive or dead because there was a time in the past where he had had to set it to look for corpses when he had been looking for someone.
This didn''t really matter in this situation because like he had said gargoyles weren''t alive like normal things were. Seeing there were still three that were buried, Lake went and finished them off. As soon as thest one was done he went to put his sword away when one of the normal people said. "Don''t, it''s the only reason we can see."
After he heard this Lake looked around and realized that they weren''t lying. Something had caused all the light sources to go out so his brightly glowing sword had been by far the brightest thing and probably helped the regr people fight as well as the dwarves who could sort of see in the dark.
Taking his sword back out of the sheath that was part of his belt Lake held it up in the air above his head and asked. "Are you all that''s left?" When he had gotten here there had been around 20 but a few had been dragged away so the 17 that were left made him think there might still be a group hiding somewhere that this group had been trying to protect.
He thought this because they didn''t have any obvious wounded people and while this could mean anyone who had been wounded had been taken it could also mean they were in one of the surrounding buildingsying low until they could be healed. "No we''re it unless there''s another group somewhere in the city that''s still alive."
Lake doubted that considering with their numbers they were probably a few groups that had met up but maybe they would end up finding a few other people. "You still have some of the people that the Metal Temple sent. Does that mean you have yourmunicators?" Lake wanted to know what the Temple wanted them to do since he was starting to think there was no reason to worry about running.
Now that he had killed most of the gargoyles and there weren''t really any Demon Worshipers around he felt like this was the safest ce to be in the city. "We have two of them but we haven''t received anything after the initial order to move in." In that case he guessed they were on their own.
Chapter 204: Follow The Leader
Chapter 204: Follow The Leader
With the way things looked at the moment Lake saw no reason not to take control of the small group of people he had saved. It would look great on his resume once payday came around and he wouldn''t have to worry about someone with less impressive skills trying to decide what was best.
"In that case we have to worry about dealing with the groups of gargoyles that are still roaming the city. Did anyone see how many there were before they started to break off with their prey." Lake was asking if there were any people here that were part of the group that had been sent closest to the summoning formation.
Lake wasn''t that surprised when only two of the people here stepped up to tell him the answer to his question. "It was only a few seconds after they were summoned that arge number of them had already run off since so many people had been on the streets so it''s hard to give you an urate answer, but I wouldn''t be surprised if there were more than we just fought in the buildings surrounding us."
Lake nodded to what the man had said and looked at the other person who had stepped out to tell him what they had seen. "We only saw the ones that appeared around us but I would say that was a low estimate of how many there are left. Depending on the area of the summoning formation It could easily be that there are hundreds left."
If that ended up being the case there would also be a sizable amount of undead they would have to worry about and after thinking about it he decided he should go ahead and share his concerns on this since he was sure none of them had put together why golems would want bodies. "I think we also need to worry about the bodies they carried away."
He paused after saying that because he could tell most of them had understood with just that much information. He understood most of them would have probably realized this much sooner if they hadn''t been fighting for their lives up until now. "What are you saying?" Not all of them got it though so he finished his thought. "They turned the ones they carried off into undead, or at least that''s what''s most likely."
After he said this he could tell almost half of the people had questions but none of them asked him anything and instead started to look around. In their minds they probably thought he would be unable to answer anything they wanted to know since he was with them and they were pretty much right since most of the questions they had were probably best answered by whoever had made these gargoyles.
He did have one thing he wanted to add to what he had said already to ease the people he wanted to make follow him for the rest of this ordeal. "You don''t need to worry about us getting snuck up on. I have a skill that allows me to find enemies within a curtain range." This should be enough to cement him in a leadership role since they would all think he was the only thing that could keep them safe from the unknown threat that could be in any building they passed.
"That''s good, but what do you n to do with this skill of yours, track down every monster in the city or lead yourself and anyone who goes with you to safety?" It seemed he had made it sound like he nned to run away and made one of the dwarves mad but he had no such intentions so he said. "I would like to continue to fight but some of you need a break so I would like to find a good ce for us to catch our breath before starting a clean up mission."
He went with this answer since it was the best of both worlds and would get every person here behind him no matter if they wanted to hide or fight. It worked as intended because he could see the willingness to follow him on lots of the faces around him. Since no one seemed to have anything else they wanted to say, Lake went ahead and set Detector to look for Gargoyles and started towards the closest building that seemed devoid of them. Sadly as he got closer one ended up being inside of it so Lake started towards the next giving a quick nce behind him to make sure everyone was following.
They were all in a tight group behind him which was what he wanted so he turned back around and continued to look for a ce for them to rest. Street after street passed as he looked for anything that didn''t have at least one gargoyle inside. Lake knew that they could go into any of them and clear it out but he wanted to find somewhere that they could rest and not have to worry about beingpletely surrounded now that he had seen just how many monsters there still were around the area of the summoning formation.
Getting close to where he had been sent earlier, Lake was finally able to find a ce for them just outside of the mana siphon part of the grand formation. He actually had more than one choice up until now but this ce was more defensible in his opinion so it was the best they were going to be able to find.
Walking up to the front door, Lake quickly switched his Detector to look for Demon Worshipers and Undead before finally just looking into the building With Mana Vision to see if any regr people were inside. Finding itpletely clear, Lake tried the door to find it unlocked and opening it he saw why, this ce was just some type of store house but it still had plenty of room inside of it for all of them so he waved everyone to follow him inside.
Once inside, Lake walked over to one of the crates and sat down and then watched as all of his followers did the same. Seeing them all Lake finally realized how low the odds were that none of the people he had worked with in the past few days were here and since there was a zero percent chance that none of them hade down here at the beginning of the day that meant someone he knew had probably died down here.
He wasn''t too worried about this but it was the first time since arriving in this world that someone he knew on a first name basis had died so he couldn''t help but start to think back to his own death. It had been a couple of weeks since he had really thought about the time he had died so he guessed that meant he was starting to get over it.
It wasn''t too surprising since he had been enjoying his time here much more than the time he had spent back in his old world. In his old world he had been in trouble constantly so the amount of freedom here was really helping to take his mind off of what had happened to him. "When are we going to move again?"
Lake looked up to see the dwarf who had started to give him a hard time earlier wanted to know how long he nned to let them rest. "There''s a good number of people here who are done for the day so I was nning to ask who wanted to go out to hunt in about an hour." The dwarf seemed happy with this but he wasn''t done questioning Lake yet.
"Depending on the amount of people who are willing to go, do you n to make multiple teams or have us all stay together, because if we''re all in one group clearing out the city is going to take a while." Lake had to actually think about this one before answering but thinking about the state the survivors had been in when he got there he had his answer.
"We have to stick together because I don''t think small groups willst long out there." The dwarf seemed to agree with this even though he had said this approach would take forever. "You are correct in choosing this method. I just feel for all of those that are still alive that are waiting for rescue."
Lake started a slow nod and said. "There''s nothing we can do for them if we all die before we find them. It''s a good thing all of the houses here are built like fortresses, it will buy them time." He of course meant the fact that all the buildings were made of stone and had thick solid doors. Even if the gargoyles had shown they could get through these things it was still better than nothing.
Chapter 205: Offensive
Chapter 205: Offensive
After about twenty minutes of talking with the Dwarf he had found out to be named Grandy, Lake had had enough of the constant questions and made up a reason he had to step outside for a second. "I need to go look around the Mana Siphon to see if the formation we sent to destroy it has made any progress. I''ll be back in a few minutes and I want you to look after everyone while I''m gone."
Grandy started to nod and said. "I can do that." Lake could tell Grandy had more to say so he got up before the dwarf had the chance and headed for the door. Once he was outside Lake started towards the ce the dwarves had set the sealing formation to see if there had been any progress.
Jumping onto the roof of the building they had been inside when they made the formation, Lake saw something he hadn''t expected. It looked like the flesh wasn''t as passive as it seemed because the formation they had made was gone and recing it was a giant scab. He wasn''t sure if the flesh had shed some of itself or just grown around the formation but it was clear it had defended itself.
This was bad news but since he didn''t really think they needed to worry about trying to destroy the formation until they had reimed control over the city because he knew there was a good chance the Demon Worshipers had something going on on almost every tier not just the ces that they had set the two sides of this formation.
This would stretch out this fight to multiple days but he didn''t really need to worry about anything going on on the other floors because of the imprisonment formation that would keep them separate from all the others or at least that was what he thought. He still wasn''t exactly sure if the imprisonment formation would stop people froming in.
Being done looking at the ce the formation they set should have been, Lake started to head back to the others. He didn''t really want to go back just yet because it would give the dwarf more time to bother him but leaving them alone wasn''t a good idea since he was hoping he would get more money by leading them to victorypared to if he did everything by himself since no one would be around to see how good he did and he couldn''t trust them to survive on their own.
Stepping back inside Lake saw even more of the people had fallen asleep to the point where only five or so were awake. Seeing that almost all of the people that were awake were dwarves, Lake wondered if maybe dwarves naturally had more stamina. It would make sense to him and maybe help exin why they tended to work so hard.
The three dwarves that had been with him from the beginning were also awake but Lake didn''t count them since they hadn''t been in the massive fight the rest of the people here were part of. Lake chose a ce away from the dwarves by making it look like he didn''t want to disturb the people that were asleep.
He was hoping this would make the dwarf think twice about trying to start another dialog with him but just a few seconds after he sat down Grandy came tiptoeing towards him. It was nice to see the dwarf had taken the hint even if it wasn''t the one wanted him to take. "So what was the progress on the formation you four set?"
Lake held his finger to his mouth before saying in a whisper. "It''s been destroyed." Grandy seemed to think all Lake wanted was for him to be more quiet and continued the conversation by whispering. "What happened to it?" Lake was tired of this and said. "Listen, these people need to sleep and you''re being too loud. We can talkter."
The dwarf seemed to have a problem with Lake talking to him like this and said. "I whispered." Lake had a response to this ready though and said. "That''s not good enough around fighters that sleep with one eye open. Every time we talk we risk another being unready to go when the timees."
Lake could tell Grandy didn''t have anything to say that would make what he said not make perfect sense and knew he had won. Watching Grandy walk away, Lake decided he would need to do somethingter to get rid of the tension he had just caused but it shouldn''t be too hard for him to do that since Grandy liked to talk so much.
...
Looking around Donny couldn''t help but to be in awe of the talisman his father had given him; everything was t but he and the two people that had been able to stick close enough to him were fine. Doing his best to get a read on the situation outside of his ward Donny decided he could move from the ce he had been standing for almost an hour.
The attack had been over for a while now but the energy it had unleashed had just now cleared to the point where he felt it was safe. Deactivating his ward Donny felt the small amount of Unholy mana that was still in the air start to sting his skin and tried to build up some Metal mana to keep this from happening.
After a few seconds of trying Donny realized there was none to gather. Something had caused all of the Metal mana in the city to disappear and he didn''t have to look hard to find what had caused this. Looking to the top of the crater Donny saw the web of flesh that was above them like a and knew that this was the formation that had caused the attack they had been hit by from its shape.
Since this wasn''t the part of the formation that drained the Metal mana that meant this was just a small part of the formation but to find out more he needed to climb his way out of the hole he was in. He had been protected the whole time but the same didn''t go for the ground under him so as the Unholy mana had eaten its way through the stone he and the two conscious people that had been holding onto him had slowly fallen downwards.
Looking back at the two that would be following him out Donny said. "Get me up there and then I''ll pull you two up." If the hole hadn''t been so deep he could have just ran and jumped his way out but the sides were close to a 90 degree angle so he and the other two would have to climb up like goats.
Once he was on the first ledge that was wide enough for him to ce a foot on Donny used his hand to knock a hole in the wall that would let them climb to the next ledge. Once that was done he reached one of his arms down and helped the first of the two up to where he was. Once the man was up Donny said. "Get up to the next one."
There wasn''t enough room for all three of them on this foot hold so the man needed to keep it moving. Getting the next guy up to him Donny moved upwards to make them a way to the next ledge. Like this they eventually were able to climb all the way to the rim of the crater. "Do your best not to touch any of the flesh."
It was hard not to be tempted to use the strands of flesh like ropes but he knew it would be a bad idea. Dodging all of the almost root-like flesh Donny was able to make his way onto the streets that had been outside of the spells range. Donny had originally been nning to help the others out of the tangled flesh but he forgot about them as soon as he saw what was happening on the streets in front of him.
It seemed that some of the guards and members from the now gone guild district had made it out before their buildings had been destroyed but they were just a small percentage of the forces in the all battle that was taking ce. Surprisingly most of the people fighting seemed to be just normal people but Donny had seen what the Demon Worshipers had managed to pass as people earlier so he doubted the crazed residents were what they seemed.
Then there were the Demon Worshipers themselves, Like every other time he had seen any of their kind they were sting Unholy spells at anything that moved not even worrying about friendly fire since their spells had an empowering effect on the undead they used as infantry. Grabbing his spear for the first time since surviving the giant spell Donny found that its tip was missing.
It must have been too long and stuck outside of the ward. Looking around he found a downed guard and went for their sword. He didn''t particrly like swords but since his magic was also useless he needed something to defend himself.
Chapter 206: High Intensity Combat
Chapter 206: High Intensity Combat
Lake didn''t know how much time had passed exactly but it had definitely been more than an hour since they hade in here to rest. That meant if he wanted to go with the n he had told Grandy earlier it was time for him to wake everyone up to see if they would being with him or not.
He decided to give them a few more minutes though because of how deeply most of them were sleeping. If he woke them up too early they would be mad at him and decide not to go and he didn''t want to leave too many behind because he couldn''t guarantee their safety if they were alone.
All it would take was for another swarm of monsters to show up and this ce would be overrun within a few minutes. Of course he had no idea if the gargoyles would evere back out onto the streets and gather up but since he didn''t know he couldn''t say it wouldn''t happen.
He would actually much prefer if they did end up doing that because he wouldn''t have to go building to building and could just wait here as wave after wave came here to get killed by him. It would save him a lot of walking but he was sure there would be people here that would get mad if he tried to save the city by sitting on his ass.
It was really annoying to have people around that made you act a certain way so things would turn out the way you wanted and if you didn''t y along they would be a pain. It made him realize he wouldn''t save Grandy if he got into danger while they were out hunting because so far Grandy was really the only person Lake was worried about making him look bad.
Lake could already see Grandy calling him a coward if he was ever interviewed while the guild was trying to add up how much they should pay him. One bad review wasn''t enough to tank his reward but he would rather have a perfect record since he was going to be doing nothing but this for the next few days.
Thinking about this made him realize he would have been so much better off if he had just stayed at the first Fighters guild and never even came here because he would have been able to make one million in a week or less and he had no guarantee of making anything here since the Metal Domain was probably going to be short on money with having to rebuild itself.
This would cause them to underpay everyone and use the fact that you would look greedy if youined since they had just gone through a tragedy. He could already see the fake happy face everyone would be putting on as they received a percentage of what they were actually owed.
He wouldn''t be like that though, if they tried to rip him off he would just find the biggest vault he could and take what he could. It wasn''t like they would have the manpower to go after him or anything andpleting the mission was worth the small chance they realized it was him who had stolen from them.
...
Lake ended up letting the people sleep for another hour before he started to wake them. Going to each person and shaking them slightly Lake could tell these people had had to go with little sleep before because they were all on their feet a few seconds after he had woken them. He guessed that was one of the benefits of having trained warriors and not just regr people here with him.
Once they were all up Lake could tell that none of them were nning on staying here and skipping out on the hunt but he still went ahead and asked. "Are there any of you that don''t want to go with me to start clearing the city?" No one said anything so Lake said. "Ok, we''ll be heading out in ten minutes, get ready."
With that done Lake waved for Grandy toe over and said. "I need a person who can see to be in the back, are you willing?" Lake mainly just wanted to keep Grandy away from him but this was also an important job so he was pretty sure Grandy was perfect for it. "Of course, do you expect us to get attacked from behind or are you just being careful?"
Lake didn''t think it would happen but he knew he would be too engrossed in using Mana Vision and Detector to look behind them as often as needed and since it was so dark out there he needed one of the dwarves to be the lookout. "Anything could happen so I need someone with experience in the back to be on the lookout."
Lake was pretty sure Grandy was usually the leader of a group in normal times so he added that to stroke his ego a little because he felt it would make Grandy more likely to be happy about the job since it would make him feel like he was in charge of something. "Do you just want me to call out anytime I see something move behind us?"
Lake nodded and said "That will work." If Grandy ended up seeing anything, Lake would probably switch to a ''let the enemiese to them'' approach since it would mean the gargoyles and undead had started to emerge. With his conversation with Grandy done, Lake looked around to see everyone looked ready even though it had only been a few minutes so he decided they might as well move now.
"Alright I''m going to go out first to see what it''s like out there then I''lle tell you all when we''re ready to start heading back into enemy territory." After saying that Lake opened the door and looked at the street outside. It was clear so he switched to Mana Vision to see if there was anything hiding waiting to ambush them.
He knew there was a chance a Demon Worshiper who could control the gargoyles and undead might have had time to organize their forces in the time they had taken to rest so he needed to be careful. Not seeing anything with Mana Vision which had a much longer range than Detector Lake felt good that they were safe.
"Alright follow me." Outside Lake led them towards the ce that the gargoyles had been summoned yesterday. It didn''t take long for him to start seeing things inside the buildings they passed with Mana Vision so he went ahead and set Detector to look for buildings with enemies inside.
Nine out of the ten buildings they passed were highlighted using this setting so Lake said. "We''re here. All of these buildings have things inside of them so I''m just going to pick one at random." Walking up to one of the buildings Lake was able to peer inside since the door had already been destroyed by the gargoyles.
The inside was a mess and there was a very obvious trail of blood going into one of the back rooms. "Alright for the first one I''m going in by myself to see how dangerous it is. Just stay right there and yell if you need me." Stepping inside Lake followed the trail of blood into the back room.
Once he was able to see into the room Lake saw that there were three Gargoyles surrounding a body. Lake guessed they had already done what they had been made to do because they were sitting still not interacting with the body at all. They didn''t seem to know he was here either so he took the time to see if the body was already an undead or not.
Setting Detector Lake saw the body did start to glow which meant this still body was undead. That meant he was going to level up when he attacked it so he looked at the details of Swordsman.
Swordsman (C) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Strength 1
Agility 1
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Sword kills
Skills from job:
This Job was almost exactly the same as Spearman but that wasn''t surprising; Strength and Agility were definitely important for someone who was fighting up close. Pulling his sword Lake rushed in while using Crunch and since the enemies were stationary he was able to get two of the gargoyles with the first swing.
Using the next swing to finish off thest one, Lake backed off to see if the undead would react to what he had just done. When it didn''t move, Lake wondered if these undead were simr to natural undead and took a while to get on their feet after being created. If that was the case this would probably be a lot easier for them and it might even be safe for him to take the others into the buildings with him.
That being said he needed to kill the undead not to see what happened before he made up his mind. Using Crunch then Imbuing Fire onto his sword Lake cut the undead in half before baking away again. A few seconds of burningter Lake felt the Exp but could tell by how it felt he hadn''t gained much even with the X2 Exp bonus for using a sword.
That made him think he had been right about these undead being weak because they had just been created a few hours ago. Looking at his Exp Lake saw it had only given 4 Experience and shrugged. He hadn''t been too interested in the skills from amon job anyway so he was willing to wait until his next kill.
Chapter 207: Clean Up Crew
Chapter 207: Clean Up Crew
Stepping outside of the building he had just killed the four monsters in Lake could tell the others were waiting for him to tell them what had happened inside. "The undead was very weak. I''m not sure if they will all be like that but it''s a good sign for us." Lake wasn''t sure if every undead would be the same since the gargoyles had turned a lot of different people and this one looked like a regr citizen not a fighter.
If the quality of the bodies they used mattered to the end result he might find a warrior undead that has a lot more strengthter on and since it was going to take them days to go building to building the undead would have time to grow stronger. Today''s battles would be much different to what would be happening in a few days.
This probably meant they should try to get as much done as they could today before they returned to the storage room that they would be calling home until the imprisonment formation went down. Wasting no time, Lake moved to the next building while saying. "Any of you that want to follow me inside can from now on."
...
[Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up]
They had been at it for hours at this point and while Lake hadn''t kept track he was sure they had cleared around 100 buildings. As he had been at it he found some of the buildings only held one Gargoyle and thinking about it Lake was sure these had been gargoyles that had grabbed someone almost as soon as they had been summoned while there was more prey for them to choose from.
These houses were much easier to clear but they still took time and made his kills per hour to fall. He would have preferred if all the houses he found had at least five or six because that would mean they were less spread out.
He did manage to get Swordsman all the way to level 5 a few Exp at a time though he had held off on taking a break to look at his new skills till one of the people in his party had said they needed a break. Looking down Lake cracked a smile when he saw his Agility stat.
Race: Human Lv.14 ( 5/10 )
Job: Swordsman Lv.5 ( 104/160 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 140
Stamina 140
Mana 570
Strength 121
Endurance 15
Agility 103
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 134
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
His agility had finally passed 100 meaning he was about to get a new skill that would be much better than the twomon skills he was expecting to find when he opened his skill page. He hadpletely forgotten about the fact that he had been sitting 2 points away from this for a while.
He went ahead and started with the two from Swordsman though just to save the best forst.
Pristine Edge (C) Lv.1
Sharpen the de on your weapon.
(Cost 1 Mana)
Works better on lower level weapons.
Summon de (C) Lv.1
Summon a copy of a ded weapon you''re holding.
The copysts for 1 minute.
(Cost 15 Mana)
Both of these were decent skills but since they weremon he knew that they wouldn''t be as good as the next one he was about to read. Thest skill he had been given from his agility hitting a milestone was Burst and he used it almost constantly so he had high hopes for whatever he had gotten.
Overpower (U) Lv.1
Skills that take stamina to activate have their effects tripled.
After he read the skill he went through his list of skills and saw he didn''t have too many skills that worked off of stamina but they were some of his best.
Ripped (L) Lv.1
Raise your Strength by 40 for one hour.
(Cost: 50 Stamina)
(Can be activated a maximum of three times at once.)
Burst (U) Lv.1
Doubles the effect of the Agility and Strength stat.
Consumes Stamina (1 per hour)
Crunch (U) Lv.1
Strength doubles for the next attack ignores the target''s Endurance and armor.
(Cost: 5 Stamina)
Fast Hands (L) Lv.1
Your arms and hands move five times faster.
Consumes Stamina (1 per second)
It was an amazing skill but he would trade it in a heart beat for something that would allow him to see when he was going at his top speed which had just grown again because Burst was now three times more effective. He was also pretty sure this skill he had unlocked just now was the reason Burst cost anything.
He had always wondered why it wasn''t free with its cost being so low and now seeing the synergy between these two he felt he had found out. There was the chance that it was impossible to make skills like burst free though so he was specting.
He was excited to use Ripped though because now it was like he could have it activated nine times at once since it should now give him 120 per activation. He didn''t think that would be necessary though because with the tier of enemy he was fighting currently crunch was enough.
Lake was done so he looked at the people that had been following him around all day and said. "The break is over. It''s time to get back to work." Everyone stood up as soon as he said this so he could tell they still had plenty of hours of following him around before they would actually have to stop for the day.
...
[Level up]
Time passed and Lake killed, and killed, and killed, until finally he leveled up again but since that didn''t mean he was done he didn''t even really stop to look at what had changed since he could picture what his status screen would look like.
Race: Human Lv.14 ( 6/10 )
Job: Swordsman Lv.6
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 140
Stamina 140
Mana 570
Strength 122
Endurance 15
Agility 104
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 134
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
He wasn''t sure what the Exp part of the job would look like so he made sure to leave that part nk in his head. "There''s something behind us." Lake had been about to walk into the next building when he heard Grandy call out to him from the back of the group. Turning around Lake saw Grandy wasn''t wrong and there was in fact someone on the road behind them.
Sadly it looked like a person so he wasn''t sure if it was one of the residents that had survived ande out since they had noticed it had died down or maybe just an undead that had gained enough strength to start moving around. He could find out pretty quickly though.
Using Detector Lake set it to look for undead. The woman that was walking towards them lit up so Lake said. "It''s an undead, I''ll kill it so back off." Lake cast Imbue Fire onto his sword and rushed the undead when two people told him to stop at once. The First was Grandy saying that there was no evidence they weren''t alive but the other was the undead woman that said. "Please don''t kill me, I''m not a monster."
Lake knew this wasn''t true but he still stopped because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn''t convince the others first. "My skill is saying she''s an undead." Lake just reminded them that he had a skill that let him tell where enemies were and let them ask for him to kill her once they remembered how he had been able to lead them to monster after monster with no problem all day.
Once he could tell everyone epted this as enough evidence to kill her, Lake raised his sword again and rushed the woman. He had no problem bisecting her and a few seconds of her burning he received a small amount of Exp. With her dead Lake turned to the others and siad. "It''s time to go back. I think this means the monsters are about to emerge again and we need to be somewhere that isn''t just in the open."
Lake started to walk back to their base but did take the time to say a good job to Grandy for calling out the undead so fast. It had been nowhere near them when he had been alerted to it giving them all plenty of time to react. This made him certain Grandy would protect them on the way back to base.
Lake also left Detector set to look for undead even though there was a chance there would be gargoyles walking around now as well. He wasn''t really too worried about anything they ran into from the direction he was looking, only stuff that came from behind so his Detector wouldn''t be what he was relying on to stop them from getting attacked from behind.
Chapter 208: Undead Army
Chapter 208: Undead Army
Lake hadn''t led them even half way back to base when Grandy called out again. His voice was much more panicked this time though so Lake didn''t even wait to see whatever was pressuring them from behind and just pulled his sword and ran back to kill whatever it was. He was extremely fast even holding back so he easily beat the gargoyle in the rush attack and sliced it in half.
Lake gave Grandy a thumbs up and said. "Keep it up." They were moving through the area he had cleared during thest few hours so he didn''t expect many more of these attacks as they were retreating but he still needed Grandy to help him make sure no one died from a sneak attack.
...
Lake ended up being right about them not really running into anything else while they returned. As he had been walking back through the area that they had spent the day clearing it seemed a lot bigger than he remembered, it looked like he might have cleared out more than a third of the area that the gargoyles were hiding in.
He guessed it was because he hadn''t really been paying attention to what he was doing since it was so repetitive. This was good news for them since it should cut down on the size of whatever hoard built up by tomorrow. "Alright we''re done for the day, feel free to sleep."
As he was saying this he wondered if it was safe for him to sleep as well. He was a little worried about sleeping in an environment for obvious reasons but eventually he would have no choice. He did have ways to make it safer for him though and the main one was by doing something he should have done earlier.
Using Detector Lake set it to look for traitors. A few people lit up but that didn''t mean they would betray him. The skill could just be highlighting them since they had betrayed someone in the past so he switched Detector to look for backstabbers. This time even more people were highlighted and Lake understood stabbing people in the back was part of their job in the Fighters guild.
Thinking about it for a second Lake decided to try ''people that are a significant danger to his life'' when no one was highlighted by this he figured it would probably be fine for him to sleep once he got tired and if it wasn''t he guessed he would see what Endurance that was over 100 actually did.
He could see someone who had low stats being unable to cut his throat on the first try giving him time to wake up and fight back. For now though he was just going to stay outside on the roof and tell the others he was going to be watching the situation. They needed a lookout and since he could see in the dark he was going to do it himself.
Telling Grandy. "I''m going to be outside on the roof making sure we don''t get surrounded. Smack the ceiling if you need me." He didn''t want Grandy going outside and yelling if he needed him for something so he made this up on the spot as a less noticeable way to get his attention.
After he said this Grandy nodded so Lake walked outside and jumped onto the roof. Once he was up there he found there wasn''t really a good ce for him to sit and still be able to see onto the streets below so he got back down, went back inside, emptied a box and carried it onto the roof to use as a seat.
Lake knew he could have just used Mana Vision to look through any obstacles but he felt he would have a hard time doing this job without losing focus if he was just staring at a wall for hours even if there was a chance that there would be lights that represented mana.
...
Donny felt a hand wrap around his ankle and was about to use his sword to free himself from whatever had grabbed him when he saw he actually knew the person and it wasn''t an enemy that he needed to attack. It was one of the two people he had survived the st earlier with.
It seemed they had been hit with an unholy spell and in theirst few seconds of life reached out and grabbed his leg. He didn''t have time for a dead person though so he just kicked his leg until the hand let go while blocking the constant attacks by the undead surrounding him and all the other people fighting to save the Metal Domain.
Cutting another undead down Donny dodged the retaliation spell from the Demon Worshiper that had been using the undead as a shield. With the Demon worshiper''s spell missing, Donny was finally able to go in for an attack after all this time of them dancing around each other. Sadly Donnys attack wasn''t particrly effective since he wasn''t skilled with a sword causing him to not wound the Demon Worshiper deeply enough to take them out of the fight.
This was why Donny preferred to use a spear over swords. He felt like the kind of wounds a spear inflicted were more lethal even if they were smaller and easier to heal. That being said you could stab with a sword if it had a good point on it. Retreating back into the crowd so the Demon Worshiper''s next attack wouldn''t be able to hit him very well, Donny saw a red sh of light that made him think a powerful mage had finally arrived to help clear out the massive amount of undead that were here.
Or at least he hoped whoever was using massive fire spells was on their side; sadly he didn''t really have the leeway to look behind him being in a duel. That being said as he was dodging around he would face that direction eventually. Having dodged another spell Donny took down another undead in the time it took the Demon Worshiper to gather enough mana for another spell.
Donny knew this was a dangerous game to y since mages could always use their own mana to cast a spell without the buildup but he was willing to bet the Demon Worshiper had already used most of their own mana before he even joined the battle. This meant he could go back and forth with this Demon Worshipper for a while before they had regained enough mana to start firing a barrage of spells towards him.
Taking down another undead Donny saw that the Mage had held off on firing this time when they clearly had enough mana to cast the same spell they had been using until now and half a secondter he saw why. Someone else had tried to attack the Demon Worshiper while they had been focused on him but sadly all their dagger had struck was a wall of Unholy mana.
With his view now obstructed by the wall the Demon Worshiper had made, Donny went ahead and cut down another undead that had been facing away from him because it was attacking a different person. The man he had helped by doing this gave him a small nod before they both moved on to new targets.
Donny still wanted to kill the Demon Worshiper but it was too dangerous to wait for an enemy that had time to build up behind a strong defense. His best bet to winning the fight between them was toe back after they hadunched whatever attack they would most likely fire as soon as their wall fell.
It seemed everyone else who had been fighting near him saw that it was best to move away as well and soon arge empty space around the Demon Worshiper that had incased himself had formed leaving only undead near them. Seeing this Donny could tell the Demon Worshiper would probably choose to switch their attack to one that would buff the undead near them.
That meant instead of a spell to dodge he would have twenty or so empowered undead to worry about. That was fine though, he wasn''t scared of the undead''s crazed iling even if it got faster for a while; he would just have to be 100% focused on defense until it was over. Skilled opponents like the Demon Worshipers would be the only ones that could hurt him.
Seeing the Demon Worshiper''s wall start to shimmer before returning to mana Donny saw a rust colored wave move out from the Demon Worshiper before wrapping all of the undead it passed in ayer of mana. If Donny wasn''t mistaken this manayer would act simr to a barrier making the Undead immune to any attacks that couldn''t break through.
Donny didn''t know what this spell was but he found the way the mana barriers were able to flex with the undead''s body very interesting. He wondered if this was a new spell the Demon Lord had just made for users of Unholy mana or if he had just never seen it before.
Blocking the first attack from one of the undead now covered in Unholy Mana Donny saw it wasn''t just some shield but instead also was able to damage the de on his sword quite heavily. Seeing this he got quite worried because without Metal mana none of them would be able to repair their weapons with magic. This would leave them nothing to defend themselves with if they weren''t able to dodge instead of block all the iing attacks.
Donny was able to dodge the next few without making contact with the undead in any way but after a while the Demon Worshiper threw a spell in his direction and he was forced to move into an attack from one of the undead in order to dodge the much more dangerous spell. This was most likely what the Demon Worshiper had wanted so Donny could expect more just like thest.
Looking around briefly Donny found another weapon of a fallen soldier close to him that he could go after if this one was to give out and stopped worrying about this new strategy the Demon Worshiper had adopted.
In a fight like this it wasn''t really people at his level that would swing the battle much so all he really needed to do was survive until a big shot showed up. This was their territory so they had a much greater advantage in numbers no matter what level of fighter you were talking about even if you couldn''t draw that conclusion by looking at the numbers each side had on the streets right now.
Chapter 209: Odd Behavior
Chapter 209: Odd Behavior
Lake eventually started to see undead and gargoyles head towards them from the summoning area. They didn''t seem to be after them though with quite a few of them passing right by the building they were in. He guessed neither type of monster were able to sense that there were a lot of people in the buildings they were passing.
This was very good because it meant he would be able to let them group up more before he went out to kill them. He knew these were still just the early birds and most of them had still yet to emerge so going out now would just be a waste of time.
...
After another hour Lake started to see some undead that had armor and weapons strapped onto them and thought that it meant thest of the undead wereing out now. The fighters had been thest to be dragged away so it made sense to him that they would be thest to emerge.
Waiting until the road was empty Lake jumped down from the roof and went inside. He nned to start another hunt soon because he wasn''t tired yet and there were now enough monsters to make it worth his time. He needed to know if the others wanted toe with him though so he needed to wake them up.
Everyone was asleep except one person Lake assumed was a guard that was supposed to wake the others if something happened. "Have you slept yet?" Lake wanted to see if this person had gotten any rest at all since they were one of the dwarves that had skipped sleep before the first hunt as well.
"Yes we switched about thirty minutes ago." This meant they had gotten around two hours if they had gone to bed around the time they had gotten back. "Who was on the first watch?" The dwarf pointed at Grandy and said. "Grandy said you told him to get you if something happened so he would take the first watch."
Hearing Grandy had gotten to sleep for less than an hour, Lake decided he could go out and get the hunt started without them ande back in a few hours once he had cleared out the monsters a bit and they were more rested. "Ok well I will be leaving for a while. I won''t go far but I''m going to start killing the monsters around the base so we don''t get attacked."
Lake made it sound like it was a necessary thing for him to do but he really just wanted to get to work and doing it while he was alone would let him do it at his max speed instead of the speed he capped himself at while he was around other people. "How far will you be going away from us?"
"I''ll make sure to stay close enough that I can hear you if you yell." In an underground city like this he should be able to hear them from almost anywhere since the people were either all dead or hiding making it much quieter than normal but he didn''t n to go more than a couple of streets away because the monster should alle running as soon as they saw him.
This meant it didn''t really matter where he went, all the monsters shoulde to him even if he was just right outside the door. He didn''t want to do it so close though because he was sure the noise would cause the people here wake up and try to join the fight thinking they were under attack.
"Ok, well I''ll yell if we are under attack." Lake nodded and after making sure there was nothing outside that would see him open the door, Lake went back outside. Once outside he jumped onto the building across the street and then did the same twice to pass over the next few streets.
Three streets over was probably enough since the gargoyles didn''t really make much noise and while the undead''s voices would probably carry if they were able to speak like the one he had killed earlier he didnt think they would speak much when they could just attack. Now he just needed to draw the monsters towards him.
Lake wasn''t sure what the best method to do this was but he decided just to run ap around their base until the monsters started chasing him. Once he had a good amount he would deal with them before doing it again. He felt like he might not need to do it more than once though because there was a chance the noise from the first fight would draw more towards him.
A few seconds after he started running down the road Lake attracted the first gargoyle then another came out of one of the alleyways he passed. He stayed at two for a few seconds before the next then his first undead. Like he had expected the undead didn''t try to start a conversation with him likest time and he was pretty sure it was because he was already being chased by the gargoyles. If it had been just them he was sure the undead would try to trick him.
After a while Lake lost count of the number of monsters chasing him, all he knew was it was a massive group and all the feet hitting the stone was making a nice amount of noise that was drawing more and more each second. He felt it was a shame because he wanted to see just how many he could draw in but he decided it was time to start the fight.
The noise was making it so the monsters knew where he was before he saw them and they kept popping out in front of him and a few had gotten close enough that it made him think of the monster movies he used to watch back before he died. He didn''t think they could kill him but he was worried he could be affected by whatever the gargoyles had used to turn the bodies.
Turning Lake used Imbue Fire and Crunch and took his first swing at the swarm behind him. He hit a few different gargoyles and undead with this strike and all of them fell back with a small fire burning in their wounds. He didn''t know if this would kill the gargoyles but he knew it would work on the undead over time.
With the first attack working he saw no reason not to keep doing what he had but he did hold back a bit since his new skill had made him swing his sword much harder than he had meant to. Crunch doubled his Strength but because of Overpower it now made it six times higher during his attack and he had felt his sword handle bend slightly from the force behind his first swing.
After a while of starting fires on everything his sword sliced he felt the first Exp start to trickle in from the first undead that had sumbed to the spreading effect fire had. He also started to have repeat customers in the form of gargoyles that had been wounded by him already but were able to survive because his attacks hadn''t gone deep enough or hit an important part of their body.
He wasn''t worried about killing them though just keeping them back so he continued to just swing into the crowd while using Crunch every two swings. Eventually he started to get surrounded since he had stopped moving much and it made him wonder what would happen if he never ended his atack.
If he was to hold his sword out and spin while Crunch was active could he just turn himself into a monster blender forever without having to use Crunch again or would it eventually stop working. He felt it was worth a shot so doing a 360 degree swing first before he just went all out Lake found Crunch worked the whole time.
With his first test working Lake saw no reason he couldn''t just drag his attack out forever so that was what he did. Spinning as fast as he could with his sword out, Lake started to move his way into the mass of monsters until the pile of bodies got too high for him to pass without stopping his spin.
He had been able to kill twenty or so monsters every second like this but the bodies piling up was something he couldn''t really stop from happening so it wasn''t really possible for him to drag out one attack forever if he was spinning. It did give him another idea though; He could just run while holding his sword out beside him.
He wasn''t sure if this would work though since he wasn''t actually swinging his weapon but he had enough leeway to try it out because there weren''t many monsters left now after he had killed so many when he was spinning. Holding his sword like he would a knife when stabbing down, Lake started to run.
Chapter 210: Attack Run
Chapter 210: Attack Run
Lake started his run with a subtle move of his sword that would count as the start of the attack and kept that going forever as he moved forward. He was holding his sword at about shoulder height so once he started cutting into monsters he was able to take heads and arms pretty consistently depending on how tall the monster was.
Finishing thest monster, Lake was happy to find that his idea for this running attack had allowed him to use less stamina while killing the monsters even faster than what he had been doing earlier. This would mean he would be able to clear out a group of monsters even faster and have less to worry about from them.
Lake was about to start running again to build up another monster hoard to kill when he saw a gargoyle jump from one of the buildings onto the street he was standing on. It was clear the monster had heard what was going on here and decided to take the shortest route to him which was over the building.
He was happy to know he had seeded in drawing the monsters towards him but he wasn''t sure standing here waiting for them would be faster than him running around but he was willing to give it a try. Cutting down the gargoyle Lake waited until the next one showed up and it took a while so he started to think they might be having a hard time finding him.
Putting his sword away, Lake smacked the gargoyle to the ground in an ear ringing sound. Lake saw the fact they had metal bodies as a perfect way for him to make some noise to draw the others right towards him. The fact that Crunch made his strikes meet no resistance meant they were pretty quiet with the only real nose they made being the whistling from a sharp de cutting the air.
Lake didn''t kill the gargoyle right away and inspected the dent he had been able to create with his p. He had been wondering for a while if he would be able to kill one of them with his bare hands but was too apprehensive to try it because they were made of metal and he had been in time sensitive fights with them.
This was the first time he was alone while fighting them as well so he wasn''t worried about the others getting killed while he tested his strength. Seeing his strike had also caused a small crack to appear, Lake knew he would be able to fight them like this but decided it would be a waste of time for him to do so.
His sword was just so much better than his hand in this situation since he was able to hold it out in one continuous attack. It was still cool to know he could punch through metal though even if he didn''t n to.
Finishing the gargoyle off Lake saw another monster had made its way onto his street. Turning his body towards it he used Crunch and swung his sword to take its head off. Having killed it, Lake was once again left alone on the street. Seeing that his n to just let theme to him wasn''t going to work, Lake decided to do ap.
...
In thest few minutes of the giant battle that was taking ce in the center of the city Donny had started to notice a difference in the amount of enemies that they were facing. It seemed at some point they had received reinforcements or someone had wiped out arge number of Demon Worshipers at once because he was now fighting against enemies that had multiple people after them.
With the number advantage that meant they should be able to finish this fight soon. He knew this wasn''t the only battle taking ce in the city but since he was part of this one he wanted it to end so he could rest. After that he wasn''t too sure what he would do because the Fighters guild building was gone and he wasn''t sure who would be giving them orders from now on.
It would probably just be the first person he saw that had any kind of rank inside the guild if Masters was dead. He could also see the Temple stepping in to take control of all the forces in the city since they were the Metal Domain''s leaders. That would mean anyone willing to fight for the Metal Domain would most likely take orders from them.
Seeing another red sh like the one he had seen earlier Donny was actually able to turn and look who had cast such a bright fire spell. Donny wasn''t able to be sure since there were a few people back behind them that might have done it but he was pretty sure it was the person wearing the alchemist robe.
He wasn''t surprised that a member of the Alchemist guild would be using high tier spells since they had a prettyrge emphasis on magic since they used to be the Mages guild. They were most likely the reason the Demon Worshipers hoped to wipe out the guilds before the fighting even started.
Most guilds had a policy to stay out of any wars that were going on but this was an unprovoked attack on the Metal Domain meaning the guilds could retaliate to make sure their operations here weren''t interrupted. It was simr to what had happened when the Demon Worshipers had attacked the Dark domain.
Back then every person who had been in the Dark Domain no matter what organization they had been part of had grouped up to help fight off the Demon Worshipers. That being said the Dark domain hadn''t only had one massive city so the army they had had a hard time covering every city at once causing the Demon Worshipers to win in the long run.
At least that was what he had been told by his father. Donny had only been a few years old when the Dark Domain had fallen so he hadn''t actually been there to see what had gone wrong during their defensive effort. It was too bad because he felt having that experience would help him understand why the Demon Worshipers were doing this or what they would do next.
At the moment he was stuck just reacting to whatever happened instead of being able to predict what would happen next and it would mean they would be stuck with the Demon Worshipers having all the initiative in these fights. After he thought this Donny was able to disengage who he had been stuck fighting for thest minute or so and turn and attack someone who had been facing away from him in the back.
This wouldn''t have been possible in a one on one since his opponent would have used this as an opportunity to attack him but he had two people that were also taking his main opponent''s attention so he had all the time in the world to strike other enemies from behind. This was one of the main reason fights like these ended pretty soon after you were outnumbered.
Of course they had been the ones who had been outnumbered at the beginning but they had been able to slice through the undead pretty quickly and from there the Demon Worshipers had been the ones on the back foot. Dodging a spell that had almost hit him Donny looked where it hade from to see it had just been a random spell that had missed its original target.
There was always a chance that something like that would happen in fights where both sides were just all mixed together so he quickly forgot about it and went back to distracting his main opponent in hopes the rogue he was fighting with would use the opportunity to finallynd an attack on the Demon Worshiper''s back.
Even if they missed though the Demon Worshiper would have to react to dodge or block so he would have a chance to attack the Demon Worshiper as well unless the Demon Worshiper used some kind of defensive spell that kept him from doing any damage. Right after the Demon Worshiper turned towards him Donny saw the rogue appear and go for a back stab.
Not seeing any signs of a spell being cast or the Demon Worshiper turning to defend, Donny knew that they hadn''t noticed the attacking from behind. Donny still swung his sword though on the off chance the Demon Worshiper noticed at thest second and tried to dodge.
His swing didn''t end up being necessary though because the rogue was able to plunge their dagger deep into the center of the Demon Worshiper''s back. A strike like this would hit the spine and the heart so they would be Dead within a few seconds if they weren''t hiding some kind of health item in their mouth already.
It was also possible that this particr Demon Worshiper was an undead and in that case they would need to finish the job by destroying a few other critical parts of their body or they would slowly heal over time. It didn''t seem like that was the case though because the rogue had already moved on to find a new opponent so they had probably received the Exp that told them the Demon worshiper had died from their attack.
That meant he could move on as well. Looking around he found another Demon Worshiper not too far from where he was with their back to him and decided he might as well go for the kill. He wasn''t very sneaky because of his heavy armor but there was enough noise to make that not really matter.
Chapter 211: Imprisonment Barrier
Chapter 211: Imprisonment Barrier
Lake had been fighting gargoyles and undead for over an hour now and he was starting to think it was time for him to go back and rest. He had been using Crunch all day and even if his Stamina was able to replenish itself over time it was starting to do a number on him. He needed to get some sleep and since he could and still get up before the others did he was free to do so.
Plus he had kind of killed all the monsters already, his n to run around in circles had been way more effective than he had expected and while he was sure there were still some out here there weren''t enough to matter. He wouldn''t be surprised if the group of Fighters he had saved could clear the rest of the city on their own since they didn''t have to worry about being surrounded.
He would be afraid of them getting tricked by the undead though. He had been spoken to by a few while he had been working on clearing the city and if he didn''t have Detector to tell him the truth he wouldn''t know unless the undead said something that wasn''t true that triggered his lie detection.
Lake wasn''t far from their base so he was able to run back in less than a minute. Walking inside he saw the guard had changed again. Lake made a small wave to the man before going toy down. Right when he didn''t he wondered if he could have just picked an empty house to sleep in but decided he would be in more danger by himself since he had already used Detector to see if he was in danger from any of the people he was with.
...
Opening his eyes because he heard people moving around Lake saw that the guards were changing again. He wasn''t sure how much time had passed but he felt rested so it didn''t really matter. Getting up he walked over to the guard that was up when he came in and asked. "How long did I sleep?"
"Less than 40 minutes." Hearing this, Lake decided he would be better off trying to get more rest and wished the guard goodnight. Going back to his spot on the floor, Lake closed his eyes again. After about ten minutes of trying to sleep and finding he couldn''t he opened his stats to see if his Stamina was full.
If it was it would mean there was no reason other than passing time in going back to bed. He was pretty sure the fact that his Endurance had risen so much in the past few days, which had risen the rate that he regained stamina, had made him need even less rest and he had just not noticed that this was the fact till now cause he hadn''t really been timing his sleep.
To him sleeping one or two hours felt no different to getting a normal amount of sleep now or at least he didn''t think it did. He had only slept one or two hours yesterday as well but he had never felt the effects of this and had been able to go non stop for much longer than normal people.
Only having to sleep for an hour was a great thing in his book so he hoped he was right and it stayed like this forever because it would give him more hours in a day to work on stuff and if he was ever on the run from something he would only need a short nap to get back up and go.
Of course it might be a bit of a burden on him if he was ever with other people while traveling because he would still need to wait for them to finish sleeping but he didn''t n to ever have a group of people he took everywhere with him so it wouldn''t be too much of an issue. He guessed it was what he was doing now though he was doing this so the guild would pay him more.
Getting up Lake walked over to the guard and said. "I''m going to check outside again. I''ll be back in an hour. Yell if you need me I''ll be close." The guard nodded and Lake walked outside. The street was clear so he didn''t bother checking before he had opened the door like he usually did.
Walking towards the ce where he had helped the dwarves ce a formation on the flesh yesterday, Lake saw the scab that had taken its ce was now gone and there was no sign that it had ever happened. This meant that the formation could heal from any damage if given enough time but it did make him wonder if it would eventually just die on its own.
He knew it was probably some kind of undead so age wasn''t really a thing for it but surely the Demon Worshipers would need it gone eventually and if so maybe they had built in some way to make it disappear when they were done with it. Right after he thought this he remembered there was a job that allowed you to control undead so they were probably just going to have someone with that job tell the formation it was time to deactivate.
It was kind of wishful thinking that there would be some type of in-built weakness he could use to defeat this thing. In all reality no one would ever make something with a kill switch if they knew they could control it with 100% certainty; kill switches were for things that could go out of control.
Lake was pretty sure this thing understood what was happening or at least was smart enough to know what side it was on. Seeing that there was nothing else here for him to see, Lake decided it was time for him to see the Imprisonment formations effects because that was what was keeping him here.
All he needed to do to find the barrier was to go to the edge of the city. Using Mana Vision Lake saw there was an invisible wall all the way around the city. Taking a rock off the ground and throwing it he saw it collide with the barrier and fall to the ground.
He didn''t want to try and touch it because he felt like it might have some type of shock or something designed to keep the people inside from trying to leave so he took out his sword and decided to give it a few hits with some of his skills like Crunch or Ripped to see if he could break it.
He decided to just start with Crunch even though he had seen it didn''t really work very well on Barriers because it still made his strength sextuple whenever he used it so if he swung as hard as he could the effect on the barrier should be massive. He did worry about his sword though and it made him think he could go get some spare ones from some of the undead he had killed earlier.
Doing that real quick Lake brought a small pile of every weapon he felt he could swing at the barrier. This gave him more than enough tries to get this barrier down so he could leave. With the fact that he had already been able to kill most of the monsters down here he was sure the other people in the other tiers were probably making good progress on theirs as well.
That meant all that was standing in his way of getting paid was this barrier and the few things he would have to help clean up once he got to the Metal Temple because he was sure they would have one or two things they needed him to help them with.
Gripping the sword he had picked to go first, Lake used Crunch and swung as hard as he could towards the barrier. Unsurprisingly all that happened when the sword started to move was he ripped the handle off and missed his swing since the de fell to the ground. He had kind of expected something like this to happen if he swung as hard as he could so it looked like he needed to find how hard he could swing and actually hit something.
Grabbing the next sword, Lake tried again but at half strength. He was able to make contact this time but sadly the sword bent while he was swinging it so there wasn''t much strength behind his hit. Seeing that this hit wasn''t enough to do anything to the barrier, Lake started to think he should just use his hand.
The odds of there being a deterrence that would kill him was really low and with his hand he didn''t have to stop with just Crunch, he could also activate Ripped to see what would happen. He would rather just have one of the other people touch it with their hand though so he decided he could just wait until they got up. No point in taking a risk when one of the others would be stupid enough to do it for him.
Chapter 212: Break It Down
Chapter 212: Break It Down
Lake decided that they had had enough sleep for one night and went to wake them up. Once they were all ready to go he led them outside saying he had cleared the area around them and it was time for them to escape. A lot of them had seemed excited until they realized he didn''t have a way out yet.
"Alright go ahead and grab a weapon. I don''t want you all to break it, I just want to observe what it does while being attacked." After he said this they all got to work like he had asked and Lake pulled one of the dwarves from the Metal temple to the side and started to ask them questions about the formation that made the barrier.
They had been in the room while the Temple Head had been deciphering it so he was sure they had been given a good look at it and understood it at least a little. "Do you think it''s safe for us to touch it?" Lake wanted to know what the dwarf had to say because if it was safe he could just have the others return for a break and take down the barrier before they returned.
"I don''t know, the Temple Head said he couldn''t fully read the formation meaning there could be a trap set for anyone who brought it down." Lake nodded he had been worried about something like this as well so he asked. "Do you think we should just wait?" It would most likely be the safest thing for them to do so he would agree if the dwarf said they should.
"Maybe until we get a message from the Temple, but there''s always the chance the ones whoe to let us out won''t be the Temple." Lake guessed that was true but he felt it was unlikely because there would be other people here that would be around as strong as he was. That would go for the Demon Worshipers as well but the defenders should have an advantage.
Plus he had already taken out a huge part of their n by killing everything here. This meant the Demon Worshipers would be missing a decently sized army they most likely nned to use near the end as some type of trump card plus with the fact that arge percentage of it was the gargoyles that could make more undead it would have been even bigger than it had been when he had destroyed them.
"I don''t think we need to worry about the Metal Temple losing, but I do think it would be best if we could get out of here because I could help quite a bit if I wasn''t here." Lake felt making himself sound important to the war effort in front of one of the three people that he knew were close to the Temple Head would help his perceived importanceter.
"Yes I think that as well but you have already done a lot with clearing out all the gargoyles that you did. At the moment you have probably killed more enemies than anyone else in the city so even if you don''t contribute anything else you have done your part. It''s not worth dying trying to get through this barrier."
Lake could tell the dwarf was trying to talk him out of trying to break the barrier because it was probably dangerous. "Yeah we should just wait. Alright stop hitting the barrier!" Everyone stopped like he asked so he said. "We''re just going to wait for rescue because this barrier seems to be trapped. If we open it up so we can leave it will most likely kill us."
After he said this he waved and said. "We will just try and hunt down any monsters I didn''t getst night until we get freed." There were probably one or two around that they could waste their time looking for and it was better than nothing.
Leading them towards the center of town, Lake activated Detector to look for gargoyles. He would worry about the undeadter since he nned to drag out thisst task for as long as he could. "There''s one." It was on the roof of one of the buildings they were passing by so he didn''t notice it right away with it being so high up but one of the people must have been looking up and noticed it.
"Alright I''ll get it." Lake jumped and drew his sword. Landing on the roof he saw the Gargoyle was still looking down at the rest of his group. It must have not seen him move or was just keeping its eyes on the prize either way he used Crunch and sliced its head off. Landing back on the ground he waved for the others to follow him again.
...
Donny looked behind him and pushed his legs even harder. He wasn''t sure what had happened but right when they were about to kill thest Demon Worshiper all the bodies got back up. He knew this meant there was some Demon Worshiper big shot in the city but all he was worried about was losing the few undead that had managed to keep up with him.
It seemed even the ones personally raised by this big shot still lost a good amount of their strength because he was not the fastest person in that battle. Turning another corner Donny cursed as he started climbing another staircase. There were stairs all over the city because of the way it was built and normally he didn''t care because it was the same as walking once your stats hit a curtain level but it was very different when your legs were tired.
At the top of the stairs he looked back again to see the undead had had no trouble with the stairs and were actually getting closer. This meant he would probably be better off just risking a fight. He could take three even if they were much stronger than the undead he had killed earlier.
Running around another corner Donny waited till they came running around it after him and took one of their heads off. That just left two and with them being so close he was able to turn and strike again before they were able to react to him. His second hit wasn''t as lethal but it would still make the fight easier.
Ducking under the first attack from the undead he hadn''t hit yet, Donny went for its leg and seeing it fall to the ground decided this fight was over since these three wouldn''t be able to chase him right away.
Finding a building with an intact door while running, Donny tried the handle and found it locked. Using his mana he opened it by messing with the lock. Walking inside he could tell he probably wasn''t the only person here but with them hiding they were probably just people who lived in the city so they shouldn''t kill him if they found him sleeping on their chair.
He was clearly just a normal person so they would understand he was a fighter that had needed a ce to recover. Using his mana to relock the door Donny grabbed the chair and brought it further from the door. He didn''t want to open any doors because it might cause whoever was hiding here to attack him so he just put the chair behind the only pir in the room and sat down.
He could feel that he would be asleep in a matter of seconds when he closed his eyes but it didn''t seem like he would be so lucky. Something was at the front door and while he didn''t know if it was the undead or just someone who was trying to get in because they were running like he had they were clearly motivated to get in.
He couldn''t just stay in his chair and let them break down the door so he got up and pulled his sword. Sadly this house had no windows he could use to look at what was at the door so he had to just open it and hope he could handle whatever it was. Waiting till the door stopped moving Donny swung it open and backed off.
Seeing a person he didn''t drop his guard right away because undead looked like normal people sometimes. The fact that they weren''t already attacking him was a good sign that they were just a normal human though. "Go away please." Donny didn''t want to get involved in their struggle to survive so he just made it clear he was hostile in the hopes the person would realize they were better off moving on. "Just let me in for a little while."
Donny didn''t understand how that would help them if he was just going to throw them out again in a few minutes so he said. "Go to that house over there. It''s empty." He didn''t know that for sure because the door had been torn down meaning anything could be inside but he didn''t really care.
"It doesn''t have a door." Donny shrugged and said. "Doors mean nothing if something wants to get inside a thin stone door won''t stop them." He was pretty sure they had been about to smash this door when he had opened it so they should be able to ept this as truth. "Just let me in."
Donny was starting to think he would be better off leaving and letting them go inside and take his ce. He could find somewhere else to sleep. "Fine,e on in." After the person walked inside Donny closed the door behind them and used Magic to make it get stuck closed. With this he would know if they had bad intentions towards him because they would have to break down the door to follow him into the streets they had been begging to get away from.
Looking down the street Donny decided to just move in the same direction as earlier to look for a ce to rest. This part of town seemed pretty quiet at the moment even if it had signs that something had happened here earlier so it was safe enough to walk around.
Chapter 213: Safety Restored
Chapter 213: Safety Restored
Donny was able to find another building to enter rtively fast; there were a few differences though. The main one being this was a split two story building so the only intact door was on the upper floor up a set of stairs. Donny guessed whoever owned this ce used the downstairs as a shopfront and the upper floor as a home for them and their family.
This was a prettymon set up for a lot of people but it was pretty rare for the entrance to the second floor to be outside. It was usually in one of the backrooms of the first floor so it made Donny wonder if this was an intentional thing the owner had done so his family didn''t have to go through the store anytime they wanted to go out.
He could see this being the case since this was a butchery; he wouldn''t want to have to walk through the back of a butchery everytime he left his house either. Walking up the stairs Donny tried the handle and found it was unlocked. He found this concerning but he still walked inside. He was met with a very normal looking front room to a house but sadly there were no cushions anywhere so he would only be able to sleep on the bare stone.
He wasn''t ready to go to sleep this time though because with the door being unlocked he needed to see what had opened it. There was a good chance he was alone but he needed to make sure whatever could be inside wouldn''t kill him if it found him asleep. Creeping over to the first door Donny tried the handle and found it locked. He wasn''t surprised by this and decided he could leave this one forst.
The next door was open and he saw it led into a bedroom that seemed to belong to children. He went inside briefly and looked around to see if anyone was hiding here. He found no one and decided this would be his new ce to sleep since there was a bed and even if it was too short for him it was better than nothing.
Going back to the locked door Donny decided to use his mana to look inside instead of going in personally. It would expend a lot of mana to do a good search since he didn''t have an actual Earth affinity and would have to use Metal magic''s principles, which were very simr, but it was better than getting sted by a spell as soon as he opened the door. He was also about to sleep hopefully so his mana would have time to refill.
Feeling around Donny felt nothing he thought could be a person or monster on the stone floor but they had a few things inside that they could be hiding on top of like their presumably wooden bed frame. If they were really still there was a chance he wouldn''t be able to tell they were on it but with them hiding like this he was pretty sure they would just be normal people so he was fine to use their other room.
On the off chance they left their hiding ce and came into the other room he would just be a sleeping warrior but to make sure they understood his allegiances he took out his family crest and Fighters guild badge and put it on the floor so it would be the first thing they saw when they opened the door.
Getting on the bed Donny thought about getting the other bed closer so he could use it for his feet but he realized he didn''t have the power to make himself get back up so he just closed his eyes. Usually he would need to take off a few pieces of his armor to sleep but he didn''t think it would be a problem this time.
...
Lake looked at the most recent kill and then at the thing that said he had leveled up. He wasn''t too surprised that it had happened but it was just that thisst undead he had killed had given him more exp than the others. He still didn''t know what would cause this but he was pretty sure it meant this undead was stronger.
Maybe the undead were starting to pass some type of threshold so their Exp amount was going up but he also thought it was possible this one had killed someone and leveled up. It made sense to him that a few of them had managed to find people to kill even if everyone was hiding at the moment.
The gargoyles had also shown the ability to break down doors pretty easily so he was sure the undead had been part of a raid or something that ended in it getting a kill. The gargoyles had shown they didn''t need living bodies to do whatever they did to make undead so he was sure this was actually a more efficient way of making more of them.
The undead would kill the people to level up and the gargoyles would raise them into undead. This is probably what they would have been doing to every person in the city if he hadn''t been here to kill them all as soon as they emerged.
Lake was pretty sure they were almostpletely done clearing out the city since they had already walked the major roads and it was such a small town so he went ahead and looked at his stats.
Race: Human Lv.14 ( 7/10 )
Job: Swordsman Lv.7 ( 32/640 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 140
Stamina 140
Mana 570
Strength 123
Endurance 15
Agility 105
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 134
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Thatst undead had been worth at least 33 Exp points which was a good amount considering all the others hadn''t even hit 5 Exp. It was too bad they hadn''t all been worth that amount because he would have probably already hit level ten and been able to get his next two Swordsman skills.
He was sure Swordsman would have other jobs it led to once he leveled it up all the way so that would be nice but he needed to start using his bow. Jobs you unlocked with the bow gave Perception so the fact that he hadn''t been using it was a little stupid he just felt he was always in closebat and he couldn''t guarantee he would kill something if he hit it with an arrow.
This meant he needed to take some time and go hunting so he could unlock the Hunter job. It would be a perfect thing for him to do on the way out of the Metal Domain when he went to unlock Bandit since he was going to have to spend some time in the woods anyway. Archer was also one of his Unique jobs so he might get lucky and find Hunter was as well.
Taking the time to stare at his free stat points Lake once again thought about putting some of them into Perception but stopped himself because he knew he would regret it as soon as he hit 200 in Perception and was no longer able to level any jobs that gave Perception on level up.
It was really tempting though so he needed to find something else to do so he didn''t talk himself into it. "It''s kind of gross so I understand if you aren''t willing but do you all want to gather up the undead so we can burn them? If we aren''t careful they might end up getting revived by any Demon Worshipers that arrive if we just leave them lying around."
This sounded like a very time consuming thing to do so it would be perfect for them. They were underground but this ce had amazing venttion so he wasn''t worried about the smoke it would make either. "That sounds like a good idea but some of us are starting to run low on food so maybe we should take care of that first."
Lake could see that being the case because they all needed to have a few meals a day so he was sure they had burned through their food. "Ok I''m not from here so lead the way." This would also keep him from eating what was left of the stuff he had taken from the Alchemist guild before he left.
Even with him only taking a few bites here and there he was starting to get through all of his bread and meat. The only thing he hadn''t really touched was the block of cheese he had because it was irreceable unless he went home to the guild where Millie was. "Alright let''s start in the market, I don''t see why the monsters would have stolen any of the food so there should still be stuff around that we can find."
Lake had been interested in some of the things he had seen the people on the streets eating so this was a great opportunity for him since all the food he had had from here was really dry bread.
Chapter 214: Hardly Working
Chapter 214: Hardly Working
Lake was surprised at how easy it had been for them to find enough food for the day. He had kind of expected that the people would have panic bought all of it over thest few days but he guessed they had more than enough to go around. It was a good thing though because it let them get to work on cleanup of all the monster corpses.
Instead of moving them all towards one big pile, one of the people said they should just burn them where they were and Lake thought that was a good idea because he had already done a pretty good job of burning them because of the way he fought undead. Most of them only had partial bodies left because of this so he felt moving them would be really messy.
"What should we do with the gargoyles?" He wasn''t sure if they could also be revived by the Demon worshipers so he went ahead and asked the dwarves from the temple. "I don''t think they will be of any use to anyone but I would like to know if the metal used for them was this color to begin with."
"Oh you mean how they look rusty in the middle." Lake had also noticed that but he had just used it as a way to know if he had cut deep enough and had thought nothing of it. "Yeah I don''t think it''s rust which means the Demon Lord finally found a way to make an unholy metal even if it doesn''t seem to have a very strong aura."
Lake found this an interesting thing to hear from a member of the Metal Temple so he asked more to see if he could get any inside information. "What do you mean finally? Are you saying it''s the first time you have ever seen Unholy metal?" If this was truly the first time this was probably a big deal to them so it was kind of cool to be here to see it.
"We''ve heard reports but this is the first time I''ve seen it with my own eyes though I wouldn''t be surprised if all the higher ups already knew it was real or had even seen small samples." Nodding Lake asked. "What was stopping him from making an Unholy metal up until now?"
It didn''t sound that hard to him so it must be a lot moreplicated than he thought. "Well usually what people think of as elemental metal is actually just enchanted metal." Lake could already tell this was about to be a really long exnation so he just made sure to do his best to listen to the end.
"Elemental Metals are very different and usually can only be found in the gods'' domain unless they have worked with the God of Metal to spread them to other ces. So there are two main reasons the Demon Lord couldn''t make a metal and they are the God of Metal and the fact that the Demon Lord doesn''t have a domain. That being said he has broken rules like these before so it was just a matter of time."
It wasn''t as long as Lake expected but he had another question. "You said the Demon Lord doesn''t have a domain, is that because he isn''t actually a god?" The Demon Lord had not ascended yet and this was the only thing that made him any different to the other gods. "Yes, when a new god ascends they be a part of the world and their domain is where their influence is the strongest. At the moment the Demon Lord is pretending that the Dark Domain is his, when you''re there ites off that way as well so it''s pretty convincing."
Lake found the fact that it sounded like the dwarf had been there before interesting so he asked. "You''ve been there?" Lake had always wanted to know what it was like there ever since he had heard the Demon Lord had done something to the Dark Goddess to piggyback off of her element and that the gods had their own domains.
"Yes a few years ago right around the time I became one of the guards for the Metal Temple''s Head. I can''t tell you why we went or much of what happened while we were there but I will say it made me think about getting a new position. Thankfully we have no ns to go back any time soon."
Lake wanted to know more so he tried his luck by asking. "I know you can''t say anything that was part of your mission or whatever you were doing there but could you tell me some of the stuff you saw that wasn''t important to what you were doing." He had high Charisma so he felt there was a good chance he could get a small amount of details.
"Oh well just a lot of the stuff we''re seeing here now. The flesh monsters were a lot smaller than that one though." As the dwarf said this he pointed at the formation that was still covering the city. "They moved around and attacked us though so them being smaller wasn''t really a good thing."
This made Lake wonder what would happen if this thing started to move again. It had already torn a good number of the buildings apart in the short amount of time it was active so he was sure it could level the city if that was what it wanted. This gave them something else to worry about if the fight didn''t go the Demon Worshipers way.
"We''re done here." Lake looked up to see Grandy was talking to him about the now cleared street. "Ok let''s go to the next one." The next ce they needed to clear was close so Lake was able to lead them there pretty quickly before starting his conversation with the dwarf again. "So how is this elemental metal better than an enchanted one?"
"Well when ites to crafting the more enchantments you put on something the harder it is so with Elemental metals it''s almost like they get a free one but there''s a lot more to it than that. Divine weapons are a good example of what makes Elemental metals better since they''re like a solid version of the element the gods can make weapons and such for their followers. The only thing better than a Divine weapon is an artifact but there''s a limited number of those so good luck getting your hands on one."
"So is there a Metal element metal?" Lake had to know now that he thought of it. "Yep, all of them. Like I said earlier the God of metal kind of controls all of them and where you can find them. It''s kind of like a coboration between him and the other gods he works with. There''s also one that''s just Metal. I know that''s what you were asking."
Looking around and seeing they were not done here yet, Lake went ahead and continued asking questions because it wasn''t everyday that you found someone who would talk to you forever and knew stuff you wanted to know. "Are they hard to find?" Lake wanted to know if you could just go out with a pickaxe and get some or if you needed to be extremely lucky to find it.
"It depends on what type you''re talking about. For example Fire metals are extremelymon because the God of Metal and the God of Fire work together to spread it around but wind metal is extremely rare. There are mines you can go to to get any of them though if you''re willing to pay."
Lake would probably just take them if he needed them but it was nice to hear there was a supply. He was about to end the conversation when he remembered something he had stolen a long time ago in one of the first ces he broke into in this world. Reaching into his bag, Lake found it in the Booster Bag where he had ced it when he transferred almost everything to his new bag.
"Do you know what this is?" Handing the man the ingot of metal he had taken out of the desk in that office a long time ago, Lake saw the dwarf inspect it for a while before he said. "Ice Metal, pretty high level too, where''d you get it?" Lake had stolen it but he had the perfect cover for this.
"I got it off a thief. That''s one of the good things about working for the Fighters guild. You never know what you''re going to find after you clear out a bunch of bandits." This was all true if you considered him taking it out of his backpack as taking it from a thief. "Well if you ever get the chance you should bring it to the cksmiths guild to have it forged."
Lake nodded while taking the ingot back from the man to put into his backpack. He had always wanted to try cksmithing because he felt there was a chance it would be a Unique job and thought maybe bringing this into the cksmiths guild could be a good introduction to how it worked.
Chapter 215: Three Hours
Chapter 215: Three Hours
"Alright, it''s break time." Lake had been leading them around for a few hours now and he had heard a few whisperedints so he thought it was a good time to let them stop working. They had cleared most of the big piles already anyway so from now on it would be them going into the houses he had killed the undead that couldn''t move.
This would be a lot slower of a job so he was fine with them wasting a few hours since in the long run it wouldn''t really matter. Finding one of the other dwarves from the temple, Lake decided to see if they were willing to talk on the way back to the base. "So how long have you worked for the Temple?"
Lake had realized these people were a trove of knowledge and since they had nothing better to do they were willing to talk to him about anything. "My whole adult life." The man looked kind of old so Lake didn''t know what that meant and after a second it seemed the man understood Lake was confused because he said. "Thirty Five years."
That was a really long time which meant this guy was probably a good person to ask about how things had changed over time. "So how long has the Temple Head been there?" He had noticed Lucas seemed to be a lot older than he actually was so he was wondering if the Temple Head was the same.
"The current temple Head has been around for almost as long as the Temple itself. I think he''s on year 92 of his position in the temple." The Temple Head was an old man and depending on the way dwarves aged he could be well over 100 naturally so it might not be the same as with Lucas.
With Lucas'' position Lake was pretty sure he had some kind of potion that lowered his age. "Is it an election to pick the Temple Head?" The dwarf started to shake his head and said. "The Oracle askes the God of Metal whenever we need a new one and he chooses for us that being said he chooses from a small group we put forward ourselves so it''s like a mix."
"Is it like that in every temple or just here?" He also wanted to know if every temple had its own Oracle and what kind of things they could do but he would ask that next. "Most of them are like that but there are a few gods that don''t have Temples like the God of Antimagic. He only has a small domain with almost no one that lives there."
"Why is that?" Lake could kind of guess but he wanted to hear from the dwarf. "Magic doesn''t work very well inside the Antimagic domain so the only people that live there are people with no magical talent because they are able to live there without worrying about running into mages. It''s a warrior''s paradise."
This sounded like an interesting ce but he had no reason to go there since he nned to get serious about magic soon. Going back to the Oracle thing Lake asked. "Do a lot of gods have Oracles?" The dwarf nodded and said. "It''s usually the first Legendary job a god gives after they ascend so they can speak with their followers easier."
"And what kind of things can the Oracles do?" Lake found them being able to tell the future unlikely but he still wanted to make sure to know if he should try and steer clear of robbing the Temples. "Mostly just passing down the God''s orders but they all get other skills like any other job meaning they all have things they can do that don''t involve the gods. The Fire Oracle has been known to fight in battles so that tells you the kind of differences the skills have depending on which god they follow."
"What''s the Metal Oracle like?" Lake hadn''t heard anything about being able to read the future yet so he was starting to think they couldn''t. "She''s nice but she mainly just worries about finding new metal deposits so we know where to dig so we don''t see much of her. It''s been over a month since we heard anything from her or the God of Metal."
"Is that normal?" The dwarf nodded and said. "Yeah he really only says anything to us if we do something wrong so we all take it as a good thing when we haven''t heard anything from him."
"What was thest thing he told you guys?" Lake was actually kind of surprised when the dwarf answered this question because he felt it was over the line for him to even ask. "He told us to hire the Fighters guild to investigate and hunt the Demon Worshipers." Foresight was kind of like being able to see the future so maybe the gods were able to do it to an extent because if they could see the actual future they would have just told them what the Demon Worshipers were doing.
It was probably like what the insider did when it showed him a vision of what could happen. It might have just been that someone told the God of Metal that there might be something going on here and that he should look into it. "So do you know where the Oracle is right now?"
"I don''t but the Temple Head has a way to find her if we need to talk to her." The dwarf didn''t seem worried about her not being around so Lake had no reason to ask about her anymore and just went straight to what he wanted to know. "Can they tell the future?" The Dwarf started tough at this question and said. "That would be nice, but no, or at least ours can''t. We''ve heard that there''s something simr to future telling that some of them can do but it''s more of a prediction." So exactly what he thought.
They were back to their base so Lake nodded to the dwarf and led the others into the building. He still had another dwarf to talk to but he didn''t know what he wanted to ask them about yet so he would save it forter.
...
Donny heard something and opened his eyes to look around the room. He quickly found out that he was safe and nothing had gotten into the room he was using to sleep. That meant it had probablye from outside because it hadn''te from the direction of the other room. Getting onto his feet that hadn''t really ever left the floor Donny walked over to the door and cracked it open.
Once he saw the front door was still intact he picked up his guild badge and family crest and put them back into his bag. Opening the door Donny looked to see the other door was still closed so he was almost curtain nothing hade in while he slept. Looking at his Stamina and seeing it was full he decided that he had been able to sleep for almost three hours and in a time like this that was pretty good.
He would be able to get through the day with that much sleep no problem so he needed to go and find the army he was supposed to be a part of. He was sure he wasn''t the only person who had run yesterday when all the bodies started to get up but he was probably one of thest toe back.
He had been too tired and he was afraid if he went back to meet up with the main group they would have been put into another fight by whoever was leading the group. If that had happened he knew there was no way he would have lived through the battle. He had no ns to just stay here and hide until it was over though so it was more like he had retreated than ran away.
Cracking the front door Donny saw that the street was still empty of people and opened it enough to walk out before closing the door again. He nned to use this ce if he ended up needing to retreat to sleep again today so he didn''t want anything getting inside while he was gone.
Donny could vaguely hear that there was something going on close to where he was but it was in the middle of the night so he wasn''t sure if it would be safe to start walking the streets to get to the battle so he climbed to the roof of the building instead of going down the stairs. Once he was on top of the building he saw that there was a lit area not far from him that he could get to using the roofs of the buildings so he started towards it.
He was sure that it would be the humans that were fighting using some type of magic to light the area so that they could see well enough to fight. As he was getting closer and closer Donny started to see something new he hadn''t seen yet. He could tell by their color they were most likely with the Demon Worshipers but what really gave it away was the fact they were dragging screaming people into buildings.
He wasn''t sure what they were but they would most likely be some type of new undead monster the Demon Worshipers were nning to use too surprise them enough to get an advantage in the first few fights that the new monster were in. It seemed to be working to with the number of people they were dragging away.
Getting his sword ready Donny fell onto the next one that passed aiming to slice its arm off to free the screaming man it had. When his sword hit and Donny was able to feel how solid the arm actually was he realized he hadn''t used enough power to get past whatever its flesh was made from.
Dodging the attack from the monster Donny got a better look at it and realized what it was. It was a gargoyle and he could tell from the first hit that it was the metal kind. Making a small smile Donny used his Mana to lock onto the monster and in the next second shrapnel went flying in every direction.
Donny knew he was probably one of the few that could use Mana Control good enough to do this but he found the fact that the Demon Worshipers decided to use gargoyles to attack the Metal domain funny. Most of the people here learned how to fight using gargoyles since they were so easy to make and you could summon them anywhere if you could use Earth or Metal magic.
He then remembered the fact that all the Metal Mana and Earth Mana in the city was missing and wondered if the Demon Worshipers had used it to summon these Gargoyles; if that was the case it would have been free to them, so it was a good choice because a free army was always better than one you had to pay for, even if it wasn''t the most suited to who you were fighting.
Looking down at the man he had saved, Donny decided the man still had a chance of surviving so he helped him up and carried him into a small alley before asking. "Are there a lot of them?" Donny could probably only use that trick a few dozen times before he ran out of mana so he wanted to know if he was better off saving his mana for something else.
The man nodded and said. "Healing." Donny was going to have to disappoint the man because he didn''t have any potions. "No, sorry, you''re going to stay fucked up." The man nodded down at his bag and said. "My bag." Donny realized the man wasn''t asking for his but wanted Donny to get his for him.
Donny dug around in the man''s bag until he felt the bottle and pulled it out before grimacing. It was the cheap kind meaning he was right about the guy staying fucked up. All this would do was speed up the man''s clotting so he didn''t bleed to death. It was better than nothing though so he fed the man the bottle.
Chapter 216: Drag
Chapter 216: Drag
Once the man''s wounds had closed Donny got him onto his feet and helped him into a ce he could try and hide. Donny couldn''t just stay with him forever and he nned to try and save a few more people from the hands of the gargoyles and bring them here so they could watch each other.
Even if they were wounded he was sure one of them would have an actual Health potion and after Donny had given some it to all of them he would be able to lead them back to the battle. It would be a nice little reinforcement force he had snatched from the Demon Worshipers. He wasn''t stupid so he could guess what they nned to do with the people the Gargoyles were dragging away.
He was sure they would be back in the fight as undead soon after they disappeared. "Alright I''ll be right back." Donny could hear another person screaming so he wanted to chase down the Gargoyle before it got too far. Following the sound he saw the man that was screaming had his hand on a railing while the gargoyle was trying to pull him into a building.
Running over Donny used Mana Control to rip the Gargoyles Metal body apart before grabbing the man to inspect his injuries. This guy was in a lot better condition than the first guy with his only big injury being to one of his legs. "Oh thank you, thank you." Picking the guy up Donny started to carry him towards the first guy while asking. "Do you have any potions?"
"The man started to look down and said. "Only a Mana potion." This was actually good news because it meant Donny could go around and kill Gargoyles with his mana for longer. "I need it." Donny wasn''t asking but thankfully the man had seen what Donny had done to the gargoyle so he handed it over with no fuss.
Getting the guy back to the other man Donny said. "Take care of him while I''m gone." The first guy he had helped seemed to have passed out so he waspletely helpless at the moment. This second guy was a mage so Donny had hope he could take out one enemy if they just happened along.
"Wait where are you going?" Donny just ran off towards the only other scream he could hear that wasn''t taking ce from therge battle that he was working his way around. Finding a woman that seemed to have gotten the gargoyle''s hand off of her leg and was trying to crawl away from it Donny once again destroyed it with his mana and Helped her up.
She seemed fine, so he asked. "Health potions?" Because with her being ok she should have at least an empty bottle of one. "No, I drank it while it was dragging me. There''s still some at base I think." Hearing the word base Donny was interested but he said. "Follow me." Before he started asking her anything about this base.
Once they were moving towards the first two he had saved he asked. "Where''s this base at?"
"It''s in the center of the light. I think it was a market before the Temple put up the walls."
So it was the light he had seen earlier. "Ok I need you to help me with something. I n to save people who are getting dragged away but some of them are in bad condition so I need you to help me guard them while I get the guy we can hear screaming." After he said this he pointed towards the alley the first two were in and said. "In there."
After he said this he rushed off towards the screams. There was a new one every minute or so so he had plenty to do and lots of people to save before he went and joined the main battle.
...
"Do you think they would mind if I took this?" Lake had found a cool bottle that had somehow survived the fall off of the shelf it had been on. It looked like it was made of emerald and he couldn''t help but think it was perfect to put poison in when he got around to making some. "I don''t think they''ll notice."
The dwarf was obviously saying they would see the pile of shattered ss and just assume this bottle had shattered as well since all the broken ones were green as well. "You''re right." Lake also knew there was a good chance whoever had lived here was dead since the door had been knocked down so they wouldn''t be needing it.
Putting it into his bag Lake found he was unable to put it into the Booster Bag space and took that to mean they were dead since this didn''t count as stealing. "Ok I''ll get its legs." This was the fourth time he and this dwarf had carried a body out of a building and they had called the feet every time.
It was fine because Lake could probably do it himself with how high his strength was but Lake was pretty sure they were doing it because Lake had used fire when he had killed these undead and it had burned most of their upper body leaving Lake to grab a handful of cooked meat while they moved it.
The little guy was being greedy not grabbing the gross side even once and Lake decided he was going to put a stop to it. The next one they went for he was going to call the legs as soon as they got close to the building. Throwing the body out onto the road Lake watched as one of the people that could use fire magic set the corpse aze and said. "Next."
Walking to the next building Lake made sure to be the first one in the door and said. "I call the legs." Hearing this the dwarf stopped and said. "You can only call once you can see the body." Lake started shaking his head and said. "I can see it." Lake couldn''t really see it very well even if he used Mana Vision and Detector really only showed him what it was shaped like and where it was but it was still enough to im he could see it.
"You can see through walls? That''s not really in the spirit of the game." Lake shrugged and said. "All I care about is winning." Running into the back room Lake grabbed the legs like he said he would and waited for the dwarf to find a good hand hold on the upper part of the body. They went with a rib that had been scorched clean of flesh but still had enough strength to be used as a handle.
Seeing the man''s short stature was making it hard for him to lift the upper body far enough off the ground that it didn''t drag, Lake started to realize the man had a reason to want to get the feet. The best way for the man to do this would be to lift it above his head but Lake could understand why the man didn''t want to hold a dripping corpse above their head.
Getting it outside Lake pointed to someone who was as tall as him and said. "It''s your turn,e on." Lake had originally asked the dwarf to help him to give himself a chance to talk to them but the third dwarf was much younger than the other two and didn''t seem to be as interested in talking.
It made perfect sense for him to switch out his helper if this was the case. "Alright, the next one is in here." Lake was pointing at the next building that had a dead undead in it. Leading the guy in Lake said. "It has an arm so let''s just drag it out." There was already a blood trail through the building so whatever mess they made didn''t matter.
...
In thest few minutes Donny had been able to save another five people and brought them back to the alley way he had the others in. Thisst guy had had a health potion but it was the cheap kind again so he was still unable to actually get the people that were really tore up back up and fighting.
He would find one eventually though, all he needed to do was keep at it. "He''s asleep, help me feed him this." The Last guy was knocked out while Donny was saving him because the gargoyle had used him as a weapon so they needed to get the potion down his throat without choking him.
Hearing another scream getting closer Donny said. "You''ve got it so I''m going to go." Running towards the noise Donny saw that the person that was being dragged was actually someone he knew. He didn''t know them very well but he had worked with him the first day he had arrived. He could also see the man was in terrible shape. It seemed he had been hit with a spell before the gargoyle had gotten him.
Chapter 217: Cleared
Chapter 217: Cleared
Lake looked back down the street that they had just finished clearing and said. "I think we should be done for the day." It had been a few more hours and he was starting to think another wave of undead would being out soon. They had run into a few really weak undead in the past ten minutes and he was pretty sure they were seeing the work of the few gargoyles that had been able to find a second person to turn before he had found and killed them.
It was fine it would give them something else to do tomorrow that wasn''t just this again. Even if both jobs were repetitive, Lake much preferred hunting to cleaning even if he had found a few cool things while going through people''s houses. "I think that would be for the best." Lake looked at the guy who agreed with him and could tell he was just saying this because he didn''t want to work anymore.
"Alright go see if everyone has food or if we need to stop and get some more before we return to base." Finding someone who was actually someone he should be talking about their ns with Lake said. "We''re about to go back to base so no one gets attacked while I''m in a building." Lake had to go in because there was a chance there would be a living monster in every building he went into so while he was inside they could get targeted.
He wasn''t too worried about one gargoyle but the Undead seemed interested in tricking people and Lake was afraid someone might fall for it if he wasn''t there with Detector to tell them the truth. "We should go get some water first. Everyone''s bottles are empty." Lake nodded and asked. "Are we good on food?"
He had already asked that other guy to check but Lake was pretty sure this dwarf would know since they had brought up water. "Yes we shouldn''t need to go look for more for another day." Hearing this, Lake yelled to the guy he had sent to ask to stop and then said. "Follow me." Once they were on the move Lake stopped at the first well they saw and let everyone fill their bottles.
He was still a little worried about the water but after watching everyone drink some he guessed there was nothing he really needed to worry about. He was still going to wait tillter to drink the water he gathered though. "Ok let''s go home."
...
Donny had filled the alley at this point and was starting to think he wouldn''t be able to heal the ones that really needed it even if he was lucky enough to get a high quality potion because he wouldn''t be able to split it between everyone who needed it. They were also starting to draw attention because of the amount of people here.
Looking at the group of people that were in good enough shape to fight he said. "We need to get a better ce to put everyone. Let''s clear this ce out." He was pointing at the ce right next to him. He was pretty sure there would be something inside so they would need to kill whatever it was before they started to move the wounded inside.
"We can do it, just worry about saving more people." The people he had saved unsurprisingly had gotten behind his n of saving the people being taken by the gargoyles and were willing to help him so he took them up on their offer to clear out the building for him. "Ok." He needed to go anyway there was another person being taken that he could hear.
The amount of people had increased over time so he hadn''t really had any time in between rescues to do anything other than take a few sips of various potions he had taken from the passed out people. It was keeping his resource bars full so it was nice but he was feeling kind of overworked and that he wouldn''t be able tost long enough to bring them to the battle.
This wasn''t the time to worry about how hungry he was though. "I''ll be right back." Passing through an ally to the next road over Donny saw that there were two gargoyles with the same person. It didn''t stay that way though because as soon as they saw him the second one that wasn''t doing anything ran towards him.
Blowing it into pieces Donny went after the one dragging the guy and killed it too. Seeing the guy was conscious he asked. "How''s the battle going?" The guy grabbed something out of his bag said. "Bad." and started to drink a potion. Donny saw it was the same cheap potion the others had so he just let the guy have as much as he wanted. They had a surplus of them back at his alley base so he wasn''t too worried about taking this one from him.
"Bad how?" Donny wanted more details because this was the first time he had asked someone and they hadn''t given him a good answer. "We''re running low on people that aren''t hurt." So the same problem he had with his people. It was because they didn''t have good potions so they were losing to attrition.
This was what usually happened against the Demon Lord since his army didn''t really need to be healed to keep fighting with any that died just being turned undead. "How''s the base itself doing?" As long as their base was still in one piece they didn''t really need to worry about being overrun right away and it gave Donny more time to build his reinforcements.
"It''s the only thing keeping us alive. The only problem is gargoyles are so good at climbing up the walls and grabbing our ankles." This sounded about right to him. "Alright, well follow me." Donny wanted to get this guy back as soon as he could because he was in good enough shape to fight and his group needed more people like that.
"It looks like the others are already inside so just stay out here and help these people." They had only left one guard outside so this man would be of more help if he stayed out here to help fight off anything that noticed them. After saying this he started up the stairs to see if the fight inside had gone well or not.
Once inside he saw that the people weren''t in the first room and had moved deeper in the building. Seeing an open door Donny went inside. Seeing a smashed gargoyle and that his team was fine he asked them. "What are you doing?" They were crouched around a body for some reason and he wanted to know why they hadn''t gone outside yet.
"They''re still breathing and we were discussing what we should do." Moving one of them out of the way so he could get a better look at the person on the floor Donny saw that they were right but that didn''t mean this person was alive. "What was the gargoyle doing when you came inside?"
"It attacked us as soon as we came into the room." This didn''t really tell Donny anything but looking at how good the body''s shape was he said. "I don''t think this is a normal person anymore. Why would the gargoyle leave them alive?" Even the best of the people he had saved had been slightly hurt so the fact this person waspletely fine made no sense.
Donny could tell these people didn''t want to take the risk though so he said. "I''ll deal with it, go back outside." He was 100% sure he was right so he had no problem killing this monster even if it looked like a normal sleeping person. Decapitating the undead Donny felt the Exp and put his weapon up before heading outside. "Start getting the wounded inside, I have to go again." They could all hear the screams so he needed to go before any of them got too far.
It seemed even the few minutes he had spent here had been too long. "Find me something to eat while I''m gone." he could eat on the run as long as he had something so he would get it when he got back.
Finding the first and closest of the three he could hear yelling about needing help Donny saw this guy hadn''t stopped fighting and was still hitting the gargoyle while being pulled along the ground. This was a good sign for them so Donny ran out to help. Killing the gargoyle the man said. "I almost had it but thanks for the help."
The guy looked like he was about to run back to the main battle so Donny said. "There''s a group of survivors over here that we need help guarding." The man looked at him and asked. "Survivors?"
"I''ve been killing the gargoyles that have been dragging people away for a while." The man looked really excited as Donny said this and said. "Did you save my wife?" Donny didn''t know but he had saved a few women so he said. "Maybe, go look, I have to go and get the next person."
Donny pointed towards the alley the others were in and ran off to get the next person. This guy was fine so even if it took him some time he would be able to find the others on his own.
Chapter 218: Early Bird
Chapter 218: Early Bird
Seeing that the others nned to sleep now that they had gotten back to the base, Lake told one of the dwarves that would most likely be one of the first guards. "I''m going back out there to hunt for a while. I''ll be back every hour or so." Once that was said he walked out the door.
Switching Detector to look for gargoyles Lake started down the road. "Hello, I need help." Turning around Lake saw someone on the streeting towards him. He wasn''t sure where they hade from because the road had been clear when he opened the door but he was pretty sure they were an undead so he was just going to kill them and move on.
He made sure before he attacked though by switching Detector to look for undead. Seeing the guy start to glow, Lake asked. "Are you an undead?" He already knew but he wanted to see what the guy would say. "No, I''m not." It was a pretty weak lie but Lake was sure it would get a lot of people because it was so simple.
"Can you prove it?" The guy was getting kind of close now and Lake thought about ending this but he was kind of interested to see if they would drop the fa?ade and attack or would keep it going even when he got close. "How?"
Lake wasn''t sure how they differed from normal people in ways that you could see so he had nothing to say to this that made sense. "Cut your finger off." He was pretty sure undead would regrow their finger so this was a real test but it was impractical. "No. I can''t." Lake didn''t see why they couldn''t so he said. "Why not?"
"Because I can''t afford to grow it back. I''ll be fingerless forever." This was a good cover story but Lake had an offer a normal person couldn''t refuse. "I''m an alchemist. I''ll get you a potion to regrow it once this is over."
"How can I trust you actually will?"
"How can I trust you aren''t undead?"
The undead had gotten close enough to Lake that an attack on a normal person might work and with their conversation hitting a wall he felt there was a good chance they would go for it. Waiting with bated breath Lake didn''t even hear thest thing they started to say as they attacked.
Dodging the attack, Lake said. "Why did you attack me?" It seemed the undead wasn''t going to keep ying along and just attacked him again. Pulling his sword, Lake used Imbue Fire and sliced them in half. Feeling the amount of Exp Lake knew this one had probably just emerged within the hour.
Switching his Detector back to gargoyles since the undead usually announced themselves, Lake headed towards the center of the city only stopping twice to kill gargoyles. After he passed the city center and headed into the area that they had been working earlier, Lake started to see more monsters in general.
He was starting to think undead were a lot like cockroaches because it felt like no matter how many he killed there were still one or two somewhere in the city. It was annoying because he wanted to be done with them but he guessed as long as there was a single gargoyle that evaded him and found prey he would keep running into them every few hours.
Setting the bodies of the undead he had killed on fire, Lake moved into another area and saw there was a gargoyle on top of one of the buildings in front of him. Jumping up and using Crunch Lake sliced it in half before kicking it towards the edge of the city where the barrier was.
He hit the barrier with the upper half of the gargoyle but seeing the new dent that was on the tip of his metal boot he wished he hadn''t done what he did. It was pinching his toe now so he sat down and took it off. Putting his hand inside of his boot and using all his strength to un-dent it, Lake decided it was as good as he needed it to be and put it back on.
Wiggling his toes around he was satisfied with his work and was about to get up when he heard something he hadn''t heard in a day or so. Someone was screaming the kind of scream that meant they needed help. It sounded like someone who was getting dragged by a gargoyle and it meant there might have been another survivor in the city after all.
Well he knew there were people here, just none that weren''t hiding extremely well. He was pretty sure most of the people had some kind of stone basement used for situations like these that were hard to find unless you could feel stone the way he had seen Grendia do. Running towards the sound Lake saw he was right that it was someone being taken away into a building and rushed down to slice the gargoyle that was doing it in half.
"I cant believe someone was actually around. Thank you." Lake gave them a thumbs up while using Detector to make sure this wasn''t some trick. He didn''t think the gargoyles were very smart but that didn''t mean they didn''t know how to follow directions. Seeing this person was not an undead Lake started to talk.
"Why did youe out?" This person wasn''t a fighter so they should have stayed inside unless there was a good reason they couldn''t. "We ran out of food or the people that were letting me hide with them did and since I was the reason they had run out so fast I agreed to be the first to go out and try to find more."
Lake hadn''t thought of the fact that other people wouldn''t have enough food tost till they were let out of the barrier. This could be a real problem if this imprisonmentsted for a long time. He needed to lead his group to stock up on as much food as they could while there was still some that hadn''t been imed.
He should also make himself a secret stash that he could use if the others went through all the stuff they gathered. He didn''t need to eat much so he would definitely be thest one left if they ran out of food entirely. "Well good luck with that." Lake turned to leave towards the market where he could start to bring food to a secret stash when the person stopped him.
"Would you mind helping me get there and back? I have money." Lake would usually help if someone paid him enough but keeping himself fed was more important and he didn''t want to be inpetition with the person he had saved while he was scavenging for food. "No I''m sorry but if you get attacked again just yell and I''lle running."
He might actually do this depending how sessful he was in his hunt for food. There had been plenty of food when they had gone to get somest time but there was no way to know how many people had been there since they had. If people were starting to run out of food they would risk a trip out to get more and since he had killed a high percentage of the monsters that were here they had a good chance of making it there just fine.
Arriving at where they had gotten their food, Lake saw that it looked very simr to what he had seen when they left yesterday so it looked like there hadn''t been any people here since they left. It seemed the person he had just saved might have been the first toe out and from what they had said about them being a guest that wasn''t originally supposed to be where they were it made sense that they had been the first ones to start to run out of food since they had an extra mouth to feed.
It was probably umon for people to let strangerse into their shelters so it would probably be another day before other people needed toe out to restock. Scooping arge amount of food into his arms, Lake started to run towards their base. He wanted all the food he gathered to be close to where he was staying so he was going to hide this in the building next to them before going to his group and telling them to get up.
He wanted to get at least half of the food in the market for them so he was going to need help. The building next to them had its door closed so Lake used Mana Vision to see if there were any people inside. He had looked inside a few times passively but never really taken the time to do a good job.
Seeing no one, Lake took his bundle of food into one of the bedrooms and slid it under the bed. Seeing that he had a lot of stuff all mixed together, Lake took the time to take out the stuff that would go bad first and move it to another part of the house. He chose to just set it on the table in the front room so if anyone came in they would see it and think it had been the food of the family that lived here.
Chapter 219: Never
Chapter 219: Never
Looking down the street he was passing on the way towards the next person he was going to save Donny saw there was a gargoyle dragging a silent person down the street. This wasn''t the first time he had seen this and he usually still saved these people on the off chance they were alive but Donny could tell this one wasn''t.
It was obvious with their guts spilling out that even if he was to get the best health potion in the world down their throat that they wouldn''t make it. He was about to move on and save someone he actually could when he noticed the corpse the gargoyle was dragging had a nice sized bag and with them being dead they shouldn''t have drank any of the potions yet.
Moving quickly Donny killed the gargoyle, grabbed the bag and continued towards the person he could actually save. He would look through the bag when he got the chance or if he couldn''t, pass it on to one of his people back at their new base. They would know what to do on the off chance there was a high grade health potion inside.
Stopping the gargoyle that had the living person Donny saw that they were in pretty good shape with the only real injury being their arm was broken. This was a serious injury but it wouldn''t stop a real warrior from fighting with their other arm. "Come on, there''s a second base for people that got dragged away."
Donny saw they wanted to put a sling on their arm before they started moving so he helped them and said. "I don''t have much time,e on." Once they got moving he asked. "How''s the fighting?" He''d been asking anyone who could speak since he had heard it had started to go bad because he wanted to know if it had turned around for them or if he needed to just keep his force hidden instead of trying to reinforce a broken army.
"Our only healer ran out of mana so I think we''re done for now. They were about to close the hatches when I got grabbed." It seemed the fortress was about to go into turtle mode. This meant he would be done saving people pretty soon. "How long do you think the base willst like that?"
"It''s surprisingly well made so I think they''ll be able tost a few days if they leave it closed up the whole time. That being said they''ll probably open it back up to continue the fight once everyone gets some rest." Donny was starting to get curious about this base. He hadn''t actually gotten close enough to see what it looked like till now because he had been so busy saving people since he started.
He wondered how they had been able to make it with the Metal and earth mana being gone. It was probably done by some of the Temples higher ups to give them another foothold in the city other than the temple itself. He wondered if they had done it to have a ce other than the temple to keep the people they couldn''t really trust.
Everyone knew that you never really knew if someone was a Demon Worshiper''s spy or not and he could understand why they hadn''t wanted to let all the people from the Fighters guild plus all the other groups that didn''t really have any other choice but to fight into their main headquarters.
"Could you estimate the amount of people left in the base?" Donny wanted to know how their numbers looked because it would give him a better idea of how much the people he saved would matter when he led them back to the fight. "There''s like five hundred. We''re starting to dwindle a littlepared to the Demon Worshipers but we have three sets of people if we rotate so more than enough for the size of the fortress."
"And you said there''s only one healer?" If that was true that person was probably more overworked than him. "Yeah I don''t know how but the Demon Worshipers were able to tell if someone could use Life magic and they were targeted at the beginning of the fight."
Donny wasn''t surprised by this because it made perfect sense to go after the healers first if you had someone on your side that could single them out. Donny knew there was a formation you could use to single people out based on their affinities and he wondered if this was how the Demon Worshipers had done it.
It was pretty obvious they had a high level formation master on their side so he wouldn''t be surprised if they were still here doing things to help them win. It was possible that the formation master that had designed this grand formation had never been here and the way they were finding the Life mages waspletely different though.
It was more likely to be a skill or something because usually formation masters were kept really safe so they wouldn''t be anywhere near the actual battle. Either way, with only one healer and no good potions around Donny couldn''t help but wonder if they really had an actual chance at winning this war.
He didn''t want to count them out yet but the Demon Worshipers had destroyed the only ce that could have changed this shortage at the beginning when they destroyed the guilds, specifically the Alchemist guild. There wasn''t a group from the Life Domain here in the Metal Domain either so the few healers they had in the Fighters guild had been it.
Arriving back at the new base Donny saw they had gotten most of the wounded inside already and that there was a new smashed gargoyle on the pile of destroyed gargoyles. It seemed his group had been able to stop it before it got anyone but he wouldn''t know till he went inside and counted.
"You can go inside. You can''t carry anyone like that." Grabbing one of the passed out people Donny got them off the ground and up into the new safehouse. Seeing one of his people he asked. "Where should I put him?"
"In the back room on the floor." After doing so Donny took a second to sit down. He had been going since he had saved the first person nonstop and with the fact his group numbered over fifty it was an impressive number of people that he had saved but also a lot of running and while carrying someone most of the time on the way back it had worn him out.
Seeing someone carrying another person Donny asked. "Is there any food?" Stamina potions could keep you going but they didn''t do much for your stomach, that was what rations were for. Sadly he hadn''t seen any so it looked like they were stuck looking for actual food from the surrounding buildings.
"Yeah there''s a bit, do you want me to get you some?" Donny nodded and said. "That would be nice?" Getting his bread and water Donny thanked them and asked. "Did that guy find his wife?" Donny had wanted to know how that had turned out but he hadn''t seen the guy again since. "What guy?"
"The buff guy with the sword." Donny guessed there was a chance the guy hadn''t made it here. And was about to get up to look around when another person came in and said. "We need help moving Peter." Peter was in the worst condition out of every person Donny had saved and none of them really even understood how he was still alive.
Donny wasn''t going to leave him out in the alley way though so he said. "I''ll be right there." He could understand why they didn''t want to move him without at least three or more people because he had been hit by an unholy spell and his whole side seemed to be rotting away.
Donny was afraid if they weren''t careful with him while they were moving him Peter''s side would split open and his guts would fall out. That would definitely be the end of Peter if that happened because the low grade health potions they had couldn''t heal something like that. Getting outside Donny saw that there would be five of them moving him into the house.
That was enough that they would be able to glide him up the stairs if they knew what they were doing. Getting one of the shoulder spaces Donny said. "On three. One, two, three." Lifting Peter up one of the People on the other side said. "It''s too bad we don''t have someone who can use Unholy magic on our side. They could probably leech this Unholy mana out before it ate through him."
"On our side for a day and never again." Donny couldn''t help but say this. He was sure he wasn''t the only person here who had wisely chosen to pretend they couldn''t use Unholy magic for their whole life. "I''ve heard there are a few who have been able to resist the temptation." Donny would like to know if that was actually true or just something the Demon Lord had spread to make people think it was safe to get closer to him.
Chapter 220: Wind Formation
Chapter 220: Wind Formation
Looking at the food they had brought back on their first trip, Lake considered stopping here but decided it was worth going one more time. He knew he would regret beingzy if they actually ended up running out like he was worried about. Turning to Grandy Lake said. "Can you tell me when you''re done organizing all of this?"
Lake didn''t want to help so he was going to step outside and pretend he was doing something. Once he was outside he realized he was actually just being a lookout now and there was no pretending to it. It was still a better job though so he jumped onto the roof and sat on the box he had brought up there.
After a while Lake heard the door open so he jumped down and thanked Grandy for getting him. Walking inside he said. "Get ready to go for another round of gathering." He could tell a lot of them had thought they were done and were about to go to bed again. After he said this one of the dwarves from the temple walked over and asked. "Why are we gathering so much food?"
He was hoping they would have most of the food before someone asked so he didn''t have to debate anyone who thought it was wrong to take all the food but Lake wasn''t going to lie. "We don''t know how long we''ll be imprisoned here." The dwarf seemed to get what he was saying so Lake stopped there and waved for everyone toe with him.
On the way out the dwarf stopped him again and asked. "How much do you n to take?" Lake had already prepared a way to make what they were doing sound fine so he went into his prepared answers. "I want us to have fifteen days of food because we should know who won by then and will most likely be out of the barrier."
Fifteen days of food for the twenty of them wasn''t that much so the dwarf should drop it but if he didn''t Lake had an exnation about why no one would miss the food they were hoarding. "You really think it could take that long?" It seemed one of the people behind them had been listening to what he was saying but he was fine with that because he would rather talk about what they had asked him.
"No, we should be out of here in a few days at the most but it''s best to n for extra time." It seemed no one had anything else to say to him so Lake just silently walked them to the market. Once they were there they gathered enough food that they would probably only need toe one more time to hit the fifteen day goal he had set.
...
Donny hadn''t moved from Peter''s side since they brought him inside because he couldn''t get his eyes off of the wound that was slowly growing and eating through what was left of Peter''s side. It was a weird feeling to know he could save Peter if he tried but that wasn''t really what he was thinking about.
He was trying to figure out what they should do next. He had saved too many people that couldn''t do anything because of the shape they were in and sadly the bag he had ced all his hopes on hadn''t had anything that could solve their problems. This left them practically stranded and all that needed to happen for them to be wiped out was the Demon Worshipers noticing they were here.
It was too bad the metal mana was gone because he could have set a nice barrier of his own that could have kept them safe for a while if anything came to attack them. Formations were still their best bet even if he wasn''t the one that would be making it. "Hey, can any of you set formations?"
Donny decided to ask the people he had saved if any of them could make basic formations. Even if they could only make formations of the first circle he would be able to have them help him by powering the formation he designed with a different type of mana. After asking all the people he had saved he had two beginners to work with.
He wasn''t surprised that there weren''t any people here who were even at the first circle but at least he had found someone that was close. "Alright, which elements can you two use?" Since they were both beginners they should only say one each. "I''ve been training in Earth." That was as useless as Metal at the moment so Donny turned towards the other person.
"Wind." Donny perked up a little when he heard this because Wind formations were usually used to move people around which was something they needed if they wanted to get these wounded to a healer. "And you know how to power formations with Wind mana?" When the mage nodded Donny said. "Oke over here so we can start designing a formation."
Realizing they would also need a ce to work once the formation was designed Donny told the other mage that was still standing there. "Could you make us a way up to the roof?" Right after starting Donny realized they really were just a beginner with him having to do everything other than the part to power the formation.
Donny was still able to design what they needed even without their help though and soon he said. "Alright let''s go see how the path to the roof ising." Walking out into the main part of the house Donny could feel the draft that opening a hole into the roof had created and followed it to the new staircase the earth mage had almostpleted.
"Are you out of mana?" The mage nodded and Donny said. "It''s enough for now but we''ll need to be able to carry them up to the roof once we''re ready." Donny wasn''t ready to tell the others what his n was in case it didn''t go well but he would soon be breaking the news that they were going to try to get to the main fortress.
He wanted to get a look at the situation around the fortress before they headed out though. He thought it sounded like something he could do while testing out their new formation. After a few seconds of looking at the area they had to work with Donny said. "We need more room."
"We can conjoin the two roofs if we take that small wall down." Donny considered this and said. "It will be too loud if we smash it and the only person here that can use stone control with no Earth Mana is out of mana." This meant they were going to have to wait to start on the formation and Donny didn''t think they could waste that much time.
That meant he would have to let them use the few mana potions he had gathered during the time he had spent saving people from the gargoyles. "We should ask and see if there''s anyone else who has a skill that could help us with this." This was a good idea so Donny nodded and said. "Keep it to the awake people. There''s probably someone who could help us in the wounded but they''re better off staying asleep."
In the time since the fight had ended a few of the less wounded had woken up so they still had over twenty people to ask without bothering the people that were sleeping because they were close to death. "I''ll be right back." Donny nodded and looked back to where the fortress that was his new goal was.
The light was gone now so it wasn''t the beacon it had been when he had first started towards it but he saw this as a good thing. As long as they weren''t discovered he would know when to set out by when the light came back on because that would mean the fortress was open to fight. He would be able to take their new flying Formation there at that time.
...
Three dark figures were slowly making their way down the stars that would take them down to the 42nd tier. "Hurry it up, every second we waste will take time from the gargoyles to do their job." The group they were part of had just finished off the defense forces that were in the tiers above this one so it was time to let the gargoyles out to do their work.
Stepping onto the 42nd tier the one in the lead took something out of their robe and set it in front of the imprisonment barrier. "That should tell every gargoyle in the city to gather here so we can let them out so get ready to take the barrier down." Right after he got done saying this he heard the first set of metal ws ripping across the stone towards them.
Turning to look into the barrier he saw a gargoylend in front of the barrier. A few hundred more and they could open the barrier up to lead them up to the next tier. A minute Later another showed up and then another but after that over ten minutes passed with no more showing up. There were a lot of reasons something like this could happen but not being an idiot they said to the others. "There''s something wrong, get ready to drop the barrier so we can find out what."
In war whenever something went wrong it was because someone you hadn''t nned for had gotten involved and not knowing who it was would make him look bad in front of his superiors when he showed up with three gargoyles instead of three hundred. "Our orders are to bring the gargoyles back right away. We can ask to be sent to investigate what happened after we return."
Seeing the other two seemed to be in agreement the man sighed and said. "If we drop the barrier and leave, whatever killed all of the gargoyles will be able to escape. It''s better we go in now to look or leave the barrier intact until we can go and tell the others what happened."
After the other two heard this one of them said. "Let''s go and tell the others first. There''s a chance whatever killed them will be too strong for the three of us or that there will be a lot of them so it''s better toe back with numbers." Turning to climb back up the stairs the man sighed again. Bringing bad news to your boss was never a nice thing to do even when you had nothing to do with what had gone wrong.
Chapter 221: Hank’s Story
Chapter 221: Hank''s Story
Lake was leading the people back from their third trip of gathering food when he saw a gargoyle running away from them. Looking down at the food in his arms then at the gargoyle that didn''t seem interested in them at all he decided to just mark it and go look for itter after he dropped off this food.
The people in the group were probably going to try to sleep again because he kept waking them up after like an hour so he was going to have some alone time to walk around the city by himself and this would give him something to do. They only had like another five minutes of walking so it wouldn''t be too much longer before he was able to go and destroy maybe thest gargoyle in the city.
...
Watching the mage that could use stone control conjoin the two roofs they were going to use to make the wind formation Donny moved over to the edge of the roof so he could look at the street below. Stone control didn''t really make any noise but there was still a chance something would notice what they were doing up here.
After a few minutes of waiting the Earth Mage was done and Donny said. "Alright time to get to work. I''ll do everything but the mana absorber so just focus on your part." Setting the first circle on the ground Donny filled it with everything that a floating tform would need before giving the other guy the chance to do his part.
With that done Donny started to check it to make sure it would actually work once they activated itter. He wished he could just test it but the amount of mana it would be using to power itself might draw someone who could use Wind magic here. A lot of people forgot that a lot of Demon Worshipers could use other types of magic if they were normal humans because they never did during fights.
The formation would probably make some noise too so that was another reason he couldn''t just switch it on and see if it worked right. Once he was done checking the formation Donny Set another circle around the formation and said. "It''s stable, you can back off." They could now just wait until the fortress light came back on to head out but Donny wanted to see what was going on over there.
He wasn''t going to go there right now though he wanted to wait a few more hours so he would have an urate grasp on what was going on closer to the time they headed for the fortress. If he went now there was a chance what he saw waspletely different by the time they got there.
Walking downstairs with the other mages Donny looked at them and said. "My name''s Donny." In a time like this Donny felt like getting friendly with people that could die wasn''t a good idea but they had hours to pass so this was better than just sitting in silence looking at the wounded people all around them.
"I''m Fendis." The wind mage that helped him make the formation reached out his hand for a handshake after he said this and Donny shook his hand while waiting for the other person to introduce themselves. "I''m Hank, and we''ve actually met before a few years ago." Hearing this Donny raked his brain for this guy.
"I''m not surprised you don''t remember, I wasn''t a major part of what happened." Donny had to know what they were talking about so he asked. "What happened?" It had to be something important if this guy remembered him after all this time. "It was a few years ago on the road out of the Metal Domain. We were attacked by a group of bandits from one of the mountains and you killed them all before they even got close to us with this flying metal disk."
After Donny heard this he remembered what Hank brought up but not Hank but that was probably because of what happened after the attack. All the people in the caravan had offered him drinks as thanks and Donny had gotten hammered because while he had stopped drinking at that point he didn''t have the best self control when he still had his shield.
He had stopped drinking a few days after he heard the Demon Lords voice the first time because he was afraid he would agree to something while he was drunk but when fifty something people were trying to get you to drink with them it was hard to say no. "Did we drink together?"
"Yeah for about five hours until you punched yourself unconscious." Donny had done this sometimes in the early days when he heard the Demon Lord if he wasn''t in the mood to listen so that must have been one of those times but he was sure it had been crazy to see for everyone there. "That was why everyone treated me so well for the rest of the trip."
They must have thought he was unstable after seeing him punch himself in the head and didn''t want him to freak out again. "I''ve always wanted to ask why you did that. To this day I think about it once or twice a week." Donny didn''t know what to say so he just started talking. "I don''t remember it but I must have been having a great time to do something like that."
"See I always wondered if someone had rage poisoned you or something with one of the drinks to steal the disk but when you seemed fine and woke up after a few hours it put a real dent in that theory." Donny could see why he would think this because the shield was constantly drawing people''s envy but what probably happened was the Demon Lord started talking to him and he had knocked himself out to be safe.
"Who knows, I don''t think I''ve done that ever again so maybe you''re right." It was weird to think this guy had been there the day he left for the Holy domain and was now here with him again while the Metal Domain was being destroyed. "So how long ago did you get back from the Holy Domain?" Donny wondered if they had alsoe back just a few days ago to help.
"Around a year ago. My wife wanted toe back because her dad was acting strange." Donny wanted to know what they meant by that but hearing the word wife made him think of the guy that he saved that was looking for his wife. He still hadn''t seen him after all this time and Donny was pretty sure they hadn''t made it here.
Snapping back to his conversation Donny asked. "How did you know her dad was acting strange without being here?"
"Her and her mom write to each other so after about five letters where my mother-inw made it sound like her father had gone off the deep end she said we had toe home." That was a good reason toe home. "So what ended up happening to her dad?"
"He disappeared about a week ago but for a while after we got home he was acting pretty normal to the point where I thought they had made it up to make use home before we had our first child. Now I think he was actually a secret Demon Worshiper with the timing of his disappearance. That, or he was killed by them."
It was hard to say what the truth was but Donny wanted to know what this weird behavior was to see if he could figure it out. "What kind of weird things was he doing in the letters?"
"Disappearing for hours and saying weird things." Donny didn''t know but that sounded like a Demon Worshiper to him. This made him think that the Demon Worshipers had been recruiting from the people here instead of them all sneaking in with the immigrants that moved here.
Well the first few had probably snuck in but after that depending how they were recruiting they didn''t need to worry about getting anyone else inside. He wondered how long it had taken them to get enough people here in the Metal Domain to pull this off. It had probably been in progress when he had left for the Holy Domain.
He was sure the Demon Worshipers had at least a few people in every domain but they didn''t seem to be doing anything like this anywhere other than here and the Dark Domain in the past. He wondered if they were working towards it everywhere or there was something they wanted here and the Dark domain that the other domains didn''t have.
Donny was about to end this topic and start another with Fendis since he had been left out of the conversation up until now when he heard someone yell from the other room where most of the wounded were being kept. Running into the room he saw it was someone that had been in the room watching Peter slowly die from the spell he had been hit by.
They were now holding a sheet over Peter''s side and by the amount of blood that was soaking into the sheet Donny could tell the wound had opened to a deadly degree. Donny didn''t really think there was anything they could do about it but he still grabbed the Health potion that was on a dresser near him and ran it over to Peter to try and stop the bleeding.
Chapter 222: Open The Barrier
Chapter 222: Open The Barrier
Stepping out of the base, Lake headed towards the mark he had ced on that gargoyle that had run by them. As he got close he realized just how close it was to the barrier and became much more careful in the way he moved. He didn''t want to just stumble into whatever was happening with it looking like it might be something new and important.
He was happy that there was a chance that the barrier was finally going toe down even if it was just for a second to let someone else inside. Either way he could probably get out. It would be too bad to leave his group behind but he would choose to leave if he had the chance.
Finding a ce he could see the gargoyle while hidden pretty well He saw there was a small group of three gargoyles standing in front of the barrier motionless. Marking the other two, Lake fell back slightly so there was no way to see him at all and bunkered down to wait to see what would happen.
He knew there had to be a reason why they were just standing there and wanted to see if it was them waiting to be let out like he thought it was. He briefly thought about going to get the others but decided He couldn''t risk missing whatever was going on by leaving or the group giving them away by being too loud.
Hopefully the barrier stayed down and the others could safely make it out on their own with him killing his way out first. He was excited to see what the rest of the city was like now that some time had passed. With no one getting in touch with them yet he had kind of changed his expectations of what was happening and now felt like it was going bad for the Metal Domain.
This meant he would probably meet a lot of opposition on the way up to the surface where he would meet the biggest of the problems he needed to defeat to get paid. It was an uphill battle but the more he got to do the better he would look once this was all over and all he needed to worry about was running into the Demon Worshiper bigshots that would be scattered around.
Using Detector he hoped to get the upper hand on this situation though by being able to find them before they noticed him. He wasn''t sure what he should set Detector to though so he nned to turn into a Demon Worshiper and use y The Part to blend in until he got a grasp on the situation.
If it went well he would be able to find out who and what he was looking for to crumble the Demon Worshipers army. Once he took out their important people he hoped the Metal Domain could handle the rest pretty quickly because if he had to go building to building for the whole city he would be here for years.
After about thirty minutes Lake started to wonder if what he was waiting for would even happen today. It could be the people the Gargoyles were waiting for had been killed or something and they would never arrive. He had no idea how the gargoyles were programmed to work and maybe the Demon Worshipers were in fact losing to a degree where their ns for this gargoyle/undead army would never happen.
Not that it was going to happen even if the people that were going to use them survived because Lake had already killed most of the gargoyles and undead. It would be too bad if he ended up being stuck here until the end just because they had kind of just been forgotten about because the rest of the war was just so chaotic.
There was also the possibility whoever made the gargoyles could tell they had all been killed and that it wasn''t worthing to get the three that had survived. If that was the case he was sure they would just leave the barrier up for as long as possible to keep whoever had killed their gargoyles trapped here until they had the time toe deal with it.
If that ended up happening he was happy he had decided to hide some food away for himself and if no one ended uping to open the barrier in a couple of hours he was going to get more food to hide away.
...
Seeing some movement outside of the barrier Lake wondered how much time he had actually sat here waiting. It could be kind of hard to tell since he usually just used the sun to tell. He had been underground for days now and he had kind of lost track of time since he didn''t know how to read the things the Metal Domain used as clocks.
To him it looked like a few gears that spun but he couldn''t tell how to know what time it was because they didn''t have any symbols or numbers to read. He guessed it was possible the things he was looking at weren''t clocks at all and just some gearwork that did something else but he felt that was unlikely with there being no other things that could tell time around.
After a few seconds he could get a good enough look at who was outside the barrier to see if he attacked he was going to have to use his actual strength because there was a small army of people lining up outside. He then realized that there was still a small chance that they were on the same side and that he should actually see what they looked like before he attacked.
Just because they were here didn''t mean they were the people responsible for getting the gargoyles to gather here. They could have just been a group the Temple had sent to find a way to drop the barrier that had stumbled upon this spot while looking around. Poking his head out to look at the group with his actual eyes instead of just seeing they were there with Mana Vision, Lake realized they were Demon Worshipers right away by their clothes.
He guessed he preferred it this way because they would definitely know how to drop the barrier unlike people who were sent by the Temple. He would have probably had to help if it had been people from the Temple. This would have been a small inconvenience but it would probably take longer than the fight he was about to have.
A few seconds after the Demon Worshipers stopped moving, Lake saw the area of the barrier in between him and the Demon Worshipers started to ripple slightly and he got ready to run in and use the opportunity to exit. As soon as he saw a hole form he jumped towards it and was through to the other side.
Landing he was expecting for the Demon Worshipers to start the fight right away but when none of them turned towards him he realized none of them had even noticed him because of the speed he had moved at. This was a great thing because it meant he could continue to let them open the barrier before he attacked them.
If he was lucky this would leave him a way in and out of the barrier permanently instead of it possibly closing if he interrupted them opening a way in. It also gave him a chance to see how they were doing what they were doing. It seemed they were able to control the barrier because of what element it was made from but that didn''t seem right to him.
If you were able to control something like a barrier just because of the elemental affinities you had, it drastically affected how safe it was to hide behind a barrier. There had to be some way this barrier was different to the ones he had seen like around the Alchemist guild if they were able to control it like this.
Maybe they weren''t interacting with the barrier at all and instead were using a special job to control the flesh that the formation was made in. That seemed way more likely to him because he was pretty sure barriers couldn''t be controlled in any other way than messing with the formation that was projecting them because it made barrierspletely useless if that wasn''t the case.
Once there was a nice entrance in the barrier Lake saw the people that had been the ones acting like they were the ones doing it stand back slightly and he was about to attack when he heard them start talking. Not wanting to waste this chance to gather some information He stood still and listened.
"What should we do with the three gargoyles?"
"Just have them follow us while we look around. We were told to stay here as long as it took for us to find out what happened so our other option is to just leave them here until we''re done."
Hearing this made Lake wonder what he should do. He had nned to kill them, turn into one of them and let the body take him back to their base but there wasn''t really a way around the fact that if he did that he would look suspicious to the people he would be returning to.
He could pretend they had been wiped out and he was the only one that got away but he wasn''t sure how the Demon Worshipers were expected to act. There was a chance a real Demon Worshiper wouldn''t have run.
Seeing them start to walk into the barrier Lake decided it wasn''t worth the hassle and drew his sword. He would rather find other Demon Worshipers to pretend to be than walk around with these ones until he figured out how he should handle this. He wasn''t willing to risk that they would close the barrier again if he was to follow them in either so his only option was to kill them.
Chapter 223: Upstairs
Chapter 223: Upstairs
Looking at his sword Lake was happy with how clean it was and put it back in its sheath. He had noticed his sheath smelled kind of bad a few days after he had started to kill bandits and realized it was because he never cleaned his de off before he put it away. He then looked at his stats because he had leveled up to level nine of Swordsman during his battle with the Demon Worshipers and he wanted to see how far off he was to maxing it out.
Race: Human Lv.14 ( 9/10 )
Job: Swordsman Lv.9 ( 1789/2560 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 140
Stamina 140
Mana 570
Strength 125
Endurance 15
Agility 107
Dexterity 121
Perception 101
Intelligence 134
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
He would need to kill a few more people at the level of the ones he had just killed then he would be able to try and get another job to level up. Looking at his bow Lake tried to think of him doing what he just did but with a bow instead of a sword.
There were times he had been able to kill multiple of them with one swing of his sword but to do that with a bow he would have to line up multiple of them or shoot multiple arrows that hit their targets. Thinking about it some more he remembered his skill that let him control arrows while they were in the air.
Magic Arrow (L) Lv.1
Lets you infuse some of your mana into arrows so you can control it.
Reading the description, Lake wondered if he even needed a bow to use this skill. Pulling an arrow out he used the skill and feeling the arrow be infused with his mana let it fly up from his hand. Seeing the arrow fly around under his control he realized he had underestimated the skill.
He understood now why this would be such a boon to an archer because it worked at close range; something lots of archers struggled with. Most of them had to switch to another weapon if anyone got too close, with this skill they could continue to shoot arrows while protecting themselves from anyone trying to get them.
He wondered if killing people with this arrow was enough to unlock archer-like jobs. It would be nice because he wasn''t particrly interested in using the bow. He didn''t even like the sword as much as he liked his bare hands so switching to a bow would be a real downgrade.
Looking at the opening in the barrier Lake thought about going to get the others but decided to just leave them a message. Pushing all the bodies into a line that would show them the opening while he checked them for anything that could be useful he walked away with two things he thought looked simr to the thing he had stolen from a Demon Worshiper during the forest massacre.
He was sure they wouldn''t do the same thing as the one from back there but having it would probablye in handy once he used Decrypt on them. He would do thatter though because he wanted to get up to the next tier which meant he had a real climb ahead of him.
Looking around Lake realized the elevators were actually inside the barrier which meant they were useless which meant these Demon Worshipers had probably had another way down here. He had already found one of their secret staircases so he set Detector to look for a hidden staircase.
It didn''t take long for him to find it since most of the tier was inside the barrier leaving a very small area for him to go through. Looking at the staircase that was inside the wall he looked at the stone that was in front of it and wondered if smashing it was his best option to get inside.
Taking his sword out, Lake used Crunch and started to cut the stone, only stopping to carry the boulders that came loose until he could see the stairs. Climbing up the stairs Lake found it was pretty short, ending after the first door he found. This should lead to the 41st tier unless this was some secret base the Demon Worshipers had built.
Using Mana Vision, Lake looked around to see if there were any people around before he tried the door. Seeing he was surrounded with there being people in every direction he looked he had no choice but to go for it. Opening the door Lake was happy to find he was in a room that had no one in it but with Mana Vision he could see there was a person next to the door he needed to go through.
This could be an opportunity for him to blend in if he was able to get them without alerting anyone else but he didn''t know if there was anyone else that could see this guard or maybe notice the small amount of time they would be gone before he reced them. Lake decided he should just take a while to watch to see if anyone moved pass or if there was some kind of rotation that was happening.
After a while Lake saw the movements seemed to be kind of random and realized most of the people here were just milling about and very few of them were guards. He could also tell almost everyone here was in bed. The few that weren''t were most likely undead because he was pretty sure they didn''t sleep.
That wasn''t something he knew for sure but he felt like it was urate because he didn''t think they needed to eat either since he had seen the ones under the Alchemist guild survive in barren tunnels. This made him think they were probably fully powered by Unholy mana.
It was a very interesting difference between them and normal people and it made him wonder if Undead were the Demon Lords version of the God of Metals dwarves. He felt it was possible that a lot of the gods had their own type of people with their own special abilities.
If he was right undead were pretty powerful with them not needing to eat or sleep and them being harder to kill. He wondered if dwarves had their own awesome abilities thate from their race and if regr humans like him had any he hadn''t noticed yet. He was probably taking them for granted because he didn''t realize they were special.
Seeing the person he had been watching for thest few minutes start to move he realized they were about toe into the room so he moved back into the staircase and closed the door. He guessed checking the stairs every now and then was part of their job as well and the time hade.
He felt this would be his best chance to get them in ce no one else would notice and just hoped they came toe down the stairs so he could hide them here. Seeing them reach the door, Lake was already a few loops down the spiral staircase and was getting ready to attack them once they started to descend when they turned and started to walk away.
It seemed all they nned to do was look into the stairs and return to their post. Activating Mute Lake rushed up the stairs and grabbed them before they were able to leave the small room he had been hiding in. Lake sunk his dagger into their neck but he was pretty sure they were undead so he didn''t think they would die from this.
Getting them into the stairwell Lake finished the decapitation then watched the arms il for a while before he went for the core. While cutting out the core he couldn''t help but think about the fact the body had continued to move after he had cut its head off, which would be impossible for a human, and that he still hadn''t received any Exp meaning it was still alive.
When he saw the core he remembered the undead under the Alchemist guild again. They didn''t really have a core because they were young so this was the first normal sized core he had seene from an undead. He didn''t know if that meant they had been alive for a long time or if this was an undead they had been made from a corpse that already had a decently sized core.
Thinking about the core some more made him wonder what would happen if he tried to use Impersonate with this core. Reading Impersonates description Lake didn''t get much from it other than that it would probably work.
Impersonate (U) Lv.1
steal target''s identity and add it to your collection.
(Uses targets core.)
He also felt that the Insider would stop him or that it wouldn''t work at all if it was dangerous so he shrugged and activated Impersonate. The core disappeared from his hand and Lake took that to mean it had worked. Opening his stats Lake saw that he was indeed a different person but it said he was still human.
He didn''t know if that meant he had be the person the undead had been made from instead of the undead but decided this should be enough to get to where the humans were sleeping to get a better disguise. Putting the ck robe on he looked at the blood stain from where he had cut their head off and decided he needed to make his way to the humans right away.
Chapter 224: Heading In
Chapter 224: Heading In
Taking the first step outside into the hallway, Lake realized he just received the Exp from the undead that he had left in the staircase. That meant it had survived a few minutes with no head or core. He had kind of assumed nothing could survive if you took its core but it seemed he was wrong.
It made him wonder if cutting someone''s core out with them surviving it, if you had taken their ability to use skills or jobs. They had to be rted in some way since you could get stat points and skills from cores. It was possible that the core would slowly regrow if you somehow survived yours being removed.
It would most likely cause a huge problem for the person during the process though even if it did grow back. He could imagine that you would lose every job and skill you had as well or that they would slowly reappear during the growth process.
It might also be that the undead had only been able to survive the loss of the core because it wasn''t its core but the core to the person the undead had been before it was turned. Maybe it had a second smaller core that he had missed that was its core.
He guessed he should have taken the time to inspect the body better before he left it when he saw his race was still human. Thinking that the body might have had multiple cores he wondered if there were monsters or people that could have multiple cores naturally and if it would make them stronger.
Maybe it would allow them to level up multiple jobs at a time. He wasn''t sure how the Exp would work though. Would it spit the Exp to the different jobs or would you earn the full amount for each job. He felt it was more likely that you wouldn''t earn more Exp but he could see you being able to surpass the 100 stat limit mortals had.
He didn''t think it would be amon thing for anything to have multiple cores though so there wasn''t a real way he could ever find an answer to this question unless he found a book that had information on cores. It seemed most people just thought of them as currency but they had to be more important than that.
It was the only thing that physically separated humans here from the ones in his world that he had noticed so he was sure they had something to do with the stats and skills they were able to earn from jobs. It was probably a way for the gods to interact with the people they granted the jobs to.
Lake realized he had kind of lost focus but at the same time enough time had passed while he was in the hallway for him to know no one was paying attention to him. He had been kind of worried that there would be someone somewhere here that could feel the death of the undead he had killed and with the blood on his clothes and him being human it was unlikely they would believe his lies if they questioned him even if he did look like the person he had reced.
With him being able to blend in as long as no one looked at him too closely he could probably leave his post as long as it wasn''t for too long. He was going to wait though because he wanted to wait till something happened to cover his tracks better. It was the middle of a war so something should cause some type ofmotion eventually.
When that happened he would be able to move without anyone noticing for a short moment and hopefully he could kill someone and hide their body in that time. With an identity that was human before he got here and a better robe he would blend in better and be able to start trying to get out of this base.
...
Looking at the time Donny saw seven hours had passed since the fortress shut itself off. With even the weakest people only needing eight hours to be back to tip top condition unless they had been wounded he was pretty sure there was a good chance the fight would start up again.
That meant he could go and take a look at the situation around the fortress without it changing too much in the time after he left. He wanted to make sure the fortress had a chance of winning before he flew them all towards it. Standing up Donny pulled a few of the people that were able to fight together and said. "I''m going to go see what the situation around the fort is like since the fight will probably start again soon."
Donny felt like there wasn''t much of a chance that they would want toe with him but he still said. "I''m going alone and I might be gone for a while so don''t feel bad if you have to abandon this ce to survive on the off chance you''re attacked before I return." After he said this he looked at the corpse of Peter.
A lot of these people would die in theing hours so there was no reason the healthy should throw their lives away to protect them. All that woulde of it was everyone would die and he would rather the twenty people that could move got away. "Also don''t try to use the Air Formation without me."
He was talking to the Wind Mage that had helped him make the formation when he said this. All that would happen was it would go out of control since they weren''t skilled enough to use it so they were better off running away on foot. Happy with the fact that they seemed to agree with what he had told them to do, Donny headed towards the roof.
Once he was on top of the building he looked down at the street. They had been silently hiding inside so for all he knew the streets would be filled with undead looking for prey. The streets were as empty as they had been so the Demon Worshipers'' army was probably still surrounding the fortress.
Walking down from the roof Donny exited through the front door onto the street. Outside Donny couldn''t help but wonder if he should maybe turn around and go back inside. Now that he was out here he realized there was a miniscule chance that he would be able to get there and back alive.
All it would take was for him to go around one wrong corner and he would get swarmed by enemies. Really considering going back inside Donny remembered they weren''t safe here either so going inside and hiding just guaranteed that they would be discovered eventually.
Taking his first steps towards the fortress he started to feel better about what he was doing. He would be fine as long as he was careful and turned around as soon as he started to run into anyone that wasn''t on his side. He should be able to see them before they saw him if he used his mana and the metal that was everywhere in the city.
After passing a few houses Donny stopped because he heard a crashing noisee from one of the buildings he was about to pass. He remembered that the gargoyles tried to drag people into buildings and the building he heard the noise from had no door so it was a perfect fit.
He didn''t know what could be causing the gargoyle inside to be making so much noise and he was curious but decided he should try and go another way even if he could kill them instantly there was no way to know if they would be the only thing inside the building without using his precious mana.
Heading towards the ally Donny heard footsteps and hastened his movements to get out of the street before whatever it was saw him. Once he was in the alley he turned his head to look back at what had emerged onto the street from the building.
He was happy to find that it didn''t seem to be an enemy and that it was actually someone he had been wondering about since they hadn''t seemed to make it back to base. It was the buff warrior he had saved that had asked about their wife. Donny stepped out from his hiding ce and waved towards them.
"Hey, were you not able to find the ce I told you about?" Donny felt like this had to be what had caused them to still be out here after all this time. "No, I saw an undeade from a building on the way there and realized what the gargoyles were doing with the people that they were dragging away and figured I was better off clearing any that I passed before they went and joined the besieging army. You know if you saved my wife she''s safe and if you didn''t maybe I could find her before they were able to turn her."
Donny nodded and said. "Good luck." And was about to walk away when the guy stopped him with a question. "Where are you going?" Donny pointed towards where the fortress was and said. "I''m going to get a look at the fortress." The guy nodded before saying. "You should wait till the sun fullyes up."
Looking up Donny guessed that that was a good idea even if he ended up arriving after the battle had already started again and asked. "Do you want me to show you back to the others?" This guy had been out here for a long time fighting and it made him think they had to be tired. Seeing them start to nod after a few seconds Donny started to lead them back to base.
Chapter 225: Red Arrow
Chapter 225: Red Arrow
Getting kind of bored, Lake started to think of a way he could cause amotion without moving. He had been waiting for a while now and he was starting to think this ce wasn''t reacting to anything going on outside. He guessed they were some type of reserves or guarding something important.
He had his knife and he knew he was able to throw it through walls with Crunch but the hole it would leave would point them right to him if they looked through it. This led him to think of using his skill Magic Arrow instead. He should be able to fly it in a path that wouldn''t lead them to him even if they were to trace its path.
He would also be able to take out a few other people during his attack so that he wouldn''t have to hide the body of the person whose core he would take to get him a human disguise. He could also pretend he had been hit to exin the blood on his clothes if anyone noticed.
Since he was supposed to be an undead being slightly hit by an arrow wouldn''t have killed him and he would have healed already. Pretending it was time for him to check the stairs, Lake walked into the next room and opened the door to the stairs. Using Crunch and throwing his arrow into the air, Lake flew it through the wall of the staircase and into the main base.
Now if they were able to trace it back to where it hade from it would look like someone hadunched it from the stairs after killing the guard he was currently disguised as. By the time they found this he hoped he would be someone else so he had no problem just leaving this body here.
With the arrow now flying around wildly inside the walls he walked back into the hallway where he was supposed to be and used Mana Vision to try and aim his arrow. It was good that he was able to see the arrow as well as the people he was aiming for because all he had to do to start taking people out was make the two meet.
The first few people he hit he didn''t receive any Exp but he wasn''t surprised since they were most likely undead but it was enough to get them into a panic and a few secondster the effects already reached him with people starting to run towards where the arrow was repeatedly stabbing people.
He felt this was enough in that area and moved the arrow towards the area with the sleeping humans that had started to stir. Hitting a few of them Lake felt the Exp and was tempted to finish leveling Swordsman but decided he needed to leave most of them alive to make it easier for him to blend in.
After a while of this another group of people ran past him toward where his arrow was. Flying the arrow away so no one would be able to get their hands on it, Lake followed them towards the area with the dead humans to try and get his hands on a new core. Stepping into the bunk room Lake saw it was inplete chaos and half the people that were still alive were looking into the holes in the wall where the arrow hade and gone.
Lake saw the fact that no one was interested in the bodies as a good thing because it let him get close enough to dig his hand into one of the holes his arrow had put in the bodies with no one looking at him. With the new core in his hand he fell back a little and wondered if he should try to get rid of the bodypletely and realized he had messed up slightly.
He should have tried to Imbue Fire onto the arrow before he started to kill anyone because some of the bodies would have been burnt enough that the head would have been destroyed. He would have also been able to kill an undead with one hit since they were so weak to Fire.
He guessed there wasn''t anything stopping him from attacking again but this time with fire. He would need to go to a ce that no one could see him to get it started though. Stepping out of the room everyone was trying to enter, Lake recalled his arrow to his hand and waited till no one was around to Imbue Fire into it.
Releasing the arrow into the air, Lake flew it into a nearby wall and towards the room he was just in. He heard people start to panic the moment the arrow reentered the room but he was still able to get a few of them even though they all hit the ground. He then heard the screams of people burning and went towards the room to pretend he was also a victim.
[Level max] [Rank up]
After he hit the level max of Swordsman Lake got rid of the arrow again by embedding it deeply into a wall and inspected his handiwork. He had hit some of the bodies including the one he had fished the core from and it was currently burning. Once it destroyed the face he would go to somewhere no one could see him and take on their appearance.
Once that was done he would be able to start walking around without worrying about anyone worrying about him not being where he was supposed to be. Seeing people start to think the attack was over and put out the fires that had been created by a ming arrow flying through everything, Lake stood up and went for the door.
The body he needed to destroy was disfigured enough that he could take their face and no one would notice. Once he switched his identity Lake walked back to the room because this was where the person he had turned into was supposed to be. Seeing how easily he had been able to kill the six that were now dead on the floor, Lake wondered if he should just go on a killing spree instead of trying to covertly get out of here but decided there was no way to know if it would be safe to do.
For all he knew there was someone here he couldn''t beat which sounded unlikely but there was no way to know especially since there were undead around. Lake had no grasp on what kind of things undead could do as they got stronger. He had seen the undead giants the Demon Lord had and they seemed to have crazy abilities.
This meant leaving was a better idea and he mighte backter if he found out he needed to for some reason but for now he just wanted to focus on getting to the surface or at least as far up as he could get. Right after thinking this he remembered the people he had been leading down on the 42nd tier.
If they found their way out of the barrier and up the stairs they would find a base filled with Demon Worshipers. They would have a chance at winning but there was no chance they would all survive. This would make it seem like he had abandoned themter if some of them survived and saw him still alive after they had to fight their way to the surface.
Lake didn''t think any of this would happen until they ran out of food though because there wasn''t a reason for them to leave base until they ran out of food especially since he wasn''t there anymore. They would think something had possibly killed him so it wasn''t safe for them to go out.
Realizing someone was looking at him, Lake switched on y The Part to blend in until he got a chance to split off from the people in this room. Feeling his body start to move on its own, Lake wondered what it would do and wasn''t surprised when it started to talk. "What happened?"
Thest thing this identity remembered was going to sleep so he would be confused too if he woke up and found that he was surrounded by burning bodies. "We''re under attack." One of the people close to him answered and Lake could tell he was about to start talking again because he could feel how confused his identity was.
"Under attack by what?" Lake wished he could control what the identity did more because it was weird he didn''t know since he had gone through it as well. "It looked like an arrow to me." Someone else answered this time and Lake realized since the arrow had been hard to see he wasn''t the only one who didn''t know what it was.
"How is an arrow hitting us?" This question didn''t get an answer but it did make Lake realize he was going to be here for a while. None of these people wanted to move and no one had gone for the door yet. He guessed they thought a room the arrow had already hit was the safest ce for them to be because a lot of the people here had arrived after the first time and knew about it hitting other parts of the fortress so in their mind if they left they might walk into another attack.
Chapter 226: Outside
Chapter 226: Outside
Almost as soon as Donny got the guy to the base the guy ran off and found his wife. Donny had kind of assumed she wouldn''t be here but this guy seemed kind of strong so maybe his wife was as well and Donny had only saved people that had been putting up a fight so he guessed it made sense.
Seeing everyone was happy enough, Donny decided it was time to go to the fortress. It was light enough now and he couldn''t wait forever if he nned to do this. Stepping back outside Donny retraced his steps to where he found the buff warrior. From here forward he would be much more careful and therefore slower.
Moving from alley to alley Donny found himself starting to detect movement in some of the buildings around him and wondered if the Demon Worshipers were using them to hide in now that the sun hade up. Moving forward now would be crazy since all that needed to happen for him to be noticed was for someone to look out a window so he decided he was close enough and looked for a quiet way to get onto a roof.
He should be able to see the fortress from here and as long as no one heard or saw him climbing onto a roof he would be able to go back with an idea of what he needed to do when they tried to get thereter. Finding a building he could climb, Donny quickly got on top of it and looked towards the fortress.
Donny wasn''t happy with what he saw. The building waspletely closed off and it didn''t look like they would have a ce tond if he was to fly them there. He guessed there was a chance that the fortress would change shape when they started to fight again but the circr roof looked like it was permanent.
Getting down so no one would see him while he tried to think of a new way to get them to the fortress that didn''t involve being able tond on its roof. He couldn''t get the wounded there like he had nned now that he knew they wouldn''t have the time to get them inside before they got swarmed since they would probably have tond on the ground.
Donny would need to get closer to see the lower half of the fortress because he was pretty sure there would be a good ce for them tond. There should be some t parts for people to stand on while they fought. He didn''t feel good about just assuming this about the fortress but there was no way he could get any closer.
Getting down Donny was real careful to not make any noise and he was soon back on the way to their base to bring the others the uncertain reality of their n but hoped they would be able to tell him more about theyout of the fortress past what he assumed.
He had always nned to ask them this anyway since he had beening here to get an estimate on the number of enemies they were facing and had decided to still get a look at the fortress when he realized the Demon Worshipers were hiding so his trip wouldn''t be aplete waste.
Once he was back to their base Donny gathered the people that were awake and asked them. "Is there a t area we will be able tond on?"
"Did you not get there?" Donny shook his head and said. "Not close enough to see all of it. I could only really see the circr roof."
"Why didn''t you get any closer?"
The Demon Worshipers were using the building surrounding the fortress to hide." No one seemed surprised that the Demon Worshipers had fallen back now that the sun hade up because they always chose to fight at night if they could choose.
"To answer your original question there is a ce that we will be able tond and enter the fortress. The only problem will be getting them to believe we aren''t a trick by the Demon Worshipers and them actually letting usnd near them."
Donny had thought of this already and to be honest he wasn''t too worried about it because even if it took a second there should be a scout or something that could tell if they were human. Skills like that were pretty rare but there should be at least one person that could tell around or the fort would have already fallen to a trick.
It wasmon for the Demon Worshipers to trick their enemies if they could so the fact the fortress was still intact gave him a good feeling. He realized this was an assumption but there wasn''t a way for him to get in contact with them to ask or set anything up so it was his best bet.
"I think they will be able to tell soon after they see us and we''ll be able tond." Donny went ahead and told them what he was thinking about this but stopped before he could say all of it because someone asked. "Why are we waiting to go to the fortress instead of going towards the temple?"
This was a good question and his only reason was because the fort was closer and he hadn''t put any real thought into going to the temple. When he did think about it though he felt like he had made the right decision because of how close they were to the fort. He also felt the temple would have something that would keep them from flying to it like a barrier.
"I don''t think we would be able to just fly to the Metal Temple. Even without any Metal mana there''s no way they don''t have any defenses up." Everyone seemed to think he was right about this because no one said anything else. He took this to mean there wasn''t really anything left for them to talk about the n and all that was left was for them to wait.
...
Seeing people start to leave the room because they had run out of things to investigate, Lake took the opportunity and followed them out into the hallway. The hallway they entered was empty and it made Lake think it was because people had congregated towards the two ces the arrow had attacked people.
Walking past the ce where he had been standing while pretending to be a guard, Lake didn''t see anyone around yet meaning they hadn''t found the body or where he had made it seem the arrow had beenunched from. This meant they hadn''t been able to trace the arrows path through the base yet and it made him stop worrying about their investigative abilities so much.
He felt he would know by now if they had some sleuth that would be able to trace his steps back to him through all the bull shit he had done to cover his tracks. That being said, there was a chance that someone like that coulde to help them find what happened. Lake nned to be gone soon though so it didn''t matter too much who came unless they could continue to track him after he left but with his skill Trespasser they shouldn''t be able to.
Breaking off from the people he had been following because he saw arge door with a crowd around it that he felt was probably the way out, Lake joined the group that seemed to be waiting to be let through. Lake wasn''t sure what was keeping them from opening the door if they would notice that he didn''t really have reason to be leaving but he felt he would be able to get through because they probably weren''t thinking that the attacker was already inside trying to get out.
They would be scared of someone who was trying to get in and once they realized the attack hade from the other entrance where he had left the dead guard they would probably let this door open. After a while Lake heard someone calling out to the guards that were guarding this door to let them through.
Seeing the door open and the group start to move, Lake made sure to look like he was doing what he was supposed to to blend in with the others. Once he was through the door he saw he was in a dark hallway that had another door at the end. The other door was closed but had no guards andke assumed it was another secret entrance like the one he had to dig through to get onto the stairs earlier.
Once they reached the other door it slowly opened and after they walked through it closed and looking back he saw he was right and the door just looked like a wall when it was closed. Recalling his arrow Lake Imbued Fire and threw it into the air flying it towards the small group of Demon Worshipers he was with.
Chapter 227: 41st
Chapter 227: 41st
Lake was able to quickly kill all of the Demon Worshipers with his ming arrow. Running off into the city, Lake realized he hadn''t switched his job to something else yet and not wanting to level up a random job he switched it to Thief. He could level up thief all the way to 100 but he already had reached level 10 so he needed like 5000 more Exp to get to 11.
He also pulled out his bow because it looked like his arrow wasn''t enough to get him another archer job and he was hoping holding the bow while the arrow killed people made a difference. Finding a good ce for him to hide while he looked around the city, Lake Recalled the arrow he had left flying around in case he was attacked and used Mana Vision to start scanning the city.
He saw cores everywhere and when he switched Detector on to look for Demon Worshipers he realized this tier was most likely under their control. There weren''t as many Demon Worshipers as cores but that just meant they had arge number of undead that didn''t count as Demon Worshipers.
He wasn''t sure what the difference was between certain types of undead but some of them seemed to be monsters while others were intelligent like people. It was probably how they were made and how much time had passed since they''d been made that made the difference but it was also possible they just hadn''t had the time to convert them.
He was pretty sure you had to worship the Demon Lord if you wanted to be considered a Demon Worshiper. Done with his search and finding there weren''t really any fights happening here, Lake wondered if he should just move on right away and not worry about killing any of the people here.
He was sure they would need his help on the surface and they would worry about what was going on down hereter but there was another barrier he had to get through to leave the underground. This meant he had plenty of time to waste on clearing out as many of them as he could and this included the ones in the base he had just escaped.
Taking his arrow and pulling it back in his bow, Lake used Crunch and Imbue Fire thenunched it towards the nearest building filled with Demon Worshipers. Feeling the Exp start toe in a few seconds after he hit the first Demon Worshiper Lake could tell he was dealing with mostly humans.
He also saw smoke start toe from the building he had just flown the arrow around and hoped it was made out of mostly stone so it didn''tpletely burn. He knew the dwarves could rebuild if he ended up burning the city to a crisp but he was worried about the air quality if half the city burned since they were underground, venttion or not.
Moving on to the next building Lake recalled the arrow and shot it from his bow again. After hitting everything inside he did it again and again until he had his ever building inside the Range of Mana Vision. Moving to a new part of the city to start doing the same there, Lake saw there were some people out and about but with their ck robes and the way they were acting he was pretty sure they had noticed him and what he was doing.
It wasn''t surprising considering what he had done inside the base he was sure they had a way tomunicate with the people outside. Remembering the devices he had taken from the first group of Demon Worshipers earlier, Lake hid and took it out of his bag. Using Decrypt on the first one Lake found it was a control device for gargoyles.
He guessed this was what they had used to get those gargoyles to gather near the barrier. Using Decrypt on the other device, Lake found it was an item used to cast Unholy magic that had been stored inside. He guessed this had been their n to kill whoever attacked them after they entered if they hadn''t been a match.
He had killed them before they had the chance to use it though so he could now use an unholy spell once if he ever needed to. Putting them away since he didn''t think there were any gargoyles here, Lake took his bow back out and started to kill all the Demon Worshipers that were in range of Mana Vision.
With this area clear Lake moved again and did the same right after. Shooting his bow and killing the first Demon Worshiper with the ming arrow Lake got a new job. [New Job Unlocked Fire Archer] Opening his new job Lake saw it was a mix of an archer and a mage.
Fire Archer (R) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Perception 2
Intelligence 2
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X4 Fire Arrow Kills
Skills from job:
It was the same rarity as a Mage job but its stats were split between Perception and Intelligence. Lake wished it didn''t give him Intelligence because it was his highest stat and he was afraid of maxing Intelligence too early but he needed Perception so he switched his job to Fire Archer.
Recalling the arrow again and shooting it, Lake wondered if every element had an archer job or if it depended on the element. Maybe some elements would have different jobs for different weapons depending on what the element went well with. Fire arrows were a staple so it made sense for archers to get a fire job but what about something like Earth or Water.
Earth made sense for heavy weapons and he didn''t really have any ideas for what kind of weapons went with Water; maybe spears since spearfishing and tridents were a thing.
[Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up] [Level up]
Like usual the first few levels were really fast to level up but because of the 4X multiplier he was getting on Exp thest few weren''t hard to get either. He had only had to clear a few sections of the city before he hadpletely maxed Fire Archer.
[Level up] [Level up] [Level max] [Rank up]
Lake wanted to see what his stats were now that he had maxed out another job and see his new skills so he crouched down to take cover so he would have enough time to read his skills and remember them.
Race: Human Lv.16
Job: Fire Archer Lv.10 ( Max )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 160
Stamina 160
Mana 590
Strength 126
Endurance 15
Agility 108
Dexterity 121
Perception 121
Intelligence 154
Charisma 41
Free stat points: 144
Lake took in the fact that he had less than 50 points until he maxed out Intelligence and decided he wouldn''t level any more jobs that gave him any until his other stats caught up a bit more or he got a job that was worth it. Moving on to reading his skills, Lake wondered what the skill would be like since this seemed to be a job that was based on abination of magic and weapons.
Spell Arrow (R) Lv.1
Imbue a Fire spell into an arrow that will release on impact.
Red Streak (R) Lv.1
ming arrows gain speed while in air.
me Spout (R) Lv.1
Shoot a spout of fire out of your bow.
Cost: 15 Mana
Fire Form Arrow (R) Lv.1
Make a solid arrow out of Fire Mana.
Lake didn''t think he would be using any of these spells very often, especially Red Streak since he could already control the speed of the arrow because of Magic Arrow. Spell Arrow did seem kind of cool though and he might get into it more once he unlocked more Fire spells.
Getting back up and putting the arrow onto the bow, Lake used Crunch and Imbue Fire and was about to shoot the arrow when he remembered he needed to switch his job to thief so he didn''t waste any Exp. Once he was done he shot his arrow at the closest Demon Worshiper and started his mission to exterminate them from the city once again.
Clearing the area he was in, Lake moved to the next and was about to shoot his arrow when he was interrupted by something hitting him from the back. Lake wasn''t sure what it was but it hadn''t done any damage and just made him fall from the building he had been sitting on.
Reaching back to inspect the damage to his armor Lake found a nice hole in the back of his chest piece and the bottom of his bag. Thankfully the hole wasn''t veryrge and nothing seemed to have fallen out yet but he needed to fix it before he started moving around crazily.
With his inspection done he started to look around for where the attack might havee from. Not seeing anyone, Lake used Detector and set it to look for who had attacked him. Detector lit up a person crouched on top of a nearby building and Lake moved around to try and get a chance to attack them from a direction they wouldn''t expect.
As soon as he started moving though he saw the person move and it made Lake think they were able to see him well enough from where they had been hiding to see what he was doing. Not wanting to deal with this Lake said. "If you can see me you should be able to tell I can see you juste out so we can fight."
Seeing them jump down Lake put his bow back and put his fists up. This person had been able to hit him with an attack and even if it hadn''t hurt him he nned to go all out just in case they had the strength tond any more even if it was just to spare his armor the damage.
Chapter 228: Putting On A Show Pt.1
Chapter 228: Putting On A Show Pt.1
Lake wanted to know how they had been able to find him and since the fight hadn''t started yet he asked. "How were you able to find me?" Lake had always figured he couldn''t be tracked because of Trespasser but this might not be true since it said magic which might not include skills.
Trespasser (U) Lv.1
Magic can''t be used to locate, or sense you.
"I''ll answer if you answer one of my questions first." Lake had no problem with this since he nned to kill them, meaning anything he told them wouldn''t go any further, plus he could lie. "Ok, deal."
"Were you the same person who attacked the base or is there more than one of you?" Lake could understand why they would be curious about this since it would help them n to fight him and since he didn''t care if they knew he told the truth. "There''s only me. Ok answer my question now."
"I saw the ming arrow and followed you when I saw you move." It was good to know that they had just used their eyes to find him and not some fancy skill. "Ok it''s time to start the fight."
"No, wait one more thing. Would you be interested in joining our side? Even if it''s just for the rest of this altercation we can offer you more than whoever you''re working for." Lake wasn''t surprised to get a job offer because he would try it as well if he had seen what he could do with a bow. It was too bad he had long decided to stay away from the Demon Lord because he was sure he would make more by working for them instead.
So like thest time he had been offered a position by them he said. "No thank you." With that out of the way Lake moved in on them at a speed slightly faster than a normal person could move with maxed Agility. This was his normal speed without any skills affecting how fast he was moving.
Throwing a punch at the Demon Worshipers stomach, Lake watched as they were able to get a basic defense up in time for his punch tond. This in itself was a pretty impressive feat and it meant this person had their Agility near 100. It made him wonder if this was the bigshot in this tier because how they were dressed Lake was pretty sure Agility wasn''t their focus.
He was dealing with a mage that had their agility maxed or almost maxed so their intelligence would have been maxed for a long time. This would mean they were going to have some magic tricks up their sleeves that he actually needed to be wary of. Getting some distance from them because Lake decided killing them from a distance would be safer for him, Lake pulled out the arrow again.
Deciding he was better off not using the bow tounch it or any fire Lake just let it go flying it towards the Demon Worshiper. Lake didn''t want to go over the top in this fight and to let itst a bit longer since this one seemed more important. He felt killing them in one hit would cause the other Demon Worshipers on the other floors to treat him like he was their top priority.
He was hoping he could keep that from happening for at least a few tiers. He knew killing everyone here was going to cause a stink but he was hoping they would underestimate his abilities if he didn''t win this fight until there had been a struggle. He needed anyone watching to think they could beat him without sending everyone they had at him at once.
Lake wasn''t stupid enough to think he couldn''t be killed if someone hit him with a good sneak attack because once he was in a fight and The Sight was active he lost his only early warning that he was about to be hit. That''s why they had been able to hit him this time because he was already fighting with his bow and The Sight had already been active.
Thankfully he was extremely tough because a few of his skills that made his Endurance act like it was over 100. He also had The Best Stat which made him take 90% less damage from anyone who had less Strength than him. This made the weakest part of him his armor which he only needed to cover his face when he was him and because his bag was part of his chestpiece.
He needed to upgrade again but he was pretty sure the gear at his level would be a lot more than he could afford if you could even buy it. He guessed it might be a good use of all the money the insider was making him gather once hepleted his mission. He was sure you could get something good with 1,000,000 gold and with his connections to the Alchemist guild he should be able to find something to spend it on.
Dodging eachothers attacks a few times Lake saw that this fight would take as long as he wanted it to if he stayed at this level for a while and started to gather up some Fire Mana. They had seen him using fire with the bow so they might find it odd if he didn''t use it during the fight and he didn''t want them to be able to tell he was holding back.
Firing off some spells whenever he saw an opening Lake and the other guy fought like this for over ten minutes until they tried to open dialogue again. "My offer is rescinded, you aren''t as strong as I thought you were. It seems you can only deal withrge amounts of small fry and are almost useless against someone like me."
Right after they got done talking Lake felt something hit him in the back hard enough to send him flying towards the Demon Worshiper. When he felt his bag start to get lighter he knew he had just sprung a leak in his bag so he probably got hit with the same attack that had hit him earlier.
This meant this Demon Worshiper had some skill or spell that struck you in your back. It was probably their go to kill spell but it didn''t seem to do any actual damage to him because he was still at full health. Stopping himself a few steps away from the Demon Worshiper Lake acted like he was in a tough spot and threw as many fire spells at them as he could without killing them.
Hitting them with a few of ten heunched Lake fell back without a problem only to be hit from behind again. Lake was able to stop himself much sooner since he had been expecting it but it seemed the Demon Worshiper noticed he didn''t seem to be hurt at all. "I thought it was your armor keeping you from getting hurt. Do you have an Antimagic job, no that wouldn''t make sense you''re using Fire magic.?"
Lake also noticed something around the time the Demon Worshiper had started to talk his Ward Ring hadn''t activated once during this fight which was odd since it was supposed to block magic. He guessed this settled the debate over if it was a spell or a skill. It also made him think skills weren''t always considered magic depending on how they worked.
"It''s a skill, it makes me invincible." Lake wondered what the odds were someone would actually believe what he had just said. "Oh, for how long though?" Lake smiled when he heard how sarcastic the Demon Worshiper sounded when he asked him how long he was invincible for. "Two more minutes."
After he said this the fight went back to how it had been with him getting hit in the back every few seconds. All his stuff had already fallen out so there was no harm in ying the part because he didn''t have to worry about any of his stuff getting hit or destroyed with itying on the ground.
There was also no difference to him if the entire back of his armor was gone since he had decided to get rid of it as soon as he found something else as soon as the first hole had been put in it. There was plenty of armor and bags here in the Metal Domain just lying around in the houses that he could take to rece the one he was wearing.
A lot of people here seemed to treat armor as normal clothes so most houses had a set just sitting in a bedroom so all he had to worry about was finding one that fit. A lot of the armor would belong to dwarves so at most he would be able to take the shoulder guards off of most of them other than that a lot of the armor would be too tight.
Chapter 229: Putting On A Show Pt.2
Chapter 229: Putting On A Show Pt.2
Lake started to think enough time had passed and was pretty sure him not doing anything else now would look weird. He already knew how he could win this fight without making it look like it had been easy. He waited till he got hit again and tripped forward further than someone would allow themselves to even if you were faking because it gave your opponent a straight shot at your head and neck.
The Demon Worshiper seemed to see this as an opportunity to end the fight and shot a spell at his face that would be impossible to dodge if you didn''t have your footing. Lake was fine enough to get out of its way by using his hands to push himself to the side. This left him on the ground in front of the Demon Worshiper which was the weakest position you could be in in a fight that he knew of.
Waiting until the Demon Worshiper attacked again Lake spun out of the way and threw his knife at the same time his arrow wasing in for an attack. His knife would get there first and when the Demon Worshiper dodged he would hit them with the arrow. Surprisingly that wasn''t what happened and instead of dodging they held up a dark redyer of mana as a shield and his dagger hit it and vanished.
Trying to recall it to his hand, Lake found nothing happened and realized his knife was gone. Lake wasn''t happy with this but decided he should focus on the fight instead of worrying about his knife. He still had high hopes of his arrow being able to hit the Demon Worshiper since they were facing the wrong direction to be able to block it.
Seeing the arrow plunge into the Demon Worshipers side Lake used the chance to get onto his feet and back off. It was just one arrow and he had no delusion that they would die from it. Recalling his arrow to his Hand, Lake used Crunch and Imbue Fire on it before sending it out again.
With this it would look like he was finally ready to go all out and that they had entered into the final part of the fight. Flying the arrow towards the Demon Worshiper Lake took out his bow and pulled back another arrow before firing it at the Demon Worshiper at the same time they were dodging the ming arrow.
He wasn''t the only one that pulled out a new trick, at the same time he was firing his arrow he was hit in the back making his shot go wide but that wasn''t the only thing he had to worry about. A spell he had never seen before came flying towards him from one of the Demon Worshipers hands and right when he was about to dodge it his ring activated and blocked it.
Seeing the bubble his ward ring made around him the Demon Worshiper paused and wanted to talk again but Lake decided to ignore him and think about what he was getting hit in the back with again. He was starting to think he was getting hit with magic and the only reason his ring couldn''t stop it was because it was forming to close inside his ward.
It wasn''t like there wasn''t Unholy or dark mana in the air all around him so he guessed there might be spells that could form away from the caster that were perfect for attacking someone inside a ward. It was probably why it was so weak. If all things were bnced a spell that could appear anywhere would be weaker than one formed near the mage.
As someone that practiced a bit with magic he could guess someone would have to have an impressive degree of skill to even use a spell like that. Done thinking about this, Lake started to listen to what the Demon Worshiper was saying. "How many more hits can it block before it breaks, one, two, you''ll be dead soon."
It seemed the Demon Worshiper had started to talk to themselves after he had ignored the first thing they had said. It was fine Lake really didn''t think there was a reason for them to talk anymore other than to catch their breath or gather more mana after a big attack or at least that was what he was pretty sure they were doing stopping to talk now.
Lake hadn''t stopped flying the arrow around for another attack though so it hadn''t really worked for them. With it about to hit them he drew another arrow back and let it fly towards them at the same time and once again he was hit from behind and the arrow he shot didn''t get anywhere near the Demon Worshiper.
The fight continued like this for a while while Lake tried to think of a way to kill the Demon Worshiper now that his original n to use his knife arrowbo had failed. With his knife gone and his bow not working since he kept getting hit in the back whenever he tried to shoot at them his only real option was to use his sword and get close to them or try and overwhelm them with low level spells.
The spells wouldn''t really work because his fire magic was too weak to matter so his only real option was to use his sword. Pretending that he was about to shoot another arrow at the same time as the ming one wasing back in for an attack Lake waited to get hit in the back to rush the Demon Worshiper with his sword.
He didn''t use Crunch because he didn''t want anyone to know he could slice through almost anything with any attack because his arrow had already shown this ability and he didn''t want the people watching to know it wasn''t an archer skill. Right now when they ran off after the fight was done they would report him to be an archer and if he showed any real skill with the sword that would change.
Swinging his sword at the Demon Worshiper''s neck they dodged and Lake swung again just in time for his arrow to arrive. Lake knew the Demon Worshiper wouldn''t dodge this and would most likely use the spell that had destroyed his knife again. He was fine with this because it would allow one of his attacks tond.
Lake wasn''t too surprised when the Demon Worshiper decided to block the arrow instead of the sword and felt his sword hit whatever they had on under their robe and stop. He guessed he hadn''t swung hard enough to break their armor. This made him wonder if his first arrow that had struck them had actually done anything.
He had assumed they had healed it through some means but it was possible that they hadn''t had to. This made him think they might be wearing the armor he was going to take to rece the ones that they had destroyed. If they were strong enough to block his swing they were most definitely better than what he was wearing now.
He had an idea how he could take it from them too. It would also help him finish this fight; the only problem was the people watching. He didn''t want them to see him recall something other than his arrow to him for the same reason he didn''t want them to see him use Crunch on his sword.
He knew how to fix this he just needed to run at the moment he was going to use Retrieval on their armor. He needed to touch it once before he could do this though so he had to switch to hand to hand for a while. Putting his sword into its sheath, Lake moved in and threw a punch at them.
They blocked with the spell he had seen disintegrate his arrow and knife so he stopped his punch and moved around them to do it again. Sadly their shield spell wasn''t static and they were able to turn it as he tried to get behind them. After a few circles the shield started to fade and Lake had to dodge back away from them as the Demon Worshiper used what was left of it as a projectile.
Lake recognised this attack as a spell they had been using earlier and realized he was using an attack spell as a shield this whole time. It was a smart way to use a high rank spell that disintegrated anything that touched it. Moving in again Lake didn''t give them any time to gather any mana and instead of using a punch grabbed onto the robe they were wearing and ripped it unveiling the armor underneath.
With that out of the way all he needed to do wasnd one attack with his hand on their armor and he would be ready to take it from them. Pulling out another arrow and turning it into a Magic Arrow, Lake let it fly into the air after using Crunch and Imbuing it with Fire. With this the Demon Worshiper would block the arrow and let himnd a punch thinking their armor would keep them safe.
Chapter 230: Evading
Chapter 230: Evading
With his arrow about to hit, Lake moved to the side so the Demon Worshiper couldn''t block him and the arrow at the same time. Like he expected they turned towards his arrow with the spell and it disappeared but he was able tond a soft punch into their side. Lake didn''t go anywhere near as hard as he could because he had a skill that made unarmed strikes partially pass through armor.
Echoing Strikes (R) Lv.1
Unarmed attacks deal 30% damage when blocked.
He didn''t want to actually hurt them because it would make them more wary of chasing after him. Turning Lake went towards the closest building and ran inside. He could feel the amount of people that could see him drop by 90% as soon as he went inside which was pretty good for just walking into a building but he wanted the number to drop even further.
He wanted the only people to see what he was about to do to be him and the person he was fighting. They would be dead so they wouldn''t be telling anyone. After that he didn''t really care about the conclusions that the people that had been watching up until now ran off and told to their superiors.
Jumping through a window out onto the street, Lake ran across it and into another building. With this stunt he felt the amount of people who were still paying attention drop even further. With this the only people who could still track him or see him had to have some kind of scouting skill he would find hard to get away from but it would happen eventually if he kept up the odd moves.
...
Hearing the sounds of fighting outside Donny got up onto the roof so he could look towards the fortress. Around an hour had passed since he had returned from getting a look at the fortress so he wasn''t surprised the fight had kicked back off. Going back downstairs Donny said. "Start getting them up to the roof."
Moving to get the feet of the closest person Donny and one of the others got the first person to the roof. There were only about twelve of them that had the use of both arms and could help carry the wounded up to the roof and since there was only one small staircase leading up to the roof it took a while to get them all up onto the roof.
Once they were up there it took them a few more minutes to get them to where they needed to be for the flying formation to be able to take them all up with them. Donny had designed it to be bowl shaped so he wasn''t worried about any of them falling during the flight but he still wanted to make them as secure as possible.
It wasn''t good for people in their condition to be moved let alone fly them through the air on an untested formation. He felt like he had done a good job but he hadn''t ever made a formation exactly like this before so there was no way to know how stable it would be. For all he knew he was just going to dump them all into the middle of a horde of undead when it failed while they were flying.
He would take them on a longer route than they needed to take to see if it was working correctly before he flew them over the Demon Worshipers to keep that from happening. With everyone ready Donny nodded toward Fendis to signal him to be ready to help him once he activated the formation.
Unsealing it from the circle he had ced it in, Donny nodded towards them for them to activate the formation''s wind mana siphon. Feeling the formation start to power up Donny increased his control over the formation to start to grow it outwards under all of them. Once it wasrge enough Donny lifted them a few inches off the ground.
Looking around to see if it was working like it was supposed to, Donny started to move them upwards slowly. Looking at Fendis and seeing their face looked calm Donny decided they were safe to start going faster. Flying them from over the building to the street Donny looked down. "We''re flying."
It seemed what they were doing had caused a few of the wounded to wake up and he was happy to find none of them were freaking out about the situation they were waking up to. Flying them around the building they had been hiding in until now while speeding up he ran a few small maneuvers to test its performance. Once he was happy with the performance of the formation Donny said. "I''m about to head towards the fortress, be on the lookout for iing attacks."
He knew the Demon Worshipers would try to blow them out of the sky as soon as they saw them. This wouldn''t be a problem if they could fly higher but with the barrier they couldn''t go as high as they needed to be safe from the people on the street. At their speed the Demon Worshipers would only get one chance to hit them though so he wasn''t too worried about any attacks he sawing.
Passing over a few rows of houses the first spell came flying towards them and Donny dodged to the side. He heard a few of the wounded make sounds like they had opened a wound or two but they could worry about that when they weren''t in the air. Passing over another row of buildings Donny was finally at the point where he was earlier but being higher up he was able to see the ground around the fortress.
There was no way to count the amount from this far away but he was able to make out the numbers around the edges and if he was to guess he would say there were at least four thousand around the fortress. He was sure there were still more in the surrounding buildings so if the estimate of five hundred inside was correct they were severely outnumbered.
It was a good thing they were in the metal domain or the walls of the fortress would have crumbled in a few hours. Convinced they had a good chance of winning, Donny started to look for a ce tond them. "Iing!"
Snapping his eyes to the iing spell Donny tilted them slightly to let the spell pass under them harmlessly. It didn''t end there though right after the first one passed someone else yelled while pointing out a spell headed towards them. Donny just sped them up in response to this one since it wasing from the side.
"Another one." Donny took his attention from the fortress since he had found a ce tond so he had already spotted this one when they had called it out. It wasing from the front so Donny had to actually lean them out of the way again. Ignoring the groans from the wounded Donny turned sharply again after the first spell passed them to dodge another spell.
It seemed they had gained the attention of the Demon Worshipers by now because the amount of spells that came in the next second outnumbered all the ones they had dodged up until now and it stayed like that even as he got close enough to the fortress that the spells they were dodging started to hit the fortress.
He guessed that made sense; it wasn''t like it wasn''t a win-win for the Demon Worshipers since they had been bombarding the fortress anyway. Getting them close enough to the t part of the fortress that they were using tounch spells down at the Demon Worshipers to see the faces of the people Donny could tell they were confused but not hostile and that was all he needed toe in for anding.
Lowering them as fast as he could while still giving the people in the way the time to move, Donny got them a few inches above the ground before he started dissipating the formation. He hadn''t even gotten his foot onto the ground when people from the fortress came towards them with weapons up.
He had expected this so he just let them move in and grab him and the others seemed to understand this was a necessary act of returning to the fortress like this. It would be insane to think they wouldn''t be suspected at all. He and the others were taken in a few different ways which he wasn''t surprised by either.
If he was them he would want to separate them so they would be easier to deal with if something did end up happening. Once he was in a small room with just his guards someone walked in and asked. "Were you the one flying the formation you arrived on?" Donny knew it had been pretty obvious to anyone looking so he said. "Yes."
"Good, were you also the one whoid it?" Donny nodded before remembering he hadn''t been the only one. "Me and one of the others named Fendis. He''s wearing a green shirt and brown armor." After he said this the person left the room and returned with Fendis a few minutester.
"Alright we''ve confirmed your identities as Fighters guild members." Donny was surprised at the speed but he guessed it made sense they had probably been on it before they had even finishednding. "We need you toe with us to help with the wall." Donny followed the man out while asking. "The wounded we brought with us?"
"The healer is making his rounds, don''t worry." Hearing this Donny put it out of his mind and just paid attention to the rings they were passing. His father had always told him to pay attention to where you were no matter what in case you had to run and he had no delusions that this base was imprable.
Chapter 231: New Defense
Chapter 231: New Defense
Lake had been running around for a few minutes trying to lose them but was surprised to find that it didn''t seem to matter what he did, they didn''t lose him. Up until this point he had figured he was almost untraceable unless someone could see him with their eyes because of Trespasser but he guessed all things were possible as long as you got the right skill.
Something that let you see through objects was the most obvious but he was sure there were other workarounds he couldn''t think of. He was also starting to wonder how A Thief''s Sense worked in a situation like this.
A Thief''s Sense (U) Lv.1
Gives a 6th sense for how much attention is on you, Also gives lie detection, night vision and increased hearing.
He had always kind of assumed it meant people looking at him because that always seemed to be what meant people had their attention on him but maybe it just meant how much people were focusing their attention on him and had nothing to do with them seeing him. For all he knew this also detected the fact that they were looking for him because he was a threat.
It made sense that they were all thinking about him especially if they had lost sight of him. He could think of a way to check this. Detector could do almost anything if you could think of what to set it to. After thinking for a second Lake decided ''People trying to find me'' was a good thing that would highlight the people he was looking for to test his theory.
Once he found someone looking for him and took them out he would know if A Thief''s Sense was picking up on people that couldn''t see him if A Thief''s Sense sensed less attention on him. After running for a while Lake saw Detector highlight a fast moving person. Taking out an arrow and Imbuing it with Fire and using Crunch Lake sent the arrow at them.
After passing through a few walls the arrow struck the person in the head and Lake felt the amount of attention on him diminish a bit. It seemed he was right and people looking for him counted as well. Thinking back to all the times he had been alone in the Alchemist guild and felt someone paying attention to him making him think he was being spied on.
It had been around the time he had started stealing things outside so maybe he hadn''t been spied on as much as he thought while inside the Alchemist guild and it was actually people looking for the person who robbed them. Turning mana vision on Lake looked back to see if he was still being chased by the guy he had been fighting.
He saw a few people chasing after him so he switched Detector to look for the person he had been fighting and killed the others with his arrow. He felt the attention on him drop even further and decided he was ready to take this guy out. Letting them catch up to him, Lake could tell they were surprised to find he wasn''t running anymore because they didn''t get near him.
If he was chasing someone and caught them he wouldunch an attack not stop forty feet away. "Why''d you stop?" Lake didn''t answer and ran at him at the same time his arrow pierced a nearby wall heading for the Demon Worshiper. "Oh." Lake could tell they thought he was nning to use thisme sneak attack to win the fight.
Running towards them Lake waited till they turned to block his arrow and used Retrieval to take their armor. He could see them shudder at the sudden loss and felt something hit him in the back to make his punch miss but it was already toote and he sunk his hand into their back until he felt a core in his hand.
Ripping it out, Lake put it and his new armor away before grabbing the body and running. He had felt the Exp so he wasn''t worried about them still being alive and he wanted more time to loot them since he still needed a new bag. They had the rest of this armor set as well so he could see if it fit him.
They looked to be the same size but sometimes armor was tighter than it looked. Especially things like the fingers of a glove. Bigger pieces of armor had straps that let you change the size a bit but the smaller stuff didn''t. There was a way around this problem if it did end up being that not everything fit, he could change into them using their core until he got the armor refitted.
No one would notice if his face was different as long as he didn''t take his helmet off so it wouldn''t really matter if he turned into someone else for a while. Getting to a ce he felt was a good ce to stop and loot the body, Lake set them down and used Mana Vision to look around real quick.
Going and taking their bag off of their back Lake dumped it out and started to use Retrieval to get the stuff that had fallen out of his bag earlier and started to stuff it into his new bag. Once he had the important things like backup potions and the small amount of money he had in the bottom of his bag, Lake tried to get his food.
He only had a small amount of meat and bread but he still had a whole block of cheese. When he tried to get his cheese nothing appeared in his hand and Lake knew why because he had been kind of worried about the stuff that had been inside the Booster Bag space. It seemed when the bag had been destroyed anything in the secret space had been destroyed or at least was somewhere he couldn''t get to it.
Taking his destroyed chest piece off, Lake looked at what was left of the bag. It had been fully destroyed so there was nothing for him to even try to repair to retrieve the stuff inside. Throwing his old armor to the side, Lake started to put on the new chest piece. Once he was done he slung his new bag over his shoulder before moving around a bit to see if it would hinder his movements any.
The bag had been designed to hug tightly to you so it didn''t move around but at the speeds he moved he was afraid it wouldn''t hold up. That test would have to wait tillter though. Grabbing the rest of the armor Lake started to test to see if it was his size. The arms and gloves were fine but the boots weren''t his size.
Deciding it wasn''t worth changing his identity permanently to wear new boots he threw them into his bag and ran outside. Drawing his bow, Lake set Detector to look for Demon Worshipers again and started to wipe them out again like he had been doing before he was attacked. At this speed as long as he wasn''t attacked like that again he would be done here in an hour or so and he could move to clear out the base he had snuck through earlier.
...
After following the man through the fortress for a while Donny arrived to a wall that had formations covering it. He understood this was the other side of the wall that was being bombarded by the Demon Worshipers. He also understood what they would be doing when he saw a formation get damaged before quickly being repaired.
"Set a formation onto the wall and keep it up as long as you can. When you run out of mana there are beds in the next room for you to sleep." Donny nodded and asked. "Are we in charge of deciding which formation we use?" Donny knew a few formations he could use to help strengthen the wall and he saw there were lots of different ones on the wall.
"Yes but try and use ones that won''t tire you out too fast. We have lots of people here so it isn''t all on you." Hearing this Donny asked Fendis. "Do you know a wind formation you can use?" Fendis was very new to formations so he was just making sure. "Yes, but is it ok to use wind mana to power it or should I just use my own mana?"
After Fendis said this he looked at the guy that had brought them here. "You can use Wind mana if you can, most of the people here are earth mages or metal mages so they''re having to use their own mana but you''ll be a great help since you''ll be able tost longer than the others."
The man was about to walk away when Donny stopped him and said. "There''s a man named Hank who should be here as well." After he said this he went to get to work. Forming a formation onto the wall Donny got it stable and calcted he would be able to do this for seven hours before he needed to take a break with the formation he had decided to use. That was what he was going for so he just waited for a spell to hit the part of the wall he was reinforcing.
Chapter 232: Base Raid
Chapter 232: Base Raid
Running around the city Lake didn''t see Detector highlight anyone. This meant he had killed all the Demon Worshipers on this tier that weren''t inside the secret base. Running towards the base, Lake used Detector and set it to look for people that could kill him. Thankfully no one lit up but there weren''t many people around so it didn''t mean there wasn''t anyone inside that could hurt him.
Taking out his sword Lake took down the false wall and walked into the hallway. Once he got through the next door he would be back inside of the base but there wasn''t a reason for him to go inside. Taking out his bow he shot a ming arrow through the wall. Flying it around Lake started to feel the Exp start to roll in again and a few seconds of this he heard the Level up sound.
[Level up]
This meant he had just reached level 11 Thief. Lake wasn''t sure what that meant because thief was the only job that had been changed to go past 10. He would check Later if he got anything like two new skills but he doubted he would get skills every time he leveled up. He could see it happening every ten levels though.
The amount of Exp he would need to get to level 20 was crazy though. The amount of Exp you needed doubled every time so for level 12 was 10240 and that was already more Exp than you needed to get a job to level 11. He would probably need to clear out a few tiers to earn this much.
He didn''t really want to level up anything that gave Intelligence though so he was fine with this. Seeing he was done with all the people inside the range of Mana Vision Lake waited a few seconds and a few more wandered in. These would be the people sent to investigate what was going on.
Recalling the arrow Lake shot it again and wiped out the new wave of people. The people that were still alive inside wouldn''t keep sending people to investigate so he had to go in to finish them off. Walking up to the gate, Lake punched it open. Walking a few feet inside he stopped because Detector lit someone up.
He had it set to look for people that could hurt him so he needed to be careful of this person. Keeping his eye on them Lake wondered if he could kill them if he came at them from an odd angle. If he was to shoot an arrow and have ite out from beneath them he felt there was a chance they wouldn''t be able to dodge in time. Of course it depended on their skills.
If they had something that warned them of danger he wouldn''t get anything from this attack other than theming at him. He was sure whatever rule was keeping them back now would end as soon as he tried to kill them. He decided to kill some more of the people here before he went after the main guy.
If his attack failed he didn''t need a bunch of small fry getting in the way during their battle. Clearing out the base room by room, Lake was soon left with only the people in the room with the dangerous person. Lake was going to leave them for after his attempt on the dangerous person''s life.
Shooting his arrow and controlling it toe from beneath them Lake felt it hit something hard and stop before it reached them. Lake knew what he had hit with the arrow because there was only one thing that had ever stopped one of his attacks with Crunch activated. He had hit some kind of barrier which made him realize why they hadn''t moved from the room they were in.
This person Detector was marking was probably important past being strong. They probably had a position that made them too important to lose so they nned to just wait till he left. It would work because he still didn''t really understand how to break barriers without being subjected to some kind of retaliation.
If he went into the room and beat the barrier down with his hands there was a good chance some kind of trap would activate which he would probably be able to survive but then he would be dealing with the person hiding inside and if he had been hurt even slightly the fight wouldn''t go as well for him.
Turning to leave Lake couldn''t help but think he should just go see what it was like. There was a chance he might be able to think of something if he was to get his eye on the situation and then he wouldn''t have to worry about the person here sneaking up on him while he made his way through the rest of the city tiers.
Going through a few open doors, Lake found himself at a wooden door with two dead guards that he needed to get through to get into the room with the barrier. Looking at the door for a second before he touched it Lake wondered if a strong wood was actually more secure than metal here in the Metal Domain.
He had never thought of the fact that people who could control metal were probably prettymon here and since this base had been here since before the attack started there was a chance they would get discovered while people could use Metal Mana making this wooden door a strongst defense.
He wouldn''t be surprised if it was booby-trapped as well so he needed to use Decrypt before he tried to open it. Seeing the mana start to highlight the formations on the door Lake saw one that would have activated if he was to open it with force and started to look for a work around with the opening formation.
Looking at the lock on the door it seemed the people inside had some kind of key he would have needed to open it but when he realized there wasn''t a barrier covering the door he backed off and used his bow and arrow to destroy the door by poking it full of holes. Once it was able to open he shot a normal arrow into it to push it open and walked into the room.
Inside he saw that the room was actually fully made of wood and knew he had been right about it being used as a bunker within the secret base. Turning his head to what he was here for, Lake looked at the ck sphere in the center of the room that the only surviving people in the base were inside.
He wasn''t able to see through it with his regr eyes because of its color but with Mana Vision and Detector he could tell the people inside could see him. It was probably like a two way mirror like the barrier around the Alchemist guild. Waving Lake said. "You want to talk?" He had nothing to lose by talking to them and he might be able to figure out some stuff by what they said so he felt that this was a smart thing to do while he tried to find a way into the barrier.
Lake could tell by the way their heads started to move after he said this that they were discussing what they should say to him before they started talking. Sadly the resolution from Mana Vision wasn''t good enough to tell what they were saying by reading their lips since the only part of a person he could see very well was their core so he was going to have to wait for what they decided to say to him.
While he waited he started to walk around the sphere to see if he could see anything that was obviously important to the barrier on the outside. He had seen formations on the outside of the barrier before and since this one wasn''t very big he felt there was a good chance there would be some this time as well.
Finding a small formation on the back side of the formation along the ground, Lake used Decrypt on it instead of trying to destroy it like he had done the time he was fighting the Demon Worshiper that had buried him alive. Once it was done reading the formation Lake was able to see why he hadn''t been able to destroy the barrierst time by damaging the part of the formation he was able to see.
This was the part that held the mana used to power the formation until it was activated so it was empty and not important to the actual barrier when it was in use. It would only cause problems for them if they had to deactivate it before the barrier ran out of mana because all the leftover mana would spill out of the broken formation.
Finished with his walk around the sphere, Lake returned to the door and waited for them to finish their internal discussion. It seemed they were being very thorough in their preparations for this conversation so he had no way of knowing when it would start if it ever did. There was a chance they would decide they should not talk to him.
Chapter 233: Reinforcements
Chapter 233: Reinforcements
After a while Lake started to wonder if it was stupid to wait here. For all he knew they were just going to wait till reinforcements arrived to take care of him. Turning to leave Lake heard. "Did the Metal Temple send you?" After thinking about this question Lake nodded and said. "Yes." He hadn''t wanted toe anywhere near here until the Metal Temples head asked him to.
He had felt like he would have to say goodbye to any money he deserved if he had said no to the Temple Head. "What do you want?" Lake decided to not answer this question and instead said. "Can I ask a question first?" He wanted to know if they had just started talking when he tried to leave because they wanted to keep him here until the people they were waiting on arrived.
"Ok." Hearing this, Lake nodded a bit before asking. "Did you call for reinforcements?" Lake wasn''t expecting to get a real answer but if they lied he would know. "Of course we did." Lake was surprised they were honest and asked. "Are they almost here?" This was the only reason he could see for them to be honest.
"They should be here within a minute." Hearing this, Lake wanted to fall back from the sphere a bit so he didn''t have to fight the reinforcements while worrying about the people inside the sphereing out to help them. He didn''t do this though. "When did you call for them?" He wanted to know how long it had taken the reinforcements to get here.
They didn''t answer his question so Lake decided it was time for him to look around with Mana Vision. He hadn''t wanted to take his eyes off of the sphere but letting the reinforcements get too close was worse. The Sight wasn''t active yet so if the people in the sphere tried anything he would have a warning.
Looking behind him to where the front entrance he had entered was he didn''t see anyone but that didn''t mean they weren''t there. He would have no way of knowing if they were just slightly outside of Mana Visions range. For all he knew they were outside waiting for him to leave to sneak attack him.
It wasn''t a bad n if they had confidence in the barriers'' ability to protect the people inside it. He would eventually give up and when he tried to leave they would get him. He didn''t think that was what was happening though. The people were probably outside talking to the people in the sphere nning what to do about him and that''s why they hadn''t talked to him since they said the reinforcements were almost here.
Going out of the room Lake knew he was probably right when they didn''t say anything to stop him. Once he got close enough to the front gate he started to see out into the city enough to start spotting the new people outside. They were hiding in the buildings surrounding the exit but he didn''t think they would stay that way if he stayed inside for too long.
Taking his bow, Lake used it to shoot an arrow out towards the city to see if they were weak enough to die from this attack. He felt like the people in the barrier wouldn''t be counting on the reinforcements if they were weak. He would just wipe them out like the people in the base.
Losing the connection to the arrow as soon as it was about to hit the first person Lake knew these people were on another level. He wasn''t sure if it had been destroyed so he recalled it to his hand. Nothing appeared in his hand so he knew someone had sniped his arrow before he could hit them.
This meant they had at least one person who could feel his attacking and move fast enough to stop it. He was sure that in the people he had killed earlier some of them had been able to sense the attacking but had been too slow to react.
With this he was surrounded but there was a way out of this. The staircase back down would allow him to evade this fight but he wasn''t sure if he wanted to corner himself back down on the 42nd tier. All they would have to do to get rid of him was close the barrier once he entered the city to hide.
Thinking about being trapped again, Lake decided he would fight. All he needed to do to win was lift some of the restrictions he had put himself under to make them think he was too weak to warrant a crazy response. It seemed he had seeded because it was just a small force that came to help against him.
Walking out towards them until they were inside Detectors range Lake looked around and found there were three people that were dangerous enough to kill him. This didn''t mean the rest of the 25 wouldn''t make this fight harder for him. Drawing his sword Lake walked outside while looking directly at the closest of the three he was worried about.
"Hello." Lake felt like there might be a slight intimidation to him singling them out like this and he felt like he was right when his ward ring lost some of its mana. It seemed they had tried to read his stats but his ring had blocked it. Recharging his ring back up to max, he asked. "I''m done here, are you sure you want to fight?"
Of course if they said no he would just move to the next tier and start wiping out the Demon Worshipers there so they would never say no to this question. Seeing the person he had been singling out leave where they had been hiding and appear out on the street, Lake realized he knew them.
"We''ve been sent to kill you so there''s no conversation to have." It was the person who had buried him alive. It was no wonder Detector thought they could kill him; they almost hadst time they had fought. Looking at the person he was fighting, Lake wanted to run so that he wasn''t standing on stone but sadly there wasn''t really a way for him to get away from the fact this ce was 80% stone with the other 20% being metal.
At least he knew what to expect this time so he wouldn''t just fall into it like he hadst time. He also went ahead and started to gather Wind mana in case he had to fly over a sudden pit opening at his feet. It seemed his move wasn''t missed by the Demon Worshiper because they started tough and asked. "Have we fought before?"
Lake had changed his armor since thest fight so he wasn''t surprised they couldn''t tell right away like he could. He didn''t want to answer this question because he felt like they might try to trick him harder if they knew so he asked. "What do you mean?" He didn''t think this would actually change their mind but he might as well try.
He didn''t want them to treat this fight like some kind of grudge match and go all out from the very start. Putting his sword to the side, Lake said. "I''m ready." He knew he was giving away the element of surprise by announcing this but with the other two strong people still hidden he didn''t really have any chance of surprising anyone unless he moved as fast as he could.
His hopes were that when he disappeared they would be in shock long enough for him to have already taken off a few heads. Using Crunch Lake moved as fast as he could and when The Sight activated he used Burst. Feeling himself crash through a wall he pulled his speed down a bit and went for the closest person to him.
They were inside the building he had crashed into so they were extremely close to each other. Angling his sword so that it would Pass through their neck, Lake used Imbue Fire right as the cut started. Lake was looking for another target when he felt an impact into his stomach and looking down he saw a fist belonging to someone he hadn''t seen yet caving in the armor te on his chest.
This was obviously an attack meant to kill him but sadly for this brawler he was fast enough to cut their arm off before they could actually do any damage to him. Using Fast Hands Lake wiped his sword through their arm and continued it through their entire upper body.
After his attack he realized the person he had just cut in half wasn''t real as it dissipated into ck Mana and not understanding what he was seeing ran away by letting himself go faster than he could control backwards until he felt himself go through another wall.
Once he was outside he stopped again to see the person who hade out to talk to him still standing in the same ce as he was earlier. "One kill. Not bad." After they said this they held out their arm and Lake saw the ming corpse of the person he had been able to decapitate fly from the building he was just in and stop in front of the main Demon Worshiper.
"Reverse Death." Lake saw the fire extinguish and the head fly back onto the neck. A second after this happened he heard them take a deep breath before they fell to the ground. He watched until they stood back up and looking at them Lake could tell they werepletely fine like he hadn''t killed them a second ago.
Chapter 234: Hard Battle
Chapter 234: Hard Battle
Lake could tell from just this one interaction he was in a battle he might not be able to win and it made him think he might have failed at making them underestimate him. That or they just sent whoever they had and it wouldn''t have mattered what he had done. Either way one thing was obvious, he needed to deal with this main guy first.
As soon as he took this guy down Lake would be able to kill someone and have them stay dead. Preparing his sword, Lake rushed forward only to be met with a giant wall of stone forming in between them. He then heard them start talking from the other side. "I think I remember you. You attacked the prephouse I was in charge of didn''t you. It''s good they sent me and not any of the others."
Lake was about to jump over the wall when he heard something from beside him. Looking he saw the person that had punched him earlier had appeared out of thin air beside him. Lake understood how this had happened, this was most likely another one of the smoke doubles he had killed earlier.
Using Fast Hands Lake swiped his sword through them again and was proved right when they dissipated into smoke. He assumed this was one of the other strong people he had yet to actually see. Hopefully this was all she could do and he didn''t have to worry about any other attacks that could just pop out of nowhere.
He was about to go back to jumping over the wall to get to the main guy when Lake had to dodge to the side. When he turned his head he had found the wall gone and a massive wall of spells were flying towards him. His identity had already been discovered so he went ahead and made a few barriers to help him with getting through the barrage of spells.
Once it had passed Lake realized that he was also dealing with people with good teamwork. In the small amount of time he had focused on the brawler that had appeared they had all shot spells and the wall he had thought was separating them had moved out of the way to allow attacks from a direction he wouldn''t be expecting.
"There they are. Were you trying to pretend it wasn''t you by holding back these shields?" This was exactly what he had been doing but he had no ns on confirming it. Looking at the main guy Lake wondered how many steps he would be able to take before anotherbo like that one happened.
It was funny that they were the only person he could see with normal vision but also the hardest to get to. He guessed they were confident in their ability to keep him safe. He didn''t really have any other option than to try to run at them though so he just tried again. Unsurprisingly after a few steps he was stopped again by the stone around him changing.
Lake couldn''t help but wonder how they were controlling the stone without Earth mana around but he was seeing it so it must be possible. Hopefully they were putting a strain on their mana by doing this and they would run out eventually.
Jumping to the top of the stone wall Lake was about tond on the top when the wall disappeared. Lake realized he was now in an uncontrolled fall that would open him up to attacks. He had a way to control himself in the air though. Casting Fly Lake knew their n was probably to get rid of his built up wind mana before opening a hole for him to fall into but he didn''t really have a choice but to go with it.
He had made a mistake by jumping into the air and he knew he had been yed again. He had been so worried about the samebo they had used on him the first time that he had jumped before even thinking about what could happen to him if he was in the air. Not being able to think through your actions was one of the problems about relying on your speed to fight he guessed.
Finished blocking the most recent barrage of spells Lakended on the ground since flying was a bad idea during a fight if you didn''t know what you were doing and waited for the hole to open. He had been gathering more wind mana the whole time he had been dodging the attacks so he had enough to fly again if he needed to.
Looking around Lake saw during the most recent exchange the people that were hiding in the surrounding buildings had moved a bit to encircle him more. This meant the next barrage of spells woulde from all sides and would be harder to deal with. "Can I surrender?" Lake didn''t think he was skilled enough to deal with this.
His speed was his only trump card at the moment and he had already gone as fast as he could and it hadn''t done anything. If he continued to fight he would just get killed and he felt he had a better chance of surviving as a prisoner. "Sure, but you would have to drink this before we''ll stop the fight."
The man held up a dark bottle as he said this and Lake could tell by the way it looked he wouldn''t be able to rely on Poison Taster if he actually drank it. "What is it?" The man smiled when Lake asked this and Lake thought it was because they found it funny that he was actually considering this.
"I''m sure you''ve heard of the Loyalty curse right?" Lake stopped considering this as a real option and got back into a fighting stance. He would rather this life end than live the rest of it as someone''s ve. He saw his second life as a way to get the enjoyment he had missed in his first one and wasn''t willing to suffer through it.
Of course he was dealing with people that could revive dead people so he might end up a ve even if he died so his only real option was to win or get away. He was sure they would see him as a prize even if they beat him because they would know he was strong and he was sure there wasn''t a person in this world that wouldn''t want a strong person they couldpletely control.
With this thought Lake decided to see what would happen if he just went as fast as he could without worrying about what he hit or controlling himself. Well not as fast as he could, there was abo of skills he could use that would probably cause him to die if he was to hit something because his Endurance wasn''t high enough.
He was just going to use Burst and none of the other skills he had that made his agility higher because with Overpower Burst was already too much for him.
Burst (U) Lv.1
Doubles the effect of the Agility and Strength stat.
Consumes Stamina (1 per hour)
Overpower (U) Lv.1
Skills that take stamina to activate have their effects tripled.
The nice thing was whenever his agility increased so did his endurance because of Increased Synergy.
Increased Synergy (U) Lv.1
If your Dexterity is higher than your Agility or Endurance they be equal to your Dexterity.
If your Agility or Endurance is higher than your Dexterity, gain a bonus to your Dexterity equal to the difference.
He was pretty sure this skill made his three stats the same because when Burst effected his Agility it made it higher than his Dexterity which gave him a bonus to his Dexterity that made it higher than his Endurance so his Endurance rose to meet it. This meant whatever his top speed was he should be able to survive it but he wasn''t sure if he was right about how Increased Synergy worked so he was going to hold back.
Putting his barriers in front of him because they scaled off of his Dexterity and would help him break through anything he hit, Lake was about to start his run when he remembered he had another skill that worked off of his Dexterity, Wave.
Wave (G) Lv.1
Send out a wave of mana that scales off of your Dexterity.
Cost: 10 mana
This was an attack he had used in the past to copse underground areas but since then he had gained Overpower so with Burst active his Dexterity was at least six times higher than it was normally. Wave had already been deadly enough to mist anyone it hit in the past and with it being a ranged attack he should be able to end this fight in one move.
Putting his sword on his back, Lake moved his barriers out of the way and Punched forward while using Wave.
...
Feeling a vibration travel through the wall Donny wondered if the Fortress had just been breached but when no one came running into the room screaming for them to get ready to fight he guessed it had been something happening somewhere else that was big enough for him to feel the vibration in the metal of the fortress.
Chapter 235: Back To The 25th
Chapter 235: Back To The 25th
Seeing everything in front of him crumble and fly away, Lake felt confident that he had won. He felt Exp so he knew he had killed at least a few of the people that had been in front of him if not all. He didn''t have time to go through the rubble to find the bodies though because looking up to the stone top of the 41st tier Lake knew he needed to run to dodge the copse he had caused.
It seemed there was no way around the fact that Wave wasn''t a good skill to use in an enclosed area unless he wanted stuff to fall on him. Running until he didn''t hear anything falling anymore Lake looked back at the area he had just been fighting in. If he had to guess he would say he had effectively destroyed a third of the city with this one move.
Of course the tiers this far down were much smaller so it wasn''t as crazy as it sounded but it was still crazy to think he had done this with 10 mana. One small Fire spell cost more than that unless he gathered the Fire mana from the surroundings. Done here and wanting to get away before he found out if the people he had just been fighting had somehow survived and chased him, Lake looked for the way up to the next tier.
It wasn''t hard for him to find the elevator shaft up and start climbing. Once he got to the 40th tier he didn''t stop and kept going. He was done ying hero even if he didn''t earn a single more gold until this was over he felt like he needed to start to prioritize safety a bit more and standing out wasn''t the way to get away from the fighting.
Setting Detector to look for a tier with no Demon Worshipers that could kill him and casting Fly to make it easier for him to go up Lake didn''t stop until he got to 25th tier Lake realized this was like the halfway point between the two sides of the formation since the top eight were above ground and under the influence of the other side of the formation. He also realized there was a small amount of Earth mana in the air around him.
Stepping onto the 25th tier, Lake remembered that this was actually where he had been sent by Masters on his first day of looking for Demon Worshipers. What were the odds that this was also where Detector said he would be the safest. Walking into the city Lake saw this ce seemed almost untouched with no destruction to speak of other than what he had done when he was here.
He wondered if the Demon Worshipers had decided to not control this part of the city when the mana siphon had failed to drain all the earth and metal mana from it because it would give the people here the ability to fight back. Arriving in the area that he had identally destroyed the day he had been practicing his Earth magic, Lake found a house that was still standing and opened the door.
Once he was inside he looked around to make sure no one was hiding and sat down. Taking out his breadke took a couple of bites before resting his head onto his arms. After a few minutes of sitting like this, Lake got up and looked for the bedroom. He felt safe enough here to actually sleep.
He wasn''t sure how much time had passed since he slept but he felt tired so it didn''t make sense for him to wait to go to bed. He was happy to find the bed in this house was one for a regr human and his feet didn''t hang off the end when heid down. Closing his eyes Lake couldn''t help but think back to the fight he had just had.
He wondered if the main guy had lived or not. He had seen them move before the Wave hit them but that didn''t mean they had been sessful in getting away. He guessed it didn''t really matter if they lived or not because they weren''t the only Demon Worshiper he had to worry about.
...
"Tiffany." Looking up from her book Tiff saw one of the Temple Heads people standing in the doorway. "Yes?" Tiff kind of already knew what this was about, it had been three days since she had returned from the Light Domain and all the others had had their turns to go see the God of Light.
"The Temple Head wants to see you." Getting up and putting the book about Demigods back on the shelf, Tiff walked to the Temple Heads office. Stepping inside she saw the Temple Head was alone, probably already done speaking with the person who had just returned. "Feel free to sit down while we wait."
As she was sitting down Tiff asked. "What are we waiting for?" She was answered not by the Temple Head but by the door opening. Turning and seeing Dawn enter, Tiff wondered if the Temple Head knew what the God of Light had told her and was giving them the chance to say goodbye.
"Alright now that both of you are here we can get started. I know you can''t really say what the God of Light said to you during your meetings but he told us to send both of you." Dawn didn''t seem surprised by this and Tiff kind of knew why.
Ever since they had been back from their meetings they had tried to talk about what happened a few times and while they couldn''t get anything important out Dawn had seemed to already know what she was trying to say. The God of Light had said lots of the others had talked about each other so she wouldn''t be surprised if Dawn had asked the God of Light about her.
The God of Light wouldn''t have a reason not to answer since he could just make it so you couldn''t repeat anything he told you. "Are you two ready to go or do you need some time to get your stuff?" Tiff would need a few minutes but she let Dawn answer. "We need a bit to get our bags ready."
"Well get to it. Come back once you''re done." The two of them walked out into the hallway and Tiff could tell they wanted to ask each other questions but sadly they couldn''t talk about what they actually wanted to. She had learned a way to learn a bit about what the other knew in the past few days.
"What do you think the God of Light wants from us?" Dawn shrugged and said. "I''d love to know, I guess we''ll have to wait and see." By the sarcastic voices they were both using they were able to tell they both already knew what was going on. Of course that didn''t mean they knew the same thing but they most likely did.
Getting to her room Tiff grabbed the bag she had prepared as soon as she had gotten back and walked back out into the hallway to wait for Dawn. A few secondster Dawn came out of her room with her bow and a bag and nodded at her. "Are you ready?" Tiff gave a thumbs up and they both walked back.
Walking back into the Temple Heads office the Temple Head said. "Let''s go." Following the Temple Head towards the front gate of their base Tiff noticed she had a bag as well but before she could ask the Temple Head started to talk. "I''ll be going with you two this time to keep you safe. We''re pretty sure the Demon Worshipers have noticed what we''re doing and there''s a good chance we''re going to run into some trouble on the way."
Tiff wasn''t surprised they were being more careful this time. The thing she actually found surprising was that they had been able to send the members of the 23 one at a time with nothing bad happening. The Light and the Holy Domain were extremely close so as long as you moved fast there wasn''t much of a chance but they had rolled the dice 23 times.
"Are we the only three going or will we be taking some guards?" Tiff felt like taking guards was an ok idea depending on what they were going for; if they wanted to move fast it didn''t make too much sense though. "No, just us three. Others would just slow us down."
"What about other members of the 23?"
"They need to be here in case they attack. With me being gone we''ll need the rest of the 23 here to have a chance of winning the battle if it''s anything like thest one." This was true, thest battle had taken almost all the members of the 23 and the giants other than the one they killed had still gotten away.
Chapter 236: Dig
Chapter 236: Dig
Opening his eyes Lake could tell almost no time had passed since he had fallen asleep. He had left Burst active to see if his Endurance had an effect on how long you slept. It seemed his experiment had been a sess because his body wasn''t even warm under the nket yet. He was pretty sure he had been sleeping for less than 10 minutes.
He guessed it made sense with Burst active his Endurance was way past the level a mortal human could have and it made sense to him that gods wouldn''t really need to sleep at all once they reached a certain level. Just now he was pretty sure his exhaustion had been more of a mental thing than a physical anyway.
It was almost like his mind had tricked his body into bing tired. He thought that sounded like what happened at least. He had never been through a fight quite that overwhelming before so he could understand if he had be overwhelmed. Either way with his break over he needed to start to think about what he should do now.
There were a few things he could do that made sense but he wanted to keep his ns to things that didn''t put him into danger. He also wanted to make it to the surface but didn''t think he could if the barrier was still active. With these two goals Lake knew what he could do, he could just dig up to the surface around the barrier that was blocking off the top tiers of the city.
He shouldn''t have any problems getting through the stone with Crunch and no one would try to stop him as long as he hid what he was doing. The amount of time it would take was a problem though. Even on the elevators it took a while to descend through the tiers and he wouldn''t be moving in a straight line towards the surface so he would actually be digging further than the elevators had to move to get to wherever he started digging.
Now all he needed to do was figure out where he would start his tunnel. If he moved closer to the surface he wouldn''t have to dig as far but he would have to leave this tier which was a safe haven away from the Demon Worshipers. Thinking about it, Lake realized the Elevator shaft had been empty thest time he was there.
He had flown up from the 41st tier and hadn''t even seen one person so if he just went up as high as he could and started digging in the elevator shaft he could get the benefits of being higher up without having to worry about any Demon Worshipers seeing what he was doing. None of them should be using the elevator shaft to get around anyway with all the secret staircases they had.
Getting up and getting ready, Lake walked outside and was about to head for the elevator shaft when he thought he might as well look around for a while before he left. There had to be people here even if they were just normal people hiding. He wasn''t looking to save them though, he just wanted any information they might have.
He knew they probably didn''t know what was going on on the surface but they might and he really wanted to know what the situation was like up there. It would tell him if he should leave and just head back to the Alchemist guild or stick around until the barrier came down so he could get paid.
He guessed he could juste back at ater date to get his money but he felt not being here at the time the fighting ended would make what he did seem less important with lots of the people he had done things in front of moved on already. He also would need to be here to sing his own praises so nothing he did was attributed to anyone else. He couldn''t leave everything to other people.
Walking towards the center of the city, Lake found the market where his quest for the Demon Worshipers started. He had spent like an hour here on the first day watching the others question people looking for anyone who acted suspicious. He had ended up marking arge number of people that were here to track them to see if any of them grouped up after they left.
Turning on his Mana Vision Lake looked around to see if anyone was in the buildings surrounding the market. If he was hiding here he would have chosen the center of town to start his base so he felt this was the best ce to start his search. It didn''t take him long to find a group of people crouched in one of the buildings.
Walking up to the door Lake knocked and when none of them came to answer the door he yelled. "Can you guys let me in?" He felt like if he called them out in any other way he woulde off as aggressive. Still none of them came to the door though so Lake said. "Please."
As long as there was a single person inside that heard how pleading he sounded they should convince the others to let him in. It took around five minutes for what he predicted to happen but the person who came to the door didn''t open it. "What do you want?"
"I wanted to know if you knew anything about what''s going on on the surface. I''m trying to get there and I wanted to know how feasible this n was."
"I''ll answer your question but how did you know we were here?"
"I''m a scout."
"That''s what we figured. Sorry, but we don''t really know anything we''ve been hiding here since the first fights started." Hearing this Lake knew he was really just wasting his time and there was almost no chance of him finding any information here. If he really wanted information his best bet would be to Impersonate a Demon Worshiper near the surface for a while.
He would rather just start digging than worry about doing that. Heading towards the elevator again Lake gathered enough mana to cast Fly and headed towards the surface. Soon after passing the 10th tier Lake could see the barrier that wouldn''t let him go all the waying up and went towards the wall while drawing his sword.
Activating Mute so none of the stone he dug out made any sounds when it fell Lake cut into the wall using Crunch. Soon he had made enough of a space for him tond if he wanted but he kept himself in the air. He was going to try to dig at a steep enough angle that all the debris would fall into the shaft so that he wouldn''t have to stop to move the stuff out of the way and he needed to be off the ground so he wasn''t in the way of the rubble.
After a bit of digging Lake realized just how much work he had just signed himself up for and started to try to think of a faster way to do it. He had loads of skills he could use to make himself stronger but the main thing keeping him from being able to move faster was his reach. His sword wasn''t partially long so all of his attacks on the wall were shallow and he was burning through his Stamina using Crunch after every two attacks.
Thankfully the refresh rate for his Stamina was extremely high so it was offsetting this but he would still tire himself out after a while even if all that happened was he got bored of doing this. Thinking of a very basic way to improve his digging speed, Lake left the tunnel and set Detector to look for a long sword.
Entering the 10th tier Lake could tell it wasn''t as peaceful as the 25th. He wasn''t here to fight though so he just ignored it and looked around until Detector lit up a sword. Sadly it was on the back of a person passing and they weren''t an enemy so he moved on to try and find one on a dead person.
It seemed the fighting had been going on for a while because there were people on the ground almost everywhere he looked so he was sure he would be able to salvage one off of someone without having to rob anybody. He was in good guy mode right now so he didn''t want to ruin it just to save a few minutes.
After checking a few streets, Lake realized a lot of the bodies had been picked clean of any gear or just didn''t have any to begin with and decided to look for the base of the surviving fighters on this tier. If they had been gathering gear off of bodies they should have someying around that he could take.
Chapter 237: Talk
Chapter 237: Talk
It was pretty easy for Lake to find where the Fighters were stationed by following the sounds of fighting and seeing where the people were running to and away from. As he was heading towards them he wondered if these people were stationed here by the Fighters guild or just happened to live here.
This was one of the biggest ces in the city so he felt it made sense for this ce to have arge enough poption to have this many people here that could fight. He also knew the struggle Masters had had getting enough people to send out to attack the ces the Temple Head had told them to attack so it was unlikely they had stationed arge number of Fighters guild members here.
Looking down at the fight that was happening in the center of the city''s square, Lake wondered what the best way for him to get down there and look for a sword was. He could take out his bow and handle the Demon Worshipers but he was trying to stay out of the fight. There wouldn''t be a fight if he killed all of them though.
It was also another chance for him to look important in front of arge number of people. Imbuing Fire onto a Magic Arrow and using Crunch Lake shot it and started to pierce it through all the people in ck robes down below. He was able to get over half of them before any of them seemed to notice what was happening.
It was toote and none of them were skilled enough to do anything about what he was doing to them. With this almost done Lake used Detector to look for people that could kill him. Not seeing anything he went down to the group of people that he had just helped. They didn''t immediately trust him like he had expected but he guessed they had no reason to.
Just because he had killed the Demon Worshipers didn''t mean he was on their side if you really thought about it. "Hello I''m Lake. I''m a member of the Fighters guild trying to make it to the surface." Lake was going to give them more information about himself so they knew who he was when they made a report of what happened here but someone cut him off.
"The surface is blocked by a barrier." This was true so Lake nodded and said. "I was nning on digging a way up so I could see what was going on up there." Lake knew he would probably sound stupid saying he was going to dig but it didn''t really change the fact that he would be sessful and people would know he was once they noticed his tunnel once the elevators started again..
"Can you dig at a good speed?"
"Yes, but I''m trying to find a longsword to make it faster. That''s actually why I''m here, I thought you might have a pile of extra equipment." Lake guessed this person he was talking to was their leader so he tried to get a better look at them. Their poster had changed during their conversation so Lake was pretty sure they trusted that he was with them.
"You said you''re going to use a sword?" Lake nodded and said. "I have a skill that helps me cut through things but my current sword is too short to be efficient." Lake had found people pretty much epted anything you said as long as you used the word skill in an exnation. They had also just seen him take out an army''s worth of Demon Worshipers so he was obviously strong.
"Sir they''re all dead." Looking at the person who had interrupted their conversation and let them talk. "All of them?" The new guy nodded and everyone looked at him with grateful eyes. "We appreciate what you did for us, we''ll give you anything you need." It seemed they had been checking the people he had dropped with his arrow while they had been talking to make sure he had killed them.
It made sense to check because undead were pretty hard to kill even if they had been set on fire it took a while for them to burn to death. "Come inside and you can pick what you want." Lake nodded and followed them inside. Once he was inside their base he saw just how bad they had needed help. Every avable surface had a wounded personying down on it.
"You guys don''t have a healer?" The man shook his head and said. "They killed them first, all assassinated by infiltrators or killed during battles."
"What about potions?" Lake had always used potions so he wanted to know if they were just holding back because these people weren''t important enough. "We ran out after the second day." It was too bad there weren''t many nts around because Lake could have helped but he hadn''t really seen many nts here in the Metal Domain.
He guessed the low light level made it so you could only grow curtain things and in special ces. He knew they had a lot of mushrooms and root vegetables at the markets so they were probably grown down here and all the other stuff came down on the elevators. "Well I guess it''s good they lived even if they''re in bad shape."
"Ok the gear is here in this room." Lake went ahead and switched Detector to look for long swords as he walked into the room. Four swords lit up so all he needed to do was pick one and get back to digging. Lake found the one with the thickest de out of the four and said. "I''ll take this one."
With a thicker de he would be able to swing it harder without it flexing too much. Because of Crunch he didn''t have to worry about the stone he was swinging it through damaging his de but his own strength was a problem. When he swung too hard weapons tended to break and the problem would get worse with a longer thinner de.
He was about to walk back out of the room when the leader who had followed him in closed the door and asked. "Can we talk?" Lake had no reason not to hear what they had to say so he said. "Sure." He had kind of expected for them to ask him to do something for them before he left anyway.
"We think the base of the Demon Worshipers will have the things we need to heal everyone because we found potions on some of their bodies and we were wondering if you could help us find it." Lake knew what they were talking about because he had also found potions on some of the Demon Worshipers he had looted. He had never taken any though since he had his own and it felt gross to take a potion from a Demon Worshiper.
"I can find it but I don''t think it''s worth it. I''m sure you know there will be a person we don''t want to fight in whatever base we find." Lake really didn''t want to fight any more big battles until he got outside and could run if he needed to. Being trapped underground was making him feel he needed to not make any more powerful Demon Worshipers mad, especially this close to his tunnel.
"If they have someone like that why wouldn''t they have been part of the fighting until now?" Lake didn''t really know why the strong people held back but it was what happened so he just shrugged and said. "Not sure, but I know because I was helping the fight up until now by going floor to floor but I pissed them off and they started sending actual threats after me so I know it isn''t worth going to get potions from one of their bases because as soon as we do the real treats wille out. All that will happen is everyone will get killed and then I''ll have to start running again."
Lake was pretty sure he had convinced them that it was a bad idea and said. "Hopefully the bodies outside will have potions you can use and the problem will seem less severe to you after some of your guys get back up."
"Yeah you''re right there should be a good number of potions out there right now but I don''t think it will be enough to heal everyone." Lake could tell the guy was looking at the potions on his belt as he said this so Lake decided it was time to end this before he had to be rude. "Ok I''m going to go back to work. I''lle see how you all are doing whenever I take a break."
Standing up, Lake walked out of the room and past all the people that were listening to their conversation through the door. Once he was outside he Gathered the mana needed to cast Fly and flew back to his tunnel.
Chapter 238: Five Potions
Chapter 238: Five Potions
Lake had been digging for a few hours and he had to say taking the time to get a bigger sword had been a great idea. With every swing a boulder would roll down the tunnel into the elevator shaft. He needed a break though so he put his new sword on his back and flew back to the 10th tier.
He had told them he woulde see how they were doing and he had meant it at the time but he had had an idea while digging that made him want to go back even more. Setting Detector to look for health potions, Lake ignored the ones he owned that started to glow and looked at the streets below.
He assumed most bodies had already been checked but there was no way they got to them all already. Plus this was a giant town so there was bound to be some hidden in the buildings. Back in his world people kept medicine in their homes so he was sure it was true here as well. After gathering five from various ces Lake headed towards the base.
They had guards posted around the base so Lake appeared in front of them and called out. "Hey I''m back." Lake held up the potions he had brought and said. "I found these." Seeing one of the guards run inside Lake knew they were going to get their leader and patiently waited. In times like these just because you looked like ''you'' didn''t mean anything. and he wasn''t going to just push his way inside.
He didn''t want to put any stress on the guards because he didn''t want to have to defend himself if they tried to stop him. Less than a minute passed before the leader came out and Lake held up the potions he had brought again. "Come in." Nodding Lake walked forward and handed the five potions over right away.
Walking into the base Lake saw there were less peopleying around than thest time he was here but there were still more than five health potions would be able to fully heal. If they spread the potions thin they would be able to get a lot more of the people moving again so they weren''tying around doing nothing.
You really only needed one arm to swing a sword and none to cast a spell so healing their legs first made a lot of sense. A lot of them probably also had pretty serious internal injuries that took priority so he was sure they would be feeding the potions to people instead of pouring it on wounds.
"I''ll try to find more for the next time Ie to rest." The leader didn''t thank him like he was expecting and instead asked. "How''s your tunneling?" Lake was happy to talk about this because he had put so much work into it already so he said. "Just a little over a day and I feel I''ll get out. Of course I have no way of actually knowing so that might be wishful thinking."
"So do you n to bring us enough potions for us all to go with you or are you going to leave as soon as you get out."
"Do you want to go? There''s no way to know if it will be safe outside, for all I know there will be a massive army of Demon Worshipers out there waiting to invade."
"That''s true but you don''t have to bring us right away. If you leave and you find it is safe you could alwayse back and get us." Lake guessed that was true and said. "I will if I can, also I''ll bring as many potions as I can before I leave so either way you all will be in a better situation."
"Oh, I never introduced myselfst time, I''m Wezz." Wezz held out their hand for a handshake as they said this so Lake shook it while thinking he needed to get better at introductions. He never really asked for anyone''s name because he tended to remember people based off of their faces.
"I think I told everyone earlier but I''m Lake. I''m a member of the Fighters guild who''s trying to get to the surface to help in the fight that is most likely going on up there." With this no one would think he was running away to save his life when there were still so many enemies down here that he could be fighting.
He had been kind of worried about this line of questionsing up once this all ended but with him saying his n was to help they should give him the benefit of believing he had good intentions if anyone brought this up when payday came. He was sure there would be people that tried to nitpick to keep from having to pay what he had probably earned.
They would be right to do so because he was trying to run away from the fight that was why spreading the lie this early was so important. "Ok here''s a room you can use to rest if you want. If you don''t n to sleep just yet you cane with me as I make my rounds." Lake thought about it and knew he wasn''t tired enough to actually sleep yet so he said. "I''ll follow you for now."
...
Tiff had originally nned to talk to Dawn a little during the trip but for whatever reason that hadn''t happened. It most likely had something to do with the atmosphere feeling too serious with the Temple Head being here for any small talk to take ce. It made sense because if the temple head felt she needed to be here to keep them alive they were probably in some actual danger.
This made it hard for any of them to say anything at all with the chance that someone might be close enough to hear them. They had made good progress in their trip though so she was starting to think they had been too cautious and nothing was going to get in their way.
They really only had about an hour left before they would cross over into the Light Domain and they should be safe there even if the Demon Worshipers had been after them. Tiff wanted to share her thoughts with the others but the vibe was still bad so she kept it to herself and just looked at Dawn.
They had silently been casting looks at each other for the whole trip so Dawn was already ready with a bored look on her face. Tiff stifled augh and looked back forward just in time to stop herself from running into the Temple Head. Dawn came to a stop right next to her and asked. "Why are we stopping?"
"It''s about to happen. Just stay close, none of them are strong enough to get past me." Hearing this Tiff got as far behind the Temple Head as she could and when she saw Dawn not moving behind the Temple Head she grabbed her and pulled her into cover. "Stay close so the Temple head doesn''t have to work hard to keep us safe."
They had gone through all sorts of training and some of that training had to do with fighting while protecting others. It was always harder to win a fight if you had lots of people to protect so one of the best things you could do was to have them get close to each other so you didn''t have to worry about your enemyunching attacks at the same time towards two different people and making you choose who to save.
Of course there was always the chance you lost everyone if you failed to block even a single attack but they didn''t have to worry about that since it was the Temple Head protecting them. If she was the one protecting two people she would have probably told them to run. She wasn''t very good at protecting people so they would be better off trying to get away while she held them off.
"Get ready." Almost as soon as the Temple Head said this spells came out of the surrounding fields straight towards the two of them. A giant white wall appeared in front of them to stop the spells and watching the shield not react at all even after all the spells struck it Tiff knew this shield wasn''t going to budge.
Usually light magic had a problem against Unholy magic but the Temple Head''s spells were high tier at the least so these small fry Demon Worshipers weren''t enough to overpower a shield spell like this. After a second round of spells Tiff looked back at the Temple Head to see her holding a ball of light in her hand.
"Tiff you should close your eyes." Tiff felt Dawn''s hand going over her eyes and listened to the suggestion. There was no reason not to cover your eyes when you knew what the Temple Head was about to do. Seeing the sh even with Dawn''s hand over her eyes Tiff knew whoever was attacking them was about to be dead.
Chapter 239: 30 Potions
Chapter 239: 30 Potions
Watching thest of the potions he had brought disappear into the person they had picked to heal, Lake wondered if maybe he should go out now to get more. He had taken a break to let his Stamina refill and because he had wanted to take a break from the repetitive work mining a tunnel was.
His n was to just sit around until he felt like getting back to work or taking a nap but he could probably just take a walk and pick up potions while doing so. Walking around the town was a better break anyway. "Those went quicker than I thought." They had only been able to heal eleven people before they ran out of potions.
"Yeah but with those people healed, all the people in critical condition are fine so we don''t have to worry about anyone dying from their wounds anymore."
"If you had to guess, how many potions do you think you would need to heal the rest?" Lake wanted to have a goal in mind when he went back out to look. "20 would probably get everyone able to move but we would need over 30 to get everyone back to perfect condition."
Lake hadn''t checked too much of the city on the way here so he was sure he would be able to get close to the 20 to get everyone on their feet but 30 was a real stretch. He might even have to go to another tier to get to 20 if he was unlucky. "Ok I''m going to go look for a while, I''ll be back in around an hour."
Lake was able to walk out with Wezz not saying anything to stop him. It wasn''t surprising because he wouldn''t stop someone who nned to bring him a box of potions he needed either. Once he was far enough away from the base that he felt like they wouldn''t have checked for potions, Lake turned Detector back on.
On the first street he walked down Lake was able to locate two health potions on bodies and one inside of a house. Taking a bag from one of the bodies to store them, Lake moved on to the next street. This street had less bodies but the houses were nicer so he had a good feeling that they would make up for theck of people to search.
He was worried about the fact that the nice houses would most likely have people inside since they were nice enough to have defensive measures. He would go inside even with all those things being true though because it didn''t really matter as long as he used Detector to look for traps.
Seeing the first potion in one of the houses, Lake got close to the window that would let him get in and out within a few seconds and turned Detector to look for traps. The window seemed to have some type of rm set on it but Lake didn''t care about something like that so he popped the window and grabbed the potion before climbing back out.
Going up to every house that Detector identified to have a potion to do the same as what he had done at the first house, Lake left the street with 4 new potions and this made his total 7. With his luck so far Lake started to think maybe he had been overestimating how hard it would be to gather the 30 that Wezz thought they would need.
He just needed to stick to areas with the nicer buildings and he would be able to go back soon enough to give them all the potions they would need. Moving to the next street because it seemed the houses in this area stayed nice for a few more streets he continued to break into house after house.
When he hit the 15 potion mark Lake decided to head back and hand over what he had so they could use them while he found the rest. He felt if he gave them 30 all at once they were likely to be less stingy while treating each person and waste some. Plus he had seen that identifying the best way to heal someone actually took a bit of time if you knew what you were doing.
He hadn''t known this because he always just drank arge amount of a potion whenever he got hurt but when he was watching the people get healed earlier he had seen you could take the time to identify the parts of the patient that needed care and use less potion to heal them. But, like he said it took more time so him taking the first half of the potions to them now would let them get to work earlier.
Lake didn''t wait for the leader toe out this time because the guards just waved him in. He didn''t think they should be so careless but it wasn''t really his problem if they got invaded by an imposter so he just smiled and walked in. Finding Wezz Lake handed over the bag and walked away before Wezz could say anything.
Lake didn''t want to waste time in a conversation about this because he really shouldn''t even be doing it. His first priority should be the tunnel and he was really just doing this to make himself look like a nice guy. Having a good public image would be helpful especially if he had to stay in the Metal Domain like he had been warned he might before he had even decided toe here.
Of course he didn''t think the Demon Worshipers would be able to keep him here even if they formed a huge grudge against him but you never knew what they might be able to do if he wasn''t careful. "Oh, wow there was actually another one on this street." Lake hade back to look for potions where he had left off earlier and found another potion on the same street he had left when he had found the 15th.
"It''s good I came back here instead of moving on to the next street." Stopping Lake realized he had just started talking to himself out loud. There was nothing wrong with this, it was just that he had always been an internal monologue kind of person. "I wonder what changed?"
Like he said it didn''t really matter but he did turn Mute on just in case anyone was around because he didn''t want them to hear him. Walking to the next street after getting the first potion of the second set and a new bag to put them in, Lake noticed these buildings didn''t really look like houses.
He had noticed that even stores and such had a part of them that could be used as a home but these looked more like warehouses. He guessed it made sense that a tier asrge as this one would need a ce to store all the goods the massive amounts of people that lived here needed.
He had a bad feeling about going inside though even if there was a chance he would findrge amounts of potions or good food he remembered Wezz asking him to find the Demon Worshipers base. If he was them and needed the resources to keep an army he would set his base either here or in the center of town where the market was.
Wezz had his base near the market so that left these warehouses for the Demon Worshipers. Turning around to head to a new part of town, Lake realized why there had been less and less bodies as he got closer to here. Whoever was inside the warehouse was probably slowly gathering them so they could be turned whenever the gargoyles got here.
He had killed the gargoyles they were waiting on though so this would never happen unless they had a necromancer around. He found this plot intriguing and wanted to get closer to investigate but decided to keep with his n to stay low key until he finished his tunnel.
Getting to a new part of town where the bodies were on the ground all over the ce Lake started looking for potions again. The houses weren''t as nice but the dead people made up for this fact and he was able to gather another five rtively quickly.
Most came from Demon Worshipers but Wezz had shown no sign that he cared where they came from so his feelings about the dark bottles holding healing potions didn''t matter. Finishing his search Lake looked around and tried to think of how much of the city he had had to search to get the 30 potions.
He was pretty fast but he didn''t think he had even covered a third of the city. It was good news he guessed, but only if there was another battle that left half of Wezz''s men injured again. Returning to Wezz''s base, Lake handed over thest 15 they had asked for and said. "I''ll be back in a few hours to see how you all are doing so make sure to keep a room ready for me because I''ll be sleeping when I get back."
Chapter 240: Stopping The Leak
Chapter 240: Stopping The Leak
Lake had been swinging his sword for an hour already and was starting to feel like he needed a break. Of course if he kept taking breaks he would never get done so he just put the thoughts of going to do something else in the back of his mind and kept going.
Slicing forward again Lake felt a wet spray hit his face and thought he had somehow hit someone with his sword when he realized what had actually happened. He had hit a source of water. Realizing how big of a problem this could be, Lake tried to think of a way to fix what he had just done because water was already starting to shoot out of the wall.
"I should have been more careful." Thinking about it now Lake could have foreseen this if he hadn''t had to keep himself from thinking to make this bearable. Thankfully he had taken so many breaks that he hadn''t gotten too far yet so even if he had to restart it would only be eight or so hours lost.
Having no way of stopping this that he could think of without getting more information on what he had hit, Lake turned Detector to look for water. Seeing the stream in the wall he was pretty sure he had hit a water pipe and he decided he could probably stop the leak by blocking the pipe further up.
Digging parallel to the pipe for about ten feet or so Lake dug above it and was about to start cutting to copse the top to block it when he wondered if this was the pipe that brought water to everyone below. It was extremely unlikely that this was the only one but he wouldn''t be surprised if this was the water for an entire tier of the city.
It would be bad if he was responsible for an entire tier to die of dehydration. He guessed he didn''t have to leave it blocked. Once he and anyone else got through to the surface he coulde back and undo any damage he caused to the pipe. Leaving the water blocked for a day wouldn''t kill anyone.
Cutting down into the pipe, Lake ignored the ssh of water and kept slicing until arge chunk of stone fell down. Seeing the water continue to flow past the blockage, Lake was about to cut more to block itpletely when he decided to go look at the flow of water where he was digging to see if this had slowed the flow of water enough that he could leave it like this.
Looking at the leak Lake was happy leaving this much water leaking out if it meant he could keep working and that he didn''t have to ever worry about unblocking the pipe. With that problem fixed Lake dug around the pipe by going back down his tunnel a bit and slightly changing his direction.
Like this Lake didn''t have to worry about the rubble not falling down the tunnel. That was really the most important thing about the way he was digging because if he had to start carrying stuff out of the tunnel he would never finish because he would quit. He could barely handle how tedious this process was now.
...
Seeing the entrance to the Light Domain Tiff breathed out in relief. Even with the Temple Head protecting them it had been stressful especially with the Temple Head saying things like, "It''s too easy." or, "Why aren''t there more? There were supposed to be more." Hearing things like that made you wonder if something was wrong.
It seemed they had just overestimated how much the Demon Worshipers cared about a little trip home to the Light Domain. That or they hadn''t really realized who was going to the Light Domain thinking it was just a normal messenger exchange. They had sent plenty of people to kill a simple messenger.
"Don''t think we''re safe just because we''re in the Light Domain. Demon Worshipers are everywhere these days." It seemed the Temple Head didn''t think they were through the trouble just yet. "Are you saying the Demon Worshipers n to attack us on the other side of the gate? That doesn''t make sense."
Dawn was right, it would make it a lot harder on the Demon Worshipers to attack them once they crossed over to the other side of the gate. "You shouldn''t try to hold your enemies up to logic if there is hate involved." Tiff knew there were deep grudges between the two sides and the Temple Head was saying the Demon Worshipers were willing to do anything if they got to kill a Holy magic user but why make it harder on themselves when they could just attack with a couple of giants now.
Once they were through the Gate Tiff saw the Temple Head walk towards one of the buildings that made up what you could call a town that the guards and people that passed through or were waiting to pass through stayed at night. "Why are we going inside?"
"I Figured we should stay here till I can have some scouts look at the road we''ll be taking. We keep a few people here at all times to have them keep watch on who and what passes through so I was going to ask them to do it?"
"You mean people other than the guards for the gate?"
"Yes, the people I''m talking about are much more useful than a normal guard." As they walked in all Tiff saw were normal people wearing nothing that would tell you they worked for the temple but the Temple Head seemed to know who she wanted to talk to right away because she walked over and sat down at a table with two men.
"Hello, how''s it going?" This sounded like small talk but if two people were important this question could be really important. "Ok, we had to stop twice this week though and that''s never happened to us before." Tiff would have loved to ask what they had to stop but she could tell they were talking in a way that no one would know what they were talking about on purpose.
They didn''t seem to be trying to hide their identities though because they were talking to the Temple Head out in the open and it was very obvious to everyone who she was. That was probably why everyone was staring at them and had been since they had entered. "It will probably stay that way for a while but as long as you keep on it it doesn''t matter. Well listen I need you to do something for me. One of our friends never showed up and I need you to go and see if you can find them."
What they were talking about was a little more obvious to Tiff this time but it was misleading enough that you wouldn''t know if you weren''t aware of what the Temple Head was worried about or what they were doing. Seeing the two men head out of the building Dawn was about to talk but the Temple Head beat her to it.
"We should know in a few hours if they''re still around. Do you two want anything to eat?" Tiff was hungry but she knew Dawn would say yes first and she would just be able to nod in agreement. "You think they have stewed greens? I haven''t had food from the Light Domain in a while and it was my favorite back when I was living in the Light Temple."
Tiff had never really cared about what she was eating so she was fine with this so when the Temple Head looked at her she nodded that that''s what she wanted as well. "Ok, I''ll ask if they have it." As soon as the Temple Head got up from the table Dawn started to talk. "Man, those two from earlier were something. It would take me 100 arrows to hit them once."
Dawn had a skill that told her how likely it was someone would dodge or block her attacks and it took all factors into consideration like skills, spells, and stats so it wasn''t umon for someone to have a good chance but 99% wasn''t ever seen on normal people. "I can see why they''re here then."
This was an important ce to keep an eye on because the Demon Worshipers loved to try to sneak through so it made perfect sense for the Temple to keep two heavy hitters here to keep any from leaking into the Light Domain. "They said they had it. It''ll be ready in a few minutes." As soon as the Temple Head finished talking and sat down the silence of the trip returned like it had never been gone.
Thankfully Dawn was here so it didn''t stay like that for long. "What''s that spell you used to block earlier?" The Temple Head shook her head and said. "Not a spell, I made it with my own mana so I could see which spell did the most damage to it."
"You wanted to kill the most dangerous first, right?" The Temple Head nodded and Dawn asked another question. "So how hard is it to keep that much mana stable without a formation?" The Temple Head looked a little troubled before she said. "I don''t think it will be possible for either of you for another 40 years."
Tiff actually felt like she was being nice with this estimate or at least of her. Dawn definitely was better at magic than her so 40 years for her was 20 for Dawn. That being said Tiff didn''t think she would ever have been able to do anything like that no matter how hard she tried if it wasn''t for what was about to happen to her when they got to the Temple.
Chapter 241: More Digging
Chapter 241: More Digging
Seeing the texture of the stone change Lake was pretty sure he had made it far enough away from the city that this was natural ground opposed to the stone that had clearly been made by whoever was building the city. He was guessing this area had been mines at some point and once they had started to build it into an area for people to live they hade though and filled it in with stone so there wouldn''t be open tunnels surrounding the city.
He wasn''t sure if this natural stone would really make a difference in the speed he could dig though so it didn''t really matter until he started to hit dirt or any kind of loose material. Once that happened he wasn''t sure if it would make it easier for him or harder though. He had never dug a tunnel in hisst life so all he knew was cave-ins were usually bad.
He was ready to take a break though so he put his sword onto his back and flew to the 10th tier because they had a room ready for him and it was always safer to have other people around that you could trust when you slept. He was getting more and more paranoid about sleeping but it didn''t really matter anymore with the fact he only had to sleep for 10 minutes a day.
It was almost like going to the bathroom at this point, it took so little time that it didn''t even matter. He was also pretty sure he could push himself to not sleep for a few days if he wanted to and not have any side effects but he was working too hard at the moment for that to be true. He actually liked sleeping as well or at least he had grown to like it while he was under house arrest in hisst life.
He wasn''t trapped inside of his house anymore so it didn''t really matter to him that much that he was going to lose the ability to sleep soon since he could always find something to do now that he was free. Landing in front of the base, Lake waved at the guards and walked in. He quickly found Wezz and said. "I''m about to sleep. Do you need me to do anything when I get up?"
"It''s hard to turn down an offer like that. We need more weapons, with everyone back up on their feet we don''t have enough any more and we''re having a hard time getting any that aren''t damaged in some way off the bodies." Lake had seen their store room when he had chosen the sword he was using to dig so he knew they only had about thirty weapons lying around before everyone had been healed.
Not all of them had been in the best condition either though so he asked. "How many?" Wezz thought about it for a second and said. "I''ll give you a list of what we need when you get up." Hearing this Lake knew they had a problem because there was no way they would think he would only sleep for a few minutes.
"Try to have it ready as fast as possible. I don''t sleep for very long." It was fine if they didn''t have it for him as soon as he woke up because he would need to take a few trips to carry that many weapons back and whatever he brought back before he got the list would still work. "Alright I''ll start asking."
Lake nodded and started towards the room he had been given the first time he hade back to check on them. Going to take his armor off he remembered he wasn''t wearing the old suit anymore and moved his hand to where the strap was now. Sliding his chest piece off and kicking his boots into the corner he sat down and wrestled the gloves off of his hands.
Laying down he realized he still had his helmet on and took it off before his head hit the pillow. Closing his eyes to fall asleep, Lake started to think about his tunnel and wondered if he was getting close. He wasn''t digging straight up so he couldn''t measure how close he was by timing the flight against how long it took him to fly up the elevator shaft unless he remembered how to do math all of a sudden so he would just have to guess.
He had started the tunnel slightly above the 10th tier and the surface started at the 8th so unless he was identally digging up into one of the mountains that surrounded the city he should hit the surface after a few more hours of digging. It was nice to think you were almost done but it was hard to not be sure.
...
Hearing the door open Tiff stopped digging through the food she had kind of eaten and looked to see if it was the two that had run off to look for ''their friend'' like she had done every time someone had entered for thest hour. Thankfully it was them this time and she could finally hear what they would have to tell them.
She had grown extremely impatient after about twenty minutes of sitting here and it had only gotten worse after their food got here because Dawn hadn''t liked it. Tiff hadn''t thought it was very good either but some of the things Dawn had said made her not want to eat it. After the two men sat down, the one who had spoken before they left started to talk again.
"We didn''t see them. That might be bad news or good news depending on how you look at it."
"I''ll go with bad news just to be safe. Would one of you like toe with us to the temple to keep an eye on us in case anything does end up happening, you can take these two and deliver them to safety for me."
"I''ll go." This time the quiet man spoke up. "I don''t need to be here for our job to still be possible."
"Alright let''s go then. Waiting just gives them more time." Standing as the Temple Head did Tiff gave the man who was staying here onest look before following the three that were going out. As soon as they were outside Dawn asked. "You said your job could be done without you here, why are you here then?"
"It can be done, just not as well. M is good at pointing people out which is what we''re here for but in a fight you don''t want to send someone who has such a useful skill if you don''t have to. He sits out of most of the actual battles."
"M? Is that his real name?"
"No."
"Why are you hiding his name from us?"
"Because I don''t know it."
"What''s your name?"
"..."
At this point Tiff felt like she had to step in. "Dawn stop. Leave him alone, he clearly doesn''t want to tell you anything you''re not supposed to know." There were always secrets that had to be kept to keep people safe against the Demon Worshipers or next time you went home they might be there waiting for you.
She had only told one person when she got the Holy attribute and that was all it had taken. Of course she didn''t know if the word had spread from their mouth or if the Demon Worshipers had gotten whiff of her some other way but they had been in her home at some point because by the time she had gotten home after her ss at the temple her family was gone.
She was pretty sure whoever had taken her family had mistaken her sister for her and that was the only reason she had had enough time to disappear. It was good that her mother had told her that she was in danger as soon as she had said she had the Holy affinity or she wouldn''t have known to run.
Once she had realized her mom had probably told people at the Temple and that the people at the Temple Might have been the ones that had told the Demon Worshipers she just stayed gone. She had stayed out on the streets for years to be safe and the only good thing she had gotten from it all was her first Legendary skill that had saved her life more times than she could count.
It was also the reason she had been chosen for the 23 because at the time they didn''t have anyone with the Holy attribute that was a better match to hold the dagger. "Ok, I''ll trail behind you all and you won''t see me unless you need to." Realizing she had better things to be paying attention to, Tiff started to walk away from the man Dawn had just been interrogating.
Looking at the road Tiff realized she was less than two hours away from seeing the God of Light again as long as nothing went wrong. She wasn''t really looking forward to it either so this was going to be a roughst couple of hours of being a normal person.
Chapter 242: Running Around
Chapter 242: Running Around
Waking up and getting dressed, Lake was pretty sure he spent the same amount of time getting his armor on as he had sleeping. Maybe in the future he could look into getting some armor that was made of leather. At this point the metal he was wearing was weaker than his skin so maybe there was armor made from skin like his.
He would settle for anything that could stop an attack from an actual threat though even if it was the most ufortable thing he had ever worn. Stepping out of his room, Lake went to look for Wezz to see if they had somehow finished his list already. "I thought you were going to sleep."
"I gave up." Wezz shrugged and said. "The list isn''t finished yet so you can try some more if you want." Lake shook his head and said. "No point, plus I already put my armor back on." When he saw he was disturbing the list making process he said. "I''ll go and start. I''ll get the listter."
Stepping out into the street, Lake tried to remember where he had seen the most bodies in one ce yesterday. Looking on the ground around the base he guessed this was it but they had already striped the bodies of anything useful. That left the street he had started his search on the first time he had brought potions.
It was near the elevator shaft so he passed it every time he came here and had seen the piles there. It was also far away from where he thought the Demon Worshipers were hiding so there wasn''t much chance they had been carrying any of the ones there away. This meant those bodies weren''t being messed with by either side so they had the best chance of having their gear around still.
He wouldn''t know if the gear was any good until he got there though. Thinking back he didn''t really see many people with weapons dead there and he thought maybe they were killed trying to escape and that was why they were near the elevator. Their armor might be misleading because here people wore it as clothes just as much as warriors wore it.
Landing on the street that led to the elevator, Lake set Detector to look for weapons and when he realized it was picking up quite a few from the bodies he narrowed it down to weapons that were at least level 20. Seeing this worked and that it didn''t really drop the amount of weapons that Detector was picking up Lake guessed level 20 was a baseline level for most people to buy.
Raising it to look for weapons that were at least level 30 he saw the number it was picking up drop to three and went to get them. As he was moving Detector started to locate more ahead of him so he was able to walk and find enough to carry back in a short amount of time. He didn''t miss the fact that some of these weapons were better than his either so he guessed it was a good time to start looking for a new knife.
Maybe a new short sword and bow as well. Actually he could probably just rece everything with the best stuff he could find while he was here in the Metal Domain. It would almost be a waste if he didn''t because the quality here was higher and with the disaster that was happening there was a lot of it lying around and no one cared if he took it.
Casting Fly Lake started back to the base to drop off the weapons he had already gathered and as he was flying over the town he realized he had missed a huge amount of good stuff on the way here since he hadn''t activated Detector until he hadnded. The items were more spread out but it was closer to the base so it should take him about the same amount of time.
Lake was unable to wave this time so he said hello with his mouth as he walked inside the base. Finding Wezz he said. "It''s mostly swords this time." Letting the people around him take what he had from his arms so they could start distributing to the people that needed it. "That''s fine, it''s the number one thing on the list."
Wezz stopped writing and took one of the swords, unsheathing it he said. "Good quality but don''t waste your time getting the best of the best since we don''t n to fight unless we have to."
"It''s no problem, it doesn''t take that much longer to do a good job." Getting a brief look at the unfinished list Lake went out knowing they still needed more swords but really he could grab anything he came across and it would conform to the list. Once he was back outside he didn''t fly to where all the bodies were and just went along the ground towards the stuff he had flown over earlier.
Picking up the first item which was a bow he would have never seen if it wasn''t for Detector, Lake pulled it back topare it to his own. It was harder to pull back which probably meant it would shoot arrows better but he preferred his since he didn''t really need the bow to do anything since he used magic arrows.
Putting it around his shoulder Lake went to the next item that was under a body. Rolling the guy off of it, Lake saw the sword had been damaged by the same spell that had taken their life so he left it. With this he had found the first weapon that was over level 30 that was damaged even if it was just the handle which might have been crappared to the rest of the weapon but either way he changed Detector to exclude damaged weapons.
It was now set to weapons over level 30 that were in usable condition. He was pretty sure usable was the best term to use to specify condition because if he asked for good condition it might exclude something beat up that someone could still use. After a while he had enough to head back again. Going in to drop off the weapons he didn''t talk and just went right back out after he delivered what he had.
If he stopped and talked every time it would probably waste an hour over all the trips he was going to make. He still needed to finish his tunnel today and who knew what that would lead to. He didn''t have the time to take it easy and chat if he was serious about getting out before the day passed.
...
Looking down the road Tiff didn''t even need to ask why they had stopped; she could feel it in the air even with herck of talent in magic. It helped that Holy and Unholy were opposite but she was sure anyone would get a chill if they happened along the road right now. "Well I don''t know what''s happening right now but get ready to run as soon as the fight starts. Our guy will be with you."
As the Temple Head finished talking all three of them snapped their heads up. A new source of Unholy mana had started to rain down on them and when they saw the y colored cloud spinning above them they knew what was causing it. "Looks like they did know after all." Tiff had heard of what was about to happen many times but had never seen it herself.
The fact they were about to send a Demigod after them meant the Demon Lord knew she was about to be a new threat he would have to worry about. It made sense to kill her now she guessed but it wouldn''t stop the God of Light from choosing another person for the job. This would be more like stepping on the God of Lights toespared to if they killed her after she got the job.
"Ok once the cloud opens there''s no way to know what''s going toe out of it so change of ns we''ll all run now." Following the Temple Head as she started to run Tiff heard her say. "Get in front of me." Tiff was already moving as fast as she could without skills so she had to use one to get in front of the Temple Head like she had asked.
Tiff heard a boom and was about to turn to look when her training took over. They had run drills like these in the past and it was a bad idea to stop in front of or try to look at an opponent that you couldn''t handle when you had been told to run. Reaching out to grab Dawn''s wrist, Tiff pulled her to make sure she didn''t get caught up in the moment and forget what they needed to do to stay alive.
Chapter 243: Mezull
Chapter 243: Mezull
Tiff felt an arm wrap around her and a voice said "The Temple Head is holding up, but we need to move faster so I''m going to carry you two." By the time the man had finished his sentence they were already speeding through the forest that had been on the side of the road. Tiff guessed the man nned to move in a straight line instead of sticking to the road.
This would also help in keeping them out of sight so she would have done this too if she knew where she needed to go without using the roads to guide her. Looking over she saw that Dawn was in the man''s other arm and was happy no one other than her and Dawn knew which of them the God of Light actually wanted because the other would have probably been left behind to speed up the escape of the important one.
No actually that wouldn''t have happened in this case because Dawn was a member of the 23 who still had their weapon. The only way someone would have been left behind was if she was the extra since her weapon was gone, or at least the Temple thought it was.
Exiting the forest as they crossed another road Tiff looked back to see if she was able to see the cloud from earlier still. The cloud was still swirling in the sky but it now had a hole in the middle. "Do you know what came through?" It was most likely a giant or one of the Demon Lords more normal sizedpanion demigods.
"It was Mezull." Tiff had heard this name before but never just the name. Most people called Mezull the Death God or the Death Demigod which was the more urate title. If the Demon Lord ever ascended Mezull would most likely be the next to follow him. "What are Death spells like, I know it''s not a real element yet and it''s weaker than Unholy magic since Mezull is weaker but there has to be some benefits right."
"No better magic if killing was your goal since it''s so straight to the point. I shudder to think of a world that has Death mana everywhere. It''s probably why the Demon Lord wants it to happen so bad now that I think about it. Undead would have an even bigger advantage over us."
Since Death magic would be Unholy magic with a few principles missing undead would most likely be immune to any form of Death magic while the other races would probably suffer just living in this world until the gods stepped in to protect them from the Death mana around them like they had done with the Unholy mana.
It would probably take a while for the gods to fix the problem even if it was possible so there would be a bit of time where people could just drop dead from being in ces with high death mana. She was pretty sure there had been a few years where that was the case with Unholy mana when the Demon Lord had found a way to take over the Dark element.
But Unholy didn''t just kill people, it also had a corrupting effect on people''s minds if they were around it for a long time. It had been why the Demon Lord had been able to turn such arge number of people in those years. Tiff knew Dawn was about to ask another question so she wanted to get a turn since she had a question now.
"Was there a problem for people when any of the other gods ascended?" There were other dangerous elements but she had never heard of there being any problems when they ascended. "No, it''s one of the gods'' responsibilities to make sure people aren''t affected when they ascend. The reason there was such a big problem when the Demon Lord spread Unholy mana was because that was what he wanted. You have to remember the elemental mana belongs to the god ites from so it has their will like yours has your will."
"So you''re saying if the other gods had bad intentions their ascension would have been bad for us." The man nodded and said. "Yes, now stop talking, I think something is after us." This made Tiff want to ask what happened to the Temple Head but she listened to what she had been told and tried to use her ears to see if she could hear anything.
She wasn''t able but she wasn''t surprised this guy had such extreme senses because Dawn had said he had a 99% chance to dodge her arrows. That probably meant he would hear the arrowing or something simr. He might have a skill that just told him he was in danger or when to dodge.
"Hey look up, the God of Light is sending help." Looking up into the sky Tiff saw the glowing cloud, that looked simr to when a cloud went in front of the sun, had started to swirl in the sky above them. "Does that mean the Temple Head failed?" The man didn''t answer this and just picked up his pace again since it had slowed while he was looking up at the sky.
After jumping into another patch of woods Tiff finally started to hear something from behind them. It was a sharp whistling noise and it was closing in so it was most likely faster than them no matter if it was a person or an attack. "I''m about to dodge." They were already rolling to the side by the time this sentence was finished but Tiff tried to keep her eyes where the attack they were dodging should pass.
Seeing a gray spike fly past where they had been Tiff knew this was a Death spell by the color and since Mezull was the only person who used this element exactly she knew he had gotten past the Temple Head. If she was dead it was a big loss for the Temple especially since in Tiff''s opinion the current Temple Head was the only thing keeping them from going fully insane like the Demon Worshipers.
Hopefully the Temple Head wasn''t dead and the God of Light knew who to make the next one if she was. Hearing another whistling out of nowhere Tiff knew Mezull had gotten closer. "Get ready he''s in range now so the dodging is going to be constant." Like always by the time the guy was done talking he had already done what he was warning them about.
Tiff wasn''t worried about how he was dodging and whipping them around at high speeds, she just wanted him to be sessful since her and Dawn''s lives depended on it. After the fist spike passed the man switched directions for a few seconds and a different kind of spell silently went passed them.
It seemed Mezull had been testing the guy who was carrying them with the spells that made sound before throwing the one that didn''t in there. A normal person would have stopped paying attention to anything but the noise so they would know when to move and would have been hit by the first thing that broke this pattern.
It was a cheap trick that wouldn''t work on anyone who knew what they were doing in a fight. She actually found it odd that Mezull would think to even try it on a person like the one carrying them. It was possible Mezull was the type to just stick to the same pattern in every fight which tended to happen to people that had been in more fights than could be counted.
Doing something like this was probably more like a chore to Mezull since fighting mortals didn''t really have any risk other than them running away or receiving backup before you killed them. She was pretty sure they didn''t have much chance of getting away this time though but she was sure the cloud would open soon and they would be saved by whatever came through.
Doing her best to look up while they flipped every which way she saw the cloud start to open and what looked like a beam of light shot down at them. It went right above their heads and Tiff was able to make out the figure of a person. This would be one of the God of Lights subordinate Demigods who she would be joining soon.
She wasn''t sure which one it was though and by how fast they were making their way away from the fight she wouldn''t get to look to find out. It was fine, she didn''t really need to know and only wanted to look because she knew they were safe now that an actual Demigod was here to protect them.
Once they were far enough away that they were unable to hear anything Dawn beat her to asking. "Is the Temple Head alive?" There was a small chance this guy would be able to answer their question because it seemed he had known way before Mezull had started to chase them.
She felt it was possible he had been able to hear the entire battle between the Temple Head and Mezull. "She used a talisman." Hearing this Tiff was able to put her worries behind her. You could get a talisman that could save you from anything in the world if you knew who to talk to and the Temple Head knew the God of Light so she was fine.
Chapter 244: Back To The Tunnel
Chapter 244: Back To The Tunnel
Dropping his 7th load of weapons into the store room, Lake was about to go out again when he decided he should go see if the list was finally done. He hadn''t gone to look in three trips so there was a good chance they had been done with it for a while. Stepping into the room Wezz had been making the list in Lake looked and saw he wasn''t writing.
"Are you done?"
"Yes, but it isn''t really up to date since you''ve done so much already." Lake didn''t see the problem and said. "I know what I''ve brought in already, I''ll just mark it off myself." His intelligence was over 100 and had been for a while and while his memory wasn''t anywhere near perfect he had kept a record of what he had brought in.
Taking the list from Wezz and marking off everything he remembered he was left with a few weird weapons that he was yet to see and a couple more bows. He had only found 3 bows so far and the people here needed 6 more. It was fine though he could find them using Detector so it wasn''t really an issue especially if he dropped his desired level down a bit.
"Ok I''ll be back with the rest shortly." Bows didn''t weigh much and weren''t that big so it didn''t matter if he carried everything they needed back at once. Walking outside Lake was about to set Detector to look for bows over level 25 when he realized he could just set it to look for the things on his list.
Detector took that as a valid setting and Lake cast Fly to head to an area he hadn''t been to yet. Once he made it away from the base a bit he realized the list didn''t specify level so he went ahead and changed Detectors settings again so it worked the way he wanted it to.
Landing to pick up the first bow, Lake moved and grabbed a hammer from a body nearby. Walking down the street he saw something he had been waiting for for a while. "A knife finally." It seemed people didn''t spend their money on nice knives for whatever reason. The reach advantage was real so long things like swords and spears were the mostmon melee weapons so it made sense that was what people spent their money on.
Even people that were fighting how you would with a knife used a short sword most of the time so while knives weremon as a piece of gear no one really fought using them so all the ones he found were cheap crap. Picking up the new knife Lake found it to be satisfactory since it was his only option and strapped it around this thigh.
His armor had loops here for knives so he could actually get another one if he was lucky enough to find one worth keeping. Moving on Lake found a mace half buried in the ground and put it in his bag. The list had only asked for one mace so that was crossed off and all he needed to do was focus on thest three items that he still needed to find other than the bows.
It seemed the various types of heavy weapons were also umon but just because there were so many different kinds. At the end of the day he felt a mace and a warhammer were almost exactly the same, especially since most hammers had some kind of spike. Picking up an axe that was embedded in a dead Demon Worshiper''s head, Lake started to wonder how he was finding all the weird stuff before the bows.
He guessed it was possible people with bows got away more often so there weren''t as many lying around but he felt the fact that most dwarves didn''t use them was the main reason and since regr humans couldn''t see very well underground they probably weren''t down here to begin with if they fought using a bow.
He had already realized the people he was helping weren''t from the Fighters guild and had been residents that could fight well enough to survive till he got there and saved them. This was why the people who used bows didn''t have them because they were retired or something and had sold them since they nned to move underground or maybe they had broke. He really didn''t know why he was having such a hard time finding the bows but it was probably a mix of all the reasons he had just said.
Casting Fly Lake started to pick up some speed since he wasn''t having any luck walking along the ground. Covering more ground quickly fixed his issue and he stopped to pick up the bow he was passing over before continuing on his way. Like this he found the rest of what he needed pretty quickly and was able to return to the base.
Walking in Lake took the weapons to the store room and found Wezz to tell him he was about to go back out to work on his tunnel. "Ok we should be fine but I would appreciate you checking on us if you wouldn''t mind. Some of the guards saw some people earlier and we think the Demon Worshipers are up to something."
"What were they doing?" Lake had guessed what they were doing after noticing the bodies were less when he got closer to their part of town but he wanted to know if they had actually seen them doing it. "They were doing simr things to what we are to the bodies around us. Moving them, taking stuff. The fact they can make them into undead has me worried though."
Lake wasn''t surprised Wezz had the same idea he had after hearing about them messing with bodies and to ease his mind said. "Don''t worry the Tunnel seems almost done. I feel like we could be outside by tomorrow." Wezz did seem a little relieved by this but Lake could tell he wouldn''t stop thinking about the chance of being attacked by an army of undead.
It was a good thing to be ready though so Lake didn''t n to ease him anymore other than by telling him. "I''lle back in two hours, if you get attacked you just need to hold out, don''t try anything, just defend." Two hours was about as long as he wanted to dig at a time so it would be a nice time to take a break anyway.
"If he came every two hours the chance something catastrophic would happen to them was very low even if they were attacked. Flying towards the elevator shaft, Lake saw the water spilling out of his tunnel had gotten worse than it was earlier when he left and wondered if the pipe had cleared its blockage.
It was fine if it had because he could just block it again but he was a bit worried about the fact that it was really noticeable if anyone was using the elevator shaft like he was. They would be able to notice the stream of water and follow it to his tunnel. He didn''t think it had happened because what were the chances but he didn''t like that his tunnel was so obvious.
Flying inside Lake went to the ce where he had identally cut his way into the pipe and saw it wasn''t where the water wasing from. Going back a bit and continuing where he had dug yesterday he saw water was seeping out of the natural stone walls he had dug through yesterday.
With this much watering through the ground he was pretty sure it meant he was close to the surface and that it was raining or had rained in thest few hours. He wasn''t sure how long it took for water to sink into the ground like this but looking at the ces that it wasing through and seeing the small cracks he was sure it wouldn''t take that long.
If it had been stone that had no faults like the stuff he had been digging through earlier in the process of the tunnel he was sure there wouldn''t be any water leaking through. Starting up Lake quickly realized he needed to be careful as he was digging because he felt wet ground was probably heavier and more prone to copse.
All it would probably take was one cut into something that had wet dirt above it and he would get a nice lesson in what not to do while digging straight up. "Maybe I should wait till it stops raining." He had been here for a few days already and it didn''t seem to rain here very often so there was no reason not to wait it out.
It would let him return to the base and watch over Wezz''s people too so it was kind of like a win-win for everybody. Before he left though he needed to try to deal with the water and he had a n. If he dug a tunnel above the water pipe he had blocked he could allow the water leaking out the walls fall down into it and all he would have to do is make a small barrier in his tunnel so the water wouldn''t be able to go into the elevator shaft.
After a few minutes Lake backed off and looked at the small tunnel he had dug and the curved barrier he had made with the stones that would make the water take the path that would let it drain into the hole he had made in the top of the pipe. None of it was perfect but it was stopping most of the water and that was all he wanted.
Chapter 245: Backup Plan
Chapter 245: Backup n
Landing in front of the base, Lake walked in while waving to the guards. "Thanks for the new weapons." Lake gave them a thumbs up and a smile and went to find Wezz to let him know he had returned early. Lake found Wezz in a back room sitting on a bed. "Are you about to go to sleep?"
"No I was going to try and wait till you got back but it''s been over a day already so I''m having a hard time staying up." Lake understood a leader like Wezz who was prone to worrying was the type to think they were useful still if they didn''t sleep. In reality it was better to get sleep whenever you could as long as there wasn''t an active fight.
"Well I''m going to be here for a while so go ahead and sleep. I will be here till you wake up because it''s raining and the tunnel is flooded right now." Hearing this, Wezz fell back andid down. Closing the door, Lake started to think about what he should do while he was here. He didn''t think it was smart to go out and look for trouble so he needed to find a way to pass the time inside.
Walking into one of the rooms, Lake saw lots of people with books in their hands and decided it had been a while since he had had the time to read anything and that it would help pass the time. "Where can I get a book?"
"They are in those boxes over there." Walking over to where they had directed he found a few boxes with a couple of books at the bottom. Digging through he realized these books were stories from history and not something he would usually see in the libraries he was going through at the Alchemist guild.
These seemed more like casual reading to him opposed to the learning material he was used to but he was fine with learning more history even if it was just akin to rumors and legend. As he sat down and read the first few pages he was proven right about the content because it read like the fairytales of his world.
...
After the first few stairs of the Temple the man finally let them down to climb with their own feet. Tiff felt like he could have let them down sooner since the temple was in the middle of the city but it didn''t really matter. Starting to climb the stairs the guards from the front door came down and relieved the man of his duty to protect them and he was gone in the next second.
He had another job to get back to so she wasn''t surprised he left as soon as he could. It would have been nice if he had at least said bye but he was probably ready to wash his hands of the trouble they had brought him. The time they had had to dodge Mezull''s attacks was probably only a few seconds but with an enemy of that caliber and at that speed, a few seconds was a lot of fighting.
"Come on Tiff, they''re waiting on us." Realizing they were supposed to be running still she stopped taking the stairs at a normal speed and ran inside. Being led straight to the room the oracle was inst time Tiff saw she was still sitting in the circle of light but there was someone who wasn''t herest time right next to her.
"We thought you were dead." Dawn beat her to talking to the Temple Head but she didn''t really have anything to say that didn''t involve saying something like; ''I''m so happy you''re alive!'' She would rather just let Dawn say everything for her. "I was never in real danger so you should be happy you''re alive."
This was true the Temple Head had a talisman and they didn''t so if anyone would have died it would have been them. They were all alive though so whatever the Temple Head had nned to get them here worked perfectly. "Alright I''ve just been told which of you he wants to see first, so Tiffe sit with me." After the oracle said this the Temple Head stood and Tiff moved to take her ce right after waving bye to Dawn who was being led away by the Temple Head.
"You remember what to do right?" Tiff nodded and extended her hands to the oracle. "Goodluck." Likest time Tiff could see the surroundings start to change as soon as she grabbed onto the oracles hands and she was back in the white space but this time she took some time to look around.
Last time the conversation had started almost right away so she hadn''t had much time to look at anything other than the God of Light who had looked like a normal person to her. As she was looking around she saw where they had satst time and that was really it. It was like this was just a small room the God of Light used to meet with mortals.
The only other thing she noticed was the God of Light wasn''t here for whatever reason. Well there was a reason she could think of and it involved Mezull and whoever had been sent to fight him. There was a good chance the God of Light was still taking care of that. Right when she was thinking of sitting down a door opened into the room and the God of Light walked in.
"You can go ahead and sit."
"Sorry about the trouble we caused." Tiff just went ahead and said this since it was what she was thinking and she knew the God of Light would know she wanted to apologize. She felt it was a bad look not to apologize even if the other person knew you wanted to. It was probably one of the most socially awkward things you could do.
"It wasn''t really your fault. The me lies on Dayna. She shouldn''t have gone with you. You two would have met almost no problems if she had just sent some regr guards but as soon as the Demon Worshipers saw her alone away from the temple they decided to try and kill her." This actually made sense of what had happened to them.
The temple Head had seemed confused over theck of follow up attacks and had made them wait while the two guys they had met went and looked around but in reality the reason they hadn''t been attacked was the Demon Worshipers were setting up an attack on the Temple Head.
"Yeah that''s pretty much what happened." It seemed the God of Light had been following along with her thoughts so she just asked. "Why did the Temple Heade with us then?"
"There were a couple reasons the first being she didn''t have the best intel on what you two would run into so she thought she needed to go because if she didn''t she would have to send a lot of people in her ce and that would hollow out the defense force in the city. But, her main reason was she wanted to."
If the God of Light was saying this it was probably true but she wanted to know why the Temple Head had wanted toe so bad. "Do you know why?" The God of Light smiled and said. "I''m surprised that you haven''t asked about why I told the Temple Head to send Dawn with you." Realizing this had been a real mystery to her until they had been attacked, Tiff was fine with the change of subject.
"Well first off she asked after I told her you were my first choice but the main reason I agreed was because I was pretty sure you would back out at thest second if you made the trip here alone." Tiff didn''t exactly understand what he was saying and before she could ask he said. "You would have said no to the job."
Straight to the point, but she couldn''t deny he was probably right. She had been on the fence the whole time about him choosing her even after he had told her why he had. She didn''t feel she was a good choice even if her set of skills were perfect for the job like the God of Light had said or because she had been the one to retrieve the Divinity the God of Light would be using.
The thing was, now that she had arrived, she felt like she needed to say yes for whatever reason so the God of Light had made the right decision in making Dawne as well. "So you do want it?" Tiff nodded. "Good, that means I won''t have to give it to Dawn. She was an ok choice but the job does nothing with bows."
Hearing Dawn was also his second choice Tiff guessed it made sense because other than their weapons the way they fought was simr. "So you had another reason to let here?" The God of Light smiled again and asked. "Are you ready? We have a lot to do and your friend is waiting." Tiff saw his point, she could probably talk all day and never run out of things to say so stopping now was for the best.
Chapter 246: Lacked Confidence
Chapter 246: Lacked Confidence
After the God of Light said they should start she saw him reopen the door he hade in through. Following him she saw that it was just that room that was pure white with no detail. It seemed wherever she was at the moment was another world entirely. "It''s not. These are my ns for the Light Domain. Come I''ll show you."
Following the God of Light out onto a balcony she saw it was indeed a city they were standing in the middle of. "I spend my free time nning out the bestyout for the future of the Light Domain. As you can see the Temple and a few other important parts of the city are already where they are in the real world so we don''t have to move them in the future."
Looking around Tiff noticed she could see something off in the distance. "Is that the Holy Domain?" Tiff ended up saying this before she remembered that the God of Light probably didn''t want to think about his dead wife. "Yeah we used to n them in tandem so they would be able to form together seamlessly once we grew them enough in real life but I left it the way she had it after she was killed so mine has a lot more done to it than hers."
"Is that the Alchemist guild? I thought it was tall already."
"No, it''s the Mages guild. The Alchemist guild doesn''t exist here." Tiff once again realized she was saying the wrong things and said. "Well I hope I get to see this in the real world someday." She felt this was a good way to end this conversation before she ended up saying something wrong again.
"Don''t worry, I''m not going to get mad at you for having it wrong. It''s mostly my fault that the Mages guild fell apart after she died. It''s one of the many casualties we suffered while I was gone looking for Akal." Tiff remembered the conversation they had had thest time they talked about this and didn''t think they needed to rehash it.
"You''re right let''s go." Walking with the God of Light through the future version of the Light Temple Tiff looked around a bit and started to notice a person here and there. She was going to ask who they were but the God of Light went ahead and gave her the obvious answer. "They''re Demigods, some mine, some serve the other Gods, but they all have jobs to do so don''t get in their way."
Tiff had no ns to stand in the way of any of them but she didn''t really have the chance because so far none of them hade anywhere near them. "I meant in the future. There will be times that you will be here. So, in the future try not to get in the way." Hearing this Tiff realized she would be doing what the God of Light told her from now on and that would include stuff here involving other Demigods.
"Other gods as well."
"That won''t be for a while though right?"
"Correct, you won''t really be useful right away since it will take you time to level up the job." Tiff knew what he was talking about, most jobs that were like the one she was about to receive had missions you had toplete for each level instead of having the same Exp conditions for all the levels.
"Correct all you''ll need to do ise back and see me using the oracle every time you need a new mission. I''ll try to make it stuff that will allow you to stay near your friends to so don''t worry about having to go on some grand campaign." This was a good thing because she was really only getting this job to help with the war.
"You don''t need to worry about the war. We did a good enough job at hiding the amount of you we had so the Demon Worshipers are scrambling to find a way to match your might without pulling all of the giants to one ce. They will go after smaller ces first to free up some of their forces so just look out for news about your smaller outposts falling."
Tiff had heard simr things already in some of the meetings about the war so she wasn''t surprised to know the God of Light was the source. "Well we''re here. Are you ready, this can take a while and I would rather answer questions now." Tiff didn''t really even know what to ask other than. "Is it painful?"
The God of Light shook his head no and said. "The opposite. It will be simr to the feeling of earning Experience." Tiff was happy to hear this and was ready to start. "Ok,e into the room in a minute." After he said this the God of Light walked into the room and left her out in the hallway.
Looking around she saw there was a clock on the wall and used it to count the time until she had been told to enter. Walking into the room once the minute passed she was able to tell this was some kind of workshop but she didn''t spend much time looking around because of what the God of Light was standing next to.
She had never seen a formation like it before but she knew what it was. It was the job she was about to receive. "All that needs to be done for it to be ready is for me to power it and then I can grant it to you." After he said this he pulled something she recognized as the core she fished from the giant they had killed from a small box on a table nearby.
Once it was in his hand he moved it towards the formations that made up the job until it started to glow. Tiff could tell the divinity was moving into the formations from the core but she couldn''t really see it happening just the signs of it. After a while the core in the God of Lights hand crumbled and he dumped the powder into a trashcan nearby.
Looking back at the formation Tiff could see it had started to move slightly but before she could really study how it looked it started to shrink down until it looked like a speck of light. With that she was unable to see any details even as she tried to get closer to get a good look. "Alright do you want to do it here or in the real world?"
"I would prefer the real world but does it actually matter, my body is there right?" He was asking if she wanted to see this or the real world during the process so she didn''t really care. "Like I said it can take a while for the grant to finish and you''ll be able to speak during it so I was more asking who you wanted to talk to."
"In that case I will stay here and talk to you." Tiff wouldn''t talk if she was sent back to the real world since the Temple Head and the Oracle around and she was unable to stay quiet here since the God of Light could hear her thoughts. "Good choice, I would have had to call you back after it was over to tell you all the stuff you needed to do and give you your first mission anyway."
After he said this the speck of light she had been looking at moved towards the God of Lights hand and she could tell it was about to start. She didn''t know what to do with her hands so she just put them to her sides and closed her eyes until she opened them again remembering it wasn''t going to hurt.
Watching the Light leave the God of Lights hand and enter into her chest heading for her core she heard the noise of getting a new job and looked at what it was called because she hadn''t been told yet. [New Job Unlocked Imitation] Reading the name Tiff remembered what the God of Light had said about the source of the job.
He had spent some time studying the skills Akal had used while chasing him down instead of just killing him at the first chance he had. The name of this job reflected the fact she was an imitation of those skills. "That''s right, are you ready for your first mission?" Tiff was a bit confused and asked. "You said it would take a while? Am I already done?"
"Yeah, it seems I did a good job on its design. It really only takes a while if the job isn''t ready to be used yet." Tiff had some questions about what he had just said but he had asked her one first. "I''m ready for the first mission." The God of Light seemed happy to hear how serious she was and said. "I bet you can guess what it is if you really tried."
Thinking a few thoughts ran through her head until she thought of the dagger. "That''s the one. I want you to get it back. It''s the only weapon fit for you at this time that I know of so we can''t leave it with who has it." Thinking back to her meeting with Jon, Tiff didn''t think it would be hard to get it from him as long as she could find him.
The only problem was the thing she had used to track himst time was gone. Back in the hands of the people who had given it to her in the first ce. They had also tried to kidnap her afterwards so she didn''t have any problems with going to get it back from them. "Sounds like a good n. Almost wonder why you hadn''t done it until now."
Chapter 247: What’s Wrong With That One
Chapter 247: What''s Wrong With That One
Putting his book down, Lake thought over what he had just read. He hadn''t expected to find something relevant to him in a book of legends but he hadn''t ever thought about how long Akal could have been around the God of Light before he betrayed him. Lake had known Laka had been on the God of Lights team but it ended up being for a lot longer than he had expected.
Lake had always expected for Laka to have been a new recruit or something but it ended up being that he had joined the God of Light around the time the Dark Domain fell to the Demon Lord. He guessed most people had picked a side around then so it was nothing special but the fact it made it into a book of important legends told you how important people saw it as.
Really what made it important didn''t happen for a few more years after the story he had just read. With this story over, Lake flipped through the book for anything else he would want to know and stopped at a picture of the Mages guild/ Alchemist guild. It was the Mages guild when this story took ce though so he was going to be calling it that while he read.
Stopping only a few lines down from the beginning, Lake repeated what he had just read out loud. "The Holy Domain." This was a question he had wanted the answer to for a long time but had never remembered to actually ask because the conversion had nothing to do with it. Thinking about it it made perfect sense to him that the ce he had been was the Holy Domain.
Where else would the war between the Demon Lord and the Temple of Light be taking ce if not for where the God of Lights wife ruled over before she was killed by Akal. It seemed these days the Light Temple had taken it over to protect it from the Demon Lord but it was still technically the Holy Domain in name most likely.
At least he finally knew why no one was ever saying where they were or what it was called in a sentence. It was like using an ancient name that didn''t really matter at the moment. That being said people hadn''t been saying the name of the Metal Domain very often either but he was sure he had heard it a few times.
Returning to his book to see what the story was actually about instead of spending all his time on the introduction, Lake found the story was about the fall of the Mages guild and the founding of the first Temple that was more about fighting than doing things for the gods they served. Before the fall of the Mages guild all the warrior type mages had been a part of it but after they had no choice but to move on to the Temples that were originally much more peaceful.
This had resulted in the first Temples moving on from their rules that kept them neutral to whatever was going on around them out of necessity even if they didn''t t out stop saying they were neutral. It was an interesting story but he didn''t really care about the characters or the plot. He would have rather just gotten his hands on a history book or naked someone who had been alive at the time since it hadn''t happened that long ago.
It made him wonder if this book was for children in the hope that if they made it interesting they would actually read it. Looking through a few pages and not seeing any big words he was pretty sure he had correctly guessed who this was written for. It didn''t really matter though since he wasn''t from here and actually needed more stuff they would teach to children.
...
Seeing the world fade back to normal Tiff Looked around and saw Dawn and the Temple Head had actually waited this entire time. She wasn''t even able to take her hands away from the oracles before Dawn asked. "How do you feel?" She felt fine and it was manly because nothing was really any different about her until she started to level up her new job.
After a few seconds of silence she remembered none of them could hear what she was thinking and said. "I''m good, the God of Light said it went better than expected." Standing up and walking out of the circle of light she had been sitting in so she could see them better she continued. "I have something I need to do right away so I need to get back to the Holy Domain."
The trip back was probably going to be as or more dangerous as the one here since she was now an actual target meaning the Demon Worshipers would want to kill all three of them no matter what. "Oh the God of Light told me to give you this." Turning around Tiff saw the oracle was holding something out in her hand. "What is it?"
Tiff already knew by the time she had asked because she had something very simr in her bag. She was sure the new one would be a lot nicer though if the God of Light was giving it to her now. "It''s a talisman like the one I used to get away from Mezull. The God of Light makes them himself when he has the time."
Hearing the Temple Heads words Tiff went ahead and took it. "The nice thing about them is they aren''t single use they just have to be recharged by the God of Light after you use them. Plus their level of protection is unparalleled."
"Does it just go in my pocket or do I need to wear it?" There was a strap that looked simr to a bracelet making her think she needed to wear it like one would with any type of gear. "I keep mine on my ankle actually but yes you should wear it so you don''t have to worry about it getting separated from you if someone hits your bag."
Tiff was sure the Temple Head had a reason to keep it on her ankle so she went ahead and took off her boot so she could put hers on like that as well. Once she slipped her boot back on she knew it wasn''t going anywhere so she stopped paying attention to the new feeling on her leg. "How do I recharge it?"
"It works off of Light mana so all you''ll need to do is wear it until it recharges but if you need it recharged faster you can alwayse see me or the Temple Head." Turning back to the Oracle Tiff gave her a smile and said. "Tell him I said thank you for the talisman." She had been told to get to work right away by the God of Light so they needed to go before much longer but it would be rude if she didn''t say anything at all to the oracle directly.
She decided to go ahead and thank the oracle as well since she had also had a part in what happened. "Thank you for your time." The oracle was a person so just treating her as a way to the God of Light would eventually have a bad effect between them. "I look forward to seeing you again."
Turning and giving the Temple Head a look they started heading towards the door. "Wait, what about me?" Looking at Dawn she understood what she meant. Dawn hadn''t been given a talisman so she was going to be vulnerable and since she was a Holy magic user she was still a prime target even if slightly less than them.
Demon Worshipers were heavily incentivized to kill them by the Demon Lord so even if all they got was Dawn they would consider it a huge sess. Looking at the Oracle Tiff could tell she didn''t have any good news for them so she asked. "Is there really no way to get her something to protect her?"
"The talisman I just gave you was actually mine and we don''t have any more at the moment. She has something already right?" Looking back at Dawn she watched as Dawn pulled out her talisman out of a pocket on her armor. "What''s wrong with that one?"
"If there was nothing wrong with it you wouldn''t have given a better one to Tiff." Dawn made a good point but the way she said it came off a little disrespectful but the oracle didn''t seem to mind too much and said. "I was just doing what I was told." Seeing the oracles smiling face Dawn seemed ready to drop it and said. "I''ll just have to be more careful I guess."
If there was really nothing they could do there was no reason to start a fight. It wasn''t like the Temple made a habit of throwing people to the wolves if it wasn''t necessary. She was sure if they needed help there would be someone to the rescue like there was thest time. Walking out of the Temple and looking up into the sky Tiff wondered where the Gods and Demigods were actually located.
Chapter 248: A Few Hours
Chapter 248: A Few Hours
Lake had read his way to what passed as a basic understanding of history in thest hour and found most of what this world put to books as important didn''t have much to do with where he was at the moment. He wasn''t surprised by this since the God of Metal was on the newer side when it came to the gods he had heard of.
That being said, if he was to sit down and read a book like this one in a few years he was sure what was happening right now would be in the book. It would probably be titled something like "The death of metal" or something like that. Being done with this book but with Wezz still sleeping Lake decided he could find something else to read to pass more time.
Going over to a new box of books he was happy to find there were other books and he just grabbed the one with the best cover. Sitting down and opening it, Lake found it was a book about items that had been used by important people in the same style as the book he had just read. He was about to go see what the other books were since he was good on history for the day when the Insider stopped him.
It seemed he was missing the fact this was a great opportunity to find something worth having and it was true if he learned about these items he might be able to go where they had beenst seen to try and find them. After a few pages Lake realized whoever had written this book wasing after the topic from a cksmith''s angle and realized this book was probably to get kids from the Metal Domain interested in smithing.
Looking around at the room thinking two books for kids wasn''t a coincidence Lake realized they were probably sitting in a school. He hadn''t noticed till now because he hadn''t seen any desks but he wasn''t surprised they were using tables instead. There were always differences between here and where he hade from even if there were less than he would have expected.
Thinking back to the bedrooms he had seen he wondered if it was a ce some of the students lived at as well as a school. He wouldn''t be surprised if they had some kind of orphanage thing going on for kids that didn''t have parents but it did make him wonder where the people that had lived here were.
He tried not to look too closely at the bodies he had dug through the past few days but there were probably arge number of younger people if he looked closely enough near the elevators who had been trying to evacuate. Turning his attention back to the book, Lake started to look through it to find something that was close to him.
He was in the Metal Domain so he could probably locate a target close to him if he went through the book. After a few pageske stopped because he saw something he recognized. It was a shield he could distinctly remember stealing from someone in the past. Reading the information he saw it was something that belonged to one of the more influential families that called the Metal Domain its home.
Thinking back to the guy he had taken it from, he remembered a talk about a rich brother who had hired the Thieves Guild to take the shield from him. Thinking back to how hard it had been to fight against the shield, Lake understood why it had gained a page in the book he was reading and it made him wish he had never handed it over for the bounty.
He was about to move on to the next page when he remembered he had held the shield in his hand for a time which might make it eligible for Retrieval. He wasn''t sure though because he had held it before he got the Retrieval skill. There was only one way to find out but looking around he wasn''t sure this was the ce.
He didn''t think he needed to worry about any of the people here telling anyone what they saw but rumors about where the shield had gone would most likely reach those interested eventually. Plus most of the people here had the same book he had in their hands so their surprise seeing an item they had just read about appear all of a sudden would definitely cause them to talk about it.
Putting "Trying to use Retrieval on the shield" on his to-do list, Lake went on to the next page and saw something he would want if he had the chance to take it. His current swords were nothing to be proud of and he could probably have found something better in the streets if he hadn''t been trying to finish gathering enough weapons for Wezz''s people so that he could get back to work on the tunnel.
It would be something nice for him to do if Wezz got up soon since he would still have to wait for a while for the water to stop pouring into his tunnel increasing the chances of copse. Looking back down to read about the sword he saw it had been forged by one of the God of Metals subordinates soon before they had ascended to Demigodhood.
He had given it to his best friend who had used it until they died in a battle while wielding it. It had gone missing after that, most likely in the hands of whoever had killed them. It was an interesting story but what he was actually interested in was the estimated level of the sword. People thought it was at least level 50 and there were some who thought it might be even higher.
Adding it to his list of things he wanted Lake moved on to see if he could identify any armor he would be interested in. Flipping through the pages that only had heavy te armor, Lake finally found something he would consider wearing. He would say it was over 80% leather and he was excited to read where he might be able to find it but stopped when he saw the date of its destruction.
"Burned to a crisp. Too bad."
...
Tiff had been unable to stop herself from looking up at the sky for most of her trip back to the Holy Domain and was sure it would only get worse as they crossed through the gate. There was no need to go right away though and since they were here and it gave them an opportunity to see the two men that had helped them earlier again.
The Temple Head seemed to think it was a good idea to stop even if it was just for a few minutes and Tiff agreed. As they walked in she saw the two men at the same exact table just sitting quietly like they had been before they had met them the first time. It was almost like nothing at all had happened today that would cause them to be worried.
Sitting down, the Temple Head went ahead and said. "Thank you for your help." to the man who had carried her and Dawn all the way to the Temple. "No problem, good job holding him off for so long." This was indeed an impressive feat considering she didn''t think the Temple Head was an actual Demigod.
She had most likely had an elixir but that only let you get your stats to 200 so whatever she had used to hold back Mezull was most likely the result of hard work and skill. The Talisman had also helped but Tiff wasn''t sure how much or when it had been used during the battle so she would rather give the credit to the Temple Head like the man seemed to be.
With that said there didn''t seem to be much else for them to talk about and after a few seconds of silence the man who usually spoke asked. "Do you need us to help again?" He wasn''t the only one who seemed to think this was where this meeting would end up and Dawn said. "Yeah I was hoping you could carry me home since you''re faster than me."
The Temple Head gave her a look before turning around and saying. "That''s not the worst idea but I was hoping you could scout for us again. Then you can help us by carrying them again if you think it''s necessary." If they were being carried the Temple Head wouldn''t have to move so slowly through the most dangerous parts of the Holy Domain since they were what was slowing her down.
"No problem, we''ll be back in a few hours." This was a longer estimate but it was arger area they had to cover this time so she wasn''t surprised by this. Watching the two men leave she only turned around when Dawn asked. "What else do they have to eat here?"
Chapter 249: Eat Bread
Chapter 249: Eat Bread
Finishing the information on thest piece of armor he felt was a good fit for him, Lake was about to stand up and put the book back when he realized he wanted it. Looking around to see if anyone was looking, Lake put it into his bag before standing and looking for something else to read.
Going to a new box and pulling out the thickest book inside Lake looked at the title and put it back. Moving all the copies of that book out of the way, Lake looked at what was under it and found a book that was much smaller that looked simr to a magazine to him. Taking it out he saw it was a picture book with drawings of things from around the world.
Opening it and seeing what he would call a basic map of the world, Lake knew he had hit a jackpot in terms of basic information. Sitting down the first thing Lake did was look for the Dark Domain. He had heard about it from a lot of people and it was in a lot of books he had read so he had been curious for a while.
Eventually he found it but noticed it looked a lot smaller than the other domains. Once he thought about it he remembered the Demon Lord had attacked her not long after The Dark Goddess'' ascension and it seemed she hadn''t had much time to build up her domain before this happened. It was bigger than it looked apparently though because it had something inmon with the Metal Domain, arge part of it was built underground.
Reading the information on the map, Lake turned to the page where the drawings of the Dark Domain were located and saw a city built in a cave like the one he was currently in. Underneath the picture he saw the word "Outdated" and understood they were saying this was no longer what it looked like.
The Dark Domain hade to be known by another name to some people and he was sure a ce people called the Unholy Domain didn''t look like a nice town anymore. Reading the passage about the Dark Domain on the next page Lake saw the information was written almost like a eulogy by a survivor that had escaped during the attack.
It was just basic information on how life had been for the people that lived there before the attack though so nothing he really needed to know. Turning back to the map, Lake picked out another ce he had heard of before, the Water Domain, and flipped to the page the picture was on.
It ended up being pictures, he guessed with time you gained multiple things that were worth showing off to people that lived in the other domains. Looking at the pictures Lake finally realized why they had added the first one by reading the passage. He had thought it was a city built on a small ind but it turned out the city floated on the water itself.
The next picture was a spire that went down into the water instead of up into the sky and reading what it was he found it was the Water Temple. Looking at the thin bridge that connected the only part of it that was above the water tond, Lake wondered if it didn''t move around with the waves.
If someone had tried to build this in his world they would have had to use flotation devices that would raise and fall whenever the water did so you would need a bridge a lot thicker than this one if you wanted to hold it in ce. There was no way it would work though even if you were able to build it it would most likely copse and sink soon after from the constant stress.
Flipping the page he saw there was one more picture that rted to the Water Domain but only in the way that someone important had been born in the building they were showing. The Goddess of Ice was unsurprisingly born in the Water Domain in a small town along its coast. Looking at the next page and seeing that the picture was from the Ice Domain Lake went back to the map to see if they were next to each other like he assumed they were.
They were next to each other but he wouldn''t say they were close. Looking at the map it seemed they were close in the same way the Metal Domain was close to the Holy Domain with days of travel between their capitals but with nothing in between they were next to each other. Going back to the crystalline buildings that were in the pictures, Lake decided he was done for now and stuck this book into his bag as well.
It would give him something to look at the next time he had to sit and wait for something. Standing up, Lake looked at the closest person and asked. "Where''s the food?" It was time for him to have his bite of bread for the day. "It''s two doors down." Walking into the hallway and then into the room he was told to go to Lake saw they had a pile of food to choose from and started to dig for something he hadn''t had yet.
...
Finishing thest bite of the pumpkin bread they had been served an hour or two ago Tiff said. "We should have this again the next time we''re here."
"The next time you''re here you mean." Dawn clearly didn''t think she would being back as often as Tiff and she was most likely right. Tiff would need to go talk to the God of Light every time she finished a mission so she would be passing through the gate a lot and she wouldn''t be surprised if it was by herself from now on.
Tiff had a better chance if she was by herself anyway because she could just stay invisible whenever she was in a dangerous ce. The only reason she had been unable to do it this wayst time was Dawn was told toe as well making the Temple Head have toe to keep them safe.
"Maybe I''ll bring some back for you if you ask nicely." Dawn didn''t seem to care whether she did or not and changed the subject by asking. "How long did they say again?" Tiff was pretty sure they could be getting back any minute and said. "They said a few hours but at their speed that should mean two or three."
After she got done saying this Tiff looked at the Temple Head to see if she had anything to add. It didn''t seem she had even been paying attention to what they were talking about though. Looking at the Temple Heads face Tiff wanted to ask what had her thinking so hard but decided to let her tell them if she decided to.
Turning back to Dawn Tiff caught her eating the crumbs that were left of the loaf and said. "See, I knew you liked it."
"Whatever, it''s just bread." Tiff could tell Dawn was thinking she would bring her some no matter what. "Yeah you''re right the stuff served at base is better anyway." Tiff was pretty sure that statement would have broken Dawn and made her ask for the bread anytime she went out but they were cut off by the door opening before Dawn had the chance to ask.
Seeing the two guys were now a bit beat up Tiff guessed they had run into whatever was meant for them. As they sat down the guy who did all the talking said. "The sky is dark from here, home. I''m guessing it''s not just one this time." Once again, not saying exactly what they were talking about was making it hard for her to get it but she didn''t even need to hear anything to know this was going to be rough.
One look at them had been all she needed. Looking at Dawn again Tiff wondered if they should just split up and tell Dawn to go back in a few days after everything had settled. She was about to suggest this when the Temple Head asked. "Is it just them watching?"
She was clearly asking about back up like they had gottenst time from the God of Light. "I only saw dark clouds but who knows. I doubt you''ll be abandoned right after what happened."
"What is most likely happening is that he knows where you are and isnt wasting his people''s time waiting on you." Tiff was guessing that he in this sentence was the God of Light and they were probably right that he knew where they were and wasn''t going to send anyone to help until they actually needed it.
Looking at the Temple Head again Tiff could tell they were about to risk it and said. "Please leave Dawn here. She cane in a few days after this is all over." Tiff could tell Dawn was ok with this n because she started to nod towards the Temple Head. "Are you ok with having her with you until it''s calm again?"
Both of the men nodded and the one that did the talking said. "Leave some gold though. I don''t have enough to get her a room." The Temple Head pulled out some gold and tossed it to Dawn as she stood up. Tiff then got a look from the Temple Head saying it was time to go so she stood too saying. "I''ll see you in a few days."
Chapter 250: Waste Of Time
Chapter 250: Waste Of Time
Lake, done with everything he could think to do, started to head back to the book room to continue reading when he saw Wezz turn the corner. It seemed he had finally woken up. "Hello." Wezz was the first to start talking but Lake wasn''t far behind. "I''m about to head out, I''ll be back in a few hours."
Not wasting any time, Lake was outside and had Detector set to look for items over level 30 before Wezz could say anything. Once he had the mana he cast fly and was heading over the city at a high speed looking for new gear for himself. Once he was done with this he would go see if his tunnel was ready for him to start digging again.
Stopping as he passed over a pile of bodies Lake pushed them all to the side until he saw the item he had seen with Detector. Taking the helmet off of the corpse, Lake saw it had done its job and the woman''s head was in one piece. This hadn''t stopped the spray of blood from her mouth though and he would need to clean this helmet before he had any interest actually putting it on.
Packing it away Lake moved himself back above the buildings before he continued on his way. Passing over another item Lake was about to go after it until he realized it belonged to someone still living. They were inside a building and wanting to know who they were he lowered himself onto the room before using Detector and setting it to look for enemies.
When this didn''t light up the people inside Lake gave up on the sword and flew away. He really wanted new armor because the stuff he had taken from the Demon Worshiper was already damaged again with a couple ufortable dents and his swords level didn''t really matter that much with Crunch.
Stopping after a while when he saw something he wanted Lake looked at the ring on the man''s finger and guessed it made sense that rings had levels too. He hadn''t really thought about it but it seemed setting Detector to look for items over level 30 and not just weapons he had opened up what he was going to find to everything.
Trying to take the ring, Lake found the man''s finger was too fat to get it off. Lake had heard of this happening as people got older or fatter but he was pretty sure the reason had something to do with the smelling off the man and not what he had been eating for thest few years. Seeing this as a good way to christen his new Knife, Lake quickly took the finger off and slipped the ring into his pocket once it was free.
He would worry about seeing what it didter when he wasn''t out in the open. He also had to figure out if it was something he could wear with the stuff he already had on so putting it in his pocket was the best he could do for now. Finding another piece of armor Lake was happy until he saw that it was a pair of gloves that he had no chance of being able to wear.
Deciding he might as well take them since he was here and they were in good condition Lake pulled them off of thedy''s hands and put them in his bag. Getting back into the air, Lake saw he was starting to get close to the part of town the Demon Worshipers were hiding in. Lake was about to turn when he saw an item light up in the distance and decided to go after it since it looked big.
He would be fine ending his search now if it ended up being a chest piece he could wear. Landing on the building next to where it was, Lake looked down to see what the situation was like down there before he went to grab it. He wanted to make sure the street was empty since these were the bodies the Demon Worshipers should be digging through.
He didn''t want to cause a fight that would lead to a big scuffle between the two groups living in the city. Landing on the ground, Lake went after the body, grabbed it and drug it away. He was being more careful on the off chance there was someone who could look this way and see him.
Once he had the body in a dark corner Lake went ahead and inspected the item that had triggered Detector. Seeing the cloth Lake was a little disappointed but he soon noticed the actual gear was underneath. Opening the man''s shirt Lake saw the thinyer of chainmail that was covering his vitals.
Getting the man''s clothes off so he could look at how the chainmail was attached to the man, Lake saw it was like a shirt that he just had to get off the man like normal. If he thought about it this was perfect because the straps of normal armor were kind of a pain whenever he took them off or put them on.
Folding the chainmail up and putting it into his bag, Lake looked around before casting Fly and headed to a new part of town that he had yet to check for armor. Once he got there he stopped as he flew over a person with what seemed to be a full set of armor that was above level 30. Lake had wished he had found this earlier but whatever the chainmail was still a good find.
Landing next to the person dead on the street, Lake looked around and saw they were the only person dead in about a 15 foot radius and looking at the guy Lake noticed a distinctck of injury that might have caused them to die. That meant he might need to flip them over to see if it was on the other side but he decided making sure they were actually dead came first.
Using Detector Lake set it to look for alive people and ignored the people underneath the road that it picked up. Not seeing them start to glow, Lake used Detector again and set it to Undead. With the guy still not glowing, Lake guessed it was fine and started to walk closer to the body only to be stopped at the same 15 foot distance that everything else had.
Realizing this guy had some kind of barrier or ward up that was stopping him from getting any closer, Lake really started to wonder what had killed them. He guessed the barrier had actedte or there might have been an attack like the one that had been able to hit him in the back even though he had a ward ring on at the time.
Trying to get a better look at the barrier that was keeping him back, Lake wondered about how much longer a personal barrier with no apparent formation couldst and decided it was worth his time to find out. But, there was no reason for him to just stand here the whole time. cing a mark on the ground, Lake went towards the elevator shaft.
It was time for him to see how the tunnel was doing. Flying into the tunnel Lake was happy to find the leak hadn''t seemed to get any worse while he was gone but it didn''t seem to be better either. Getting to the natural stone and seeing water still pouring in through the cracks, Lake turned around and headed back to Wezz''s base.
...
Looking out from behind the tree she was hiding behind Tiff wondered if their attempts at hiding really mattered. The People they were really trying to get past were looking down from above and Tiff didn''t think a tree could block their eyes. She shouldn''t beining yet because it seemed to be working.
Tiff didn''t get it but it was her turn to move so she stopped thinking and dived from where she was hiding to the next tree. As soon as she got back into cover she instantly started criticizing this method of getting home by trying to guess how many more trees she would hug until she was there.
They had already been moving like this for over an hour and she didn''t think they had even passed the first town on the way back. Of course every inch they took like this was one less they would have to run once they were spotted so she needed to stopining and get ready to move to the next tree.
She took the chance to look up while she was passing to the next tree and was happy to find the clouds hadn''t started to spin fast yet. This meant at worst they had a few more seconds of safety to waste going from tree to tree. Looking back and seeing the Temple Head make it to her tree Tiff went to the next one. "There!"
Tiff guessed the jig was up and started to run like they had nned ahead of time. Activating her stealth She just trusted the fact that the Temple Head could see her just fine and headed out into the open to get a look at the clouds. She didn''t know how fast the ones up there would notice the chase happening down here but she wanted to be able to anticipate the first attack.
Chapter 251: One At A Time
Chapter 251: One At A Time
Seeing the cloud finally start to open, Tiff just kept running because she knew the Temple Head was the one who would be fighting this first of the Demigods that would being down to get them. And she was hoping that by the time the second one got down here the first Demigod from their side would be here to help them.
Seeing the dark figure stream towards them from the now open cloud and a shield of light blocking it for about half a second Tiff knew the Temple Head was already doing her job so Tiff took the chance to look back at the sky. Seeing two new clouds starting to spin, Tiff knew she was right that there would be someone other than the Temple Head to protect her from the next Demigod.
The next cloud that opened was one of theirs and Tiff stopped paying attention to what was going on behind her and just focused on running to make this battle as short as possible. If she kept looking she would have to stay out on the road so she didn''t run into something but this would make her trip longer since she wasn''t moving in a straight line towards the Holy Domain''s capital.
It was one of the benefits of moving towards the Holy Domain. For whatever reason they had decided to make a spire on the Alchemist guild that you could see from really far away. That being said she had seen what was nned for the Alchemist guild in the fake city and the spire there had been visible from the Light Domain.
She was just happy the war wasn''t currently threatening the city or she wouldn''t have been able to see the Alchemist guild because of their barrier. Hearing another loud noise and another wave of odd mana sweeping across thendscape Tiff knew another Demigod hade down from above.
She wasn''t sure what this element was called but she could tell it was probably based off of the Dark element originally so they were probably on the enemies side. It was fine because a secondter a much moreforting wave of mana came down and countered the darkish mana that had just swept through.
It seemed the God of Light wasn''t just waiting to send his people to save their time; he nned to send the counterpart to whoever the Demon Lord sent down. She guessed this was a smart tactic at their level since the majority of demigods were skilled in magic. This meant you needed to counter each other or you wouldn''t have much of a chance at a real fight.
It would just be two people using spells that had no business being used down here around mortals. Hearing another loud boom Tiff knew leaving Dawn back at the gate had been the right call. They were about the same speed if they went all out so she wasn''t worried about being slowed down but the size of some of the attacks that were happening behind her guaranteed that Dawn would die on the chance one of them hit them.
Tiff hadn''t tested the new talisman yet but she would most likely survive since it was something the God of Light made himself. After a while of running Tiff noticed that no more clouds were in the sky and guessed two was the max the Demon Lord had been willing to send after them and with two of theirs here as well she should be meeting up with the Temple Head soon.
...
Walking back out of the base after checking on Wezz, Lake went towards the guy with the armor to see if the barrier had failed yet. It was bound to happen soon as long as it wasn''t able to power itself by means other than whatever it had been charged with before the man''s death. Lake had to stop and see if he could get close to the man since the barrier was see-through but it still only took him a few seconds to see it was still up and he was able to get back to looking for new equipment.
Landing on the streets he had already checked for weapons when Wezz had asked him to. Lake quickly found a few nice pieces of armor he had walked past without noticing the first time he came through and added them to his bag since none of them were what he was looking for. He just needed some boots that would actually fit and he was done putting together the new set he was going to wear until he could buy one that matched or got lucky enough to steal a full set off of a body.
As for the gloves he had given up on finding any he could wear that weren''t too clunky. He needed to be able to use his fingers so having thick metal wrapped around them wasn''t worth the extra protection especially since he had a skill that let him grow them back.
...
"Hey are you Donny?" Donny wasn''t able to look back since he had to focus on what he was doing but he still answered. "Yes."
"I just wanted toe by and thank you in case I didn''t get the chance again." Donny had already gotten 20 or so peopleing to thank him for saving their lives so this was nothing new so he said. "It''s no problem. Try not to get grabbed again and we''re even. I don''t want to have to fight more undead than are already out there if it''s ever my turn to go outside and fight."
With about 600 people inside the base at the moment Donny had saved about one in ten of them so his name was all over the ce at the moment and he was expecting a few more people toe see him to say thank you. It wouldn''t be all of them though, there were a lot of people who didn''t like to say thank you so he was expecting the number to be just about half.
"Well I''m up in about ten minutes so goodbye." Donny almost wanted tough at how curtain the man sounded that he was going to get killed this time for sure and took a brief second to get a look at them while they walked away. Seeing them he was sure they would be fine as long as they did what the others did.
It had been a few hours since they lost anybody so he was sure teamwork was the most important thing on the walls. The only people that were getting taken were those that tried to do something fancy or lost their cool. That was why the losses had been so much worse at the beginning.
Feeling a spell hit the part of the wall he was reinforcing, Donny took the time to repair any damage that had been caused to his formation before he looked to see if anyone else had taken damage from that attack. It seemed it had been a direct hit on his part of the wall and everyone else was just fine.
Turning back to Fendis he said. "Have you heard anything about what it''s like out there?" Fendis didn''t spend as much time asleep as the rest of them did since he was able to use Wind Mana to do his job for him so he had more chances to talk to the people on the other shifts. "They''re saying we''re starting to make some real progress killing the Demon Worshipers but the attacks won''t end until we find the person who can turn all the bodies into undead."
"Less spells to defend against though." The undead outside were mostly the mindless type that didn''t use magic so once they got through the Demon Worshipers they wouldn''t be getting hit by so many spells. "What, you want to be out on the wall that bad?" Thinking about it Donny started to nod and said. "I would rather be out there. I''m a fighter first, then a mage." At least when it came tobat.
Donny saw Fendis look at him so he looked over more and saw Fendis staring at his highly damaged sword. "What are you going to do with that?" Knowing Fendis was right that his sword was pretty much useless at this point he said. "I picked this up after my spear was destroyed. So I would get a new spear then go out on the wall."
"You know they do let the mages go out there as well and I''ve seen you use magic to destroy the gargoyles so maybe you should just ask to see if they need someone out there."
"I don''t think they need a Metal Mage out there when there isn''t any Metal Mana. You''re more likely to get out there than I am."
"I''m not exactly what you would call deadly. I just started my training in Wind magic and my spells don''t make it past armor."
"It looks like we''ll both be staying here then." Donny truthfully didn''t mind standing right here until this was over if it was what he needed to do but he felt bad about the fact he could probably make a difference in the fight if he had the chance.
The chance woulde even if he just waited patiently so he had no need to go and bother someone about getting to fight. There was no way the people in charge here in the fortress would waste so many talented mages inside once the walls were no longer getting bombarded. They would need them outside to help destroy the bodies past the point where they could be used to make more undead.
Chapter 252: Polite
Chapter 252: Polite
Dropping down Lake finally saw some boots that met his level requirements. Over the past few days Lake had been able to find out what people did and didn''t spend their money on and it seemed boots were one of the things people didn''t think were important. He could understand, how often did someone aim that low, so as long as the boots had good traction it didn''t really matter.
Grabbing the boots, Lake put them in his bag and looked for a ce to try them on. He needed to find out if this was the end of his search so it couldn''t wait untilter. Landing on a balcony that had a solid guard rail he could sit behind Lake kicked off his boots and tried the new ones on.
Lake was satisfied with the size but new shoes always felt weird after your feet had the chance to get used to the old ones and the fact these had been broken in by someone else probably wasn''t helping. He was sure after a few uses of Burst the only feet in the bottom of these boots would be his though so it didn''t really matter.
Seeing this as a good idea to break them in Lake stood up and activated burst before starting to run around. He usually liked to fly since it was less energy intensive but he was able to move much faster on his feet. If he decided he was fine with running into things he could go even faster but he didn''t want to dent up his new boots just yet by running through a stone building.
Once he felt he had pressed the shape of his feet into the bottom of his new boots, Lake stopped and headed for the base. He wanted to go ahead and clean the other two pieces of new armor he had found so he could change into them without worrying about the smell. The helmet was the worst of the two but the chainmail hade from underneath the man''s clothes so it had been pressed into rotting flesh for at least a few days.
Walking into the base, Lake went towards the ce he was pretty sure they would have soap. Stepping in and seeing the two doctors Lake asked. "Do you have anything I could use to clean blood off of armor?" He could tell they were looking at his non-bloodied armor so he said. "It''s not what I''m wearing."
After he was done talking he pulled the helmet out of his bag and showed them the inside. "The water we use to clean blood is this way but you should ask a water mage to do it. Next to life mages they''re the best at cleaning." Hearing this, Lake asked. "Are there any around?"
Hearing a few namese out of the mouths of the two doctors Lake just cut to the chase and asked. "Where are they?" Once he was told Lake was able to predict the trouble of finding one person in themon room so he asked. "Can you bring me?" He was the reason these two didn''t have any work at the moment so he felt like it wasn''t too much to ask for.
Being led down the hall by the younger of the two, Lake walked up to the first person the doctor pointed at and asked. "Would you mind cleaning a few things for me?" he could tell they knew who he was so he was surprised when they said. "No."
"Might I ask why?" He figured it would just take a few seconds so he didn''t get why they wouldn''t jump at the opportunity to help him after all he did. "I don''t gain my mana back very quickly and down here the water mana is scarce so I would have to use mine."
"How scarce is it?"
"It would probably take me a whole ten minutes to get one item clean." Lake didn''t think that sounded correct and said. "Are you sure you just don''t feel like doing it? Alright, can you just point out someone who can help?" He understood beingzy and since he could tell the guy was lying, Lake decided to just give up on them and look for someone else to help him.
The guy looked around and pointed at someone in the corner. Marking the guy in case he ever thought about this in the future when he wasn''t pretending to be a good guy, Lake showed the helmet to the person in the corner and asked. "Would you be willing to clean this for me?"
"No problem." Around three secondster the helmet was sparkling clean and Lake pulled out the chainmail. "This two please." Watching the water spin and spit out the clean chainmail, Lake wondered if he should maybe get around to learning a spell he could use to wash stuff. He would probably go with Life magic though because clean seemed to be a better way to do this since he didn''t have to get wet to get himself clean.
That had been how he had cleaned himself almost every time he had the chance to in this world. One of his servants in the Alchemist guild had been a healer so Lake had just asked them to clean him every morning when he had been walking out the door. It would be nice to be able to do it for himself plus he probably wouldn''t need health potions anymore.
He would also like to see what kind of skills a Life mage would get on level up. Something that gave him more health or made him heal faster would be nice. He guessed it would also be nice to be able to heal someone if he needed to. Thanking the mage for cleaning his armor, Lake went towards his room to change.
Taking his chest piece off Lake was about to put his chainmail on when he stopped and put his normal shirt on first. He didn''t want the metal on his bare skin even if that was how you were supposed to wear it. Looking at how he looked now Lake decided he needed to get his hands on a jacket to put over his new shiny top.
He also looked kind of weird since his legs had te armor that made it look like his legs were way bigger than the top part of his body. Grabbing the new helmet and putting it on Lake thought it made the problem even worse. Plus the new helmet was kind of shy so everyone would remember what it looked like if he ever robbed them while wearing it.
He guessed this new jacket he was looking for should have a hood attached so it could cover his head as well. Leaving his room Lake saw a few people look at him but nothing crazy since he wasn''t the only person walking around with a mismatched set of armor. Lots of the people that had been injured had to rece some of their armor and had gone to the bodies outside to do so.
After making it down the hall, Lake realized his new piece of chainmail made a lot of noise as he moved and guessed that would be another use his jacket would have when he found it. He wasn''t worried about the noise getting him into trouble since he had Mute but it was kind of annoying to make this much noise every time you moved.
Wishing he had been able to find a nice leather shirt instead, Lake wondered if there was some kind of local taboo against wearing leather. He understood this was the Metal Domain but it seemed kind of ridiculous that there wasn''t any high level leather gear. He bet if he was still where the Fighters Guild people were he would have been able to find some dead people from outside of the Domain who hade to work who were wearing leather that was at least level 30.
Seeing Wezz Lake walked up to him and asked. "What do you think?" Wezz gave him a good look before saying. "Each piece looks nice on its own but you need to cover up if you care what you look like." Starting tough, Lake nodded and asked. "Do you have any jackets or robes I can look through?"
"I''m sure you could find them if you tried." Thinking about what Wezz just said Lake knew he was right, all he had to do was set Detector and anything he wanted to find started to glow. "Yeah you''re right, talking to you to get permission to take your stuff is a waste of time." His only real reason to say anything to anybody at this point was to be polite.
"Ok feel free to look around. You have my blessings." Getting the green light Lake started by setting Detector to look for clothes and went to the only ce in the building that lit up other than the people. Opening the closet Lake pulled out what he thought to be dresses and guessed he might have to leave the building to get a jacket.
Chapter 253: Determined
Chapter 253: Determined
Walking outside Lake saw people start to glow and knew he needed to find a better thing to set Detector to to exclude things like socks. Setting detector to look for things that would cover his upper body that he could wear, Lake saw the corpses of the demon worshipers start to glow as Detector picked up their robes.
Lake decided this was fine and left Detector set to this as he lifted into the air heading for the nice part of town. He figured the nice houses would have the kind of jacket he would want to wear. One house should have more clothes to go through than an entire street in a poorer area.
Not to mention the quality would probably be a lot higher as well. Hopefully he could find something that wouldn''t look too bad with a few holes in it. Stopping at the first house on the street, Lake saw three separate locations light up like they were ces where the people that lived inside kept their clothes and broke in after making sure it wasn''t dangerous.
Finding the first bedroom Lake saw it was pretty bare and wondered if maybe it was a guest room. If he was right the stuff in this closet would probably be on the older side but he didn''t really care about the current fashion of the metal domain and just wanted something to fix the way he looked and sounded.
Dragging the three items that met his requirements out of the closet and tossing them on the bed, Lake Took the one he liked the best and moved towards the next room that held clothes. Seeing the wide bed Lake knew this room would probably have arge amount of clothes not in his size since they would most likely belong to the woman of the house and fished out what he felt he could fit into.
Once he dragged out the five things that looked to be his size, Lake grabbed the only thing that didn''t have any shiny metal bits and tried it on. Spinning until he found the mirror, Lake liked how he looked better now that his mixed gear was covered but he still needed to see if it helped with the noise so he ran to the next room in the house that had clothes in it.
It was a short distance but it was long enough to see that the new coat muffled the noise so that it was about the same amount as hisst two sets of armor. He could live with that and opened the door to thest room. Seeing toys Lake still went in but guessed he was unlikely to find anything better in a kids closet.
Opening the door, Lake saw the size of the clothes and went ahead and closed the door again. Heading for the door, Lake grabbed the other coat he had found in the first room and put it in the special space for stolen items in case he ever needed it. He really had no way of knowing how long these two coats wouldst so taking two would save him some timeter.
Walking back outside Lake was about to head for the base again when he figured he could go check on the barrier that was protecting the guy with the nice armor. Stopping once he was passing over Lake lowered himself down to see if he could step on the top of the invisible barrier.
Feeling his foot hit the top of the barrier Lake lifted off again after standing there for a second. At this point he had touched the barrier a few times so he knew it was safe but he didn''t want to attack it in an attempt to break it and find that it was capable of hurting him. Thinking this, Lake stopped because he remembered he could solve almost any problem that involved himcking information with Detector if he just worded what he wanted to find right.
Setting it to look for barriers just to make sure he had the name for what it was right, Lake was happy to find it starting to glow and switched it to look for barriers he could break with his sword. With the barrier still glowing, Lake switched it to look for barriers he could safely break.
When he saw it glowing still he knew he had been right about it only being a shield with no other abilities. Taking out his short sword Lake swung once to see if it could take even a normal attack from him. When it was able to take a normal attack Lake decided he should switch to using his fist so he didn''t damage the sword when he swung it harder than it could take.
Using Burst and Fast Hands Lake did a small smack on the side of the barrier and felt it pop like a bubble. With how easy that had been, Lake wondered if maybe he could break the barrier to the surface after all and decided he would check before he went to look at his tunnel again. Wondering why he hadn''t ever thought to use Detector to figure out how to break a barrier safely, Lake thought maybe he had overestimated how strong they were after one had been able to stop Crunch. That being said there wasn''t really a reason to think the small barrier was anywhere near as strong as the one covering the surface.
The one he had just broken was also clear which made it a lot less menacingpared to the one he was thinking of breaking now because he was sure the color meant it was dangerous to those that touched it and deadly to those who broke it. With the barrier gone Lake walked towards the guy to see if he could finally figure out what had caused their death.
At this point he wanted to know that more than he wanted the armor. It was too thick for him anyway so really all he was going to do with it was bring it back to the base to see if anyone wanted to wear it. It would have been nice if he could take it to sell but he didn''t have the room for it in his bag and with the owner dead him taking it wasn''t stealing so he couldn''t stash it in the space created by Booster Bag.
Flipping the guy over Lake saw he waspletely devoid of any injuries and started to think of ways that could kill you that didn''t leave a mark as he took the helmet off. Seeing the older man''s face Lake wondered if he had just dropped dead from the excitement and used Detector to look for someone who died of natural causes.
Seeing the guy start to glow, Lake realized he could have figured this out before taking the barrier down if he had just yed with Detector for a few seconds but he would have still probably taken it out so he could get the armor and bring it to Wezz. Finishing undressing the man of his armor, Lake could tell every piece was enchanted.
He wasn''t surprised about this since he had figured it had been what made the barrier but it made the fact he wouldn''t be able to keep it a little harder since this was the first time he had seen enchanted armor. He guessed it just made it a nicer gift to whoever it ended up with. Picking it up, Lake headed for the base.
Once inside Lake set the armor in front of Wezz and asked. "Are you interested?" Wezz took one look at what he had brought him and dropped his cup of water. Lake wasn''t expecting such an exaggerated response but he was happy Wezz liked it and was about to ask if he liked it when Wezz asked. "Where''d you get this?"
"It was on a dead guy. Why?" The way Wezz asked made it seem he wasn''t just asking for no reason. "Because I know who it belonged to. You said he was dead?" Nodding Lake asked. "Who was he?"
"He used to be the oracles guard, he''s been retired for a while but I didn''t think he would die so easily." Lake wondered if he should tell Wezz the man had died from something like a heart attack or if he should just let him continue to think he had died in battle. After thinking about it some more he decided to do something in between. "I''m actually not sure what got him. The armor is in perfect condition so it had to be something weird that he couldn''t defend against."
Right after he said this, Lake could tell he had identally made it seem like the Demon Worshipers had a new sinister way to kill someone and was about to fix it when Wezz said. "We have to get out of here soon." After he said this he started to change his armor to the set Lake had just brought him with a determined look so Lake decided it was fine.
"I''ll go see if I can dig yet. It should be done raining by now so I''ll try to get us to the surface by tomorrow." Lake could tell Wezz wasn''t really listening but didn''t repeat himself and just went towards the door. Wezz had unlocked a new source of determination and Lake didn''t want to get in the way of that by continuing to talk at him.
Chapter 254: Back At It
Chapter 254: Back At It
Flying to the end of his tunnel, Lake saw the water was still pouring in but he was tired of waiting and after taking out his long sword he started digging again. He had stopped on the way to see if he could break the barrier but Detector had said he could but it would be dangerous so he had decided he would be better off digging and risking a copse.
He was sure he could survive a simple copse and a big one should be slow enough that he could get out of the way as long as he was paying attention. Right after having this thought Lake remembered he had a knife again and took it out and threw it up while Crunch was active. After letting it fly for a while Lake walked over and stuck his hand near the hole to see if he could feel any air.
It was a long shot but Lake knew it was possible for him to find out if he was close to the surface like this. Not feeling a draft Lake thought maybe the stuff his knife had pushed out of the way had just filled in the hole again making it so he couldn''t tell. Taking an arrow out this time Lake made a Magic arrow and let it fly upwards.
With his mana in the arrow he was able to feel it so he was able to know if it was passing through air or ground unlike with the knife. When he was flying the arrow up Lake took the chance to use Retrieve on his knife before he forgot and put it back in the sheath on his leg. After a while of flying the arrow up Lake could tell he was just wasting his time and recalled the arrow and started digging.
It was obvious he had either overestimated how close he was or that he was digging up into the bottom of a mountain and flying the arrow was just a distraction he needed to forget about and just dig until he couldn''t anymore. He had to stop wasting time even if he felt like it was the right thing to do to be safe.
...
Looking ahead and seeing the walls of the citying up Tiff couldn''t wait to get inside but ended up stopping when she saw something moving towards her in one of the fields. Looking over at the Temple Head who had also stopped to get a look at the thing that was trimming down the overgrown fields of their weeds Tiff said. "Is that a golem farming?"
"That''s what it looks like, bute on we don''t have time to gawk." She was right it was just Tiff had never seen a golem do anything other than kill people while protecting something so seeing them be used to try and solve the food problem that was brewing was a real surprise. Starting to run again she asked. "Who do you think it belongs to?"
"I don''t know but I''m sure the Farmers Guild will have something to do with it." Hearing this Tiff put it into the back of her mind and quickly forgot about it as they made it to the Temple. Walking in she could tell people were staring and it made her realize she was probably about to be the center of a huge meeting.
Thankfully with her seeing it early she had a chance to get out of it. "Temple Head I was told to get to work on my first mission right away. I''ll be leaving as soon as I get ready." Using the God of Light''s words made it really hard for the Temple Head to do anything to stop her so Tiff knew it would work.
"Can you talk about it?" Tiff nodded and said. "He never said I couldn''t and I''m sure he wouldn''t mind you knowing even if he had. He wants me to find the dagger." There was no reason to keep it a secret from anyone here so she didn''t mind that the people around them could hear what she was saying.
"Do you want some help? I know you ran into a dead endst time so you''ll need more people out looking for hints to who took it." Tiff didn''t want to own up to lying thest time so she said. "I''ve been pointed in the right direction already." She made it sound like the God of Light had given her a hint or something that would lead her to the dagger.
"Well you might still want to think about bringing a few guards with you. You haven''t gotten to the first level yet so you''re still the same strength as you were yesterday." This was already part of Tiff''s n to begin with but she didn''t want the guards just yet. She needed to make it seem she did some work first so it didn''t look like she knew where it was already.
"I need to do some investigating first. I''lle back for help once I know how much I need and what I need it for." After she said this she headed for her room. She had been running for around 13 hours if you added up the time so she needed a nap.
Usually she would hide somewhere to sleep but the Temple head was here and the dagger was already written off so all the dirty tricks she had been worried about for thest few years had pretty muche to a stop and with her new position no one would think they needed to get rid of her anymore.
It was nice to know the only people she was going to need to fear from now on were the people working for the Demon Lord. After having this realization Tiff realized just how much her ns for the future had changed in thest few days. For years she had been trying to find a way to convince the others to run with her so they wouldn''t die but now with the Legendary job all she wanted was to finish her missions and to get stronger.
Her main reason to do this was the same as why she wanted to run away though so her ultimate goal of saving her friends was the same. It was just that now the way she could make sure they wouldn''t die was by taking their ce in the biggest fights. Of course fighting would have the benefit that she could get more Divine cores from giants they killed.
After a few there would most likely be a few more members in the 23 that got the same treatment that she did. She could already see the God of Light making Dawn the next person to get the Imitation job since he had said she was his second choice. He seemed interested in seeing how the job did so she wasn''t sure if he would give it to anyone else until she had unlocked all the skills and tested them.
Realizing she had never asked how many skills there were in this job Tiff made a note to ask next time. Legendary jobs didn''t always follow the normal rules so there might be more than four by the time she made it to level ten and ten might not be the actual limit. It would all depend on the way the God of Light had made the job to act.
She guessed it might have been a good thing if it had taken slightly longer for the bestowal to finish because it would have given her longer to be told what to expect from the job. She was sure the God of Light had other things to do and just took the fact it had taken a second as a good sign and sent her on her way to do her first mission.
There wasn''t actually a lot she needed to know yet and maybe the God of Light had decided to wait to tell her till after she was strong enough to not get captured since she would be able to give them intel on the new job he had designed. If they got her at the moment all they would get is its name if they could get it out of her and it didn''t even sound like a real job.
She guessed she would know the next time they talked but until then she needed to get some sleep so she would actually be able to sit through the long information gathering session she would have to do tomorrow. It sounded interesting if you put it that way but it would most likely be her staring at the door for a day with almost nothing happening.
It would be simr to what she had done to find the dagger the first time but she wasn''t going to attack Jon this time once she found him. She had realized trying to kill him the first time was a big mistake and it was because she had mistaken him for an enemy when in reality he didn''t even seem to want the dagger anymore like she had expected him to.
It was probably because he hade to realize only those that could use Holy mana could actually do anything with it and it had be a liability to own instead of the ultimate weapon he had assumed it to be when he stole it. She also needed to tell the Temple Head about Jon after she found him again since he had a skill that would allow the Temple to hide Holy mages.
He was a good person for them to look into hiring even if it was just a few times. The Temple always had a hard time when they had to move people that the Demon Worshipers wanted to kill and it made it so lots of people had to live their whole life inside a single Temple out of fear they would die as soon as they went outside.
Chapter 255: Tunneled
Chapter 255: Tunneled
Seeing the stone change again Lake didn''t stop for a break like he normally would and just kept hacking into the wall with his long sword. Seeing how dusty and loose the new stone was he did stay slightly further back as he dug in case it started to copse. After looking at the new stuff for a while, Lake couldn''t help but think of the road he had walked into town on; this new stuff looked almost exactly like the parts that hadn''t been smooth stone and he wondered if this was where they had gotten it from.
Gravel was an easy way to make a nice road that didn''t take mages so he could see them using the stuff they dug up like this. He was hoping it was also a sign that he was close to the surface and would be breaking through soon enough. After a while Lake saw a few stones fall from the ceiling and flew away as the first copse started.
It ended soon enough and after sending all the debris in his way down the tunnel he continued to dig. After a few more copses like the first one Lake saw something he thought he never would again. The sky looked so bright and it actually took him a few seconds to realize it was night time.
He had passed days underground sometimes inplete darkness so any light looked bright enough for him to mistake it for day. Sticking his head out of the hole and looking around to see where he hade up, Lake didn''t see anything that he recognized. He was also about halfway up a mountain and looking back at the top of the mountain Lake bet it was what was blocking the city from his view.
Getting out of the hole by flying up Lake saw the bubble that was the barrier slowly emerge from behind the mountain as he gained height. He wanted to stay out here for a while and look around more as an excuse to take a break but he quickly flew back down the tunnel to tell Wezz he was done.
It had been a while since Lake had gone to check on them as well since he had decided to finish the tunnel no matter what so it was past due for him to check in to see if they were fine. It would be a real shame if they died after all he had done for them so he really should have taken a small break to check on them after a few hours of digging.
It would have been the right call though if they were fine when he got back. Flying towards the base after entering the 10th tier Lake could tell right away that there wasn''t a big battle going on from how quiet it was. This didn''t mean something had already happened though but he wouldn''t know till he got back to the base. Seeing the guards standing in their spots just fine, Lake congratted himself for making the right decision and went to find Wezz.
Lake found him sitting at a table with a few other people and he could tell by the tone of their voices they were having a serious conversation. He felt what he had to say was better though so he cut them off. "The tunnel isplete." Wezz stopped talking as soon as he said this and turned to him to ask. "Are you ready to leave right away or do you need to rest?"
It seemed Wezz was extremely ready to get out of here but Lake needed a few minutes. It seemed using skills that needed Stamina tired you out a lot faster than if you went without them even if you regained it as fast as you were using it. "I need a few minutes and I''ll be ready to go. Start getting everyone ready."
There was no reason to mention he was going to sleep in those few minutes but he figured no one would notice since they would be getting ready to go on a journey. Entering his room Lake sat on his bed and smiled at how fast it was to take off his new armor. Now the only things he had to undo straps to take off were the greaves and his arm guards which he just left on.
Laying down Lake fell asleep and woke up within a few minutes and was back up to look for Wezz to see how long it would be until they could leave. Lake also needed to go and make it so they would be able to enter the tunnel since it was inside the elevator shaft one would need to fly to get to it now.
He hadn''t thought of it till now but he needed to carve out a path to the tunnel''s entrance along the side of the shaft so he didn''t have to ferry one person at a time. "Wezz how long till you''re ready?"
"I think we''ll be ready in less than an hour but I need to ask, how long is the tunnel?" Thinking about it, Lake had to say it would probably take them a few hours to climb up since they were unable to fly like him. "It takes about five hours at normal pace probably, I made it so we don''t pop out right next to the city so we don''t have to worry about any armies finding the hole and setting up an ambush for whoeveres out of it."
Lake made it sound like the fact they were going to have to climb down a mountain was on purpose to keep them safe so no one wouldin when they saw it. "Ok in that case I''ll give everyone more time to get ready. We''ll need extra water and food for a break in the middle of climbing."
Done with this conversation Lake said. "I need to make some changes to the entrance of the tunnel now so I''ll be gone for a while. Feel free to wait for me toe back to set out so you don''t get attacked on the way to the elevators." Lake was sure the demon Worshipers would notice an army marching and assume it was an attack even if they weren''t headed right for them.
There was also no reason for them to head for the tunnel until he was done so they might as well wait. "Ok see you in a few hours." After hearing Wezz''s farewell Lake went back to the Elevator and started to dig out the side so everyone would be able to walk their way into the tunnel.
It took less time than he had expected because he found he was able to just hold the sword out as he flew back and fourth to carve out arge ledge for them to use and he was able to return to the base to tell Wezz he was ready. Walking in Lake saw everyone had gathered what they wanted to take with them in bags and even though he could tell some people were still preparing they were almost ready to go.
Walking up on Wezz who was holding another meeting Lake said. "I''m ready whenever you are." Wezz didn''t stop what he was saying this time so Lake went ahead and listened to what they were talking about. "We can''t waste time getting people to go and tell them."
"It won''t take as long as you''re saying, all we need to do is tell a few and let them spread the word." Lake was interested now so he asked. "What are you guys debating?" Wezz turned towards him after he asked them this question and said. "They want to tell some people that are hiding that there''s a way out but I think it''s a bad idea for a few different reasons."
Lake was on Wezz''s side on this but it put him in a bad position because he had been ying a hero but Wezz wanted to leave right away without telling anyone where they were going to keep themselves safe. After thinking for a while Lake said. "Don''t worry about that, I n to get more people out after we find a safe ce on the surface. I''m just going to bring you out now because of the lurking threats that are nearby."
Saying this Lake was able to make it seem like he was a hero who was being cautious for now to keep them safe while in reality he would probably nevere back unless he was chased back down here. "You''re right we shouldn''t tell people how to evacuate until we know we aren''t leading them to their deaths but I''m worried the Demon Worshipers will attack the people hiding here as soon as we''re gone as a deterrent." Lake wasn''t going to say this person was wrong to think this would happen but he really didn''t care what happened to the people down here as long as the ones that survived had good things to say about him.
"They aren''t in as much danger as you think. I''m pretty sure there''s a reason they haven''te out to attack and I don''t think it''s just because you or I are here. That being said, even if I''m wrong we still need to go because we''ll probably be the first people to get out with news of what''s happening. I wouldn''t be surprised if people are already here to help but just don''t know how."
Seeing the effect the word "help" had on the people he was talking to, Lake knew he had convinced them their escape would be what saved the Metal Domain. "He''s right, saving a few more isn''t worth failing to get outside. If we spread the word the Demon Worshipers will give their all to stop us."
Seeing how pumped up everyone was, Lake wondered if maybe no one here had very high Charisma. His points had been good but not without ws or even that convincing so he felt maybe he had been overlooking the fact he could talk them into almost anything as long as he proposed it right.
Chapter 256: The Climb
Chapter 256: The Climb
A few minutes after their discussion had ended someone came into the room to tell Wezz that everyone was ready. Lake was happy to hear this and said. "Alright get everyone to head towards the elevator. I''ll be in the air on the lookout." After he said this he went outside and waited for the people inside to start toe out to take to the air.
Activating Mana Vision and Detector to look for threats to the people he was leading to the tunnel, Lake was ready to start moving as soon as Wezz gave the order for everyone to walk. Sadly they were moving kind of slow by his standards so it took a while for them to reach the elevator shaft but he didn''t mind since they made it safely without any fights.
He had predicted this but he was happy the Demon Worshipers didn''t want to fight because he was sure they would have lost at least a few people. Once they were there Lake watched from a position he could catch anyone who fell as they crossed the ledge he had carved in the wall into the tunnel.
Wezz had told them not to start climbing right away so Lake was able to assure them that he would be ready to catch anyone who slipped on the wet stone as they climbed. He didn''t think this would happen but he could tell they all felt better about climbing into thepletely dark tunnel after he said this.
Remembering he had one other trick that could help them climb easier, Lake Imbued a few things with Light Mana so everyone could at least see where they were putting their feet and hands. After a while they got into a rhythm and Lake was able to guess they would make it to the top in less than nine hours.
...
After waking up, Tiff was about half way into her morning routine before she remembered what had happened yesterday. It seemed a lifetime of doing the same type of things as soon as you got up trained you to the point you didn''t need to think while doing it. Finishing up as fast as she could tiff headed to the Temple Head''s office to tell her she was about to leave.
Seeing the door was open Tiff walked in while saying a small greeting to get the Temple Head''s attention. "Good morning Tiffany. Are you about to leave?" Tiff was not surprised that the Temple Head guessed the meaning of hering to see her and said. "Yes, I just wanted to let you know since I''ll be gone so long."
"Would you mind if I send out some people to watch your back in case something happens?" Hearing the Temple Head''s request Tiff wondered how much time she had slept and after seeing it had been about 9 hours since they had returned said. "That''s fine." With 9 hours she wouldn''t be surprised if the Demon Worshipers had something nned for her.
She knew an army of Demon Worshipers hadn''t been snuck into the city in thest few hours but one or two people that were stronger than her was all it took to take care of her before she became a real problem. She wasn''t new to being targeted though so she knew what she was doing when it came to hiding.
"Alright the people watching you will be sent out like a normal patrol but they will be doing their best to stay near you." Nodding Tiff said. "Thank you." And headed for the front door of the base. She activated her invisibility and waited for someone else to leave to go outside in case anyone was watching the front door for her to leave.
Once she was outside Tiff headed for the building she had talked to the three thievesst time. She was going to spend time split between watching here and the Alchemist guild on the off chance she saw Jon just walk out like thest time. She wouldn''t spend too much time on this though and would eventually just attack even if she didn''t get any real information on what was going on inside the thieves'' base.
With a few people to help her from the Temple she was sure she would be able to force them to give her the tracker for their lives. Thieves were known to care more about living and money than anything else so she did think the threat she made to them would be sessful. There probably wouldn''t even be a real fight before they gave in.
Setting up across the street from the building they were in, Tiff didn''t see anything for the first two hours she was there and decided to go see if there were any people going in or out of the Alchemist guild that she thought could be Jon. Seeing the carts that were leaving the guild she guessed the chances of him just walking out onto the street were pretty slim and realized she really needed the tracker if she wanted to find him.
Going back to the base Tiff walked into the Temple Head''s office again and said. "I need a few strong people to go with me to raid an underground shelter that a few thieves are hiding in." The Temple Head gave her a smile and said. "Are you ok with me? If we''re dealing with the thieves guild I''m sure they''ll listen to you if I''m there."
"That would be great, but are you sure you have the time?" As she said this Tiff looked at all the work that had built up in just the time they were gone yesterday. "I had to go out to visit with some guild leaderter anyway so we can do your thing first." Hearing the Temple Head was going to talk to people from guilds that they usually avoided made Tiff want to know why but the Temple Head didn''t make her ask.
"I forgot to tell you this morning but the Demon Worshipers are attempting to do what they did in the Dark Domain again, this time the target is the Metal Domain. It took a while for the scouts to get there and back after we noticed no one came from the Metal Domain in thest few days so we didn''t really know what was going on until yesterday."
Tiff wasn''t surprised to hear what the Temple Head said or at least not as surprised as most people were when they first heard but she was confused. "Why are they attacking the Metal Domain?" The target didn''t make sense to her, the Metal Domain was one of the more neutral Domains even though it was so close to the Holy Domain.
She wouldn''t say they werepletely neutral because they traded with the Light domain and not the Dark Domain but that was nothing special with lots of gods deciding to leave the Demon Lord out of the trades and deals they made for what he had done to the Dark Goddess.
"We aren''t sure why but the reports of them hiding in the Metal Domain are nothing new so it isn''t exactly surprising it hase to violence. One thing is clear though and that is we''re about to march on the Metal Domain to help as soon as we talk to the guilds to see if they n to help as well."
"You mean like the cksmiths guild right?" The Temple Head nodded and said. "They are the most likely to help but we think the Alchemist guild will send forces to rescue people. Whether they will fight as well or act more like the people from the Life Domain is to be seen." Hearing Alchemist guild Tiff asked. "Is it ok if I go to the meeting with you?"
If she was able to get a second to talk to the Alchemist guilds Leader Lucas she might be able to ask him about Jon if her first n to get the tracker failed. "Why? It''s going to be really long and I''m not sure showing you off is a good idea." Tiff was about to say she could sneak in to watch but decided to not even say it because the people there would be able to see her and she didn''t want to be mistaken as an assassin.
Deciding to wait till they had raided the thieves for their tracker to make any more moves to find Jon Tiff asked. "When will you be ready to leave?" Tiff would understand if the temple Head needed time to tell people she was about to leave so they wouldn''t try to find her while she was out. "It should only take me 10 or so minutes. You cane with me so we can leave as soon as I''m done."
Tiff didn''t really want to go meet with the people that would be in charge while the Temple Head was gone so she said. "I''ll just wait here." She didn''t need to do anything before she could leave again so sitting in the Temple Head''s office was a better use of her time in her opinion. "Ok, I''ll try to hurry back."
Chapter 257: Deal With
Chapter 257: Deal With
"That''s it right there." Tiff pointed at the door of the building the thieves were inst time. "Do you think they would let us in if I knocked?" Hearing the Temple Head''s question Tiff thought about it and said. "I think it depends on if the person they have on the door recognizes you."
"You''re right I''ll just knock the door down." After the Temple Head said this she fired a beam of Light at the door and Tiff saw the whole building shake as it was struck. "I figured they would have some kind of defense on the door so I think I went a little hard."
"I think it''s fine, it will probably help us convince them to give us what I need." Tiff had already told the Temple Head what they were after on the way here so she was aware of what they needed to do. After a few seconds Tiff saw someone exit the building next to the one they had just attacked and she yelled. "Go back inside!"
A lot of people hade out of the basement shelters since it had been quiet for thest few days so she wasn''t surprised someone came outside to see what was happening. Watching them run back into their house Tiff said. "It looks like they don''t n toe out." She had expected the thieves to try and run but it seemed she had been wrong.
"I''ll go in first, you can follow me." Nodding Tiff was happy she had been able to get the Temple Head to go with her because it looked like she wasn''t going to have to do anything. Standing behind the Temple Head as they walked into the hole of a front door She did her best trying to remember how to get down to the shelter.
"There''s a secret door in the basement." Once they made it down the first staircase Tiff pointed at the door and said. "That''s it." It wasn''t as well hidden as she remembered but she guessed that made sense since she knew where it was. Seeing the Temple Head was about to blow down this door as well, Tiff covered her eyes slightly since they were ustomed to the dark of the basement.
Seeing the sh of the Temple Head''s spell Tiff uncovered her eyes to see the doorpletely gone. It seemed the Temple Head had decided topletely destroy it so it wouldn''t be in their way as they tried to go down the stairs. Seeing the dark staircase that would lead them to the metal door that was thest thing they had to get through to speak with the thieves, Tiff said. "Last time I talked to them they used something that made it so I couldn''t understand them unless they wanted me to. I''m guessing whatever it was won''t work on you so you should pretend it does so you''ll be up on whatever they''re nning."
Tiff forgot this small detail till now so she thought this was herst chance to let the Temple Head know whatever she heard them talk about was supposed to be secret. The Temple Head would most likely notice almost right away that she was hearing something she wasn''t supposed to but Tiff felt like how the Temple Head reacted might let the thieves notice their words were heard.
Descending down the stairs they saw a metal door that Tiff remembered from thest time she was here being open. "There is a room on the other side of this which is where I met themst time. I don''t really know about the other rooms they have but there are definitely more in this shelter."
"Alright go ahead and cover your eyes again." Tiff did as she was told and only reopened them after she saw a sh. When she opened her eyes again Tiff saw there was already another spell ready to beunched in the Temple Head''s palm. Tiff was on the Temple Head''s side and felt threatened by this so she could only guess what the people inside felt.
Looking over the Temple Head''s shoulder Tiff could see there were more people here this time than thest time and looking at just a few of them she could tell they were guards. "Hello, we are here to retrieve a tracker. Is there someone important here we could talk to?"
Hearing the Temple Head start to talk instead of just sting all the guards Tiff was pretty sure she was right about them not even needing to fight. Hearing the odd whispering start again, Tiff knew the thieves were hidden somewhere in the room in front of them and just tried to hear what they were saying.
"Who''s that behind you?" Hearing one of the thieves call out a question that she could answer, Tiff said. "It''s me, the one who told you I would find the thief we were both looking for."
"We were expecting for you to return eventually so we are ready to make a deal." After the thief said this the Temple Head took over again and said. "Hand over the tracker and we will leave."
"We will but we would like to ask that you bring it back. It''s very important to the Thieves guild and it will be useless to you once you find who you are looking for."
"Fine." The Temple Head just said yes to this request because it really didn''t matter to her. Like they said the Tracker didn''t really have a use after they were done with it. "Ok who are you trying to find?" Tiff took over again and said. "The same person asst time."
"Oh, you were supposed to kill them for us."
"And you weren''t supposed to try and sell me."
After she said this the whispering started again and after a while one of the thieves dropped down into view and handed something to the closest guard. Tiff just assumed it was the tracker but with no warning the Temple Head let the spell that had been in her hand fly at the thief.
No one had time to react and before she knew it the thief was gone in a sh. Right after the spell had left the Temple Head''s hand Tiff had gotten ready for a fight but surprisingly no one moved towards them.
"Hand it over this time or I''ll kill everyone and take it." Tiff heard a brief back and forth between the two thieves that were left before she saw another one of them drop down and hand something to one of the guards before disappearing again. "Bring it to her."
After the Thief''smand the guard walked forward and handed the thing in their hand to the Temple Head who after a second handed it back to Tiff and asked. "Is that what you wanted?" Using it the same way she had thest time Tiff saw the thing point her in a direction and said. "It seems to be but it could easily be a fake."
"There is only one way to make sure." The new threat the Temple Head made was understood by the thieves who both started saying. "It''s real. We aren''t going to try and trick you twice."
"What do you think?"
"Just kill them all, if we believe them and we''re wrong they will be gone before wee back." Tiff had other reasons to want to kill the thieves and seeing how little they could do about it she nned to get her revenge while she could. "No please!" Tiff only heard one voice before the Temple Head started firing into the room.
It seemed she had decided to use a weaker spell but it still did the job and soon all that was left of the people inside was parts of their bodies. "Alright I''ll go and make sure there aren''t any traps and then we can start looking around."
"Ok." Tiff used the time the Temple Head took to make sure it was safe for them inside the shelter to inspect the tracker that had been handed to them. She was unable to really tell but she felt that it was the same one she had held thest time. "Alright it''s safe to look around."
Hearing what the Temple Head said, Tiff started looking in the pockets of the three thieves. They had all sorts of things but nothing that looked like the tracker. Throwing all the interesting things she found into a bag Tiff went to the first room on the left and started to look around. After checking all the furniture Tiff could tell they had a hidden ce somewhere in the room because there was nothing around that had any value.
Walking back out into the main room Tiff said. "There''s hidden stuff in these rooms but I can''t find it."
"Don''t worry about it, I already called people here to help us look around." Hearing this Tiff Went to the next room to see if she had better luck while they waited for the people from the Temple to get here.
Chapter 258: Let Me Go And See
Chapter 258: Let Me Go And See
Flying out of the tunnel, Lake looked at all the people who were sitting down until he found Wezz and said. "What do you want to do from here?" Lake wanted to leave them behind and start looking around by himself so he nned to talk Wezz into this n. "We need a break. That climb was brutal."
Hearing this, Lake knew getting what he wanted would be easy and said. "Ok I''m going to look around to see what the situation around us is like." Flying up to the tip of the mountain Lake looked around for a while before he headed towards the city down below on foot. He didn''t want anyone seeing him approach while in air and shooting at him.
With his Agility running down the mountain wasn''t dangerous so there wasn''t a real reason for him to take the risk that came with flying. Once he was at the base of the mountain, Lake took the time to set Detector to look for enemies. Going forward while using Mana Vision to look for groups of living people hiding in the rocks he slowly made his way towards the dark barrier that covered the city.
Making it almost all the way there before he saw anything that could be people, Lake headed towards them to see who or what they were. Once they were in the range of Detector and they didn''t start to glow golden he ignored them and headed towards the barrier. Once he was there he looked around and started to fly up so he could look over the wall and into the city.
With the way the city was shaped he was unable to see the whole thing but from what he could see it was in bad shape and the other side of flesh formation was still in one piece like the one he had left behind. It seemed no one knew what to do about the formation because it had to be damaged on both sides at the same time or the formation would change and start doing something else which would most likely be more deadly to the people still trapped inside.
As he was flying back towards the ground Lake couldn''t help but wonder what the Demon Worshipers were up to again. If they had wanted to just kill everyone here they could have very easily by making the formation slightly different but they had gone for trapping everyone instead.
With the fact the barrier was still up it made him think they had wanted to drag this conflict out for some reason and the only thing he could think of was that they were trying to draw something or someone here.
He was sure people wereing to help but that didn''t really tell him who their target was or if that was really even their goal. With him done looking at the city he decided to look around a bit more before heading back to where he had seen those people. There was no reason not to say hi even if they didn''t end up being involved at all in what was going on.
Walking towards where he had seen them, Lake used Detector to make sure they were humans before he wasted his time trying to talk to them. Seeing them glow gold Lake walked through the stones until he could see them with his eyes and said. "Hello." All four of the scruffy people that had been hiding looked towards him with looks of fear and he could tell they were about to run away so he stopped them by saying.
"Do you need any help? I''m from the Fighters guild." They didn''t really look like they believed him but none of them tried to run away and that was good enough for him. "Who are you?" Lake had kind of just told them but he was sure they wanted to hear a name so he said. "I''m Lake."
"We don''t need any help, please leave." Lake understood their apprehension to ept help from a stranger and was happy to leave but only after they answered his questions. "Do you four know anything that might be able to help the Fighters guild?" Lake doubted they would know anything he hadn''t already figured out, especially since they seemed to have been living outside of the city for a while and hadn''t been trapped but you could always get lucky when you asked people stuff.
"We''re under attack by the Demon Lord. His armies have taken control of the entire city leaving no way in." Lake had known this already so he asked. "Anything else?"
"There''s a disturbance in the Metal mana and Earth mana seems to be affected as well." Seeing they didn''t seem to be the kind of people that had looked into anything and only knew what you could tell from a distance Lake said. "Alright I''m going to go now, good luck."
These four weren''t the type of people he needed to waste his time on. Even if he did get them toe with him they would slow the rest of his group down because of their bad condition.
Heading towards the mountain Lake quickly ran back to where the tunnel exit was and saw everyone had taken the time he was gone to eat and dry their clothes on rocks. They looked ready to move again if he gave the order but he wanted to talk to Wezz first to see if they would be happy to wait here since it was safe.
Lake wanted to go see if the gate he had passed through was what was keeping help from getting here. The gate had been built like the walls of the city so if the Demon Worshipers had made a barrier there as well he could see them being able to keep anyone from being able to send help.
If he was right the only way anyone would be able to get here was by climbing through the mountains which meant it would take forever if it was even possible for the average person that would be in an army. He really didn''t know how strong the average person would be in an army so he really had no idea how long it would take them to get here.
"Wezz no one is here to help yet." Lake decided to paint a bleak picture so he could make Wezz think him going to investigate was necessary. "That''s not a good sign. What do you think we should do about it?"
"I want you all to hide while I go to look at the gateway. I think it''s possible the Demon Worshipers have taken control of it and are using it as a way to keep help from arriving."
"Do you think it''s safe for us to stay here next to the tunnel? If anyone finds it we will be in trouble since it will lead them straight here." This was true but Lake didn''t want to spend any time finding them a new ce to hide. "You guys can move down the mountain while I''m gone if you want, I already looked and there aren''t any threats around and I''ll be able to find you when I get back."
"Alright. How long do you think you will be gone?" Lake actually had no idea but said. "In less than two days. Even if I''m not done with whatever I''m doing I''lle back to check on you." Lake might or might not keep his word this time because he wasn''t going to ruin whatever he was doing toe back here for them.
"Ok, I''m going to take us that way." Wezz pointed away from the city to the next mountain over. "I feel like we''re less likely to get caught up in anything if we move away from the city." Lake didn''t really care what they did and said. "Alright I''m going to go now, good luck."
Running down the mountain again Lake got onto the road and started towards the gate as fast as he could move. The road was extremely straight in ces so he was able to actually use Burst every now and then to go even faster than he could handle. Like this he was able to get half way back to the gate within an hour and was able to see it before the hour passed.
Trying to think back to the amount of time it had taken him the first time he had traced this road, Lake knew his increased perception had let him go a lot faster this time. He wasn''t exactly sure how stats scaled as they went higher and higher but the amount the 20 point increase from Fire Archer had allowed him to speed up made him think maybe the more you got away from mortal the more the increase was with every point.
It was really something he should ask Lucas the next time he saw him since he was the one who had given him the elixir. Getting a bit higher off the road so he could get a better look at the gate Lake could tell he had most likely been right about the gate getting taken over but wasn''t sure because the only thing that made him think this was the buildings were destroyed.
He didn''t see anything like the barrier that was around the city but Lake knew a lot of the time barriers were only used when necessary since they could burn through arge amount of mana. He saw this as a chance for him to get inside because he was sure they had guards that looked around every now and then.
Chapter 259: Heading Home For The Day
Chapter 259: Heading Home For The Day
Lake had been watching the gate for long enough that he had seen a few people dressed like Demon Worshipers moving around the fortifications of the gate. He hadn''t seen any actually leave the gate though so he wasn''t sure if he would be able to get one of them. He really only needed to get inside though so it wasn''tpletely necessary for him to disguise himself.
All he really needed to do was rush the building and hope they didn''t have anything that he couldn''t see that could stop him because it would probably give him away when he hit it. Once they knew he was trying to get inside they might activate a barrier that he wouldn''t be able to break out of fear of being injured by it.
Setting Detector to look for obstacles that could stop him, Lake started to run towards the gate in a straight line at a speed that would give him the time to react if Detector lit something up in front of him. Right when he was about to jump onto the wall so he could enter the fortified part of the gate from the top, Lake felt someone notice him.
At the speed he was moving someone would need a really high perception to notice him but when you took into ount the Demon Worshipers here were on the lookout for enemiesing from the Holy Domain it made sense they had someone like that here. Instantly deciding tomit, Lake jumped onto the gate wall at the same time he saw a dark Barriere to life.
Setting Detector to look for people that can kill him, Lake saw The Sight activate and knew he was already being attacked. Not knowing where it wasing from, Lake just dropped and rolled. Getting back onto his feet looking the opposite direction, Lake still didn''t see the person or the attack that had activated The Sight but looking straight down he saw a person that was glowing gold and knew they were the only one here he had to be worried about.
Thankfully he had already been through a battle that was a treat to his life and knew what he should do. Lake used the skillbo that made his Dexterity jump to a point where he wasn''t even willing to try and do the math before letting Wave off directly downwards at the Demon Worshipers. The wave of mana that flew from his fist instantly destroyed the ground he was standing on and as he was falling with the rest of the gate he gathered the mana necessary to cast Fly to lower himself to the ground.
[Level up]
The gate nowy in a pile in front of him but the barrier that the Demon Worshipers had erected still stood so Lake knew it wasn''t over just yet and this was confirmed when he saw peopleing out of the very bottom part of the wall that the gate had been a part of. It seemed his Wave attack hadn''t hit everyone that had been in the other parts of the gate.
It did seem that he had killed the one person he had to worry about though so really the rest of this fight would be him pping them around so they would get rid of the barrier. Running over to the closest person and grabbing them, Lake threw them while saying. "Let me out and I''ll leave you alive."
He had destroyed the gate and that was really all he had wanted to do so if it let him leave now he had no problem letting a few of them go. The Demon Worshiper he threw didn''t say anything so Lake grabbed another one that looked like they were about to attack him and threw them straight up into the sky.
"Let me out or I''m not going to catch you." Lake watched the person''s face shift from they didn''t care to realizing they could die as they went higher and higher and once they hit the top of the barrier and started to fall back down they started to scream but they didn''t give in and just let themself hit the ground.
Lake didn''t get any Exp from them hitting the ground so they were still alive and he walked over and said. "I''m going to do it again." As he picked them up, Lake had to dodge a few people''s attacks but he was quickly able to throw the Demon Worshiper into the air again.
As they wereing down after hitting the top of the barrier he didn''t think they would survive the impact with the ground so he quickly said. "Tell me to catch you and I will." Lake didn''t say they had to tell him anything to make him save them this time so he was hoping they would just ept and he could question them once he had saved them.
Maybe it would cause some kind of gratitude even though he had been the one to throw them in the first ce. But, like the first time the Demon Worshiper wasn''t willing to talk and just let themselves hit the ground. Feeling the Exp Lake was about tomend them for their loyalty but realized it was probably forced through the curse.
It waspletely possible that they were unable to tell him what he wanted to know. Lake had no idea if there was a way to get around the loyalty curse but he said. "Fine, I''ll just stay here and kill whoeveres to stop me." With him here forever the Demon Worshippers would have a hard time rebuilding the gate so he was hoping the loyalty curse would let him leave to keep this from happening.
To make sure they didn''t think he was just saying this, Lake grabbed the next person and crushed their head. Sadly it didn''t seem his new ns made them change their n of keeping him here with the barrier so he just went ahead and killed the rest of them. Once he was alone he started to think of a way to break the barrier without touching it.
The most obvious way would be to use Wave again at the barrier but he didn''t know if that would actually keep him from getting hit by the retaliation from the barrier. He felt if you were inside the barrier you were trying to break it would be able to get you so he turned to Detector to find the best method to get out.
He started by seeing if the barrier would glow if he set Detector to look for barriers that were safe for him to break with Wave. Seeing the barrier start to glow golden Lake knew the part where he had added ''for him'' in Detector''s setting was probably why and braced himself to be hit by something that wouldn''t be able to truly hurt him.
Using the same skillbo he had earlier to raise his stats as high as he could Lake used Wave in the direction of the barrier and could tell he had destroyed it in one hit but he also felt a hot feeling on his skin at the same exact time and when he looked down he saw his clothes and armor smoking having been burnt to a ck crisp.
Moving slightly Lake saw his jacket start to fall into pieces onto the ground and the rest of the clothes soon followed with the only thing that really survived being his helmet even though it too was heavily damaged. Being left mostly naked Lake grieved the loss of the armor he had just gathered through great effort.
Taking his bag off of his back and seeing it destroyed as well, Lake wanted to start crying because this left him with nothing other than the stuff he could take off of the corpses that wereying on the ground behind him. Lake quickly grabbed a robe off one of the less bloody corpses and was about to head back to Wezz''s group when he looked the other direction.
He had told Wezz he would be back in two days which actually gave him time to go back to the Alchemist guild to rece all of the stuff that had been destroyed. Things like potions, clothes, and food were more important to him than whatever Wezz''s people might be going through at the moment and he knew this might be hisst chance to go back to the Alchemist guild for a while.
With the trip back being a straight line from here with minimal need for him to worry about what he ran into he could go as fast as he wanted and he thought this might be a good chance for him to try a new method of getting around that didn''t rely on the ground or the fly spell.
Lake was getting to the point that whenever he used even a portion of his agility he had to worry about his feet going through the road or whatever he was running on and the air resistance was almost like he was trying to run through a solid wall which made him think he might be at the point that he could run on air if he tried hard enough.
Even if he was wrong he was sure he could use Wind Magic to make it work at least a little so the trip back to the Alchemist guild was a perfect opportunity to figure it out.
Chapter 260: Home Work
Chapter 260: Home Work
Lake started the process of figuring out how to run on air by just going as fast as he could whenever he had a really long stretch of open area in front of him. His top speed was something he had never really dealt with before and it made him feel like he was some type of missile that would explode on impact.
But even at that speed he wasn''t able to get traction on air and was really only able to get a bit of lift if he leaned forward or used his arms like wings but that wasn''t walking on air. Realizing that it might not be possible to use air like a solid since it would just get pushed out of the way at his level of speed he decided to try and use well timed bursts of Wind magic to solidify the air enough that he could run on top of it.
Of course this wouldn''t be him actually running on the air since he would be stepping on small mana tforms but he still felt it would be faster than if he had to slow down every time there were things in his way. It would also let him save his Wind mana to cast fly if he was somehow knocked out of the air.
Joy had told him you weren''t really supposed to Fly if you didn''t have a backup way to catch yourself if you started to fall so this would be it in the future once he got the skill to a level where he could use it at any time. Gathering the mana Lake made a small tform in front of him and used it to propel himself slightly off the ground.
He had no ns to go into the sky until he was confident that he could do it more than once in a row. Once he started toe back towards the ground he waited till his foot was about to hit the ground and made another mana tform to jump into the air. Seeing it really wasn''t that hard to do at this speed Lake stepped it up and went faster than he could really control.
He had some confidence that this was fine because all he had to do was make the mana solidify at the bottom of his foot for a brief second and this had nothing to do with your eyes. He found that at this speed he wasn''t really able to make the mana solid enough that it was able to propel him forward enough to keep himself at this speed.
Landing back onto the ground, Lake knew this was a problem caused by his inexperience in principle training. If he had trained a bit more and was able topress the mana faster he wouldn''t have this problem. Thankfully it didn''t really stop him from using this as the perfect opportunity to do some solid principle training.
Keeping his speed to a level that he was able to walk on the tforms he made, Lake slowly got better and better at this for the next two hours of running and only stopped when he saw the capital wall. Realizing that this meant he had already made two thirds of the trip back, Lake just sped back up and passed through the still open gate.
With his journey almost already done, Lake went ahead and checked on the progress he had made by slowly bringing his speed up from what he had capped it at for most of the journey. He was happy to find he was able to go over the speed he would have considered safe while using the mana as stepping stones earlier.
It was always a good feeling when you were able to feel like you had made good progress in a short amount of time so Lake was looking forward to being able to hone this skill the next time he went on a run. Finishing thest third of the trip even quicker, Lake stopped for a while to get a good look at the city before he went any further.
There was a war going on at the moment and he didn''t want to go running towards the city dressed up like a Demon Worshiper so he needed to make sure he wasn''t attacked by someone he was technically on the same side as. Once he had a chance to see there didn''t really seem to be any active fighting going on, Lake took the robe off and made it into more of a skirt.
He had never seen a Demon Worshiper dressed like this and it wasn''t like no one else was allowed to wear ck so he felt no one would bother him if they saw him while he was heading towards the guild. He was sure he would have an issue actually getting inside though. All his stuff was gone which included his badge and identity scroll.
Trying to use Retrieve one more time to see if he had anything that he could use to prove it was him, Lake guessed the only thing he could do was let himself be taken into custody until Lucas or someone who could tell a fake came and confirmed it was him. Lake had no idea how long that would take but he would put up with it and maybe they would give him a book if he asked.
Getting to the guild Lake finally noticed the barrier was down. He had seen the spire from a distance and he had just never even thought about the fact that the barrier had been up when he left. He took it as a sign that it was nice and peaceful at the moment and walked up to the guards. "I lost my identification badge and scroll, how do I get inside?"
"What''s your name and who is your direct superior?"
"My name is Lake Fuller and my direct superior is Guild Master Lucas. I live in the spire."
"Guild Master Lucas doesn''t have time for this in most cases so you should be ready to wait for a while unless you want to try another name."
"Master Na."
"Alright we will see if he is avable,e with us." Lake was brought to the same room he always was whenever he returned to the Alchemy guild where he was checked for any curses and then was asked to wait till Na was able toe see him. He was guessing this was much better treatment than the average member would get if they were unable to prove who they were.
He had really expected to see something akin to a jail cell but he felt saying he was an inhabitant of the spire had kept that from happening, Lucas'' name had probably helped as well. After an hour or so Na finally showed up and Lake was expecting to get some shit but Na instead said. "It''s good you''re alive. Lucas told me you went to the Metal Domain so when we heard the news I feared the worst."
"That''s nice of you to say Master. I''m sorry to trouble you like this."
"No No it''s fine. Come on, I have to test your skills to make sure it''s you. It''s procedure." When he heard this Lake realized why he was asked who his superior was, it was because there was a test and they were the person who knew them well enough to say if they passed or not. "Alright what''s this?"
Lake was expecting for Na to exin the test first but as soon as they entered a new room it started. Looking at the small bottle Lake was about to inspect it to see when he remembered. "It''s the poison I made the first time we met. You had me feed it into that bottle at the end."
"That''s right, now what is it?" Lake literally didn''t remember anything about the potion other than it was poison and was about to say so when he remembered one of his skills.
Observer (U) Lv.1
Nothing can stop you from essing somethings information.
(allows you to see hidden details)
It was a skill he didn''t particrly like using because it filled your head with more than you needed to know but it would give him the information he needed for the question. Activation Observerke started sifting through the information until he was able to find all of the ingredients.
After he listed them out he didn''t get the reaction he wanted and was about to ask what was wrong when monster Na said. "You should have just said you didn''t know because it was a blind brewing test, remember. I''ll let that one slide since you clearly appraised the poison."
After Na said this he vaguely remembered the test and was happy Na seemed to not take what just happened as a sign he wasn''t him. "Alright it''s time for you to show your skills." Seeing Na motion to the table next to them, Lake got ready to brew some poison.
Chapter 261: Fated Meeting
Chapter 261: Fated Meeting
Once Lake showed off what he could do while brewing poison Master Na said. "You are cleared of suspicion. Let''s go back to the spire." Lake was happy that this hadn''t taken too long and asked. "Is Lucas here, I need to ask him about what is going on in the Metal Domain."
"He is but I''m not sure if you will have a chance to meet with him if we don''t hurry. He will be leaving to attend a meeting soon if he hasn''t already left." Hearing Na''s words, Lake didn''t panic. He could always talk to Lucaster, he would just have to wait for him toe back instead of going back to the Metal Domain right away like he had nned.
Lake really needed some help breaking the barrier and getting rid of the flesh formation and he didn''t think trying to rely on whoever he could find back in the metal domain would be enough. He had failed the first time while working with the Metal Temple and he didn''t see a second attempt going very well now that a lot of them had already died.
Walking into Lucas'' office, Lake saw him sitting at his desk working like usual. "I heard you were back. Are the others dead?"
"What others?" Lake knew who Lucas was talking about without asking because he foresaw Lucas being annoyed if he let the other important members of the Alchemist guild die without trying to save them. If Lake had known how their attack was going to turn out he would have probably gone to the Alchemist guild branch and told them to run.
He had been too caught up in what was going on to do that though so now he returned alone. "I mainly mean Nia but the masters that were at the branch in the Metal Domain would be a big loss as well."
"I really don''t know if they are dead but I know the guild branch was destroyed so some of them might be." Lake knew that the guild district had beenpletely leveled by the attack the formation hadunched. This probably meant that the guild members there had been lost already.
"So I have to leave soon, I would like you toe with me so you can tell me what you know on the way to the meeting." After Hearing Lucas'' request, Lake looked down at what he was wearing and said. "Would you give me some time to get some clothes? I don''t think I should go looking like this."
Lucas finally looked up when Lake said this and saw what he was wearing. Lake could tell this had an effect on how annoyed Lucas was. Lake looked really rough so Lucas was probably thinking he had really struggled for the past few days which was true. "Yes, that''s fine. Have one of the servants clean you as well."
Lake was in a hurry so he turned to master Na who was still there and said. "Thank you again master." Once he had said bye to master Na, Lake quickly went to the stairs to Fly up to his room so he could get ready to go with Lucas to the meeting.
...
"I think this is the real one. I''m sure at this point." Tiff had helped the group of people from the Temple look around the thieves'' shelter and she really did think the thieves had given them the real one. "Alright, well I have to go to the meeting anyway so you can get started if you would like."
Looking at the Temple Head Tiff said. "I''m going to go outside and figure out which direction I need to go real quick before you leave so you know where I am." Climbing the stairs Tiff climbed up to look out towards the direction that she needed to go. Seeing it was pointing her in the opposite direction of the Alchemist guild, Tiff started to worry about the fact the Thieves might have set it wrong to screw her over.
Going back to the Temple Head''s side Tiff said. "Maybe we should have left one of them alive." They could have easily got the one that was alive to talk since most thieves didn''t have a loyalty curse to keep their mouths shut. It kind of came with the territory of their line of work that they needed to lie with the only ones that couldn''t lie or tell you what they knew having been enved by someone by forcing them to take the loyalty curse or die.
"Do you think it wont work?"
"No it''s just that it''s telling me to go the opposite direction than it did thest time. I was really expecting to be told to head to the Alchemist guild again." Tiff had really hoped she wasn''t going to try and track down Jon because even if she knew where to go it could take forever.
With the tracker telling her to head towards the edge of the city she was afraid that he wasn''t in the Holy Domain anymore. "I''m about to be meeting with the people from the Alchemist guild. I''ll try to ask them about it again." The Alchemist guild had fully denied having the daggerst time but the stakes for them to lie was much higher this time and as long as they came at them in a non-usatory manner they might be willing to hand it over this time.
"I don''t want to confront them, I just need you to ask to set up a meeting with a guy named Jon. He said he had the dagger and that he didn''t want it anymore."
"So you met this guy once already and you convinced him to give the dagger back so what stopped that from happening?" Tiff had kept part of the story from the Templest time since she nned to use Jon as a way to run away so she didn''t want the Temple to know she had already met the person with the dagger.
"I got kidnaped and Jon was the one who saved me so I got distracted and he left before I could bring it up again."
"He saved you and he works for the Alchemist guild as some kind of thief." Tiff could hear the doubt in the Temple head''s voice but that was exactly what had happened. "Yeah he seems to be a hidden figure that has his own things going on but he fought off an assassin to save me right after I tried to kill him to get the dagger back. It takes a curtain kind of person to do something like that."
Tiff wouldn''t deny that Jon seemed to have aplicated position that was between a lot of the major yers in the Holy domain but what could she say he had saved her life for really no reason against the Assassins guild which most people would never do for even their closest friends since it was seen as a death sentence for you and your whole family and sometimes even people you sort of knew.
"Well if you think he''s willing to just give the dagger back if we can find him I really don''t care who he is. We have to try all the ways to reach him. Since you''re the only one who has seen him you have toe to the meeting on the off chance the tracker is a trick and he is actually still in the Alchemist guild, or if we''re lucky, next to Lucas."
Tiff actually felt like there was a good chance Jon would be close if he was still working for the guild because when someone like Lucas came out it was prettymon for strong subordinates to stay close in case they were needed. Hopefully when they got a chance to talk to Lucas about him it would only take a few hours to set up a handover for the dagger.
"When does the meeting start?"
"We have to go now if we want to be there on time." Tiff nodded to what the Temple Head said and asked. "Should I wear something that makes it less obvious who I am, maybe a guard robe?" This had been the main reason the Temple Head hadn''t wanted her toe to the meeting when she first asked so she figured maybe she should dress like one of the guards.
"No you need to look important so Lucas will actually give you any of his time. If a random guard started to try and talk to him he probably wouldn''t like it." This was true, even if they could exin to Lucas that she wasn''t actually a guard he might not give them more than one chance to start a conversation so they couldn''t risk blowing it.
"Alright we''re going to take the cart the people from the temple came in." Walking outside and getting into a cart Tiff asked. "Where are we going?" A meeting between all the groups that ran the Holy Domain was rare and she doubted they had a prepared ce they could all agree on. "The pce."
Chapter 262: Meeting
Chapter 262: Meeting
Lake realized he hadn''t ever asked where they were going as he stepped out and seeing they were at the pce he said. "It''s been a while since we were here." Lake hade with Lucas on one of his trips here to look for one of Amanda''s journals. "Try not to talk to the king too much this time. I don''t have time to keep you from agreeing to everything he says."
"I''ll stand next to you and be quiet unless someone asks me something." Lake had already told Lucas most of the stuff that was going on in the Metal Domain while they were on the way so his reason toe was pretty much done. Now all he was here for is as a source of additional information for Lucas in case someone was talking about something that Lake knew about.
As he followed Lucas towards whatever meeting they were about to attend, Lake started to see various types of guards he recognized. Seeing how many people there were from the cksmiths guild Lake remembered how important the Metal Domain was to them. Then came the people that were wearing robes of all colors that Lake guessed were from various temples and mage groups.
Lake could tell Lucas wasn''t the most liked guy with the mages by the looks they were getting as they walked and Lake already knew it had to do with things that happened during the Mage Guild''s copse without asking Lucas anything. He eventually saw the people from the Light temple and he was surprised to see not only the Temple Head but the person who had attacked him for the dagger.
Lake was about to turn when he remembered he had been disguised as Jon when Tiffany and him had spoken so there was no way she would know him by his voice or face. The Temple Head would be able to remember him by his face but he didn''t know if she would bother toe say hi just because they had met before.
Right after he thought this the Temple Head started to walk towards them. Lake was expecting a hello or something but he waspletely ignored. "Guild leader Lucas, we were hoping we could speak before the meeting." Only after the Temple Head had said this did she spare a nce at Lake and he could tell she remembered him.
"What is it?" Lucas didn''t seem to want to talk with them but that was what they were here for so it would be a bit extreme if he just said no. "Are you ok with me putting up a barrier so people can''t listen?"
"That''s fine." After Lucas agreed the Temple Head waved her hand and a thin membrane of mana formed around them. "We need to ask you about a person we need to find. I''m sure you remember us asking about the dagger that was stolen but we have a name now. Jon."
Hearing this, Lake wanted to look away but he kept his cool and instead of reacting he looked at Lucas like any good subordinate would in a situation like this. "Are you saying a person named Jon was the one who stole the dagger and you are asking me if I know them?" The Temple Head nodded when Lucas said this and Lake could tell Lucas was going through his head for people named Jon.
"Well I know of at least ten people by that name, could you narrow it down a bit more?" By the look on the Temple Head''s face it was clear she thought Lucas was being unhelpful on purpose but she wasn''t the one who answered. "We aren''t trying to make things hard for you or your guild, I already talked with him and we came to a deal. We have just lost contact with each other and we are trying to find him again."
Lake looked back at Lucas and could tell he could tell they thought he was trying to hide something and didn''t like the fact they thought he was trying to get away with lying when he really had no idea what they were talking about. In reality the only person who had lied was him and it had been to everyone.
Seeing this wasing to an end soon with Lucas being obviously mad, Lake decided he needed to just get this over with and bring the dagger to the Temple as soon as he got the chance. Seeing that Lucas was done talking, Lake took the chance to say hi to the Temple Head to help this interaction end in a slightly more positive light.
"It''s good to see you again Temple Head." The Temple Head gave him a small smile while Lucas looked at him in an annoyed way. "Hello Lake, how''s your Light magicing along?"
"I actually started with Wind magic since it has less principles so I haven''t made any progress in Light magic."
"Let''s see what you can do then." Looking around Lake guessed it was fine for him to do a small amount of magic so he condensed a cube really quickly before stepping on it. "You''re still a beginner but I''m sure you''ve been busy with alchemy."
Once they were done with their small interaction the mana membrane dropped and Lake waved as the two of them walked away. Looking back at Lucas Lake asked. "What was that about?" He could tell Lucas wasn''t in the mood to joke around and followed him as Lucas tried to walk away from him.
...
"Who was that guy that was with Lucas?" Tiff hadn''t expected the Temple Head to be on friendly terms with anyone who would be with Lucas. "He was someone who had to stay in one of our temples for a day while a deal was struck with the Assassins guild. He fought back when they tried to kidnap him so the Alchemist guild had to pay a hefty price."
"Wait, that guy right next to Lucas fought off an assassin?" It was pretty obvious what Tiff was getting at when she said this. "You said his name was Lake right, I''m going to try and talk to him alone when Lucas isn''t around."
"Alright but don''t push too much." Splitting from the Temple Head who was heading to her seat since everyone was here and the meeting was about to start Tiff went towards one of the walls to stand. Keeping an eye on the guy she felt had a good chance of being Jon in a disguise, Tiff waited till he was at least a few feet away from Lucas who was now sitting at the table as well.
Tiff wasn''t sure how to ask someone if they were them so she said. "Is it you?" If it was Jon he would know what she meant.
...
Lake wasn''t sure what had given him away but he knew he could easily get out of it even if lying didn''t work. "I need to pay attention. Can we do thister?" Lake said it like he didn''t even hear what Tiffany had said to him and just kept looking forward. He was hoping that as soon as the meeting finished Lucas would get up and this would scare her off.
Sadly she just said something elsepletely ignoring his request. "I''ll be outside the Alchemist guild tonight if you have something for me." Seeing that she walked away, Lake made sure he had marked her and went back to paying attention. He quickly came to realize the amount of information he had fed to Lucas was giving them a huge advantage over the other leaders.
More than once people questioned where he had gotten so much information about a situation that none of them had been able to get close to. Once Lucas had given them all information on what they would need to do to take care of what was going on negotiations on what each group would be willing to send.
Lake wasn''t surprised that most of the leaders didn''t want to send a lot of people on the off chance that whoever they sent would be killed. There was also the problem that the Metal Domain was really hard to march an army towards with there really only being one small road there.
This meant they needed to send a small army of people that were on the higher end of strength and people were even less willing tomit to something like that. Lucas was one of the people who didn''t n to send any people and Lake guessed he should have told Lucas that he actually nned to go back before the meeting but he really didn''t expect Lucas to not want to help at all.
Walking up and tapping Lucas on the shoulder while someone else was talking, Lake asked. "I nned to go back. Are you ok with that?" He could tell he was really getting on Lucas'' nerves today but he saw that as a sign he wouldn''t care if he went to die in the Metal Domain. "Why would you want to go back?"
Lake had no idea how to put the fact he wanted to get paid for everything he had done so he said. "The people who helped me escape are waiting for me toe back with help." Lake felt like this sounded usible and was happy with Lucas'' response. "I will be sending a few people to help evacuate any survivors and hopefully anyone who''s still alive from my guild."
After he said this Lucas turned back to him and said. "If you fight, make it clear that I told you not to and that we were only there to save people from our guild." Lake found it funny that Lucas was still trying to stay neutral when the Demon Worshipers had destroyed one of their buildings but he guessed Lucas had some kind of deal that the Alchemist guild couldn''t break.
Chapter 263: Ride Home
Chapter 263: Ride Home
As they were walking back to their cart Lucas turned to him and said. "I''ll be sending Master Na with you." Lucas didn''t exin why he would be doing this but Lake knew it probably had something to do with the annoyed feeling he had now that he was going to have to deal with Master Na while finishing the business in the Metal Domain.
Lake liked Master Na but he knew there was no way he would be able to do everything he wanted without sneaking away which he was sure Na would hold against him for a long time. This meant he would just have to do what he was told until the end which almost made him not want to go anymore.
Figuring opening his mouth would make Lucas stack something else onto him that he wouldn''t enjoy so Lake just stayed quiet and waited for Lucas to start a conversation once the silence got old. "You never really mentioned anything about who could be leading the Demon Worshipers in the Metal Domain."
Lake could understand why Lucas was interested in this because theck of obvious leadership was another thing he had found weird about the Demon Worshipers'' n. He was going to have to disappoint Lucas though because he really didn''t know anything about the person who was leading whatever they were trying to do there. "I ran into a few people who were strong enough to be a threat but all of them were out in the open and after me so I doubt they were the strongest or most important people there."
"So you have no idea who or what could be hiding there?" Lake just shook his head and said. "There is no way to guess either without first figuring out what they are trying to aplish." If they were after a Demigod they would probably have a Demigod running the operation. "It''s fine since we won''t be fighting them. I was just curious if you had any guesses or information you thought was telling that you weren''t sure enough about to share earlier."
Since Lucas seemed like he wouldn''t get mad if he started to ask a few questions, Lake went ahead and asked something he wanted to know so he could start on a n for the next few days. "When will the people from the guild be leaving for the Metal Domain?" In the meeting the people who were sending armies had decided on a date but he didn''t think Lucas would be sending them at the same time.
"You should talk to Na about that. I really don''t care as long as you two don''t start anything." Hearing it was kind of up to them to n their trip back, Lake started to wonder if he could make it back to Wezz in the amount of time he had told them he would be back. If it was just him there would be no problem but since he had to travel back with Na it was going to take a while.
"Lucas, would you mind letting us take one of the nice carts?" If he was able to talk Lucas into giving him one of the guilds fastest carts the speed at which they would get back might still be before he failed to meet his return date. "Master Na will be able to get whatever he wants from the guild since I''m telling him to do something he might not want to do so you should talk to him about it."
Lake had kind of forgotten how Lucas operated the guild so when he heard the fact Na could take whatever he wanted with them he stopped thinking of it as a punishment. If he took the time to have a real conversation about what he needed to do, maybe Na would amodate him.
...
"So what did he say when you spoke to him?" Tiff had already been thinking about the interaction with the person she thought might be Jon so she told the Temple Head what was going through her mind. "I don''t know if it was him but I would have lied too if I was in a disguise. I tried to set up a meeting for tonight and even though he didn''t respond I still n to go."
"It would be nice if that was all it took, where''s this meeting?" Tiff hadn''t made a definite ce or time and had said she would be outside the Alchemist guild tonight so she was a little embarrassed to tell the temple head and hoped there wouldn''t be any follow up questions. "Outside the Alchemist guild tonight."
"Do you want me to send people with you?" Tiff appreciated the Temple Head giving her the choice because she didn''t want anyone around because even if they tried to hide she was sure Jon would be able to see all the extra people and she was sure it would make him stay away. "No, I''ll be fine going by myself."
"Alright." A minute passed in silence while Tiff thought more about tonight''s meeting but the Temple Head said one more thing before they arrived at the base. "Dawn is going to being back tonight." Hearing this Tiff instantly started to worry about Dawn instead.
Even if the Demon Lord had stopped paying attention to who was passing through that area Dawn would still be a target since she was a person with Holy affinity. A short trip wasn''t really something that was considered dangerous though because it took a while for the Demon Worshipers to track them down and all of the members of the 23 were fast enough to get back to base before that happened.
...
"Na will being down since I just called for him if you would like to wait to talk to him about your trip." They were standing in Lucas'' office and while Lake needed to go and get some stuff ready, getting a chance to talk to Na was more important.
Soon after Lucas said this Na appeared in the office and said. "What''s this about sending me to look for the people from our guild that are trapped in the Metal Domain?" Lake could tell Na wasn''t happy and looked at Lucas to see how he would handle it. Seeing Lucas pointing at him, Lake turned back to see Na now staring at him with an annoyed face.
Lake wasn''t sure what to say because he had never wanted to bring Na with him but knowing he couldn''t say this without making Lucas mad he just started talking. "I have people there who helped me escape and I told them I''de back to help. Lucas doesn''t want me to go back by myself though because he doesn''t trust me to stay neutral so you got roped into my n."
"I don''t think it''s necessary for us to go ourselves even if everything you just said is true. We can just send people to go rescue the people that helped you." Lake was happy to see Na didn''tpletely dismiss that he should help the people who helped him but he could tell it was going to be hard to make up a reason that they needed to go themselves.
"I would like to go back myself since I''m also a member of the Fighters guild now and have been paid to kill Demon Worshipers." Lake knew Lucas wasn''t going to be happy about this since he hadn''t really exined that part of what he had done yet. "In that case you can go alone as a member of the Fighters Guild."
Hearing Lucas'' voice Lake was aware that he seemed mad that he had joined another guild but what he said was more important to him at the moment. Since he didn''t have to worry about Na slowing him down he would be able to go at his own speed. "In that case I''ll be excusing myself."
Seeing Na start to walk away, Lake was about to do the same to get ready for his trip but Lucas stopped him. "Did you tell them you were a member of the Alchemist guild when you joined up?" Lake didn''t actually remember and had to think for a while to find an answer he felt might be the truth. "I don''t think they asked and I didn''t mention it either, Why?"
"Because if they had known you were a member of my guild they are supposed to ask us before they let you join but to be honest at times like these I wouldn''t be surprised if they forgot. I''ve heard member sign ups have been through the roof in areas where refugees are passing through."
Lake remembered how bussy the guild branch he had walked into had been and guessed it was possible that he had mentioned it and they had forgotten to get in contact with the Alchemist guild but he really didn''t think so. Not really knowing what to say to Lucas, Lake said. "I have to get ready to go."
Seeing Lucas had lost interest in him and had already sat down at his desk and got to work, Lake headed for the stairs to go to his room. He needed to go up there to get changed into less fancy clothes and get his gear ready then he would kill time by reading a book on barriers till night to head to the meeting Tiffany had set up.
He was looking forward to finally getting rid of the dagger and while he didn''t think he should go since Tiffany had somehow figured out it was him and showing up would confirm she was right, he stopped caring too much if someone figured out he could change his face. He could also just hide his face and not talk so she wouldn''t know for sure which would get rid of her being able to be sure.
Chapter 264: Missed
Chapter 264: Missed
Lake looked up from his book to see if the mark he had ced on Tiff was any closer to the guild. Seeing that it was, Lake got up and started to head outside knowing that she was there for the meeting that she had set up with him earlier. Lake was about to grab the bag that held the dagger that he had left in his room so he could bring it out to her when he decided to just use Retrieval once he was outside.
Not wanting his servants to see it disappear Lake said. "You can have the rest of the day off." This would send his servants to their rooms so they wouldn''t notice if he had taken the bag or not. Once they were in their rooms he walked out and started to head outside. He had had plenty of time to get all the stuff he needed for the road so he was ready to head for the Metal Domain as soon as this was done.
As he was passing through Lucas'' office, Lake thought about all the stuff he had wanted to ask Lucas and decided it wasn''t worth it to talk to him. Lake really needed to find a wise and powerful person that wasn''t also stressed and grumpy to ask his questions too.
...
Looking around Tiff didn''t know if whoever else was here was Jon or not but she knew she was going to have to deal with the fact that there was no way for her to find out without possibly scaring Jon off if it was him. Trying her best to keep her guard up without making it obvious she was ready to attack whoever came out, Tiff waited.
Right when she was seriously considering leaving she saw a person start to walk towards her. Their slow pace made her feel she wasn''t dealing with an enemy but she really couldn''t tell since the person had their face covered. Not wanting to continue to guess Tiff called out to the other person. "Jon is that you?"
When the other person just kept getting closer without saying anything Tiff felt her chest tighten slightly and was about to turn invisible like she normally would in a situation Like this but still not really feeling any type of threat from the person she just let them approach. Seeing them pull out something from their bag Tiff got ready for the handover.
Being passed a bag Tiff watched as the person walked off and was a little disappointed that Jon hadn''t wanted to talk at least a bit. Realizing it was weird that she couldn''t feel the dagger from the bag Tiff quickly opened it seeing nothing but a puff of smoke that hit her face. As Tiff felt herself falling to the ground She knew what had just happened and when she felt someone catching her before she could fall to the groundpletely she just hoped someone would save her again.
...
Walking outside Lake checked where Tiff was again so he would know where he needed to head only to to see the mark he ced on her moving extremely fast away from the city. Lake was about to go after her, guessing something hade up when he saw the dark sky light up with a swirling white cloud.
Lake recognized this as something to do with a god or demigod and just guessed by the color that it was something to do with the Light Temple. Not wanting to get involved in their business, Lake just decided to hand over the knife the next time he got a chance. He was sure the Temple wouldn''t wait too long to set up another meeting since Tiff had missed this one.
Guessing he should go ahead and go to the Metal Domain so he wasn''t wasting time, Lake took onest look at the spinning cloud in the sky wishing it was safe for him to head to the ce Tiff was rushing off towards. He would love to see what was going on but he really wasn''t willing to risk his life for a quick look since he felt running towards one crisis was already bad enough.
Getting onto the road that would take him to the Metal Domain Lake went straight to training in the Wind running technique he was working on. He figured by the time he got there he would no longer need to hold back much and could try actually running up in the sky safely.
...
"Did you hear? They are finally nning to send a group out to deal with the undead that are left." Hearing what Fendis said Donny started to drop his formation. He had wondered if they had finally killed all of the Demon Worshipers that were firing spells since it was night and they weren''t attacking but he hadn''t been sure enough to drop his formation and go and find someone to ask what was going on.
"How are they deciding who will be going?" Donny wanted to go out and fight so he was hoping it would be by volunteer. "I don''t know but they will probablye talk to us soon since our job is pretty much done for now." Hearing it was up in the air at the moment Donny knew the right thing to do would be to go and try to rest so he would be at his best when they came to get people.
Walking towards the room where they had the beds Donny saw that there weren''t any open and decided he wasn''t willing to sleep on the floor. Sitting at a table Donny waited till someone got up and just took that bed. Ignoring the warm feeling that the bed had from whoever had just been using it, Donny quickly fell asleep.
...
Lake had made great time on the way back to the Metal Domain and could already see the destroyed gate off in the distance. He was going to stop here to rest for a few minutes before he continued on. He had wanted to sleep before leaving the Alchemist guild since it would have been safe but being unable this was his new best option.
Finding a ce on the ground Lakeid down and was happy the armor he had chosen this time was made of soft leather. This made it so all he had to do to getfortable was take off the helmet so his face wasn''t covered. He didn''t know why but wearing the helmet whileying down made him feel a bit ustrophobic when it didn''t bother him at all when he was just walking around.
It was probably just because he had never had anything cover his mouth while trying to sleep before but either way he didn''t really need to wear it so it didn''t matter. This armor had just been chosen for how it felt since he was 100% positive it would be destroyed as soon as he got into a real fight.
Wondering if he should try to find the Metal Temple''s head to ask about what someone at his level was supposed to do for armor Lake thought it was a good idea but not the right time. He had the book that listed strong items but really all it had done was tell him there weren''t a lot around. He also didn''t know if the items in the book were even as good as what he would need.
This made him think he should really look into trying out cksmithing soon. He was sure some of the other people who had the Insider in the past had run into a simr problem and fixed it by making it so they could make their own stuff.
Getting up after a few minutes of sleeping, Lake wondered why he felt more annoyed by the fact that he had to sleep now that it was so fast. It was like now that he knew there was a way out of having to sleep; he couldn''t wait till he never had to think about it again.
Getting his helmet back, Lake walked out and looked back towards the gate to see if the Demon Worshipers had sent someone else that could make a barrier to hold this position. After a while of watching he was pretty sure there wasn''t anyone there.
He wasn''t sure if this was because they didn''t feel it was worth trying to protect anymore or if they had just yet to hear it had been destroyed, but either way he hoped he was right and it was empty. He really didn''t want to have to destroy his clothes again to get through another barrier that he had been trapped by.
Running towards the gate, Lake moved into the sky bit by bit but made sure he would be ok if he was hit by something that would knock him down towards the ground. As he passed over the gate he looked down with Detector which he had set to look for Demon Worshipers and saw he had been right and they weren''t there. Lake was happy what he had done had been permanent since it would make it easier for the rest of the people to get through.
Chapter 265: Looking For The Spot Pt.1
Chapter 265: Looking For The Spot Pt.1
Once he passed the gate Lake made it to where Wezz had said they would be hiding when he came looking for them and using Detector started to look for them. Lake saw the group near the bottom of the mountain without even using Detector and went towards them.
When hended the guards that were protecting the sleeping people looked like they were about to attack but they noticed it was him before they did and put their weapons away. "Is Wezz asleep?" Everyone was just asleep on the ground so Lake could find Wezz pretty easily but he just asked one of the guards since he didn''t want to disturb everyone sleeping by walking around looking for him.
Seeing the guy that the guard pointed at looked like Wezz Lake thanked them and walked over. Seeing Wezz waspletely asleep, Lake just left him alone. He really didn''t need to tell Wezz anything directly so he just told one of the guards to tell Wezz people from the Holy Domain would be here in three days to help.
After he told the guard this he told them to be safe until he came back and left heading towards the barrier that was covering the city. Lake needed to start gathering information about the barrier so he could help the people take it down once they got here. He knew for a fact that they would be sending people that specialize in barriers here since he was in the meeting and he was hoping to be able to speed up this process by having everything ready when they got here.
This was the reason why he had spent the few hours of free time he had in the guild reading a book about barriers. It had been one of his top priorities for a while so he was unhappy to know the subject was a lot moreplicated than he had ever feared. Thankfully there seemed to be amon weakness that every type of barrier made by formation shared and with Detector he would be able to find it much faster than normal.
Setting Detector to look for the barriers weakness, Lake started to fly around the Barrier looking out for the small spot that would be the key to taking down the formation without suffering the bacsh. After a while of not seeing it Lake started to worry that it might be somewhere underground.
At least half of this barrier was underground so it waspletely possible and if the person who had made it was a real expert and knew what they were doing he was sure they would have made the weak spot somewhere that was hard to find. This was why it was a good thing he hade a few days before the experts had.
He knew this process was supposed to be time consuming on barriers as big as this one so he didn''t let the amount of work get to him and continued to look at the rest of the barrier that was out in the open. Once he was done and he still hadn''t found the spot he started to think about how he should start the process to look for the weak spot.
He knew he was going to have to dig to uncover the barrier under the ground but with the range of Detector he wouldn''t have to dig it uppletely. He should probably walk the perimeter as well first on the off chance he got lucky and Detector could find the spot underground before he even broke ground.
Starting his walk around the barrier Lake started to n where he felt he should start digging. He knew Detector could probably give him this answer so he decided he would walk around twice; once with the current setting and if that didn''t work he would do it again with it set to look for the ce he should dig.
After about forty percent was over Lake started to move a bit faster because he had stopped worrying too much about missing it. Finishing the loop, Lake reset Detector and started walking again. After a while Lake saw a seemingly random spot about ten feet away from the barrier start to glow and not questioning why Detector thought it was the best he ran over to it.
Getting out his new sword Lake started digging and after a while got down and started to transfer the stone he had broken up out of the hole. Repeating this process a few times Lake started to wonder if maybe he should get some people toe help him but remembering how long it would probably take them to get here he forgot about it and went back to work.
After he had made it about ten feet he heard something and after he made sense of what he was hearing as running water he said. "Another pipe." He was about to divert his tunnel to try and dig around the pipe when he thought maybe that''s why Detector thought this was a good ce to dig.
If the pipe happened to go under the barrier he could use it as a way to check the bottom of the barrier without digging for days. Thanking Detector for saving him, Lake quickly dug his way down to the pipe and sliced his way into it. Looking in Lake saw it was dark, which wasn''t a problem for him and that the water wasn''t going extremely fast, which was good.
Dropping down into the pipe, Lake started to move forward in a slightly crouched position. After a while Lake found the direction of the pipe changed and that it started to head down under the city. Setting Detector to look for barrier weak spots again Lake sat down and slid himself down the pipe.
After a while of sliding he put his arms out to slow himself down before he picked up too much speed and he was happy he had done this because off in the distance above him he saw a small golden dot. Pushing even harder against the walls to bring himself to a stop, Lake used his legs to hold him in ce and took out his sword to start digging.
Once there was enough space to stand Lake did and cast fly. Once he was in the air all he had to do was dig like he had in the first tunnel with all the rubble falling down the shaft and into the water pipe. This made his job a lot easier and he was able to get really close to the dot in less than an hour.
As he continued his way towards it one of his sword swings let light into his tunnel and afraid he had cut into some secret base that had been ced here to protect the weak spot he got ready to run. He did not want to fight while still trapped in a small tunnel so he felt this was the best option for him if any attacks dide for him.
After a few seconds Lake remembered he could tell when people had their attention on him but didn''t drop his guard and went ahead and used Detector to look for Demon Worshipers. When he saw none start to glow he guessed the light was caused by something else so he turned on Mana Vision and looked in front of him. Finding that there were indeed people in whatever he had just cut into Lake wondered how he should tell them he was there without causing a fight since none of them had noticed the hole he had made yet.
Deciding he should just go with a hello, Lake first used Detector to make sure none of them could kill him. Seeing someone start to glow golden when he set it to look for people who could kill him, Lake sighed and called out. "Hello, is there anyone nearby?"
With Mana Vision Lake was instantly able to tell that they had all moved towards him when he said this and waited for them to call out something back to him. "Look there''s a crack in the wall. Hello." Lake was happy that no one tried to fight him and said. "Can Ie in?"
"Who are you?" Lake wasn''t really sure what he should say to this so he just started with his credentials. "I''m from the fighters guild."
"What are you doing here?" Lake was sure it was exactly the same reason they were here so he said. "I''m looking for the barriers weakness."
"Alright we''re going to take the wall down." Lake let them do this even though he would have done it much faster. Once there was a hole he could see through, the digging stopped and one of the people put their face up to the hole to get a look at him. "Pass us your guild badge." hearing this, Lake got a little nervous since it had been destroyed and he didn''t have a new one yet.
"I don''t have it. It was destroyed a few days ago but I have my Alchemist guild scroll but don''t tell anyone you saw this because the alchemist guild is neutral." This plea was a mess and Lake really didn''t expect it to work at all. "Give us a minute." The face disappeared and Lake quietly waited to see what they would decide.
Chapter 266: Looking For The Spot Pt.2
Chapter 266: Looking For The Spot Pt.2
Not long after the face disappeared another took its ce and said. "Let me see the scroll." Lake did so and like he expected the fact it had just a name on it made it not great at proving who he was. Seeing the new face disappear as well, Lake went back to waiting and wondered what would happen if he just let himself in.
He had no ns to attack anyone so even if they tried to fight with him he didn''t think it would continue when they saw he was peaceful. Lake decided to just wait after he yed this scenario out in his mind, Detector had saved him so much time digging that he could stand here for two days and still have plenty of time.
After a while the second face appeared again and said, "We''re going to let you in, someone here said they know you." They had taken his name from his guild scroll so he guessed they had asked everyone inside if they had ever met him before. Once the wall was down Lake looked around to find who knew him.
Seeing a few people that he thought it might be on the other side of the barrier, Lake took off his helmet to show his face to them. He wasn''t sure if they had ever gotten a good look at him but they had slept in the bunk together so maybe they had gotten a glimpse of his face before he started trying to hide it after he saw the girl he had met in corn town.
Once he got closer to the barrier Lake saw someone else he knew in the form of the Metal Temples Head in the back of the crowd that was inside the barrier. Lake didn''t know what to say since thest time they had seen each other they had been rushing off to try and stop what had happened which they failed at so he said. "How''d it go on your side?"
"I''m guessing slightly worse than it went for you since you''re outside of the other barrier." Lake could understand why the Temple Head would think that but they were slightly wrong. "I was let out by the Demon Worshipers when they came looking for their army of summoned gargoyles and the undead that the gargoyles had made."
"Is the other Barrier still up?"
"Yes but it had an opening when I left it." The Temple Head seemed to be happy about this and asked. "What of the army of gargoyles and undead?" Lake was excited he had a chance to tell the Temple Head what he had done directly so he quickly answered. "Destroyedpletely. They nned to take the army floor to floor to grow it to a size we wouldn''t have been able to handle but the survivors from the Fighters guild including myself were able to stop this from happening."
"This is good news, I had feared what might be going on down there. So what are you doing here?" This was another question that gave him the opportunity to brag during the answer. "I just got back from the Holy Domain to see if help was being sent and they will be here in three days if everything goes well so I wanted to find the barrier''s weak spot in advance so they would be able to get straight to bringing it down once they got here."
"Using those scouting skills again I can see. Well it''s good that you can lead them here once they arrive." Hearing this operation here wasn''t nning to take the barrier down themselves, Lake asked. "Are you not able to take it down yourself?"
"I was going to try but it would be better to wait for the reinforcements to get here." It seemed the temple head was out of things to say so Lake used this opportunity to ask a few more questions. "Will it be ok to only take out one of the two barriers?"
"That''s another benefit of waiting for the others to get here; we''ll be able to let them get a look at the formation to see if they see anything I missed hidden in the formation."
"Should I go and find the other barrier''s weak spot just in case?" Lake was willing to do anything for the Temple Head since it would reflect greatly on himself. This would also give him a chance to go see how the people he had left behind were doing underground. "It would be helpful even if we are able to enter and exit it freely we might need to take it down depending on what the other experts find hidden in the formation."
"Alright, will the weak spot be in the same spot on the barrier as it is here?" Lake did not want to have to check the whole city blindly looking for another weak spot so he was hoping for the temple head to say it wouldn''t be in a random spot that had nothing to do with this one. "It should be in the same ce as this one on the barrier."
"Ok I''ll go and start digging it up." Lake did a quick goodbye and went back to his tunnel. Climbing his way up the pipe and back out into the open he headed for his other tunnel that was on the side of the mountain. Flying down into the elevator shaft, Lake took a second to get Detector to look for Demon Worshipers.
He had left for a reason so he needed to be careful as he went back down to the other barrier. Flying down the shaft until he reached where he would need to enter the 41st tier of the city, Lake slowed down because this was where he had run from to begin with. He didn''t want to have to fight as he passed through the entire city and would like to keep it to the time that he was passing through the base that had the stairs down to the 42nd tier.
Quickly sneaking his way to the part of town that he had copsed the roof of the cavern they were in, Lake made his way to the secret door. Seeing it didn''t have any rubble in front of it even though it should have he knew it had been cleared by whoever was inside. Getting his sword out, Lake broke the hidden entrance open and walked in.
There was still another door he needed to get through before he would actually be inside but thanks to Detector he was able to tell there weren''t any Demon Worshipers that were close to the door he needed to go through. He wasn''t surprised that they had almost no one left here because he had killed all of them before he had run away.
Really all that should be left were whoever had been inside the small barrier that had been in the wooden room and maybe some of the people that had attacked him if they had survived. Opening the next door into the secret base, Lake just headed for the room where the staircase down was.
On his way Lake realized the base had beenpletely abandoned and tried to think what would make the most sense for the Demon Worshipers to be doing. He had been a little worried for a while that the people he had left behind would be dead by the time someone came for them so he wouldn''t be surprised if that was where the Demon Worshipers were right now.
Getting into the staircase, Lake ran down them as fast as he could hoping that the barrier hadn''t been reclosed by the surviving Demon Worshipers. Bursting out of the staircase''s secret stone door, Lake saw that the barrier had been closed and guessed he had stayed away too long. It was really too bad that all of them were probably dead because they had seen him do a few things that had saved the Metal Domain a lot of problems.
With his first group being dead, all that was left of his first few days here was what he said he had done since the evidence of what he did could be attributed to anyone. He didn''t think they would question what he had done here though since there wasn''t going to be anyone else who knew what had happened here.
He had also taken credit directly to the Temple Head so it was probably fine if they had all died though he might get med for the members of the temple he had left behind. Walking around the small space he had to work with Lake set Detector to look for the best ce to start digging for this barrier''s weak spot and once he found it he wasted no time keeping his ears peeled for a pipe or something that would make it as easy as it had beenst time.
Chapter 267: Volunteer
Chapter 267: Volunteer
Lake had been at it long enough to realize that Detector had just told him to dig in the closest ce to the weak spot. Throwing the stones out of the tunnels so he could keep going, Lake switched Detector to look for the weak spot so he would know where it was so he didn''t dig too far and pass it.
Continuing this process for a while Lake made better progress than he thought he would be able to and ended up finding the reason he was supposed to dig here when he sliced into a tunnel. Looking into the tunnel Lake found it was apletely bare stone tunnel that he assumed used to be part of a mine or maybe still was.
The city this far down wasn''tpletely done so they were still digging and that meant there would be tunnels around. Dropping down Lake went the direction that would bring him under the city keeping his eyes peeled for the small spot that would tell him where he needed to go.
After a while Lake saw the spot appear above him and got out his sword to start digging to it while thanking Detector with his whole heart. It was almost unbelievable the things you could do with a skill that could find things and if he got the chance he would make sure whoever was the Insider after him would be able to get this skill as well.
All he would need to do was make it a Unique skill and it would always be one of the four skills someone got when they unlocked the Burr job. He didn''t know if it was him or the Insider who actually did it though so it would have to wait tillter. He was expecting it to be one of the things he got to know once he actually got the Insider to level 1.
Learning from his mistakest time Lake used Mana Vision to make sure there weren''t any people where he was going. He had gotten luckyst time and ran into friends but he did not think that the people here would be someone he knew. Not seeing anyone at all, Lake was happy he thought to check and went back to digging.
With him digging up it took almost no time to make it to the barrier and he was about to turn around to go back when he thought maybe he should dig out more room here for whoever might need toe down here. If they needed more space to break the formation it would slow down the process.
Once he had a room about the size of the one that had been at the other weak spot Lake turned around and started to head back. As he wasing out of his hole Lake wondered if he should try to cover it but decided he didn''t feel like it. If the Demon Worshipers did find this all he needed to do was kill them which he would have to do eventually anyway.
Getting back to the surface as fast as he could, Lake returned to where the Temple Head was underground and told him. "I found it. There was no one there so I dug a path to it so it''s ready if we need it."
"Good. Are you willing to do something else for me?" Lake did not want to say no to the Temple Head so he nodded and asked. "What is it?"
"I''ve had one of the people on that side copy the formation''s design and I want you to bring them to whatever group of people that are being sent to help so they can start deciphering it before they get here." Looking around, Lake asked. "Who is it?"
After he asked, one of the people stepped forward and she said. "It''s me." Lake wasn''t sure why they hadn''t just drawn it on a piece of paper but he asked. "Are you ok with me carrying you? It will make it a lot faster." Normally he wouldn''t ask but thedy was slightly taller than him so it was going to be really ufortable for her since he wouldn''t be able to support her like he would if she was short. "Whatever."
"Alright, we need to get out of here first. We won''t fit through the pipe if I have you in my arms."
"In that case we should just go the other way." After she said this Lake actually took a second to think about the fact the people here probably had their own entrance. "Lead the way."
On the way out Lake quickly found there were about three hidden entrances they had to pass through to actually get outside. Seeing the size of the secret base they were going through he could tell they had been looking all over for the weak spot. Once they were outside Lake noticed he had actually passed by this when he had done the first loop around the barrier.
He didn''t think it was better than his spot though because of how much quicker it was for him to get to the weak spot from where he had dug. He would try to set Detector to find a door to whatever he was looking for in the future though on the off chance he got lucky next time he had to find something.
"Alright I''m about to pick you up and start running so get ready." Once he had the girl in his arms he chose a good speed that he figured she could handle and set off to go look for the group that should be heading for them.
...
"Donny, they''re here to tell us what''s going on." Hearing someone waking him up Donny opened his eyes and asked. "Has it started already?" Fendis shook his head and said. "No, they''re giving us time to wake everyone up."
Getting up more and looking around he saw he wasn''t the only person getting woken up. "Alright where''s the meeting being held?"
"Where we''ve been eating for the past few days." Donny could see why they would hold it there because it was one of thergest rooms in the entire base. "Ok." Following Fendis all the way to the cafeteria area he saw all the other people he had been working with for the past days.
They were all sitting quietly looking forward to the person who was standing in the front of the room that Donny was pretty sure was Rigbis themander of this fortress. He wasn''t 100% sure though because he had never seen him before in person and was just going on the description he had heard from some of the others who had been here longer.
Taking a seat with all the others who had just been woken up, Donny saw someone whisper into Rigbis'' ear and in the next second he started to talk. "As I''m sure all of you already know, we have gotten to the point where if we want to kill anymore of the Metal Domain''s enemies we''ll need to leave the fortress to clear the surrounding areas. We''ll be facing Undead and the ck gargoyles that drag people away so if you think you will be of value to the team that will be setting out raise your hand."
Donny and about twenty other people in the room raised their hands. Donny looked over to where Fendis was sitting to see he hadn''t raised his hand which didn''t surprise Donny because they had talked about this a few times and they both thought Fendis was better off staying inside since he wasn''t really great at fighting and was one of the best people they had for reinforcing the wall.
"Ok the rest of you can get back to work." Once all the people that would be staying had left the room Rigbis said. "Alright those of you that can only use Metal and Earth magic raise your hands." Donny was one of the few that raised his hand at this time. "Are you sure you''ll be helpful to the team?"
Rigbis pointed at someone when he said this and they answered. "Yes sir." Rigbis pointed at a few other people who all answered in the same way before Rigbis dropped it and said. "Alright follow me."
Being led to the upper part of the fortress Donny saw a huge amount of people split into two groups. "Stay here until you are told which group to join." After they were given this order Rigbis and his entourage walked away towards the front of this room before starting another speech on what their ns were.
"Half of you will be staying here in case we''re wrong and the Demon worshipers have hidden an army that they n to surprise us with. The group that will be going first will be decided by coin flip to keep it fair as soon as everyone has been organized."
Donny had the chance to count how many people were in each group while Rigbis had been talking so he knew it was around 100 people per group which meant they had all most likely volunteered for this as well. If this had been mandatory there would be more people or groups here in this room.
Chapter 268: Captain Keel
Chapter 268: Captain Keel
Someone eventually came up to Donny and after they asked him a few questions he was told to go into the left group. Soon all of them had been put into a group and Master Rigbis started to talk again. "Alright we''ll be doing the flip soon but it has been brought to my attention that there is someone here that deserves our attention."
Donny didn''t like too much attention so he was really hoping Rigbis wasn''t talking about him but when someone came up to him and asked for him to follow them up to the stage he knew he was about to be appreciated in the grandest fashion. "As a lot of you already know this is the man who led the group of survivors back to the fortress. What''s your name, young man?"
"Donny." Donny just gave the first name because he didn''t want anyone to bring up his family. "Well Donny I would like to thank you for everyone in the fortress for bringing us our friends back when we all thought they were gone. Everyone give Donny a round of apuse." Hearing all the people in the room start to p for him he wondered how he was supposed to be able to act like a normal person in his team.
All he had wanted was to go out and fight but now people would be trying to talk to him the whole time. He guessed he should let it happen before he started to worry about it. Once the apuse ended Rigbis said. "I''ve heard the story from one of the people you saved so I would like to promote you to vice captain of team two. I know that if anything happens to captain Keel you''ll lead the team back to the fortress like you did in the past."
Hearing that he now had a position with some authority he stopped worrying about what the other people in the team would do while they were out there because he could just tell them what to do now. Looking at the person that was at the front of his group Donny walked down to stand beside them to a second but smaller round of apuse.
Once he was next to who he was assuming was Captain Keel Rigbis went back to talking. "Alright time for the flip. Would someone bring me a gold coin?" Seeing someone run towards the stage with a gold coin Donny knew he was about to see a time honored tradition in the Metal Domain, the blessed coin flip.
Once the coin was in Rigbis'' hand the prayer to the God of Metal started. Bowing his head like everyone else he only looked up once the prayer ended to see the coin hadnded on heads. "Team one will be the first to go into the city to start the extermination."
Donny wasn''t sure if he was crazy but he would have preferred to have gone out first because he felt he would have been of great help to the first people to step out of the fortress in a couple of days but a blessed coin flip was final so he would have to wait. The other team would have people that could do the same types of things he could so they would be fine unless there was a situation where they would be wiped out no matter what they did.
Seeing the other team getting ready and that people had started to make some noise Donny used the opportunity to introduce himself to captain Keel. "Hello I''m Donny."
"I know, I asked for you to be my second inmand after someone pointed you out to me when you walked in." Donny guessed that had been what had caused Rigbis to be aware of him as well so in a way it was caption Keel''s fault that he had been pped towards. Donny could forgive this though since it had put him in a better position.
"It looks like we''ll have a chance to talk about what''s happening to the other group while they''re out there. Would you like to join me in themand room?" Donny felt this was a great way for them to get used to each other so when it came time to lead their team out into the city they wouldn''t beplete strangers so he agreed.
Being led to the top of the fortress by captain Keel Donny saw that they had small slits that they could see out over the battle and was about to ask if he could look out when captain Keel said. "We''ll be told when we can look when the fight is going on but they aren''t out there yet so go ahead."
Walking over Donny looked through the various slots to see they could see the entire area around the base in this one spot with the use of mirrors. It was a cool system he had never seen before but he didn''t spend too much time using it because more important looking people including Rigbis had started to enter themand room.
Walking back over to captain Keel Donny was about to ask about the view wall when he heard Rigbis start to give orders. "Open the side gate." Realizing everyone else was silent Donny kept his mouth shut and just watched. A few seconds after the first order the person who had been looking out of the view screen backed up and told Rigbis that it looked clear.
Rigbis took a couple of seconds to think it over before giving the order to move out of the fortress. After he said this Rigbis started to look into the view screen himself before backing off and calling out. "Captain Keel,e get a look." Watching Keel move over there Donny wondered if he could have gotten away with going as well but decided it was for the best if he just stayed in ce.
"Do you see the building to the left?" After Keel nodded to Rigbis'' question, Rigbis asked. "What do you think? Should we reroute?" Donny would love to actually see what they were talking about but he did his best to picture it himself. "Just warn them that something is moving on the inside."
Hearing that they were talking about actual enemies and not just a building the situation started to make more sense to him. "Can you hear me?" Seeing Rigbis pull out amunicator he listened for an answer. "Yes sir."
"The building ahead has movement, get ready for a fight."
"We have eyes on them. Thank you for the warning." Once that was done Rigbis sent Keel back and took his ce at the view wall. Donny had a hard time not instantly asking Keel about what he saw but was able to keep his mouth shut since there wasbat going on outside. After a while themunicator came back on. "Building clear. It was gargoyles and a few undead."
"Alright move to the next building down." This process repeated a couple of times before Rigbis said. "Donny, would you like to look this time?" Donny had no idea who would say no to an offer like that after being in almostplete darkness this whole time so he felt like he didn''t even need to answer the question and walked over to look through the view.
Seeing the group from the fortress moving to a building that was on the edge of the area the fortress was in the middle of he was unable to see any movement from inside but he was sure every building out there had at least a few undead inside. Feeling someone pull him back Donny pulled his face away from the view window to let them take a look.
"There doesn''t seem to be anything going on, maybe we were worried for nothing." Hearing what the guy who had reced him at the view screen said Donny agreed but he really didn''t think it was smart to assume everything was alright with them only being out there for 20 minutes.
He didn''t say this though since the guy who had said it seemed important and he didn''t want to step on any toes. "Alright lets give the order for them to split so they can clear two buildings at once." After Rigbis said this he pulled out hismunicator and gave the order.
Realizing his turn to look was over Donny walked back to where Keel was and whispered. "When will we be going out there?" All seeing the outside had done was reignite his want to go out and fight. "When we''re told to and if something bad happens we might never get to go out."
With how it was going for the people outside Donny guessed it could be hours before they switched so he just settled in and started to watch what everyone in the room was doing. He had never really seen this kind of operation since all his experience came from the field so this was a good chance for him to learn how a military operation worked.
Chapter 269: Helain
Chapter 269: Hin
Looking forward, Lake stopped and asked. "Do you want to take a break?" They had been running for about an hour but at their speed they hadn''t even passed the gate yet. He had just identally looked down and saw the face of thedy who he was carrying and had seen she looked unhappy.
"For a few minutes but we don''t have time to waste on a real break."
"You want some food?" Lake wished he hadn''t said this because all he had was food from the Alchemist guild and he didn''t want to share. It had been time for him to take a few bites of bread and it hade out before he had even thought about it though so he didn''t n to say no if she agreed. "What do you have?"
Lake had already pulled the food out so he just opened it and said. "Meat and bread." Lake made it sound really basic so she would turn him down because the second he had to give her any almost half of what he had would be gone. "Alright I''ll take a strip of the meat."
Taking one of the slices from the pile he had, Lake thanked her in his mind for only wanting a single piece but made sure to put it away before he handed it to her. Keeping his eye on her face as she took her first bite since this was really the only good part about giving her any of his food, Lake saw the look on her face instantly change to fear after her first bite and dived to catch the meat as it fell out of her hand.
"You poisoned me!" Lake had never expected this reaction but he understood it and said. "No, this is food from the Alchemist guild." Holding the meat back out towards her it took her a while but eventually she reached out and took it from him. "Well I might as well eat the rest. I''m already dead if it is poison."
Lake was pretty sure she was going to have another funny reaction with her second bite so he kept his eyes on her to see what it would be. Seeing her just widen her eyes slightly, Lake finished thest bite of his bread and asked. "What''s your name?" Lake had always been bad at asking this question to people so he figured he might as well do it while he was thinking of it."Hin."
Lake didn''t think it was necessary since he had told everyone his name before they let him in but he went ahead and reintroduced himself. "I''m Lake. I''m from the Fighters guild." He wanted to make sure he said the fighters guild''s name at least as often as he said the Alchemist guilds to make sure he didn''t make Lucas mad so he went ahead and added thest part.
"Well I''m ready to go." Lake could tell picking her up was slightly more awkward than it had beenst time and he was sure it was because he had made them introduce themselves but he just ignored it because he didn''t really care since they would never see each other after he delivered her to the people on their way save the Metal Domain.
It might take a while for him to actually find them though so they might be together for around a day. Passing through the gate Lake could tell Hin tried to say something about it but was unable to hear her small voice over the sound of the wind so he slowed down and let her talk. "What happened to the gate?"
Lake guessed he hadn''t mentioned this when he had told the Temple Head about him going to the Holy Domain for help so he said. "The Demon Worshipers had taken it over so I had to destroy it so that the people from the Holy Domain could get here without having to go around."
"Oh in that case I guess it was unavoidable." Hearing what Hin said, Lake picked the speed back up and started to look for the people that should be around a third of the way to the gate from the Holy Domain''s capital. Looking down at Hin Lake kept his eye on her face as he sped up to make sure he didn''t go over her limit.
Once she started to look scared Lake stopped picking up speed. Guessing it would probably take three hours to get where he thought the group they were looking for would be and who knew how long to find them if they weren''t there Lake knew he couldn''t go to fast for her for hours.
After about an hour they were passing through a forest so he took the chance to take another break. It was really for Hin though, he wasn''t tired. Lake didn''t want to find the people and find that Hin was almost dead because he had been too rough with her. Setting her down, Lake asked. "Was I going too fast for you?"
"It was unpleasant but I understand the need for speed." Lake was happy she didn''t intend to tell him to slow down because he was getting tired of running back and forth between the two domains and he wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. "Alright let''s get going then."
"A few more minutes please." Lake found it funny that she knew that they were in a hurry but still needed a few minutes to get her breath. "So I don''t know exactly where we''re going so once we get around where they should be I''ll slow down and let you walk on your own feet while we look around for them."
"Alright I''m ready." Picking her back up, Lake started to run at the speed he had earlier. Lake wondered if the people from the temple that would be part of the group they were looking for would be willing to tell him what had happened the other day. He had wanted to know what was worth a demigod showing up when the whole war up until now hadn''t warranted their attention.
...
"Alright head back." Hearing Rigbis give an order for the people outside toe back Donny Looked at Keel who gave him a small nod. Seeing the nod Donny got ready to head back to the rest of their team since it was about to be their turn to go out. All they were waiting for was Rigbis to tell them to go.
Once the team was about to walk through the gate Rigbis turned to them and said. "We''re going to open the gate once so you need to leave at the same time as the other team ising in. If anyone is watching waiting for the perfect time to attack it should be when both groups are visible so be ready to receive orders and defend yourselves."
Keel nodded before turning to Donny and saying. "Let''s get down there." Donny did what he was told and matched the speed Keel was moving towards the rest of their team. On the way he asked. "What do you want me to do?" When Keel was around, Donny really wouldn''t have any authority so he wanted to know if he would just be acting like a normal team member while raiding buildings.
"I''ll have you lead a team when we''re told to split up." Donny could have guessed this but he was more asking what he was supposed to do while they were together but he wasn''t going to ask the same question again. He would just wait till Keel started to give orders to decide if he should just do what the other people were or stand next to Keel.
Seeing their team standing in front of a gate, Donny followed Keel to the front and waited for the gate to open. "Here, it''s a backupmunicator in case something happens to me where you can''t get this one." Taking themunicator from Keel Donny almost dropped it because a voice came from it. "Get ready."
Hearing Rigbis'' voice Donny looked at Keel who was looking at the one in his hand confused. "Oops I gave you the wrong one." Switching themunicators, Donny watched as Keel answered Rigbis and put hismunicator in a ce he wouldn''t lose it during a fight. "The gate is opening."
Seeing the gate start to open Donny looked back to see how the faces of their teammates looked. He was thankful to find that everyone looked ready and that there weren''t any scared faces. He guessed that was the benefit of only taking people who volunteered out to fight. If they had forced people to go outside they would constantly be dealing with people who didn''t want to be out there.
With his team in good shape Donny looked at the faces of the people returning who actually looked even better than their guys. He guessed the return after a sessful mission was really making them happy. He got it; that was probably how he would feel if they returned with minimal casualties as well.
Chapter 270: What Is That
Chapter 270: What Is That
"Alright go." Hearing Rigbis tell them to go, all of them started to walk out of the fortress. Donny had no idea what he should be looking at since there weren''t any obvious enemies but remembering what Rigbis said he wanted to keep his guard up. Just because there wasn''t an obvious ce for the Demon Worshipers to be hiding didn''t mean they weren''t close.
Especially here where there were so many people who knew how to control stone with their mana. At any moment a full army coulde from the ground even just a few steps from the fortress where no one was reinforcing the ground. Donny wouldn''t let something like that happen usually when he had ess to infinite Metal mana from the environment but since it was gone and he needed to save his mana for battle he just had to hope it didn''t happen like everyone else.
"Start off where they left off." Hearing the ordere though themunicator Keel pointed to the building that was their first target and said. "Move forward." It was a short walk to the building and once they were there no new orders came from the fortress so Keel said. "Alright you five are going in first, then all of you follow them in."
Keel had pointed to the obvious choice to make a breach into a building since all five of the people were wearing heavy te armor. "On it." Watching the five take the door down and enter closely followed by around twenty other people Donny turned his attention to the surrounding city.
It was so quiet with all the major fighting being over so it felt like they were the only living things in the entire city and it was making him wonder what the new poption of the Metal Domain would be after this. He was sure there would be a few lower tiers of the city that would bepletely abandoned but he really had no way of knowing until this was over and the Temple had a chance to count how many people were still alive.
He was sure a lot of immigrants would head back to the Stone Domain as well so that would lower it even more. It started to make him worry what the future of the Metal Domain would be like after this. Nothing like this had happened for a while but the recovery never went as well as you thought it would even if what had happened waspletely over.
People never really felt safe again in a ce where half the poption had been ughtered unless they were the people who had done the killing and took over thend from who they killed. It was an especially hard blow to the people of the metal domain since they had grown up hearing how no one could raid their city.
"Donny, would you go in and see what is taking them so long?" Hearing Keel Donny stopped thinking about the Metal Domain and said. "Sure." Walking up the stairs Donny could hear that there didn''t seem to be any fighting going on inside but he could hear someone talking somewhere inside so he walked in and went looking for their people.
Once he found a staircase down Donny could tell the voices wereing from down stairs walking down Donny called out. "Is everyone down here?" There were 25 of their people in the building so if they were all down here the basement had to be pretty big. "It sounds like someone ising down, tell them what''s going on."
Donny stopped walking when he heard this because it sounded like there was a chance that something bad was happening downstairs and it wasn''t safe to go down there. Seeing a person start to climb the stairs Donny asked. "What''s going on?"
"A barrier activated while we were clearing the building and a few of us are trapped." Donny now understood why they were still in the building but had to say. "You should havee to tell us as soon as you could." There were people outside like him who could have helped. "Go tell Keel what''s going on in here so he doesn''t keep sending people."
After he had given the person the order he walked down to see what was going on. His hopes that this wasn''t connected to the Demon Worshipers left him as soon as he saw the color of the barrier and what was in the center of it. It looked like two people sitting back to back but their heads had been fused together somehow and Donny knew something gross like this could have only been done by Demon Worshipers.
Five of their teammates were also inside the barrier but like him they were staring at the thing that was in the center. Wanting to see how they were doing, Donny called out. "How are you doing in there?"
"They don''t seem to be able to hear us vice captain." Turning from the five that hadn''t reacted at all to look at the person who had said the people inside couldn''t hear them he asked. "Have you seen them look away from the thing at all while they had been in there." Donny was starting to think maybe the people inside were in a lot more danger than was obvious.
Demon Worshipers were known for curses and weird shit like this usually had something to do with people getting a sickening curse that no one could save them from. "No, they haven''t looked away since we found them." Donny knew there was a chance the people inside were afraid to look away since it could be an enemy but he felt they would be holding their weapons towards it if that was what was happening.
"Alright everyone out of the basement. Go back outside to the rest of the team." Donny wanted to help these five but it wasn''t worth the rest of the team so he needed to check with Keel and Rigbis before he did anything. Following behind the other people out of the building Donny saw that Keel was staring at him and got ready for the questions.
"What is going on in there?" Donny was sure the person he had sent out here to tell Kell everything had done their job and Keel just wanted to hear it again from him. "There''s some kind of trap inside. Five of the people we sent in are inside of it and they seem to be unresponsive."
Donny was about to tell Keel about the thing that seemed to be the purpose of trapping people when Keel asked. "What is the trapposed of?" Hearing this Donny just said what he was about to say before the question. "There''s this thing that looks like two people sitting on the ground back to back but their heads are fused together and it seems to be what is projecting the barrier."
"Do you think it''s safe for us to go in and try to save them?" Donny really wanted to say yes but he wanted to be honest. "I think it''s probably toote to actually save them since they already seem to be in some type of trance but we might be able to stop whatever is going on inside the barrier if we get it open." Donny knew he was making it sound like there was no hope for the five inside but he really felt this was the case.
"What do you think it is that is happening to them in the barrier?" Donny had already narrowed it down to two things so he told Keel what he had deduced. "My first guess would be some type of curse but this could also just be a way to draw out important people that could take down a barrier like the one in the basement."
Keel took in what he said while nodding and said. "That''s very good. Do you think we should head back or just move on to the next building?" Donny could tell Keel was just seeing what he would do as some type of test to make sure he was a good choice for vice captain. "I would head back if it was up to me but you should ask Rigbus for orders."
Donny really didn''t want to go back without doing anything but it was a matter of safety and it was his job to get the people in his team back. "Commander."
"What is it? Why have you not moved from the first building yet?"
"We found something and five of our members have been trapped. We would like to head back until it''s been investigated."
"Describe what you''ve found."
"It''s some kind of sculpture made from people that is projecting a barrier and we''re guessing it''s doing something to the five that are trapped because they''re not responding."
"Alright head back. We''ll talk about what to do once you get back." Once they had given the order to head back to the team Donny turned to Keel and said. "What are the odds that the first building we went into had something like that in it?" The other team had cleared around ten buildings and hadn''t had any real problems. "Something was bound to happen eventually and it''s good we found out about whatever it was before we split since there could be more of them in the other buildings."
Chapter 271: Where Are They
Chapter 271: Where Are They
It took no time for them to return to the fortress since they were still on the edge of the area around the fortress. As the gate opened Donny Looked back at the faces of their people topare them to the faces that the other team had when they wereing back from their first mission.
Like he expected they didn''t look as happy as the other team did but they really just seemed confused. He was confused about what happened as well and he was sure the ones who had seen it first hand had told the others and since they hadn''t seen it they were trying to picture it in their minds.
Turning to Keel Donny asked. "Are we heading to themand room again or are we going to do this where everyone can hear what''s going on?" Keel shrugged and said. "It''s up to Rigbis. He hasn''t called us up yet though so it''s probably going to be here."
Donny was happy that he probably wouldn''t have to repeat everything that was said in the private meeting to their people. After a minute of just standing there Donny finally saw Rigbis and all the people that followed him arounde into the room. "So what happened exactly? Anyone who saw it feel free to answer."
Hearing that Rigbis wanted to hear it from someone who saw it, Donny pointed at one of the people that had been in the basement and asked. "Who found them first?" Seeing them point to another person Donny went over and said. "Tell Commander Rigbis what happened."
Donny had stepped in because he knew it would take a while for someone to step up to talk to Rigbis if they left it up to them. No one liked that much pressure and most people would avoid it until they were called upon. "Well we had finished clearing the building and were going to see what was going on downstairs since we hadn''t heard from the people that went down there and they were already trapped when we found them so I don''t really know anything more than anyone else who saw it."
Hearing the first person who saw them didn''t have any extra information Donny looked back at Rigbis who was already talking to one of the people that was always with him. After a while of this Rigbis said. "I''ll be sending a small team to investigate in a few hours after we can confirm it''s safe to go back out. You two follow us"
Hearing that Rigbis wanted them to follow him they did as they had been told and quickly joined the group that was following him around. Once they were back in themand room Donny saw a new face and wondered who they were. Looking at their clothes some more Donny quickly put together that they were probably from the Temple and was happy to know the Temple was still involved in this.
It was kind of hard to tell what was going on in the other parts of town so he had started to think that they had lost contact with the Templepletely. "Alright go ahead and start. Everyone who needs to be here is." Hearing that they had held whatever was going on for them, Donny felt slightly important for a brief second before he realized it was just because it was easier if they only had to do this once.
"We got into contact with someone who told us that help will be here in around three days. Once they are here they will begin with destroying the barrier so whatever the Demon Worshipers are nning now has a time limit. We are going around to all the known groups of survivors and warning them that the amount of danger might ramp up in the next few days."
Donny was sure everyone was relieved like he was that they might be getting out in a few days even with the caveat of there possibly being more activity from the Demon Worshipers. Whatever this was had been going on for long enough that he was starting to get used to it and that was worrying to him. "Where is the helping from?" Hearing Rigbis still had questions Donny refocused onto what the man from the Temple was saying. "The Holy Domain. We don''t have too much information on who they''re sending but they seem to be good enough to at least free us so what more can we ask for."
Donny wasn''t surprised that at least a few groups from the Holy Domain were willing to send help against the Demon Worshipers but he had really expected them to say the Earth Domain were who was sending people first since they were so close and so many people from the Earth Domain lived here.
"Alright, thank you for taking the risk toe here and tell us." After Rigbis said this to the person from the Temple he turned to the other people in the room which included him and said. "We will be staying inside for the next few days until the barrier is down. I want everyone to focus on defense so tell everyone who volunteered to go out and fight that they will now be staying here in the fortress."
Hearing that the missions outside had been canceled before he had even got to kill a single thing, Donny told himself that all he had to do was wait for a few days. A massive fight should break out as soon as the barrier was down since they would still have to kill every enemy that was still inside the city for this to truly be over.
Feeling someone hitting his shoulder lightly Donny looked up to see Keel trying to get his attention. "Come on." It seemed the meeting was over and that they had been dismissed to go and tell their teams what would be happening. As they were walking out of the room Donny remembered what they had talked about in the meeting right before this one.
"Will Rigbis still send someone to investigate the thing that we found?" Donny really wanted to know what the purpose of that trap was and if they had to wait days to find out anything it would be a real shame. "He probably hasn''t made up his mind on that yet, he''ll tell us once he does." Hearing there wasn''t a real answer to his question Donny guessed he would just have to add this to the list of things he had to wait on.
...
"Alright this is around where they should be." Letting Hin down Lake pointed towards the closest rock and said. "Go ahead and take a break while I try to see if they''re close." Casting Fly Lake rose into the air and started to look around for any obvious groups that could be who he was looking for.
Not seeing anyone, Lake sunk back to the ground and said. "If they''re around they''re moving while hidden. He could easily find them using Detector so he wasn''t worried about that part but he knew there could be a problem if he found them since they would most likely attack if he startled them.
He needed to find a way to make them realize they weren''t dangerous before they realized they had been found. Thinking his face would probably be the best way to get this done since a few of the people that would be in the group should have been at the meeting that he was at with Lucas Lake took off his helmet and put it into his bag.
With this he hoped they would know that he was there to help and not try to kill him or Hin as soon as the two groups saw each other. "Are you ready to go?" It had been around the same amount of time as their other breaks they had taken on the way here so he was sure Hin was ready to move again. "Will I be walking from now on?"
Lake nodded and said. "Yeah me carrying you is over unless we figure out that they aren''t anywhere close to us." Hin seemed really happy as she stood up and they started to walk on the road. "So you said you work for the Fighters guild and the Alchemist guild, which did you join first?"
Lake was fine with talking since it would help pass the time so he answered in a way that Lucas would like. "The Alchemist guild but since they''re neutral I had to join the Fighters guild to be able to fight the Demon Worshipers." Lake made it sound like he had heroic intentions when he had joined the fighters guild with the hope that it would get back to the Temple Head of the Metal Temple.
"So are you an Alchemist?" Lake nodded and said. "Yeah but I don''t particrly enjoy it." Lake really preferred being outside even if it came with increased danger. "I''ve heard that it can be really tedious and that it takes a curtain type of person to brew potions all day but I''ve also heard it''s one of the easiest ways to make a fortune so most people are willing to suffer through it for the money."
"Yeah that''s probably true but there are other ways to make a living." Lake had made more money killing bandits and stealing than he had making potions so he really didn''t think boring himself to death was worth the possibility of making the gold he needed slightly faster. If he was already an expert maybe he would have made a different decision but it would probably take him years to read all the books that were in the beginner library of the Alchemist guild.
Chapter 272: She Is
Chapter 272: She Is
Lake had just used Detector to see if they were on the same road as the people they were looking for and found that they weren''t so he looked at Hin and said. "I''m sorry but I have to pick you up again."
"Are we not near them?" Lake shook his head and said. "I have no idea where they are, that''s why we need to go fast for a while."
"Alright go ahead and pick me up." Scooping Helian into his arms, Lake started to run to the capital. Right now the only thing he could think to do was get close to where all the roads came together and see if one of them lit up.
If he wasn''t able to find the road they would be on he would have to start looking for footprints that they might have left as they passed through the area. Getting to where arge amount of roads met together to head into the capital Lake didn''t see any of them start to glow so he switched Detector to look for evidence of the people he was looking for.
Still not seeing anything, Lake had to wonder if maybe the people hadn''t left the city yet. Depending on how fast they nned to move the day they had set to get there really didn''t tell him much about where they would be. It was also possible that they had gone another way and nned to wrap around to make it less obvious where they were going.
After a while of running around and seeing no signs of the people Lake stopped and said. "I don''t think they have left the city yet. I''m about to run us all the way to the capital." Lake wasn''t 100% sure but he really felt this was the most obvious thing that could be going on. Getting back up to speed they arrived in around 20 minutes and Lake slowed down to let her walk into the city on her own feet.
"Have you ever been here before?" Lake had no idea how often people traveled in this world but he couldn''t see peopleing to the Holy Domain for anything other than business. "No, I''ve always been told it''s a mess here but it looks pretty goodpared to the Metal Domain now."
"It''s not this nice when the fighting is actually going on." All the fires were out and the streets had been cleared of rubble so carts could get through so the city actually looked a lot better than the current Metal Domain. "Where are we going?" Hearing Hin''s question, Lake started to think about where he should go to figure out if the people had left yet.
He wasn''t really on good terms with anyone that would be sending people other than the people from the Temple of Light and the Fighters guild but without his badge for the fighters guild his only option was the Temple of Light. Lake didn''t know where they were though so it was going to take a second to find it.
Setting Detector to look for buildings that held people from the Light Temple Lake only had to go down a few streets before a building started to glow. Walking up to it and knocking on the door Lake waited for a while before he heard someone call through the door. "Go away."
Lake wasn''t surprised that they didn''t n to open the door but since he really needed to get in touch with someone important from the temple so he said. "We''re from the Metal Domain. We have information from the Metal Temple." Lake figured making it sound like he and Helian were from another temple would increase their odds of getting inside.
"Do you have any proof?" Lake knew he didn''t so he looked back at Hin to see if she did. Seeing her start to dig around in one of her pockets, Lake stood back to let her get to the door. "Here, this is my ring." Lake didn''t know how a ring would identify someone unless it worked in a simr way to the guild badges but the door opened and a man in a white robe stepped out to inspect the ring Hin was holding.
After he had looked at it for a while the man walked back inside without saying anything. Lake thought they had failed whatever kind of test they had just been given but a few secondster the man reappeared and said. "I''ll take you to where someone important can hear what you have to say."
After being led through the city for a while they were brought to a normal looking building in the nicer part of town. The man that was leading them knocked on the door and told the person who opened it that they were iming to have information from the Metal Temple. Once they had seen Hin''s ring as well they were led into something thatke found familiar.
It seemed this building''s interior was almost exactly the same as the Light Temple he had spent the night in once. Being led through the building, Lake went ahead and set Detector to look for the Temple Head on the off chance she was here because he knew she would talk to him if they saw each other.
She was really the person he had been hoping to find this whole time because he was sure she would have arge amount of experience when it came to formations so even if she just looked at it for a few seconds she might see something the Temple head from the Metal Temple had missed.
Looking all around him Lake saw she was here but they were walking in the opposite direction to where she was. He took this to mean whoever they would be talking to wouldn''t be her but he didn''t lose hope because he was sure she woulde once Hin showed them what she had brought them.
Being brought into a room that had an older man behind a desk, Lake assumed this would be the person they would be talking to. "These two say they''ve been sent by the Metal Temple with information." After the man who had brought them said this he was quickly shooed out of the room and the man asked. "Who are you and what have you brought for us?"
Lake had faded into the background already with Hin obviously being the one with the information so he just kept his mouth shut and let her do the talking. "I have a copy of the formation that the Demon Worshipers set in the Metal Domain." After she said this a glowing copy started to appear in the air in front of Hin.
Looking at it, Lake was able to tell it was exactly like the one the Temple Head had been working on before the disaster had even happened and wondered if he had taught Hin through the barrier what it looked like. "Let me get a look at this." The man leaned forward slightly and Lake was expecting for him to take his time looking at every part of it but less than a minuteter he sat back and said. "Wait here I need to go get more people."
Once the man left the room Lake took the opportunity to talk to Hin. "When they get back I''m going to ask to see the Temple Head. I know her and I want to ask about the group we were looking for." Lake had no idea how his request would be taken or if they would say yes but he was sure he could talk his way into getting a meeting.
"Alright. Will you be leaving and going back to the Metal Domain or staying here and waiting to bring me back once we''re done." Lake understood she was asking because she didn''t want him to leave since he was the only person she even kind of knew that was here and she didn''t know how she would get back so he answered in a way that would give her hope.
"It depends on what the Temple Head says. If the group we''re after is gone already I''ll probably bring you to them once I know where to go." Hin seemed happy enough with his answer but he didn''t get to continue the conversation because the man was back with more people. Not wanting to wait till they had already started, Lake asked. "May I talk with the temple head? I need to tell her some things?"
Lake was about to add his name and that they knew each other but was cut off with an answer. "The Temple Head isn''t here?" Lake knew the man was lying so he said. "She is, would you tell her Lake is here and wants to talk." The man obviously didn''t like being called out but seeing Lake drop his name like it was important he left to go get the Temple Head.
Chapter 273: Nope
Chapter 273: Nope
Lake wasn''t sure how long it would take for the man toe back with the Temple Head so he just watched all the people that hade to look at the formation do their job. A few secondster he saw a golden person through the walls running in their direction. Knowing that it was the Temple head who he could see because of the effects of Detector Lake got his greeting ready.
As the door opened Lake started. "Hello..." But was cut off when the Temple Head grabbed him and started to pull him from the room. Wanting to at least say bye to Hin Lake started to wave but wasn''t sure she saw him because he was already out of the room and hadn''t seen if she looked at what was going on. Wanting to know what had got the Temple Head so worked up Lake was about to start asking questions but was once again cut off. "I need to talk to you about yesterday."
Realizing thest time they had seen each other had been only yesterday Lake could guess she was going to ask about the dagger again. If Tiff had put it together so had the Temple Head in all likelihood. "Alright, go ahead." Lake was fine with them knowing more about him since it seemed the Demon Lord had sort of found him already and he was 100% sure he didn''t want anything to do with the Demon Worshipers.
That really just left the Temple of Light since you usually had to pick a side after getting as involved as he had. "The girl who set up a meeting with you yesterday, do you remember her?" Lake nodded and got ready to hand over the dagger. "Well she thought you were a person who saved her in the past and went to meet you at the ce she told you but she was kidnapped and I wanted to know if she was right or if you were involved in any way."
Lake was about to start talking when he stopped to let the vision the Insider was showing him finish. Once it was done and he knew what it wanted him to do Lake said. "Nope. I don''t know anything about what you or her want so I never went, but I can help you find her if you would like." Lake had no idea why the Insider seemed to like Tiffany so much but he would do what it told him since it seemed to be right all the time.
"How can you help?" Lake knew the Temple Head really only knew about his legendary Alchemist skill so he wasn''t surprised that she didn''t think he would be of any help but he had already decided he was on their side so he said. "I got another Legendary skill since thest time you saw me and it''s rted to finding things and people."
After he got done talking he was about to tell her that he was a member of the fighters guild now as well but he didn''t get the chance because she asked. "What would you need to find her?" For some reason a picture of him sniffing a t-shirt before tracking Tiffany like a dog ran through his brain but his skill didn''t work like that so he said. "I don''t need anything but it could take a while to find something so I should get started right away."
"Alright let''s go." Hearing the Temple Head nned to go as well Lake wasn''t sure there was anything he could say to change her mind so he just kept talking like he was fine with hering with him and said. "Yeah, lead me to herst known location." Lake kind of already knew where it was because he had seen her being carried away in all likelihood.
"So was that bright cloud in the skyst night because of her being attacked." Lake had almost said Tiffany''s name there but he wasn''t supposed to know it yet because the Temple Head hadn''t used it yet. It wouldn''t have given him away but there was a chance the Temple Head would have found it odd.
"Yeah but whoever grabbed her got away somehow so the Demigod never actually came down to chase them." Hearing the person that had grabbed Tiffany evaded a Demigod Lake started to get worried that they might have a skill that threw off Detector. It hadn''t happened yet but that didn''t mean it was impossible, he was just pretty sure someone who could do it would be as rare as a person that had a skill as powerful as Detector.
"So whoever we are looking for is untrackable?" Lake could tell his question made the Temple Head start to worry but she didn''t say yes and instead said. "So far, but maybe your skill will have the advantage over theirs. We''ll never know until we try." Lake nodded and was about to say that he would be getting to work since they were there but he once again remembered that he shouldn''t know that so he instead asked. "Is this the ce?"
They were outside the Alchemist guild and the Temple Head had stopped running so it wasn''t crazy for him to be able to put that together. "Yeah it''s around here." Lake was about to use Detector but stopped to try to think what he should set it to. The Temple Head said they had had problems tracking whoever had taken Tiffany so he needed to try to do something only Detector could.
Thinking of the footprints setting he had tried to use earlier, Lake had an idea and set Detector to look for where the person who took Tiffany had ced their feet or shoes. Seeing what looked like golden boot prints had appeared all over the ce, Lake said. "I''ve got their tracks. Are you ready to go after them?"
"Really? Yes, let''s go." Hearing the Temple Head saying she was ready Lake located the tracks that led away from where they were and said. "Follow me." It didn''t take long for them to get out of the city and Lake picked up the speed slightly because it was really obvious that wherever they were going would be really far away.
"What''s in this direction?" Lake really hadn''t spent a lot of time here so even if he had a map he couldn''t tell you right away which direction they were heading or what they would get to if they ran this direction the whole time. "There''s freend in this direction that doesn''t really belong to any of the domains yet but if we change directions slightly we could end up going to the Wind Domain or Fire Domain but neither are exactly close."
"Alright, well keep me posted on where you think we might end up." Lake hadn''t really thought about the amount of time this could take since the Insider had been the one that thought he should do this and he needed to know the time scale so he could think about how long it would take him to return to the Metal Domain.
It would really suck if this was all over when he got back and all the rewards had already been handed out. He would still probably get something but who knew if they would even know who he was. There was a chance that everyone who could identify him would die in whatever battle happened after the barrier fell and that included the Metal Temples Head.
This would be a real problem since he no longer had his badge from the Fighters guild. They might just think he was someone who was trying to lie to get reward money. Turning to the Temple Head Lake asked. "Do you know how they would identify someone as a guild member of the fighters guild who didn''t have their guild badge and didn''t know anyone?"
Lake could tell the Temple Head was confused by this question that didn''t have anything to do with what they were doing but she still answered. "It might still be possible if you were lucky and they had someone with a skill that could tell if you were lying or something like that but in most cases you would just have to try to find someone who could confirm your identity or just rejoin the guild and get a new badge."
"What about the money I had inside the guild?" Lake had a lot of money saved up inside the Fighters guild from the bandits he had killed. "There''s no way everyone who knows you will be dead. The members are so spread out." She was right, Lake stopped worrying and made ns to go back to the guild branch that he had started at.
The clerk who had signed him up or the Master that had sent him to the Metal Domain would still remember him and he could just get a new badge before going back to the Metal Domain to im his reward. "Hey it looks like the tracks stop here for some reason, we''re going to have to stop so I can look around."
Chapter 274: That Way Maybe
Chapter 274: That Way Maybe
After looking around for a while Lake eventually found a single footprint around 500 feet away from where the trail ended. If it hadn''t been for Detector he wasn''t sure if he would have ever found it but that wasn''t really what he was worried about. "Why do you think they changed up the way they were moving?"
Looking at the Temple Head while he waited for her to answer, Lake could tell she was really thinking. "It''s most likely just to make it harder for anyone who is able to track them but it could have also been to avoid being seen. If there just happened to be a person here as they were running, maybe they jumped over the area so they wouldn''t be seen."
"So you don''t think it could be a fight or anything?" Lake had kind of been hoping that maybe Tiffany had been able to get away on her own and they had fought up in the air or something. He hadn''t been able to find any of her tracks though so he had wanted to know what the Temple Head thought.
"There would be more damage to the area if there was a fight." Lake knew that as well but he said. "Not if the person was trying to avoid hurting who they were carrying."
"Her name is Tiffany, but you''re right there is a chance the fight could have been devoid of any big attacks. I wouldn''t really call that a fight though more of a chase." Hearing that the temple Head finally said Tiffany''s name he was happy he could finally use it without worrying. "Well do you know if Tiffany can fly or anything like that that wouldn''t leave tracks?"
"Not that I know of but she is pretty fast so her tracks might be far apart." Anyone with high agility could jump long distances which made the way he was tracking them less useful. "We''ll continue after the person who grabbed her just to be safe." Lake didn''t want to waste anymore time and just started to follow the tracks again, only stopping whenever there was a gap since he had to look around to find where the tracks continued.
"I think you were right about it just being a way to throw us off. I can feel intention from where they''re jumping to make it harder for us to find the next set of footprints." It was always somewhere that he would have to pass through a forest or something to find the next one so it was obvious that they were trying to trick whoever was after them.
He was sure they had other tricks they were throwing in to stop other methods of tracking but he wasn''t dealing with them since he was just going off of tracks so this was the only thing slowing them down. As he was saying this he could tell the Temple Head was looking around at the surrounding features of thend to keep track of where they were heading.
"It looks like we aren''t heading in a very straight direction either so there''s no way to guess where they''re actually going." Hearing the Temple Head was being vague with who they were actually after Lake asked. "Who do you think we are after?" With no evidence at all he was asking her to guess so he could also guess where they might be going.
"The demon Worshipers are the most obvious group but they don''t usually take people alive since their body is as useful as the living person so we think there''s a chance we''re dealing with one of the dark guilds and this might be them looking for a way to ckmail us. My guess would be the Assassins guild since Tiffany has had dealings with them in the past."
Lake knew what the Temple Head was talking about since he had been there when it happened but he acted like he didn''t and asked. "What happened?" He could tell the Temple Head almost didn''t answer him because it probably wasn''t a good idea to spread news of a conflict with the Assassins guild on the off chance they decided toe and settle it to shut you up.
After a while she did start to talk, having made up her mind that telling him was more important than trying not to step on any toes. "She was taken by them but someone who doesn''t work for us stopped it so it''s not a problem for me to talk about it since the Assassins guild will be after them for payment. Alright let''s get moving."
Lake had realized he had slowed down to talk to the Temple Head and asked. "Could you move faster if I wasn''t here?"
"Yeah but I can''t tell where we need to go." Thinking back to what he had done to Hin to speed them up, Lake said. "Let me ride on your back. I''ll still be able to tell you where to go and when to stop." Lake was sure he could go as fast as her but he didn''t want to show off his top speed so this was his only option left to speed them up.
"Usually I would never let someone that I don''t really know that close to me but fine, climb on." After the Temple Head said this she took a knee to allow him to get onto her back. "Where do you want me to hold on?" This was an awkward question but he knew she wouldn''t like him just going for her neck without asking.
"Do you think you''ll be able to hold on to my shoulders and not fall off?"
"We can try it but don''t go top speed right away. Increase it slowly." Lake knew there was probably no reason for him to say this since she had probably carried loads of people before but sometimes it was good to say what felt obvious. "Alright get ready." Feeling her start to move, Lake told her to just go straight and held on.
Once they had passed the speed at which he had carried Hin Lake had to get his face really close to the Temple Head''s ear so that she would be able to hear him but when he heard her tell him to back off of her ear he guessed she was able to hear him even with this much noise. After a while they were going much faster than what they had been doing earlier and he really had to grip her to make sure he didn''t go flying off of her back.
"Stop." Calling a stop, Lake climbed off and started to look around for the next set of tracks. Eventually finding them he gave the Temple Head a look and was about to ask to get back onto her back but she just let him with no need for any words. "I''m going to speed up faster this time, hold on tight from the beginning."
Lake mped his hands down and could feel most of his bodye up off of the Temple Head''s back being dragged like a cape behind her for a few seconds before he was able to get his legs back by doing what was essentially a crunch. Once he was nice and secure he started to giggle a little and said. "Turn slightly to the left."
After a while they got into a rhythm and they were able to cover a massive amount ofnd that was simr to what he could have done on his own if he wasn''t trying to hide how fast he was. "Stop here the trail ends again." It seemed whoever they were chasing had arge amount of patience to still be trying to slow down anyone who had been able to stay on the trail this time.
As he was looking for where the tracks would continue he went ahead and asked. "Where do you think we''re heading at the moment if you had to guess." He had asked around twenty times at this point but he really liked to know where he was going. "My guess would be the fire Domain. We''re getting close to it but that doesn''t mean that''s where they are. They could have just passed through."
Lake took in everything she said before he said. "The track will probably be over there, let''s go look." There was a river and the person they were chasing had jumped over almost every river they had seen so far, sometimes evennding in it before jumping again. If it wasn''t for Detector he would have never had any hopes of seeing this but he had no problem using his cheat-like skill.
"There it is, but it looks like they kept jumping for a while." They had never jumped more than three times in a row so Lake wasn''t worried about losing them here. Eventually finding another trail of footprints Lake was about to tell the Temple Head to let him back on but he saw this set stopped after ten or so paces. "It looks like they might have changed it up again."
Lake had no idea why but he thought maybe whoever they were after had been able to tell they were tracking them and had decided to throw them off like this but all he needed to do was think of a way to use Detector to get past this new trick and they would be back on their heels.
Chapter 275: New Methods
Chapter 275: New Methods
After thinking for a while Lake was pretty sure some of the tracks were misleading so he tried to think of a way to get around this using Detector. He found an obvious setting with ces or things where the person I''m looking for put their feet or boots that will lead me to them which would probably work with a few small tweaks. He had another idea that he wanted to try first though.
"Turning to the Temple Head Lake said. "I need a minute to do something." As he was walking into the woods Lake wondered if the Temple Head thought he was heading off to go to the bathroom. Taking an arrow out of his quiver, Lake turned it into a magic arrow and started to slowly spin it in all directions.
Once it was ready Lake set Detector to look for arrows that were pointing at the person who had taken Tiffany once it was set Lake started to spin the arrow around in every direction as fast as he could and a few secondster he saw the arrow briefly sh golden. Seeing his magicpass idea worked, Lake realized this could probably be used to find anything in the whole world and was about to put it away because it was actually too good to let someone else see it when he remembered that Detector wasn''t a unique skill.
There would be other people that had this skill somewhere in the world so something like this wasn''t really worth hiding from someone who could be trusted like the Temple Head. She was probably more trustworthy than someone like Lucas who he had told a lot about himself already.
Stepping out of the woods with his spinning arrow that every now and then would sh golden telling him what direction he should go, Lake said. "I''m ready." With this new method Lake wouldn''t need to tell the Temple Head to stop anymore so they would be going a lot faster.
"What''s with the arrow?" Lake hadn''t expected for her to actually ask since most people minded their own business and the Temple Head had actually been one of the first people to tell him to not just tell people everything but Lake didn''t have to tell the truth so he said. "Magicpass. It will tell us where to go without needing to stop constantly. It''s abination of a few skills that I just thought of."
Once he got done talking Lake realized he hadn''t actually lied and wondered if this was the effect of charisma. Charisma was also what was making him feel like the temple head was so trustworthy in all likelihood and he didn''t think there was much he could do about it either. "Will you be able to keep it spinning above your hand while we run at full speed?"
Lake really didn''t know but he had high hopes that it would be fine so he said. "Just keep the amount of speed you gain steady for a while and it should be fine." Climbing onto the Temple Heads back again, Lake realized he really didn''t need to keep the arrow above his hand and moved it next to his head since he needed to use his hands to hold on.
As they slowly sped up Lake had no problem keeping the arrow next to him or being able to read it to tell the Temple Head where she needed to go. After a while he could tell the person they were after was all over the ce to keep them from being able to track them so they had to change direction a lot but Lake was fine with it because he just saw this as them panicking.
It was also making whoever they were after travel less distance since they weren''t moving in a straight line so it was probably making them catch up to them even faster. He had no idea how far away they actually were though so this could still take forever. "It looks like we''re going to be entering free territory and not the Fire Domain after all."
Lake was barely able to hear what the temple head said at this speed with all the wind in his ears but he still asked a question. "Is that a good thing?" He knew nothing about any of the ces they could have ended up in so he wanted to know if this was a good oue. "Well we don''t need to pass through a border so that will make it easier but it makes the chances of being attacked by one of the dark guilds much higher."
"So does it tell us who did it or at least make it easier to guess." The Temple Head didn''t answer right away but that was fine because he needed to tell her to change direction slightly. "Go slightly more left." A few seconds after he said this the Temple Head finally answered the question he had asked.
"Yeah it has to be the dark guild alliance but there''s a good chance the Demon Worshipers put them up to it. This means we could be attacked by any of them so it really doesn''t matter who did it." After the Temple Head said this they were silent for almost an hour which gave him time to think about the people who had been the first to attack him in this world.
Nelg had been a member of the Dark Guild Alliance and had almost seeded in kidnapping him when he was still much weaker than the average person you ran into in fights. He had never forgotten this, just gotten distracted by other things and he had kind of assumed the Demon Worshippers would be part of the Dark Guild Alliance since they seemed to be what one would call bad guys.
"What''s the Dark Guild Alliance, and are the Demon Worshipers also a part of it?"
"I''ll answer the second part of this question first, the Demon Lord hasn''t made his army a part of the Dark Guild Alliance but most of the people who join his army are a part of one of the Dark Guilds. For example, there is a group known as the Dark Temple that ims to be separate from the Demon Lord but almost all of its members join the Demon Worshipers eventually because of the fact that the Demon Lord has control over the Dark element. As for the Dark Guild Alliance it is a group of around twelve known dark guilds that deal in things most Domain consider illegal like murder or stealing."
"I know about the Assassins guild and the Thieves Guild are there any more groups in the Holy Domain that belong to Dark Guild Alliance."
"All of them but really the only other one you hear about in the Holy Domain is the Dark Temple. Lots of people see them as the opposite of the Light Temple so they''re brought up a lot around us like it''s our fault that they do stuff that no one wants." Lake was pretty sure he could hear a heavy amount of annoyance in the Temple Heads voice but at this speed it was kind of hard to tell.
It seemed it didn''t matter who you were if you were in charge of arge group you had a lot of annoying stuff happening to you at all times. Thinking back to how Lucas had been treating him recently, Lake almost wanted to startughing. He wondered just how busy Lucas was actually and it felt like all he ever did was bring him more bad news.
At this point Lucas probably just wanted him to stay inside the guild and stop getting involved in whatever the Demon Worshipers were doing around them. "I just saw someone I think." Realizing he had kind of spaced out Lake looked at thepass and asked. "Where?" Painting the arrow in the direction the Temple Head pointed towards Lake started to see if whoever she had seen was the person they were after by spinning the arrow in a different way that only focused on the area in front of them.
Seeing the amount of times the arrow shed increased by a lot, Lake said. "I think it''s them. Get close and I don''t need the arrow anymore. I''ll be able to tell you where they are at all times."
Feeling the Temple Head get slightly faster Lake made sure not to fall off and got ready to set Detector to look for Tiffany. He already knew Detector would be able to pick her up since he had done it before during their fight so it was better to look for than the person they were after who might be able to mess with Detector with one of their skills.
"Right there. We''re so close." Seeing that they were probably in range already, Lake put the arrow away and switched Detector. Seeing something up ahead start to glow, Lake said. "They are still holding Tiffany. Don''t spook them by getting too close." It was important to remember that in this case Tiffany could be used as a hostage and if they weren''t careful she could die.
They had to take the person carrying her out in one attack or they would probably have to fall back or give up something to avoid her being used as leverage during the battle/negotiation. "They''ll see us as soon as we''re out of this patch of woods so I''m going in, get off of my back." Hearing the Temple Head nned to attack right away before they had more time to get ready, Lake wasn''t sure but he did what he was told since it would be on the Temple Head if something bad happened.
Letting go, Lake watched as the Temple Head sped out of his vision and couldn''t help but think he should probably go after her. He didn''t want her to see him going the same speed as her because he was sure she would be mad that he had ridden her like a horse but he really didn''t want to get left behind. Activating Mute Lake started to run at a high speed not worrying too much about hitting anything since Mute took care of the sound.
Chapter 276: There’s Nothing You Can Do To Me
Chapter 276: There''s Nothing You Can Do To Me
It didn''t take long for the Temple Head to get close enough to make her move. As Lake watched using Mana Vision he could tell the fight could start at any second. Sadly he was unable to keep his eyes on them the whole time with the constant dodging around he was having to do so that he wouldn''t identally take a tree down by running into it.
He wasn''t worried about the noise because of Mute but there was no way a tree falling wouldn''t alert the people he was following behind. Seeing the Temple Head was even closer than she had been when he looked up this time Lake knew he was seeing her chosen method of getting Tiffany back.
Knowing they shoulde to a stop soon no matter if the temple Head seeded or not Lake changed direction slightly so he would be in a good position to attack if it became necessary for him to do so. It would be kind of silly for him to attack from the same exact direction the Temple Head had because that should be where the person was looking during most of the beginning of the fight.
Looking back Lake saw that Tiffany was still on someone''s shoulder but having looked away during the actual exchange he wasn''t sure who had her so he got closer as the next attack happened. Seeing as they were still both alive, Lake knew the Temple Head had either failed tond an attack or just took Tiffany and was now defending against the kidnapper.
Only moving whenever they did it took a while for him to get to a ce where he could see the fight and instantly he knew that the Temple Head had somehow failed in the rescue attempt. Tiffany was still squarely on the shoulder of a person he had never seen before and not wanting to give himself away on the off chance he had been right about this person being able to tell when someone was tracking them he didn''t use Detector to find out more about them even though he really wanted to.
Getting an arrow out, Lake held it but didn''t turn it into a Magic Arrow right away and got ready for a sign that he needed to act. At the moment the fight seemed to be a stalemate with the Temple Head too afraid to use any real attacks but being able to dodge all the ones that were thrown at her but Lake knew that at any moment the person holding Tiffany could snap and use her to make the Temple Head stop in her tracks.
Eventually what he was waiting for happened and the person pulled Tiffany from their shoulder and started to yell. "There''s nothing you can do to me." Taking that as a green light he let the arrow fly from his hand after using both Magic Arrow Crunch and Imbue Fire. He had spent a lot of time killing undead with thisbination so he knew it would be lethal if it actually hit while it might not without the fire.
Seeing the silent arrow quickly elerate as it went, Lake knew there was a good chance the person was dead but quickly pulled the arrow back as the person turned towards him and Tiffany got in the way of his attacknding. "Did you think I didn''t know there were more of you? Get down here before I start cutting into your friend."
Seeing that exactly what he was hoping to avoid had happened, Lake jumped out of the ce he had been hidden andnded next to the Temple Head. "Get down on the ground." Hearing they were being told to get on the ground by the person, Lake looked at the Temple Head and seeing she was doing it he decided to just go with it.
"Which one of you was tracking me?" Lake didn''t know if he should tell the truth but when the Temple Head didn''t say anything he deactivated Mute and said. "It was me." As he was saying this he used Detector to see if it would be able to tell him anything about this person. He started with the ssic people that could kill me and sadly or maybe thankfully Lake didn''t see the person start to glow.
Wanting to find out if it was actually a good thing Lake switched Detector to look for people and like he had thought the person still didn''t glow knowing that this could still just be because they weren''t considered a person Lake tried to think of something that could only mean them. The thing or person that was holding Tiffany was what he went with and once again the person didn''t start to glow which meant he had been right and they were somehow stopping Detector''s effects.
This meant they might be able to actually kill him since the fact they hadn''t lit up when he had checked didn''t mean they were harmless. "You''re too powerful for me to let you live so you have two options: either drink this or I''ll kill this girl." Hearing what the person said Lake had to smile because this was the first time being able to tell when someone was lying had been extremely useful.
"You wont kill her, you should say what you would actually do if I refuse to drink whatever that is." Lake could tell no one liked what he just said and after a while of silence the person said. "Don''t make me do it."
"You''re not going to kill her because you took her for a reason and you know you''re not allowed to hurt her or whatever. Let me guess you''re under the loyalty curse and were told not to hurt her. That''s probably why you were still able to use her as a shield since you weren''t the one that would hurt her."
Lake was making everything up as he was talking but he felt it was probably close to the truth from how the person was reacting. He felt like if he was wrong Tiffany would already be dead and the person who had been acting really cocky up intel now would beughing at what they had done.
"You should say something before we both get up off the ground and start attacking again." Lake knew it was a funny thing to be the one who had taken control of the situation while stillying face down on the ground but he kept himself from cracking a smile and kept his tone serious as he asked. "You don''t have anything you want to say, or maybe you can''t say anything that would confirm what I just said because of the curse."
The silence from the personsted for a few more seconds before they turned and started to run. Neither him or the Temple Head said anything before they got up and started chasing them again. It was only after a few steps that Lake realized he had gotten too caught up in what he had been saying and had forgotten to control his speed.
Looking away from the person they were chasing, Lake saw the Temple Head was looking at him keeping up with her like it was no problem. Lake really had nothing he could do at this point and got ready for a difficult conversation after this was over. Looking back at the person who was trying to get away from them, Lake went ahead and set Detector to look for Tiffany on the off chance they somehow sped away.
If he was in the person''s position he would try to hide Tiffany and try to trade that information for his life. It would probably work but it was always better than just being killed without trying anything. It was even less likely with someone like him around since even when something got in the way he had two skills that let him see people through things.
They wouldn''t know this though so he got ready to run and catch Tiffany if the person tossed her somewhere they shouldn''t be able to see as they were running. As they started to catch up with them Lake started to have a hard time keeping up with the Temple Head since she continued to speed up while he had hit the max speed he could go while not constantly hitting things.
He was fine with this though because he would be able to say this had been one of the reasons why he had decided to make her carry him when she eventually asked him what was wrong with him. This and a few other details should make her drop this issue but it wouldn''t make her forget about the fact that he was as fast as he was.
Trying to think of a good reason for this, the best thing he could think of that would save him from having to tell the Temple Head all of his secrets was to tell her about the job he had unlocked Fleet-foot. Hopefully she would have heard of this job before and it actually could exin his speed.
Chapter 277: A Demon
Chapter 277: A Demon
Having been left behind slightly, Lake watched as the Temple Head moved in for an attack almost exactly like thest time they had caught up with the person who was carrying Tiffany. Seeing the Temple Head had failed to actually get her hand on Tiffany once again Lake ran harder to get there before they got away.
With the both of theming to a stop after a short exchange of hands Lake was able to get close enough to join the battle but it seemed the person they were after didn''t think they would be able to handle both of them and they tried to start running again. They didn''t get far though with the Temple Head right next to them.
With them being forced into another exchange Lake had plenty of time to try and grab Tiffany from them. Lake had held back a lot so that he would have time to pull back if they used Tiffany as a shield again so before his hand was even close Tiffany had been pulled away from his hand and with a spin the person''s heel was headed for his face.
Lake could tell from the speed that it was a dangerous attack and that was without even knowing if they had enchanted it with any skills so he didn''t want to let it just hit him in the face. Moving out of the way, Lake knew this was also a chance for him tond the first attack of the fight without having to worry about Tiffany getting in the way.
Using Fast Hands, Lake swung at the leg that he was dodging and like he had hoped his attacknded before anyone even had time to process that he had made one. Seeing the leg turn to mist in the ce he had hit and the person fall to the ground Lake got away slightly more on the off chance the person had one of those things that activated when they were about to die.
The Temple Head didn''t miss this opportunity to grab Tiffany and had backed away with her in her arms. Lake didn''t know if it would be safe to finish the person off or if it was even a good idea so he fell back as well. While keeping his eye on the person that was holding their bleeding stump on the ground, Lake turned to the Temple Head and asked. "What do you want to do with them?"
"Well if you were right and they''re under the effects of the loyalty curse we won''t be able to get them to talk so the only source of information will be what they look like and they don''t need to be alive for that. It was you who took them down so you can finish them off if you would like."
Hearing the Temple Head was fine with killing them, Lake wasn''t on board. Thest time he had fought someone who had tried to kidnap Tiffany he had almost been killed when he had thought he had won before he had actually beaten the other person. "Do you think it''s safe to go near them?"
"You don''t need to go anywhere near them to finish them off. Use your bow or something." Hearing the Temple Head''s words, Lake guessed she was right but he really didn''t want to show off magic arrow if he didn''t have to.
He didn''t think she had seen it when he had used it earlier since she had been in a fight and it hadn''t been obvious he could make an arrow do whatever he wanted when he had used it like apass with there being so many different ways he could have been spinning it using magic. Taking out his bow and firing an arrow like normal without using any skills or spells Lake realized as soon as the arrow in the air that it wouldn''t be doing anything to the person he was trying to kill.
Seeing the arrow harmlessly bounce off of the person''s armor, Lake guessed he couldn''t hold back that much and actually hope to kill them with the bow he was using. All his current equipment was really cheap stuff he had grabbed while he had been in the Alchemist guild since it had been avable on such short notice so he would need to add something extra like a skill to his next attack to get it to actually be lethal.
"What was that?" Looking at the Temple Head who almost seemed annoyed at hisst attack Lake asked. "What?" It had been slightly pitiful but it was crazy to think everything he did would be perfect so there was no reason for her to get mad just yet and he felt like it probably had more to do with him having her carry him than what had just happened.
"You could make it less obvious that you''re holding back. I already know you''re at least close to my level if we''re just talking about stats." Lake wasn''t surprised that the Temple Head could see through his actions but he really wished she had just kept her mouth shut.
Actually it was probably a good thing that he knew that she knew and It actually made her more trustworthy than if she had just kept the fact she had seen through him to herself. Seeing as it didn''t really matter anymore since the Temple Head would always know there was something weird about him, Lake called the arrow he had just shot back to his hand and putting his bow away used thebination of Magic Arrow and Crunch to send a more lethal attack at the person on the ground.
Lake hadn''t wanted to disfigure the body too much or destroy the face any so he went for an attack on the heart and left out Imbue Fire. Seeing the arrow pass through the person''s chest with nothing crazy happening like he had been expecting, Lake turned to the Temple Head as he felt the Exp and said. "They''re dead."
"No wonder you were so bad at using that bow. With a skill like that I don''t even know why you carry it." The speed the arrow had gone without the bow had been so much higher than when he had used it so he wasn''t surprised that the Temple Head had said this but he didn''t want to linger much longer so he said. "What now?"
"Get their armor off and let me get a good look at their face." Going to do what the Temple Head had told him to, Lake noticed as soon as the helmet was off of the body that it wasn''t a normal person. Lake had no idea what they were though so he turned the things face at the Temple Head. "A demon. That means we''re probably dealing with the Coliseum."
Lake wasn''t sure what to ask about first and with it not being the first time he had heard the word demon in this world asked. "What''s the Coliseum?" He could kind of guess from the name what it might entail but he was really asking what their rtionships were. "It''s an organization that used to belong to the God of Fire but these days they are considered to be almost the same as the Assassins guild."
"Are they one of the dark guilds?" He really didn''t even need to ask since she hadpared them to the Assassins guild but he just wanted to be sure. "Yes, but I have no idea why they would be the ones to take Tiff. They were on the lower end of my list of who it could be."
"Are you that sure it''s them just based on the fact that this person is a demon?" He didn''t really understand why this one detail would make her so sure and he felt this question would make her exin the reason. "I''ll tell you as we head back. The story of the Coliseum and demons is really long."
Backing away from the corpse of the demon, Lake looked at Tiffany and asked. "Can you wake her up?" Tiffany had been back in their hands for around 10 minutes already so the fact that she was still asleep made him think the Temple Head didn''t know what was wrong with her. "It''s for the best If we let the people back at the Temple who know more about sleep poisons do it. There''s no way for me to know which antidote to give her without knowing what they used and I don''t know enough about the process to make an educated guess."
Lake knew he could probably figure it out with his skill that told him everything about whatever he used it on but he decided to just stop showing off for the day. He had finished this little mission the Insider had given him so there wasn''t a reason for him to do anything more.
Following behind the Temple Head, it didn''t take long for her to start talking. "To exin the Coliseum I need to start at the creation of this world." Lake hadn''t been expecting her to say anything like this but he was even more interested knowing he was about to hear something about how a world was made.
Chapter 278: Coliseum
Chapter 278: Coliseum
"So our world had six gods at the beginning and that included the God of Fire. The only reason why this is important for the story of the Coliseum is because all the gods other than the God of Fire have the same origin world and knew each other before they ascended." Hearing how deep the Temple Head was about to go, Lake got ready to finally understand what was going on in this world a bit more.
"They originally had another god of fire that was meant for this position but something happened and they had to find another." Hearing she was being vague all of a sudden He asked. "What does something mean?"
"I don''t know, the God of Light didn''t say what happened. I''m sure whatever you''re guessing is pretty close to what happened though." Lake had guessed that the other God of Fire had been killed or something just based off of what went on in this world''s history. Tragedy seemed to be ingrained in almost every story he had heard. "Please continue."
Lake had identally made the Temple Head stop talking by asking a question so he told her to keep going to snap her out of whatever she had started to think about. "Well after some searching they eventually found our God of Fire who was alone and looking to join a group of gods to ascend with and they decided they could work together."
Lake could tell by the way the Temple Head had said thest part that this was going to be some type of mistake. "Everything was fine between the six original gods until it came time to actually start moving people to this world. The god of fire wanted to bring some of the people from their world which the other gods eventually agreed to and those people brought the Coliseum."
Thest sentence kind of made it seem like the Temple Head had skipped a lot of stuff that had happened and he was about to ask her if she was done when she started to talk again. "It was an old custom from the world of the God of Fire so the other gods allowed it to happen even though it didn''t really line up with the original vision of their world and that brings us to where the demons came from."
Lake wanted to ask for a bit more information about what the Coliseum did but he had learned that if he asked a question in the middle of her talking it would kind of derail what she was trying to say so he stayed silent. "As I''m sure you know every god has their own race that represents their element or at least they eventually do."
Lake hadn''t known this exactly but he had known there were other races that seemed to specialize a bit in a certain element. "The demons were supposed to be the race of the God of Fire and they were for a long time but. Actually I''m telling this part out of order. The Coliseum was how the God of Fire and his people made all the decisions in the Fire Domain and while this was considered a brutal way to make decisions by the other gods it was fine until the God of Fire made the Demons who are a lot stronger than a normal person in a fight. This meant that soon after the demons were introduced they took control of the Fire Domain by winning all their fights in the Coliseum."
Thest sentence made Lake think of the metal Temple which seemed to entirely be made up of dwarves at least at the higher levels and wanted to know if this was the norm but the Temple Head was still talking so he just saved the question for a moment when she had paused.
"Once again the other gods felt like they had to step in because the normal people of the Fire Domain were being oppressed and something that I don''t know the details of happened that caused the God of Fire to get mad and get rid of the demons and Coliseum from his domain. He didn''t destroy them though just banished them so these days if you see a demon there''s about a 99% chance that you''re seeing a member of the Coliseum."
Seeing the Temple Head pause for a moment, Lake was about to ask the questions he had prepared but he actually started with one that came from thest thing she said. "You said 99% is the other 1% something to do with the Demon Lord?"
"Yes there was a small group of demons that spit from the others and that''s the group the Demon Lord was born from. We don''t know too much about it though because it was a long time ago and none of the gods like to spread knowledge about what happened around."
Lake wanted to ask his other questions before they moved on too much so he went ahead and asked about the Metal Temples makeup for its important members. "Earlier you said the gods didn''t like the fact that one race was ruling a domain but when I was in the Metal Domain every member of the temple that I saw seemed to be dwarves. Is this allowed because it''s not like this through violence like it was in the Coliseum."
"That''s a good guess but it''s actually like that because the God of Metal has just started turning people into his version of Dwarves a few years ago. Anyone who wants to be a metal dwarf can go to the Temple and if the God of Metal thinks you''re worthy you can go through the transformation."
"So not everyone in the temple was a dwarf to begin with but it would seem that way to someone who just got there." Lake had his answer and was about to ask his next question when he saw that they were about to pass a group of people that were sitting next to the road with a fire built.
This wasn''t important to them and the people would most likely barely even notice them at the speed they were moving but he didn''t want to talk as they passed them in case they were somehow rted to the coliseum. Once they had passed the group Lake asked. "Are we still in free territory?"
"I think so, why?" Lake had been being paranoid so he just told the temple Head what he was thinking. "I just wanted to know because of the group we just passed. I figured if we were there was a good chance those people would have attacked us if they had noticed us."
"There are normal people out here as well and those people looked like they were probably here to stop any bandits that might have been using that road. The way they had the fire set made it look like they were trying to act like clueless travelers while their gear made it look like they were probably here for a fight."
Lake memorized this method of drawing in bandits for the future since they were still one of the best sources of Exp he had found and switched the conversation back to the Coliseum by asking. "So if we hadn''t saved Tiffany what would have happened to her in the hands of the Coliseum."
"They would have probably made her fight but they might have also had a deal to give her to another group in exchange for something. There''s really no way to know just yet until I send people to investigate." Lake had a few other things he wanted to ask about why it had been Tiffany again but decided to just directly ask about the fighting thing.
"So is that what they do? They kidnap people and make them fight in the Coliseum." It made sense for a group with that name but he didn''t see the point. "They say there''s more to what they do but essentially yes they just make prisoners fight and sell tickets."
"Do non-prisoners fight as well?" Lake was guessing the answer would be yes since they tried to make it sound like they had actual reasons to keep the Coliseum going but he wanted to know if maybe they were just putting on a bloodshow to make money. "I''ve heard there are private shows for members of the Coliseum sometimes where members settle feuds but I don''t know if they''re to death like the ones between prisoners."
With this all there was left for him to ask about was what he had originally shown up at the temple for. "The group that''s going to the Metal Domain, have they left yet?"
"I don''t know, they hadn''t when we left but it''s been a few hours already so there''s a good chance they went to meet up with the other groups and headed for the Metal Domain." Lake was happy to know he had gotten Helian there in time and hadn''t just left her in a ce where she wouldn''t be helpful.
He could already picture the Metal Temple Head''s confused face once he learned that he had somehow failed to get her to the people that would be bringing down the barrier. It would kind of make him look like he had a good chance of failing any task you gave him and that wasn''t really the type of person that you paid a lot.
Chapter 279: The Return
Chapter 279: The Return
Seeing the capital in the distance, Lake briefly thought about heading off to the Metal Domain but figured he should at least find out what happened to Hin first. If on the off chance they hadn''t brought her with them on the trip to the Metal domain, Lake would ask if she wanted him to take her back to the Temple Head of the Metal Temple.
He felt like she wouldn''t be there though since they had probably taken her with them so they could study the formation more on the way to the Metal Domain. As they were entering that city Lake saw that one of the fields they were passing had a golem working in it and was about to say something to the Temple Head about it but then remembered it was probably Alchemist Guild business meaning he shouldn''t just talk about it with anyone.
Trying to remember to say something to Wace the next time he went back to the guild, Lake quickly put the golem sighting to the back of his mind and asked the Temple Head. "Are you going to go to the Metal Domain?" The Light Temple was the Demon Worshipers number one enemy so he felt like there was a 50/50 on if she would go or not.
"I don''t think I''ll be going unless something really bad happens and the God of Light wants me to. Are you going back?"
"Yeah, I''m pretty involved at this point so it would be weird if I just forgot about it. There''s also arge amount of people I helped hide in the mountains that I need to go check up on."
"How many?" It seemed they had gone into a bit of small talk so Lake went with it and said. "Around a hundred I think. There''s another group that''s trapped underground that''s around the same size and I want to be there when the barrieres down so I can see if they survived."
"Are some of your friends in that group?" Lake didn''t know how to answer this because he really didn''t know anyone from the group that well but he just nodded and said. "Sort of. They were the group I was with at the beginning of the crisis."
"Why aren''t you trapped like them then?" Lake didn''t really want to go into the whole story so he just said. "I was able to slip out of the barrier because it was opened by a Demon Worshiper but by the time I got back from killing the Demon Worshipers that were nearby it had been reclosed."
This wasn''t quite what had happened but it made the story really short with all the things he had left out so he didn''t care. "How good do you think their chances are?" Lake felt like the Demon worshipers had migrated into the barrier after he had destroyed their base and thinking of the people he had fought he didn''t think the people inside had a good chance of living.
"Not good. They weren''t particrly well suited for the situation we were in which was why they weren''t with me when the barrier opened. I really thought the barrier would stay open and that they would be fine while I was gone."
They were almost at the Temple as he said this and their conversation ended since they had to go through a brief check to enter. With them here both of them had their own things they wanted to do with him needing to find Hin if she was still here and the Temple Head off to let the doctors wake Tiffany up.
Using Detector to look for Hin Lake did a quick look around before asking someone. "How big is this ce?" He didn''t see Hin but without knowing how big this ce actually was he had no idea if the range on Detector might be too small to find her. "I don''t know but most of it is empty so really just the three hallways that have people in them are being used."
Hearing that this ce was almostpletely empty, Lake set Detector to look for the Temple Head so he could go tell her he was about to leave. Finding her in a room not far from where he was, Lake walked in to see Tiffany on a bed with five people standing around her. Getting the Temple Head''s attention, Lake waved her over to him. "It looks like you were right and they''re gone already. I''m going to go and catch up with them."
"Alright, well thank you for your help getting Tiffany back." Seeing the Temple head really didn''t intend to bring up the fact that he had asked her to carry him. Lake guessed him running into things constantly while they had been running had really made it seem like it was necessary.
Walking out of the Temple Lake set Detector to look for Hin''s footprints and started to follow them out of town. He eventually found a ce that seemed Hin had wandered around for a while and guessed this had been where all the groups had met up before they set out for the Metal Domain.
Seeing her footprints went onto a road that went straight to the Metal domain, Lake guessed they didn''t have any ns of hiding the fact that they wereing from the Demon Worshipers. Starting to run, Lake was able to quickly catch up to the group and saw Hin and the rest of them just slowly walking.
He had no idea why they were going so slow or why they weren''t using any carts but Lake guessed they had their reasons and went to join them. Like he had expected they didn''t like the fact that he just walked towards them but it was pretty easy for him to convince them that he was on their side when the people from the Light Temple including Hin said they knew him.
Once they got back to slowly walking towards the Metal Domain, Lake walked up to Hin who was surrounded by various people studying the formation that was floating above her hand and asked. "How''s it going? Have they found anything that will stop them from destroying the barriers as soon as we get there?"
Lake was really hoping that they would be able to drop the barrier as soon as they got there and he wouldn''t have to go all the way down to the 42nd tier again. "They''re saying the formation is tooplicated to be sure of anything yet especially with the fact it''s made inside a living creature. They say there''s a chance the Demon Worshipers took advantage of the fact the flesh things could move and made it so all that would need to happen for them to be able to make another barrier is for it to move and change the formation slightly."
Lake really didn''t see how they could do anything about that if it was true since they couldn''t kill the flesh from outside. He guessed they could have the people inside do it but if they knew how they would have already done it and they didn''t have anyone in the other barrier underground so there wasn''t a way for them to take out both sides at once like they had to because of the bridge formation.
"So what''s the current n?" Hin didn''t answer his question and instead someone that had been next to her did. "There isn''t one. There''s no point in wasting time on a n until we''re ready to try and take the barrier down. Right now all of us are just focused on thinking about this formation so we can try to predict what will happen when we begin our attack on the barrier."
Seeing that none of them had even looked away from the formation as the man had said this, Lake guessed he was getting in the way of their work and after giving a small wave to Hin he faded into the background. Thinking of walking to the Metal Domain at this speed without even being able to talk to anyone, Lake wanted to go ahead but knew he needed to stay to protect them if they were to get attacked.
With the way they were traveling there was almost a 100% chance that they would get attacked at some point so him being slightly annoyed wasn''t a good reason to leave them to possibly be killed. Using Detector Lake set it to look for Demon Worshipers
A few hours passed Like this as Lake looked for Demon Worshipers and while he didn''t think any would show up this early he eventually saw some golden figures rushing at them from the side of the road. He didn''t rush out to meet them and just yelled. "Iing attack." He wanted to see what the people in the group could do so killing all of the Demon Worshipers himself right away would be a real waste.
Chapter 280: Formation Fight
Chapter 280: Formation Fight
Staying in the same spot to watch the battle Lake saw a massive amount of formations start to show up in the air of all colors. He had expected the people that would be sent to drop the barrier to be tilted in magic but this light show was a lot more than he expected. There was a chance this was them holding back as well so he was starting to think he could leave them and they would be fine.
He had no way to know what the Demon Worshipers had brought though so it was still to be seen if he would need t o step in at any point in this fight. Having looked at all the formations that were on their side, Lake looked back to where the demon Worshipers had been to see they had prepared a few of their own.
There were less of them on the Demon Worshipers side but seeing the size of the formations they had made he didn''t think it mattered too much. Seeing he was about to witness a new type ofbat he hadn''t really seen yet, Lake looked at the faces of the people closest to him to see how tense they looked.
He didn''t get much from this because there was a mix with some people looking worried and others having a neutral face. Lake guessed this was caused by the fact that some of these people probably hadn''t been in many fights while others like the people from the Light Temple being used to fighting Demon Worshipers.
Seeing the formation that the Demon Worshipers had made start to move towards them and a barrier activating to stop whatever the Demon Worshipers had been trying to do, Lake looked around and wondered why no one was talking. He guessed they had probably talked about who would be in charge of what before they had actually set out so he would know if the fight was getting out of hand when people started to say things.
That would be when he would get involved in the battle if he felt there was something he could do to help. By then he might be unable to act if he was still inside of the barrier that was protecting them since he would have to destroy what everyone was relying on to keep them safe.
Seeing the formation the Demon Worshipers had sent towards them start to st a continuous beam of reddish brown mana towards their barrier, Lake once again looked to see what the faces of the people around looked like. Seeing no change to the neutral faces of the people he was sure were actually doing the fighting, Lake just turned back and watched the show.
After a while the formation that had been firing at them stopped and started to dissipate and was reced by the smaller ones that the Demon Worshipers had left. Seeing the swarm of smaller formations start to hit the barrier with a barrage of small attacks, Lake wondered if this was a normal way you could look for the weak spot of the formation if you weren''t able to get it down with your big attack.
Wondering if they would be sessful, Lake Watched as every part of the barrier was hit with a spell. Seeing nothing happen the entire time Lake watched the formations go back to where the Demon Worshipers were and wondered if they had failed to find it. If whoever had made the barrier had ced the weakness underground the Demon Worshipers couldn''t really do anything about it.
He didn''t think the barrier would stay up forever though, it seemed they couldn''t attack while it was up so if they actually wanted to end the fight it would at least open slightly for a while to let them fire back. After a while of nothing happening he guessed the Demon Worshipers had decided to save their next round of attacks.
"Now." Hearing the first word from their side since the beginning of the fight, Lake knew the real battle was about to start and saw the Barrier drop and five massive spells including a beam of their own fire towards the Demon Worshipers from some of the formations that had been formed in the air above them.
Seeing a dark barrier form around the Demon Worshipers Lake understood this was going to take a while and wondered how a fight like this would end. From what he understood about how magic worked they all had an infinite amount of mana to work with so they would be able to form formations and shoot spells until they fell asleep.
Seeing the Demon Worshipers barrier survive their attacks and their barriere back up only for the Demon Worshipers'' to drop and for them to fire at their barrier. Realizing he didn''t have the patience for this, Lake got a Magic Arrow ready and as soon as it was his turn to fire he flew the arrow so it would be outside of the barrier once it came back up.
Once their barrier came back up and the Demon Worshipers went down he would fly the arrow through them and hope that they wouldn''t see iting. He hadn''t set the arrow on fire though to hide it so he wasn''t sure if it would actually be able to kill any of the Demon Worshipers since they might be undead.
Seeing their barriere back up once their attacks were over he was going to start flying the arrow towards the Demon Worshipers when he realized his control of the arrow was being partially blocked. He was still able to move it around but he was having a hard time flying it in a straight line.
This would makending any real attacks on heads or hearts really hard and he was sure the Demon Worshippers would notice an arrow flying zigzag towards them and destroy it. Looking at the barrier that he was sure was the reason his connection to the arrow was messed up, Lake wondered if all barriers messed up skills and mana vessels.
He had never tried to control something on the other side of a barrier before so he had never even thought about the fact barriers could do something like cut you off from the other side. It wasn''t like there was a string of mana connecting him to the arrow or anything so he really had no idea what the barrier was doing to block him off from it.
Trying to think of a way to still use the arrow to help them in the fight, Lake figured he could use it to make them think there was another group of people here by flying it towards them from behind. He wasn''t sure if one arrow would be enough of a threat to actually get some of them to go and check it out though.
Seeing that the Demon Worshipers had started to attack, Lake flew the arrow towards their backs. Like he expected before it was even close a spell flew and destroyed the arrow flying towards them. Seeing none of the Demon Worshipers even really look in the direction the arrow hade from he guessed he had failed in making a difference.
With this his only option was to leave the area that the barrier covered the next time it went down so he could attack the Demon Worshipers while it was their turn. There was a problem though, he was afraid that the attacks the Demon Worshipers wereunching from their formations could kill him very easily by aiming at him for just a brief second.
That beam looked like it was something that could not only kill him but disintegrate his body. Thankfully he was extremely fast and he was pretty sure he could move faster than they could move the beam. It was a big risk to take just to speed this fight up a bit. Calming himself down, Lake decided it wasn''t worth the risk before he saw how a fight like this would usually end.
There were more of them and the fight was going just fine so there was no reason he actually needed to get involved especially when he might just be getting in the way of what the original n had been. Deciding to just look at the formations to see if he could start deciphering any of themonalities they shared.
He was nowhere near skilled enough to even try to make anything at the scale of the formations he was seeing being unable to even really control arge amount of mana outside of his body but that wouldn''t be true forever. Eventually he would need to start practice or at least what formations could do if he wanted to survive in the high levels.
Eventually he would get to the point where all the people he would be fighting would be demigods or even gods if he continued to get stronger and he was sure they would be able to y with him like a toy if he didn''t understand magic at least a little.
Chapter 281: Second Circle
Chapter 281: Second Circle
Seeing their turn to attack was here Lake watched the barrier fall and the other formations including one that hadn''t been used yet light up to send the spells at the Demon Worshipers barrier. Lake paid close attention to the formation that hadn''t fired yet and the ball of light it had sent at the barrier.
Seeing the demon Worshipers barrier wobble slightly as it was hit by the ball of light, Lake wondered why they hadn''t used it up until now. He then heard someone start to talk about what happened. "It looks like we almost had the bnce right so they''ll probably change it next time."
Lake wanted to ask what they meant but he decided to wait till this was over since they might be one of the people controlling the formations and he didn''t want to make them mad by distracting them from the fight.
Like the guy had said the next time they fired the same formations at the Demon Worshipers barrier nothing happened and he could tell by the faces of the people around him that this was a bad thing. He didn''t know if it was bad because it meant they would lose though; it could be that they were just unhappy with how long this could take like he was.
There was a good thing that had happened though, it seemed each round was getting faster as they went. He had no idea why but the time between when the attacks started and ended and the barriers came back up was getting much shorter. After a while he saw that anotherbination of spells that they had fired actually had an effect on the Demon Worshipers barrier and by the amount of shaking that happened he was pretty sure it had been close to breaking.
He didn''t think the fact that they had gotten close would matter though sincest time they had to start the process over again. Looking at the person who had talked thest time they had made an effect on the barrier, Lake could see they looked annoyed and knew he was right about this not being a good thing.
Starting to get really tired of watching this, Lake looked towards Hin and wondered if she was doing anything. She seemed to know at least a little about formations so there was a good chance she could exin what was happening. Walking over to herke wanted for when they were inside the barrier and asked. "Are you busy?"
This was the first time since he had caught up to them that she wasn''t swarmed by people looking at the formation so he was pretty sure he wouldn''t be getting in the way of anything but he still wanted to ask. "No. Sorry about that earlier, I didn''t want to chase you away like that."
Lake liked the fact that Hin felt guilty over something she had nothing she could have done about because he liked people who were constantly apologizing. Not wanting her to stop this behavior he said. "It''s no problem, I know you didn''t have time to talk." After he said this he looked at what was happening in the fight for a second before he turned back and started to ask her some stuff about what was happening.
"I''ve never seen this kind of fight before, what''s happening right now?"
"We''re trying to find abination of elements that will disrupt their barrier enough to make it copse."
"Why aren''t they just firing everything at once and doing it slowly?" This was his main question he had wanted to ask so he couldn''t wait till she exined. "It takes a while to recharge formations so if we use everything we won''t have anything to kill the Demon Worshipers with before they erect a new barrier."
They had a lot of formations of various colors and they were only using four or five of them at a time and this was leaving almost half not used so he felt like there had to be another reason they weren''t using more to break the barrier leaving only one or two to attack. "Is that the only reason? There are a lot of formations that haven''t been used at all yet."
"Those aren''t attack formations." As she said this she pointed at some of the formations he had been thinking were being unused for no reason and said. "These are defensive formations that do things the barrier cant. This one for example lets whoever is controlling it detect people on the other side of the formation so we don''t get attacked from behind when we drop the barrier. If it wasn''t here we wouldn''t know that someone had snuck up behind us since the barrier cuts all of our skills off from the outside world."
Hearing this put a lot of the stuff he had noticed during the battle make sense. If the Demon Worshipers had something like this it made sense that they hadn''t worried about the arrow he had flown at them from behind. Not only had they probably sensed him flying it around them they had known there was no one over there.
"So how many formations are there for attacking?" If there was such a low number he had no idea how it was taking them so long to find the rightbination and the fact that they were firing the same exact ones a few times in a row didn''t really make sense to him either but he would ask about that next. "There are six elements that have an effect on barriers made of Unholy and Dark mana that we have ess to with the people here so these six are the ones for bringing it down."
Hearing this Lake realized they were only leaving one or two formations to attack with after their barrier came down Lake realized they had been doing exactly what he thought they should. "So why are they firing the same ones multiple times in a row?"
"These are barrier breaking formations and have the ability to change the exact spell they''re firing to better break the barrier they''re firing at but it can take a while to get it exactly right and with the fact we''re kind of taking turns it makes it seem like they''re just doing the same thing over and over again but they''re being tuned."
Like always anytime there was something about magic he thought didn''t make sense there was a perfectly sound exnation and with him being out of real questions he asked. "Are you able to do something like that?" Lake pointed at one of the formations as he asked this and after Hin looked she said. "I''m not able to make things that big yet but I could make a smaller version."
Lake wasn''t surprised by her answer because Hin had made a small replica of the huge formation in the Metal Domain but he really didn''t understand if the reason he thought she could only make small formations was right so he asked. "Is it because the bigger the formation is the more mana you have to control?"
"Yeah. I''m only barely in the second circle so I''m not good enough to make a formation big enough to help." Hearing her use a term that was used to measure how skilled someone was in magic Lake asked. "How long did it take you to get to the second circle?" This was a good question that would allow him to get more information without having to say he didn''t know what she was talking about.
"It''s been about three years since I started but I''m not particrly skilled so that''s only thanks to the Temple Helping me to get ready for the transformation test." Lake knew that the transformation was her bing a Metal dwarf which most members of the Temple seemed to want.
"Are you allowed to talk about how the transformation works?" Lake would like to know more so he hoped it wasn''t against the rules to talk about it with outsiders. "I can''t tell you much since I''ve never been through it, looks like we''re about to try to take down the barrier again."
Hearing Hin change the subject, Lake took the hint and stopped asking about the transformation process. He was sure there were other sources of information on the transformation process that he could find so he wasn''t going to push Hin even if he felt he could get a bit out of her.
Seeing the barrier of the Demon Worshipers bend out of shape before disappearingpletely Lake guessed they had finally gotten the bnce right and watched as the two other formations that hadn''t been used to break the barrier fire at the group of Demon Worshipers Lake used detector to see if any of the Demon Worshipers had been killed.
"It looks like around half of them are still alive." Lake hadn''t thought about the fact that both barriers were open and he could have used this time to attack to finish the rest off until a new barrier showed up around the Demon Worshipers. "It looks like we didn''t get the one making the barrier."
At this point Lake had stopped worrying about how much time this was taking so he just silently celebrated the fact that they were closer to winning. He could already see that the Demon Worshipers had less formations on their side so it was only a matter of time until they finished the rest of them off.
Chapter 282: Awake
Chapter 282: Awake
Seeing the Demon Worshipers barrier finally go down again Lake was expecting for them to do the same thing they hadst time but before the other formations could fire to kill any of the surviving Demon Worshipers he saw them make a break for it. Looking at the faces of the people in their group Lake could tell they had no intentions of going after them and neither did he.
Going after them was one of the worst things you could do in a situation like this even if you were slightly worried about them bringing information on their group to whoever had sent them. For all they knew they were just a small portion of a muchrger kill squad and if you went after them you would run into the rest of them.
For this reason the best thing they could do was move quickly away from this spot and try to hide as they made their way towards the Metal Domain, or at least that was what he would have done. Thinking back to the speed at which they had been walking, Lake wasn''t sure what the n was going to be.
They really didn''t seem to be worried if they were attacked, which was one of the reasons he felt like they had been holding back in thatst fight. As someone who tried to hide his real strength Lake understood the benefits but he felt their reasons would be slightly different. He usually did it to avoid attention from other strong people but with their speed he was pretty sure they were doing the opposite.
He was guessing they were hoping to draw the other group out to take care of the early in their journey. Turning to Hin Lake asked. "When will we start moving again?" They hadn''t started to move yet and instead the barrier hade back up right after they saw the demon Worshipers run away.
"It could take a while if we do move anymore for the day." After Hin said this, Lake remembered he was moving with a group that would need to sleep like normal people and with it being night there was a good chance this was it for the day. "Would we really rest in the same spot the demon Worshipers attacked us?"
Hin shrugged and it caused Lake to think that she probably knew about as much as he did. She was really more like a recourse than a member of the team in this situation so he wouldn''t be surprised if she hadn''t been told anything about the n he suspected their group was following.
Looking around, Lake looked at the other people that were talking and tried to hear what they were saying. "You''re right we''ll be staying here for the night." After he got done saying this, Lake wondered if he would have to pretend to sleep a normal amount of time so that no one realized he hadn''t slept the whole time.
They would be stuck inside the barrier the whole time anyway soying on the ground and pretending to sleep wouldn''t be that hard for him. Seeing people start to get out bed rolls Lake realized only about half of them had any and guessed they intended to sleep in shifts. This would lower the amount of time he had to pretend to sleep so he was more than happy to take a guard shift.
Seeing there were some people who were starting toe towards them, Lake stopped them before they got to Hin and asked. "Who should I talk to about taking the first guard shift?" The man didn''t even stop to talk to him and just pointed for him to head to where a tent was being erected.
Not letting the dismissive attitude bother him like it normally would, Lake headed towards the only person who was near the tent and not helping in the process of building it since she was probably the one in charge at the moment. "I would like to take the first watch." Lake didn''t bother introducing himself since everyone knew how he was from when the people from the Light Temple had said he was trustworthy.
"It''s being picked randomly so find someone who''s been picked for the first watch and trade with them." Hearing it was up to him to make this happen, Lake used Detector to look for people who had been chosen as the first guards. After he did this he saw his own hand was actually glowing and realized what he wanted had already happened through shear luck.
If there were only half as many beds as people that meant he had had a pretty good chance so it wasn''t really that surprising. Wondering what he was supposed to do as a guard when the barrier was kind of cutting them off from the outside world, Lake walked over to one of the others and asked. "What are we supposed to do, are we just lookouts?"
Detector seemed to work fine through the barrier for whatever reason so he would have no problems actually seeing and peopleing to attack but most of the other guards wouldn''t have a skill like his. "Are you able to make any formations?" Lake shook his head no and this caused the man to start talking again. "In that case just pass time till it''s your turn to sleep."
Seeing the pattern of the people here thinking he was useless was being continued Lake remembered these people would be the ones who would drop the barrier in the metal Domain and let him get paid and that if he got mad at them it would get in the way of his actual goal of getting one million gold.
The thought of that much gold in one ce quickly calmed him down and Lake went towards where arge group of people had gathered so they could get a look at the formation Hin had reformed over her hand. Sitting down Lake set Detector to look for Demon Worshipers and got ready to pass time like he had been told.
...
Feeling herself wake up suddenly Tiff tried to move her arm to see if she was tied up like she was expecting. She remembered what had happened when she had opened the bag and the puff of smoke had hit her in the face causing her to pass out so when she found she could move her arm just fine she opened her eyes to see that she was inside a room she was familiar with.
Excited to find that someone had saved her she looked around to see the healers in the room were looking at another patient. Not wanting to get in the way of whatever they were doing to the other person, Tiff tried to get out of bed only to find she got really dizzy as soon as she tried to move.
Realizing she wasn''t back to top condition yet she was left with no option other than to call out to the doctors. "Hello." She wasn''t sure what questions to ask since she really had no idea who had tried to take her so she just started by letting them know she was awake. She was pretty sure they would tell her what had happened while she was asleep without her having to ask.
"Go tell the Temple Head Tiffany is awake." After the doctor had said this they left the side of the other patient and asked. ''How are you feeling? The sleep poison they used on you wasn''t something we had ever seen before so we were not sure if wepletely negated it yet."
Tiff had an answer ready for this since she had almost fallen over when she moved. "I''m dizzy but it''s only when I move." Tiff didn''t leave out the part about it being only when she moved since she knew it could be important. "You were asleep for around a day because of poison so I wouldn''t be surprised if that''s just a side effect. Tell me if it doesn''t fade."
Seeing the man was only worried about being a doctor she was about to start asking about what had happened to her but the Temple Head came into the room and Tiff just decided to get the information from the Temple Head since she would have all of it with her being in charge. "You woke up a lot faster than we thought you would."
Tiff already knew it had been around a day since she had been poisoned but she wondered how long it had been since they had given her the antidote there was a more important question though. "How long did it take to rescue me?" She wanted to know how long she had been in enemy hands.
"It was like 18 hours but you were just being carried the whole time since where they were taking you was far away so nothing big happened in that time as far as we know." Tiff was happy to hear she hadn''t been cursed or anything while they had her because if that had been the case it wouldn''t have really mattered if they had saved her.
"Who was it that took me?" Tiff had two guesses but she felt that at least one of them was wrong because if it had been the Demon Worshipers they would have killed her. That left Jon and she really didn''t think it was him who had handed her the bag. "We''re not really sure yet but it looks like it was the Coliseum."
Tiff hadn''t expected this answer and wanted to ask why they would do that but she knew the Temple Head wouldn''t know for sure yet so she instead asked. "Did you go yourself to get me back?"
"I''ll tell you about thatter but there''s something else I have to tell you." Seeing the look on the Temple Head''s face fall Tiff remembered there was actually another thing that was supposed to happen today. Realizing Dawn wasn''t next to her bed when she was supposed to be back today Tiff asked. "What happened?"
Chapter 283: Another Meeting
Chapter 283: Another Meeting
After hearing the Temple Head say they really didn''t know anything yet about where Dawn was, Tiff struggled to her feet and said. "Are the other members here?" Knowing the 23 she was sure they hadn''t waited even a second to go and look for her but she still needed to ask because she wanted to join up with them wherever they might be.
"They are, I''ve banned them from leaving because it seems you all are being targeted more than normal. I''ve sent people who are less important to the Temple to look for information." Hearing they weren''t going to be going to look for Dawn themselves Tiff was mad but she knew fighting the Temple Head on this was a terrible idea.
"Do you think she was taken by the same people I was or just a coincidence that it happened around the same time?"
"Both arepletely possible but I hope it was the same people who got you because." The Temple Head didn''t finish what she was saying and Tiff was grateful because she didn''t want to hear the fact Dawn might already be dead if it was the Demon Worshipers who got her. Deciding she wanted to change the subject Tiff asked. "Can you tell me about how I was saved."
The Temple Head had said they woulde back to this and not really being ready to move yet this was a good time to hear it. "You should find this interesting, do you remember why you thought Lake might be Jon?"
"Because he had fought off an assassin before like what Jon had done to save me." The Temple Head nodded and asked. "Guess who came with me to save you." It was pretty obvious she was supposed to say either Lake or Jon and she felt it was most likely Lake. "Was it Lake? How''d that happen?"
"He just showed up with a person from the Metal Temple, he didn''t seem to have any idea what had happened but he offered to help almost right away when I told him you were taken and we were unable to find you." Tiff wished they had the actual person here so they could ask him how he had gone from the meeting where he was with Lucas to showing up on a mission from the Metal Temple but he wasn''t so she would have to do with the Temple Head.
"So do you think I was right about him being Jon?" The Temple Head didn''t answer right away so Tiff had a chance to remember the mission she had been given to find the dagger and the fact they still might have not actually made any progress if they were wrong. "I don''t know, I feel like Lake was strong enough to have done something like that but I didn''t get any feeling like he knew who you really were. He didn''t even seem to know your name."
"So you think we''re on the wrong trail?"
"Maybe, but I think he could help us find it now that I think about it. He had a crazy skill that was able to track you down almost instantly while all of our people had failed." Hearing they had finally found someone who might be able to find the dagger Tiff asked. "Where is he?" he must not be here because if he was the Temple Head would have probably told her that they had him looking for Dawn already.
"He left for the Metal Domain before I had thought about the fact that he could help us."
"So he isn''t one of the people out looking for Dawn?" Tiff had really been trying to change the subject but knowing there was a person who could possibly help her with both of her problems she wanted to go and find Lake right away. "No, but there''s a good chance he''s with the group that''s heading to the Metal Domain and they haven''t gotten very far yet so I sent someone to see if he''s there to call him back."
Hearing the Temple Head already had what she wanted in the works she was out of things to say really and tried to move again to see if she would get dizzy. Finding she could take a few steps without falling, Tiff figured she was good enough to go and told the doctor. "The dizziness is gone. Thank you."
She didn''t have to say anything to the Temple Head about her being ready to leave for the Temple Head and both of them walked out into the hallway. "There''s a meeting soon for the members of the 23 but you have time to eat or whatever else you might need after being asleep for a day."
Realizing just how hungry she was after the Temple Head said this Tiff nodded and said. "I''ll see you in a while." Heading for the cafeteria after making a brief stop in her room to change her day-old clothes and take off her armor, Tiff quickly ate and went to where they always had the meetings when inside the temple.
As she stepped in she saw half of the members of the 23 were already quietly waiting for the meeting and the rest of the members to get there. This was going to be her first real chance to talk to all of them at once since she had been chosen and thought about saying something to them about her being chosen over them but thinking about it she decided to just sit in the back of the room by herself.
A lot of them were still mad at her and while they didn''t let it show whenever they talked she could tell they would need more time before they had really gotten over her being picked over them. As she was sitting she told herself she couldn''t me them for being mad at her, if someone had won the only thing she had ever wanted she wouldn''t be happy either and it would make it worse if someone who was known to be the worst out of them was the one who had been chosen.
Tiff knew even if they loved her they all had gotten used to looking down on her over time so it would take a while for them to settle into the new power dynamic. As she was sitting there a few of the other members came in and all the friendly waves kind of proved her point. It seemed like nothing was wrong but if you took into ount that she had been kidnaped just yesterday and none of them had seen her since you would expect something more than a wave or a smile.
Doing her best not to get her feelings hurt by the cold treatment Tiff started to think back to all the times she had been jealous of the others. Her being the worst member of the 23 hadsted years so there had been plenty of times where she had been mad at the others over how things were even though it wasn''t their fault so it would be unfair if she didn''t give them time.
"Hello." Hearing someone that wasn''t the Temple Head start talking to her Tiff looked back to see Greg had just walked in. "How are you feeling?" The fact that Greg was the only one who didn''t seem to be treating her any differently wasn''t exactly surprising, he had alwayse off as a little strange to her if youpared him to the others and it really stood out when it came to emotions.
"I''m ok." She didn''t get much out before he was already down where the others were sitting and she went back to silently waiting for the meeting to start. A few minutes after Greg had walked in the Temple Head came in and headed for the stage while giving her an odd look. Tiff knew it probably looked weird for her to be the only one to not be with the others but she knew it was the right move.
"Alright I''ll make this quick so you all can get back to training. It seems there might be someone who is targeting all of you so for now until we can find out for sure none of you can leave the Temple unless we get attacked." This wasn''t much different from the normal rules so Tiff wasn''t sure why the Temple Head had said it at all but she wasn''t done talking so maybe there was a reason.
"This includes missions so if you are given orders to go out by someonee and check with me before you go." Tiff realized the Temple Head was holding this meeting with only them for a reason past Dawn being missing. Standing up, Tiff asked. "Are you afraid we''ve been infiltrated?"
"It''s been a while since thest time it happened so there''s a good chance. With you all being targeted and the fact the Demon Worshipers noting to attack in the middle of the war it feels like they''re trying to get rid of you all before resuming the war." Hearing the Temple Heads words Tiff had to agree that it would make sense for the Demon Worshipers to try and get someone on the inside that could pass off fake orders to draw them out.
It was really smart of the Temple Head to foresee this possibility and Tiff made a note to tell her thister as she sat back down to hear the rest of what the Temple Head had to say. "Last thing, I wanted to tell you what we have on Dawn''s disappearance so far instead of making you ask questions."
Chapter 284: Help Us
Chapter 284: Help Us
Once the Temple Head was done talking all the other members of the 23 left quickly to get back to training but Tiff stayed and walked out next to the Temple Head. "If we find Lake and he agrees to help, will I be able to go out to look for the dagger?" Tiff didn''t think she would be allowed to go after Dawn since the people she would be fighting to get her back would possibly be the same ones that had taken her so she didn''t even ask.
"It''s up to you. It was a task given to you by the God of Light so I can''t tell you not to do it. I don''t think you should, though it would be wise to send someone with him to make sure he doesn''t keep it. A divine weapon is hard to turn down even if you can''t use it correctly." Tiff had to agree considering it seemed the person who had stolen it couldn''t actually use it.
"I''ll decide after we find him." This was a lie, she had already made up her mind that she would be going to find not only the dagger but Dawn as well. All she would need to do is talk Lake into it by telling him what had happened to Dawn since it seemed he was a helpful person. "I''m going to go and select people to go with him if he decides to help."
Waving bye to the Temple Head as she walked away Tiff headed for her room. She needed to sit down again because even now she didn''t feel quite right. She didn''t think anything was actually wrong with her because it was just a headache but she needed to sit down in case it made her get better faster.
She didn''t want to be unable to go with Lake because she was visibly unwell. Walking into her room and getting into her bed Tiff wondered if she should go back to the healers. They might have a potion or something that could make her head feel better.
...
"Someone ising towards the barrier." Looking around Lake didn''t see anything glowing golden and was about to say they weren''t a Demon Worshiper but realized their range might be greater than his. Waiting a while he eventually saw the person who was running towards them with his eyes and with them still not glowing he knew for sure they weren''t a Demon worshiper but there was no reason to say this since everyone else would be able to tell from how they looked.
"People from the Light Temple gather to help us identify them." Lake wasn''t sure if he was part of the Light Temple so he didn''t get up but he did switch Detector to look for members of the Temple of Light just to make sure they weren''t being tricked. Seeing the person start to glow he went back to looking at the formation in Hin''s hand.
He had been listening to the people studying the formation for around two hours at this point and while it hadn''t made him any better at mana control he was at least able to repeat some of the stuff that had been said about this formation if someone wanted to ask him a question about it.
He found it interesting that the longer the people studied it the less confident they were that they would actually be able to do anything once they got to the Metal Domain and it made him think about what the Demon Worshipers had been trying to aplish with their attack on the Metal Domain.
It was really starting to seem that all they wanted was to distract arge number of people who were considered strong by giving them an unsolvable puzzle. "Lake, this guy has a message for you." Hearing he was being called out by the messenger, Lake got up and started to walk over to the edge of the barrier.
"The Temple Head is requesting your help again, someone else has gone missing." Lake took a second to answer to see if the Insider had anything to say since it seemed to have some reason it liked the Temple of Light but when it stayed silent he guessed it was leaving it up to him to say yes. "Alright, can I be let out of the barrier or do we have to wait?"
Lake didn''t know who was making the barrier so he just asked thedy who seemed to be in charge. "We''ll drop the barrier to let you out. The Temple Head of the Light temple deserves respect and I would never make her wait." Lake felt like giving thedy a thumbs up after she said this but he felt like it woulde off as rude so he didn''t.
A few secondster the barrier opened and he walked out to join the person from the Temple of Light. As he was about to say he was ready to follow them back he remembered Hin and turned back to see she was looking at him. Giving her a small wave, Lake turned around and said. "Lead the way."
He wanted to ask who had gone missing but the guy had probably not said on purpose so as to not spread the internal business of the Temple around so he saved his question for when they were alone. After running back towards the city for a while Lake asked his question. "Who''s missing?"
"I don''t know. The Temple Head will tell you once we''re there." Hearing this guy was telling the truth Lake asked. "Are you ok with me carrying you, I can speed us up quite a bit." Lake wanted to get there as fast as possible and he was used to carrying people at this point. "You can just go on ahead, the Temple Head is waiting for you and taking me with you serves no purpose."
Lake shrugged and sped forward. He had wanted to take the guy with him to prove it was actually him but he had been there enough times to know that they had other ways to know if he was him or not. He wasn''t sure how they were doing it but anytime he went into any type of base there was always someone who checked him.
At top speed Lake was back to the capital in around an hour and he knocked to let the verification process begin. Once he was let in he was told someone had gone to get the Temple Head and was asked to wait for her by the front gate.
...
Hearing a knock on her door Tiff said. "Come in." Seeing the person who opened her door was the Temple Head she sat up and could tell she was feeling a lot better by just the small amount of movement not hurting her head. "What is it?"
"He''s here." This was all it took for her to get out of bed and start throwing her armor on. Following the Temple Head down the hallway towards the front door Tiff realized there had been no reason for her to get her armor on because she wasn''t going to be allowed to go after Dawn which would probably be the first goal the Temple Head had for Lake. "Lake, follow me to my office. We have a few things we need to talk about before we can start the search."
...
Seeing Tiffany staring at him, Lake gave a small wave and started to follow the Temple Head. He would do a proper introduction once they got to the office since it seemed the Temple Head wanted to hold the conversation away from anyone else. As they were stepping into the office, Lake went ahead and said an actual introduction before the Temple Head sat down so it wouldn''t get in the way of the meeting.
"Hello Tiffany, I''m Lake."
...
Reaching out to shake Lakes hand Tiff didn''t really know what to say so she just said what she normally did when someone her age introduced themselves. "You can call me Tiff, thanks for saving me."
Lake gave her a thumbs up and sat down at the chair in front of the Temple Head''s desk. Seeing they were about to start the actual conversation Tiff sat in the other chair and listened. "A girl named Dawn was taken as she was crossing the area in between the gate to the Light Domain and here and we were wondering if you were willing to find her for us like you did for Tiffany."
...
Once again the Insider waspletely silent so Lake said. "Sure, are you going this time as well?" If she said no Lake wouldn''t have to hide any of his skills and would probably do just fine on his own so he was kind of hoping no one would be going with him. "I will for this one but there''s something else that we would like your help finding."
After she said this the Temple Head pulled out a drawing of a dagger he knew very well. "Is this the thing you keep asking Lucas about?" Lucas had asked him if he had it so it would be weird if he pretended like he had never even heard of this problem the Temple had. "Yes, does your ability work on items as well?"
Lake nodded and took an arrow out of his quiver as he said. "It does but let''s find Dawn first." Spinning the arrow in the air, Lake set Detector to look for an arrow pointing at the girl named Dawn that the Temple Head was looking for. "Let''s get going, I just got her trail."
"Does this mean she''s alive?" Hearing Tiff''s question Lake did some tinkering with the setting of Detector before answering. "Yes she is, let''s go." Turning back to the Temple Head he could see her looking at the arrow and was about to ask her what was wrong when she said. "Could you use that to identify traitors or spies?"
Lake nodded and said. "Yeah I think thisbination of skills could be used to find anything. It might be kind of confusing if there''s a lot of something close together and it can''t tell us distance either so it has some problems."
"Either way I need your help with something before we can leave." Lake shrugged and said. "It''s up to you." He had already decided to help so he might do everything they wanted this time before leaving so they didn''t keep calling him back every few days.
Chapter 285: Priorities
Chapter 285: Priorities
Hearing the Temple Heads request to help her make sure there weren''t any people who shouldn''t be allowed into their base, Lake tried to think of what he should set Detector to to find the people inside just this building. If he set it to look for all of the spies that were infiltrating the Temple of Light Detector would pick up all of them in the whole world.
Realizing just using Detector without the arrow since it had a limited range would be better, Lake set it to look for enemies of the Temple of Light. "Temple Head can''t this wait tillter, whoever has Dawn could get to wherever they''re trying to take her if you don''t go now."
Hearing Tiff''sint, Lake said. "Don''t worry there only seems to be one person that shouldn''t be here so we can take care of it on the way out the door." Seeing this seemed to settle, Tiff down Lake led the way out of the office towards the person that was glowing. "It''s whoever is in this room."
Lake didn''t just burst into the room and attack whoever it was because he could tell this was an office like the one the Temple Head had so what he was saying might be a big deal that needed some more evidence than just him saying it was true. "Are you sure?" He could tell by the look on both the faces of Tiff and the Temple Head that he had been right to not charge in.
"I''m looking for enemies of the Temple and this is the only one that''s in the Temple but I can understand if you want to confirm it before you take my word." After he said this the Temple Head looked at Tiff and said. "This might take a bit longer than expected. Go tell Ronnalis toe here." After she said this and Tiff had gone to do what she had been told the Temple Head turned to him and said. "Come into the room with me in case there''s more than one person. I''ll need you to tell me who it is."
Lake nodded and walked in after the Temple Head. Seeing two people other than the glowing person Lake pointed at the person behind the desk. He didn''t say anything though so as to not give anything away to who they were here for. "Would you two go wait for me in my office?" Seeing the Temple Head dismiss the two other people Lake wasn''t sure what was about to happen but it seemed the Temple Head nned to wait for Tiff toe back because she stayed silent and the only person who talked was the one behind the desk. "What''s going on? Why did you interrupt my meeting with Greg and Seth?"
Once again the Temple Head stayed silent and Lake could tell this was causing great distress to the guy behind the desk. As someone who snuck into a few ces while pretending to be something he wasn''t, he could put himself in their ce and kind of knew what was going through his head.
Right now they should be weighing the option of trying to run but stopping themself with the thought that if they ran and they hadn''t been discovered they would give themself away for sure. Wanting to disrupt this process on the off chance they tried to run or attack, Lake went ahead and introduced himself. "Hello I''m Lake. I''m here to look for Dawn."
This should cause them to think this was a friendly meeting and the Temple Head was being weird for a reason that had nothing to do with him. "Nice to meet you. I''m Davin." Lake saw the man extend a hand for a handshake and didn''t really want to reach out to touch it on the off chance that it was a trick and Davin nned to kill him or something when they touched but decided he would be fine.
After the handshake had ended Lake tried to pretend like he wasn''t relieved as he backed away to stand next to the Temple Head again. Seeing he had seeded in killing the tension, Lake looked back at the Temple Head to see if she was just still silently staring at Davin. Seeing she was Lake wished she was hiding the hostility that was in her gaze better but it made him wonder if maybe she wasn''t because Davin wasn''t a threat to her if it turned out he was a traitor.
Maybe she had been trying to scare Davin into proving what he had imed to be true and all he had done by breaking the tension was get in the way of the easiest way to get Davin to give himself away. Lake had been trying to stop a fight when really he should have been trying to provoke one before any usations were even made.
It seemed to be toote for this though because as soon as he had this though the door opened and two people entered with one being Tiff and the other most likely being Ronnalis. With all of them in the room now Lake looked at the Temple Head and was about to ask if he still needed to be there but she got to it first. "Tiff and Lake, you two can wait outside if you want."
Hearing it was up to him Lake looked at Tiff to see what she did. He was fine with watching this process but if she left he would take it as a sign he should as well. Tiff saw him looking at her and nodded towards the door before starting to walk towards it. Doing the same, Lake followed her out into the hallway.
"So what is that person''s position? Are they really important to the Temple?" Davin had only said his name with no title so Lake was still curious who he had used. "Davin, he''s in charge of troop cement for about half of our army." Hearing this guy was like a general, Lake knew he had really caused a mess and wondered if he should try to use Detector to get more information on Davin but instead he asked. "What about the person the Temple Head made you go get, what do they do?"
"Ronnalis is our best person at detecting spies and such. He can detect lying." Hearing there was someone else who could do what he could, Lake wasn''t surprised. He had actually been worried about this for a long time so it made him feel good to know he had been worried about it this whole time with it actually being a possibility.
Lake was about to ask another question but didn''t get the chance because he heard arge crash in the room and backed off to avoid getting caught up in whatever was going on inside. A second Later the door opened and the Temple Head and Ronnalis stepped out with Ronnalis carrying Davin on his shoulder.
"Alright Lake we can go now. Oh wait no I need to do something else now. Follow me to my office again real quick." Thinking the other thing she needed to do was rted to the two people the Temple Head had told to wait for her in her office so he followed her like he had been asked. Once they were there the Temple Head said. "Lake wait here. I''m about to talk about something only members of the Temple can hear. Tiffe in, you should hear this as well."
...
Stepping into the office Tiff saw two other members of the 23 sitting inside. Tiff wanted to ask what they were doing here but she figured it woulde up naturally. "What was Davin saying to you two?" Hearing these two had been with Davin when the Temple Head had gone inside the office Tiff wanted to hear what they had been talking about.
"He was asking us why we had refused our orders that he had given us and we were exining that we had been banned from leaving the base."
"It seems we caught him just in time in that case. Losing you two would have been a tragedy for the team." What the Temple Head said was true, Greg was the strongest person in the team and Seth wasn''t far behind. "What do you mean caught him, what happened?" Seeing they didn''t seem to understand what was happening Tiff looked to the Temple Head to see how she would choose to break the news that one of the people who had been working with them for years was a traitor.
"Davin has been identified as a traitor. We''re not sure for how long or to whom he was feeding information but it''s confirmed by two people." Wanting to see if this news would affect Greg, Tiff had kept her eye on his face as the Temple Head had been breaking this news only to see he didn''t even blink as he was told Davin was a traitor.
"Feel free to talk about this with the other people on the team but try not to spread the word to any one else until it''s announced. I''ll be gone for an uncertain amount of time so stay on guard while I''m gone." After the Temple Head said this she stood up and said. "Tiff, be careful while I''m gone. You''ll still be the number one target."
...
Seeing the Temple Head walk out of her office Lake asked. "Are we ready to leave?" Getting a nod from the Temple Head Lake was slightly surprised she could leave so soon after a huge incident but he guessed this Dawn person was important enough to be a top priority.
Chapter 286: Ideas
Chapter 286: Ideas
"Get on my back, we were faster when I was carrying you." They had been running for almost an hour so the ws of him trying to keep up with the Temple Head while looking at the arrow were obvious. He kept falling behind making the Temple Head have to slow down to let him catch back up.
As they stopped to let him get onto her back Lake said. "We''re definitely heading towards the same ce asst time right?" The Temple Head nodded and Lake asked. "Have you ever been to the Coliseum before?" Lake knew he was asking her if she had ever gone to watch two ves fight to the death but he wanted to know if she knew where they were going.
"I''ve been but it was a long time ago and I wasn''t there to watch a show, I was looking for someone I was told liked to watch the fights."
"So could you take us there if we somehow lost the lead on Dawn?" Lake was worried that as soon as they got Dawn to where the Coliseum was he would be unable to track her anymore and while there were other settings he could probably set Detector to to find them as long as the Coliseum wasn''t hidden in some way it would be a lot easier if the Temple Head already knew how to get there.
"The Coliseum isn''t all in one ce; they have multiple buildings like any other organization. I could only bring us to one of the better known arenas they have near the Fire Domain."
"In that Case we should catch up to Dawn before they have a chance to hide her." This had already been their goal but it was still worth saying so the Temple Head knew he was fine with her going as fast as she could the whole time without slowing down for his sake.
Speeding in the direction the arrow had pointed, Lake could tell they had a good amount of time before whoever had taken Dawn got to where they were going by where they were heading at the moment. They were slowly having to turn to the left as they ran which would cause them to eventually go the same way they had when rescuing Tiff.
"Do you think we should try to predict where they are heading and just run that way instead of constantly turning slightly?" Going in a straight line was always faster than a curved path so if they predicted where they would be correctly they would catch them faster so he felt it was worth a try.
"It''s impossible to guess an interception when you don''t know the distance between you and your target." This was true but he felt like they could guess within reason but with him being the one telling the Temple Head where to go he didn''t need her to be on board with his n for it to be what they did.
He didn''t feel like he needed to lie though so he said. "I''m just going to tell you to turn slightly more than necessary from now on. It should make us slightly faster without needing us to know how far we''re going." When the Temple Head didn''t say anything Lake took it as she was leaving it up to him so the next time the arrow pointed where they needed to go Lake pointed in a slightly different direction.
If he was right this would be where they would be heading after a few more turns if they were to keep turning whenever the arrow lit up. Sadly there was no way to know if this would actually help them or not without knowing how long it would have taken originally.
There was also a chance the person who had Dawn would have some type of skill that would cause them to move differently as they got closer and that wouldpletely destroy this method and they would have to go back to the old method of going wherever the arrow pointed.
...
"Rigbis has called a meeting about the thing that trapped our guys. It looks like we finally get to know more about it." Hearing Keel say he had to go to a meeting with themander Donny turned towards the group of people he had been making run drills and said. "We''re done. Good work."
Grabbing a piece of cloth Donny quickly cleaned his hands and followed Keel out of the room their team had been given to train. "Did he say anything about it yet or were you told about the meeting by someone else." Donny knew it was kind of ridiculous to try and get information now when the meeting was going to be starting almost as soon as they got there but he really wanted to know what that thing was doing to the five people who had been trapped.
"He told me nothing as of yet but it''s probably going to be bad or at least odd if he''s calling a meeting with all the people inmand." Trying to think what Rigbis might say that would make him want to keep this meeting private Donny had more than one idea of what the thing could have been doing that wouldn''t be good to tell everyone about.
He knew that in the past there had been times people panicked so bad that they ended up turning on each other when they hadn''t been in any actual danger and it usually happened in ces like a fortress that waspletely cut off from anyone else on their side like they were now.
As they walked into themand room Donny looked at all the faces of the people that were always next to Rigbis to see if he could tell how bad the news was going to be. Most of them had the hardened faces that were normal for people like them but Donny saw a few of them had various negative looks on their faces.
None of them looked scared though, just unhappy, so he was hopeful that the news wasn''t going to be that they wouldn''t be alive when the barrier finally came down. "Thank you all for gathering so quickly. As you all know team two found something none of us had ever seen before on their first outing that resulted in the loss of five of our people."
Hearing Rigbis start to Talk as soon as they walked in Donny guessed they were thest people to get there. He was happy that he wouldn''t have to wait but he felt weird that he and Keel were still moving towards an open spot. "We sent three of our scouts out a few hours ago and I just wanted to let you all know that the thing had disappeared."
Donny wanted to ask about the five people that had been trapped but Rigbis would most likely say everything that they needed to know so he didn''t raise his hand. "Not wanting toe back empty handed, the scouts moved on to look into a few other buildings that were nearby and they found a simr thing in another building. This means whatever they are there''s a lot of them spread out around the city. This means we won''t be able to clear any buildings the way we nned with small teams."
They had already decided to stay inside the fort until the barrier came down so Donny wasn''t upset they couldn''t clear out buildings in the next few days to kill time but this was really going to cause problems for them when it came time to clean the city up. "Hopefully whoever they''re sending to destroy the barrier will have a way for us to solve this problem but for now I wanted to know if any of you had any suggestions for a way to deal with these traps."
Donny had questions so he went ahead and raised his hand and since he was the only one who did Rigbis pointed at him and said. "What do you think we should do Donny?"
Donny didn''t really have a great answer and had really just wanted to ask if the people that had been in the trap were gone as well but hearing Rigbis wanted an idea he said. "We should destroy the buildings instead of going in to clear them. We can rebuild a house in a matter of days."
"That''s a good idea. With just a few mages we could tten all the buildings around us with Earth magic once the Earth mana is back. Hopefully that will happen soon after the barrier is down and we will be able to crush all the infested buildings." Hearing his hastily made idea was taken well Donny decided to ask about the five people that had been trapped.
"Were the five people in the barrier gone or were their bodies found where we left them in the basement?" It was a change of subject but he was sure he wasn''t the only person who wanted to know. "There was no sign of them, no blood, no bodies so we really don''t know what happened to them but it probably isn''t good and it''s why we don''t want to risk any more people getting taken by these traps."
Donnypletely understood being extra wary of something they didn''t understand when there was a good chance it was doing something very simr to the gargoyles that had been grabbing people to turn into undead. "Go ahead." Seeing that Rigbis had just called on another person, Donny went back to stand next to Keel while listening to the next person''s idea.
Chapter 287: Practice
Chapter 287: Practice
"I think something is happening, I think they stopped." Thest few times the arrow had picked up Dawn it had been pointed at the same exact direction and while they could be running away from them still just in a new direction he felt like they might have stopped for a reason.
"Do you think they might be resting for a while, it''s been hours since we got word that Dawn had been taken so maybe they''re tired from running this whole time." Lake thought this sounded very usible and said. "That''s probably what it is. They must not know we''re after them like thest person." There was a small chance this was a trap but he didn''t feel like there was a real chance of this being true but he still wanted to check.
Not needing the arrow to tell them where to go any more, Lake tried to think of a setting for Detector that could tell them if this was a trap that they were running towards. Wondering if people about to fall for a trap would work, Lake set Detector and a secondter was happy to find neither of them were glowing.
Setting Detector back so that he would know if the person who had Dawn started to move again Lake wondered how much longer it might be before they caught up to them. With them not moving, Lake felt like they would arrive within an hour based on what he knew about the size of the Holy Domain which they were still in.
It would probably be a lot faster actually since the amount of time they had already been chasing them they had to be really close. "I''m about to change my tracking method because I think we''re getting close so I won''t be telling you where to go for a while."
Setting Detector to look for Dawn without using the arrow anymore, Lake waited to see a golden person appear in front of them. Less than twenty minutes Later Lake saw someone with Mana vision and said. "Slow down, I''ll tell you when you can stop moving." The people he was seeing weren''t in range of Detector yet so he still needed them to get closer to make sure it was the people they were after.
After slowly creeping forward for a while the two people in front of them finally entered Range and seeing one of them start to glow Lake gave the Temple Head a thumbs up. Getting off of her back, Lake activated Mute and crouched down next to a tree. He knew the Temple Head would be going first and that she probably wanted him toe from another direction likest time but neither of them wanted to speak this close to the person on the off chance they heard them and ran so he was just assuming.
Watching the Temple Head start to move forward again, Lake silently headed off in another direction toe around the back of the person they would be ambushing. Moving quickly because he had arger distance to coverpared to the Temple Head and because he had Mute so he didn''t have to worry about the amount of noise he made, Lake got around to the other side before the Temple Head had even attacked.
Getting an arrow ready Lake waited for her to get the person''s attention if she failed to take them out likest time. Less than a secondter Lake saw a sh of light and the person fell to the ground with no head. Seeing the Temple Head had decided to just use magic this time since there wasn''t a chance of hitting Dawn who was on the ground a few feet away from their target Lake walked out of the bushes he had been hiding in towards the body.
"It was a lot easier this time huh, you ready to head back?" Hearing the Temple Heads wordske was about to ask if she wanted him to check the body first but he guessed there wasn''t much of a reason without its head. "Yeah."
...
With the meeting done all Donny could think of was wanting to find the scouts who had been sent out to investigate so he could ask them about all the small details that had been left out of the meeting. Donny''s father had always said in situations like these to never ignore any bad feelings you had since it seemed people''s instincts were a lot more trustworthy than you would think and this advice had served him well so he nned to find them as fast as he could.
"Hey Keel, do you know who was sent out to investigate?" Keel had probably been in themand room when the scouts got back so he should know their faces. "Yes but I do not know where they are at the moment." This was fine because it gave him a way to find them. "Would you point them out to me if you see them?"
Seeing Keel nod Donny was about to go back to the room their team was in when Keel asked. "I will but Why?" Donny had no reason to hide him being curious so he said. "I just want to ask them about a few things and didn''t want to bother Rigbis with it." Keel seemed satisfied with this answer because he turned and started to walk away.
Doing the same, Donny was back in their room in a few minutes and was about to start training again when he saw a huddle of people in one of the rooms corners. He wasn''t able to hear what they were saying so he started to walk over because he was curious what they could be talking about.
"I''m telling you it''s weird that the other team didn''t find any of those things we should askmander Rigbis to make sure they''re still who they were when they went out." Hearing this person was spreading rumors that could lead to the situation he had been worried about before the meeting Donny walked into the group and said. "We''ve already looked into that. We haven''t been infiltrated, we were just unlucky finding that thing."
He wanted to nip this in the bud now before this kind of talk spread any further. "Donny listen I''m telling you it''spletely possible a few of the people they sent into buildings were tuned without the other people they were with noticing."
Donny knew there was always a small chance but not wanting to feed into this at all said. "We have people checking our identities constantly. Four different people came into this room yesterday making sure no one had been cursed while we were out on our mission. We would have found anyone who shouldn''t be here by now."
He could tell his words were working on all the people around but the guy he was arguing with still wasn''t convinced. "The Demon Worshipers are constantly finding new ways to trick us. Just because our skills say everything is alright doesn''t mean anything."
"What would you like us to do? We already segregated the two groups that went out into their own rooms that they aren''t allowed to leave. That''s more than enough." The next step would be to start throwing random people into cells which waspletely ridiculous when there was no evidence that anything was wrong in the fortress.
"Mendy, Vice-captain Donny is right there''s nothing wrong with how we''re doing it now. Even if there is a person that''s being controlled or has been reced they won''t be able to get out into the rest of the fortress." Donny would have preferred if the other person just agreed with him that there weren''t any traitors but this was good enough with this Mendy guy being done talking.
"Would you all like to run some more drills?" It was a great way for them to pass time while they were being kept away from the others. Seeing a lot of people go and grab their weapons Donny smiled and wondered if it would be ok if he set a formation inside this room. He knew a small formation that would make small flying things that they could use as targets; he just wasn''t sure if the guards outside their room would like it.
Deciding it would be fine Donny got to work and soon twenty small balls were flying around the room in random directions. "Alright everyone pick one and try to catch it. Whoever hits one first gets to tell the others what move to practice to do." They were all extremely bored so making this into a game was one of the best ways to get everyone who wasn''t asleep to participate.
A few minutes after the game started the game Keel walked into the room and said. "Donny the scouts are in themand room right now if you want to wait in the hallway to talk to them when they walk out." He wasn''t allowed into themand room if he wasn''t invited to keep him from hearing anything he wasn''t supposed to so waiting in the hallway was his only option.
Chapter 288: Passing Time In The Fortress
Chapter 288: Passing Time In The Fortress
Donny wasn''t sure how long he had been waiting for the scouts to exit the meeting they were holding inside themand room but he was starting to think it wasn''t going to end anytime soon. He wasn''t really supposed to be out of the room his team was in either unless he had been called by Rigbis so he was starting to think he should go back.
On the off chance something bad happened he could see him being out of the room by himself for so long really being a problem. Starting to walk away Donny kept stopping and looking back thinking he would get lucky and the meeting would end as he was walking away but turning the corner with still nothing he just walked all the way back to the room.
Opening the door and seeing that the group he had broken upst time had reformed in the corner, Donny walked over to see if it was the same person causing problems again. If it was he wasn''t sure what he would do about it but he thought maybe it would be good to get them away from anyone that was willing to listen to him by sticking him into the corner permanently.
Pushing a few of the people in the group out of the way Donny looked into the center to see the same guy from earlier was the one who was causing themotion. Donny didn''t even listen to what the guy was saying and started to talk over him. "All right that''s enough, the rest of you go and find something else to do." Seeing he had startled the guy into shutting up, Donny grabbed him by the shoulder and said. "If I see you do that one more time I''m going to have to do something about it. You''re going to cause a panic over nothing so if you think what you''re doing is helping it isn''t."
Donny didn''t really want to threaten the guy just yet so he left the punishment vague in the hopes it wouldn''te to him ever actually needing to say what he would do. "I''m telling you there''s something going on with the other team." Seeing the guy still hadn''t gotten it though his head Donny was about to iste him away from the others by making him stand in the corner like you would do to a child.
He didn''t think throwing this guy into a jail cell was necessary just yet so this would be all he did for now. "Listen I''m not saying I don''t believe you could be right but I need you to stand over there for a while until I say you don''t have to anymore."
Donny didn''t like how weak the punishment came off since it wasn''t a real deterrent but he didn''t want to make the rest of the team think he was going overboard with the treatment especially since he didn''t really know how many of them were friends with this guy.
Them all turning on him while they were stuck here was about as bad as them panicking and drawing their weapons on someone because both could lead to a fight. "Are you putting me in time out?" Donny could tell the guy was insulted but just shrugged and said. "For now. With Keel in a meeting I don''t think giving you a real punishment is appropriate. I just don''t want you whispering something while I''m not looking."
"Alright fine I''ll stop." Donny thought about it and decided to let the guy off. With him here he really didn''t think it would happen again since both times he had seen it had been whening back into the room. "Ok well forget the punishment then." After he said this Donny walked back towards the rest of the people so they could resume the training game they had been trying to y when Kell had told him he could wait in the hallway.
"Donny the meeting is over and the scouts said they had the time to talk to you for a bit before they went back out." Hearing Keel''s voice Donny looked towards the door to see him standing there waiting for an answer. "Ok I''ming."
He still really wanted to ask the scouts about the thing to see what the one they had found looked like exactly. He really wanted to know if it was the same one and if it had moved somehow or if it waspletely different.
The one they had found had two different sets of clothes on the two bodies so he felt they might be able to tell if it was the same one if he asked them about the clothes. "This is Donny, I''m sure you have at least heard of him before so I''m not going to do a real introduction." After Keel said this he walked back towards their room which Donny was fine with.
He was actually happy someone in charge other than him would be looking after all of them. Turning back to the scouts Donny started by saying. "Sorry about not waiting. I didn''t want to be away from the team for too long and I don''t think any of us expected for your meeting tost that long."
"It''s fine, so what did you want to ask us about?" Seeing he didn''t need to do any more small talk he guessed these three were on a tight schedule so he cut to the chase. "I wanted to ask about the clothes that the thing was wearing."
"Lets see, they were both wearing armor but it wasn''t the same, one had gold trim around the shoulders but the other was toocking in detail to really tell you anything about it. Just ssic te armor." Thinking back to the five people that had been trapped by whatever it was that they had found, Donny had to think this description matched two of them.
If these things made more of themselves it would follow the ssic Demon Worshiper strategy of fighting where they turned your own army into more enemies as you fought. That meant from the five people that had been trapped there would be two more of those things out there that someone could identally find.
It made him wonder what happened to the fifth person though. They weren''t there when the scouts got there and they hadn''te back to the fortress so the thing definitely did something to it. His best guess would be that they had been turned into a regr undead that was out in the city somewhere looking for people to trick or if they were the mindless type, kill.
"Alright thank you, you''ve been helpful." After a brief goodbye from each of the scouts Donny headed back to the room to talk to Keel. With this new information nothing would really change for them right now but it was good for them to get word to Rigbis that this was the purpose of the thing that had trapped their people.
Seeing Keel hadn''t actually done anything with the people in their team and was instead just sitting at one of the tables silently Donny started to wonder what the meeting he had just gotten out of might have been about. He decided he would ask after he told him about the fact the people who were trapped got turned into more of those things.
"Keel, I asked the scouts about the clothing that the thing was wearing and it seems it was our people that had been turned. I know it doesn''t really do anything for us to know that I just figured you could mention it to Rigbis next time you see him."
Keel didn''t give him much of a response which made him want to ask what was wrong even more. The news he had just given Keel wasn''t something most people could just ignore so he knew whatever was on Keel''s mind had to be important whether it be bad or good. "Can you talk about what the meeting earlier was about?"
"No but you''ll hear about it soon enough." Seeing Keel go back to staring at the table after he said this Donny started to get worried. This kind of confirmed that whatever was going on was bad and there might be nothing they could do about it if they weren''t sounding the rm now.
Hopefully it was something happening far away that they couldn''t do anything about and not something that would be unstoppable that there wasn''t even a point in trying to fight that wasing to kill them all. Done with Keel Donny looked around to see if that guy was keeping to himself like he had said he would.
Not seeing anyrge groups formed in any of the corners he figured it was fine and took a seat before realizing it was time for them to switch who was sleeping. Getting up he called the names of the people who got to sleep next and told them to wake up someone and take their ce.
Chapter 289: The Dagger
Chapter 289: The Dagger
"I''m going after the dagger next right?" He already knew this but with the temple in sight Lake just wanted to make sure the Temple Head still wanted him to do this. "Yeah but it might take a while for Tiffany to want to leave. She''s going to want to make sure Dawn is fine before she''s ready."
Lake was fine with this, he had time to kill until the people that were going to the Metal Domain to destroy the barrier got there so staying in the Temple wasn''t that bad of a way to kill time. He would really only care if it took too long for Dawn to get better. "Do you have a library here?"
Lake couldn''t help but ask because he felt it was good to read at least a single book about magic whenever he got a chance and thinking back to the other Temple of Light he had been in there was arge amount of books. "There are some books but I wouldn''t really call it a library."
Lake only nned on reading one at most so he didn''t really care if there were enough to call it a library. "Alright I''ll be reading whenever she''s ready." Lake didn''t want to watch a dramatic reunion so he nned to stay away from the medical room. Splitting off from the Temple Head Lake found someone and asked. "Do you know where I can find some books?"
"I do, what kind are you looking for?" Lake guessed they were asking him if he wanted fiction or nonfiction so he said. "Anything about magic." The man nodded and brought him into a room with mats on the floor and a few stacks of books. There were a few other people inside all sitting and reading so Lake knew he had been brought to the right ce. Not wanting to disturb them, Lake gave the man who had brought him here a silent thankyou and went to look through the books.
...
"Tiff the Temple Head just got back with Dawn." Hearing the words that hade out of Greg''s mouth she couldn''t believe how fast they had been able to return. Chasing people down usually took a lot longer but apparently Lake''s skill in tracking things down was the best the Temple Head had ever seen.
Running to the infirmary she saw Dawn in the same bed she had been in just a few hours ago. "It doesn''t seem to be the same poison used on Tiffany so it will take us longer than we had hoped to wake her up." Tiff kind of ignored what the doctor had been saying and tapped the Temple Head''s shoulder.
"Was it the same people who took me?" the Temple Head shrugged at her question and said. "We weren''t able to look at the face of the person who took her because it was destroyed in the fight but it''s fine. Our people will be back with more information soon."
After the Temple Head said this Tiff realized Lake wasn''t in the room and was worried he had left before she had been able to use him to find the dagger. "Did Lake leave already?" Seeing the Temple Head start to shake her head Tiff was relieved. "Where is he then?"
She wasn''t any help here at the moment and because of all the doctors she couldn''t really see Dawn at all so instead of standing here looking at the back of a doctors head she figured she could use this time to talk to Lake about what they would do to find the dagger. "He''s in one of the reading areas. He said he would be there when you were ready to go."
Hearing Lake was fine with waiting Tiff started to second guess her n to go see him but the thought of waiting here worried with nothing to do sounded bad to her. She just hoped she came back before Dawn woke up. "I''m going to go see him. I''ll be back soon." As she was walking out Tiff got a brief glimpse of Dawn''s sleeping face and she was happy to find that she just looked like she was sleeping normally.
Finding her way to the biggest reading room Tiff poked her head in to see a person she thought was probably Lake on one of the mats. Walking over to him she was about to start talking when she realized he was sleeping. Crouching down and taking the book off of his face she realized she was right and he had fallen asleep while reading.
Guessing rescuing Dawn had worn him out she decided to leave him alone but she didn''t want to put the book back on his face so she put it on top of the closest stack and started to walk away.
...
Opening his eyes Lake realized something had happened to the book he had been using to block the light. This room was well lit so when he had realized how tired he was he had decided to use the book to cover his face for the small amount of time he would need to sleep. "Where''d my book go?"
Sitting up Lake looked around but saw Tiff looking at him before he found the book. "Tiff, are you ready to leave?" He had only gotten a few minutes of sleep but that should be enough to go look for a dagger he already had. "No, not quite. I just wanted to talk to you about the mission we will be leaving for once Dawn is awake."
Hearing they weren''t leaving just yet Lakeid back down on the mat and asked. "How long have you all been looking for the dagger?" Lake was pretty sure it had been around a month since he had stolen it but that didn''t mean they realized right away. "I''m not sure. I spend a lot of time indoors but it''s probably been around two weeks."
Hearing two weeks, Lake thought back to the first time he had been asked by Lucas about the dagger. At that time he had been spending a lot of time indoors as well so while the days blended together a bit he was sure it had been around two or three weeks ago. "In two weeks you should have a clue of who took it, should I expect a fight?"
...
"I don''t think there will be any from who has it but that doesn''t mean we won''t run into anyone. We might have to travel far depending on where your skill leads us and there are Demon Worshipers everywhere." As soon as Tiff stepped outside the timer for when the first Demon Worshiper found her scent would start since she had a Holy affinity.
This meant if she followed Lake for too long he and her would be battling whoever they sent after her until they found a temple to hide in. "I''m not worried about fighting Demon Worshipers, I was just hoping I wouldn''t have to anger another group by fighting them."
Hearing Lake didn''t care about fighting Demon Worshipers Tiff was reminded that he was involved in what was happening in the Metal Domain. She had been wanting to ask someone who had actually been there what was going on but the amount of people she had met that hade from there was one and she had been more worried about Dawn thest time they had met.
"So what is it actually like in the Metal Domain right now?" This was thest thing she was going to ask him before heading back to the infirmary but she felt like his story was going to be pretty long.
...
Lake didn''t really know where to start with what was going on in the Metal Domain but he didn''t think that mattered too much because her question had given him an idea. He needed to get away from Tiff long enough to hide the dagger because there was no way to to just hand it to her at this point without making everyone in the Temple mad at him for wasting their time.
The Metal domain was the only ce he could think of that was hectic enough to pull this off. "It''s bad. I really don''t even know if there''s anything we can do about it at this point. We might be witnessing the next Dark Domain." As he was saying this Lake pictured him leading her there telling her that was what direction the dagger was in.
Then once they were there he would be able to lead her into the city once the barrier came down and hide the bag the dagger was in inside a random building. This would also allow him to be around when the battle started so he could show the Temple Head of the Metal Temple that he was helping even if he didn''t do that much in reality.
"You really think that will happen?" Seeing his words had affected Tiff more than he expected, Lake shrugged. He could tell his uncertainness hadn''t really helped but a few secondster she said. "I''m going to go back to the infirmary now." Watching her go, Lake wondered if her being this worried would keep her from wanting to go to the Metal Domain even if it was for the dagger.
Chapter 290: Medical Leave
Chapter 290: Medical Leave
Stepping into the infirmary Tiff saw the number of doctors that were working around Dawn had dropped down to three and she was able to get her first real look at her. She looked just fine like how she had earlier so Tiff wasn''t sure if anything had been done to her yet. "Have they given her an antidote yet?"
The Temple Head gave her a small nod before saying. "About a minute before you walked in. They said the poison they used on her wasn''t as strong as the one you suffered so she could be up soon." Tiff hoped the t was true, while she didn''t want to have to rush out of the room right after Dawn got up she did have something she needed to do for the God of Light.
"Her eyes seem to be moving. This is a good sign that she will wake up soon. You all cane closer to the bed now if you want." After the doctor said this he and the other two backed off to let whoever wanted to be there next to Dawn when she opened her eyes get close. Tiff didn''t even look at the other members of the 23 that had been silently waiting in all the empty parts of the room and took the spot that was the closest to Dawn''s face.
She had been trying to stay away from the others to give them time to get over what had happened but right now she didn''t really care if they didn''t want to be around her. The rest of the bed quickly got surrounded by the members of the 23 that were more worried about Dawn than the grudge they had against her and all of them waited for Dawn to finally open her eyes.
As she was waiting Tiff tried to think what she should say to make Dawn realize she hadn''t been taken to some jail somewhere she would never be found. Sadly as Dawn''s eyes started to open she still hadn''t prepared anything so she just quickly asked. "Dawn, can you hear me?"
"Tiff? Is that you?" Tiff was happy that her hasty words had made Dawn realize what was happening. As a gifted member of the 23 Dawn was much stronger than her currently so if she went on the attack right away in the hopes of surprising her captors it would have been bad for her and the others that were next to the bed.
"Yeah, you''re in the infirmary. Do you remember what happened?" It had only taken about a second to pass out from the poison powder that had hit her in the face so if Dawn hadn''t seen the poisoning it was possible she didn''t even remember it happening. "Someone was chasing me when I tried to return to the Temple for the Light Domain. I''m guessing it got me and you guys saved me."
That was close enough to the truth for Tiff so she didn''t try to exin what exactly happened because they weren''t sure quite yet. "How do you feel?" Other people could tell Dawn about the situationter so Tiff just wanted to see how she was doing before she left. "I''m alright. I feel a little groggy but I think that''s normal."
It seemed Dawn was in better condition than she was when she had been healed from the sleep poison. This made her feel a little better about having to leave now. Giving the other members of the 23 a small look before she bent down and gave Dawn a hug Tiff whispered. "Someone who can help me find the dagger is here so I have to go. Sorry."
Tif could tell Dawn was a little sad that she was leaving already but soon her face went back to normal and she whispered back. "I''ll see you when you get back. There will probably be a special ceremony for you once you get the dagger back so I look forward to it." Tiff could tell Dawn was saying this instead of getting mad at her for leaving so she made a distressed face so Dawn could tell her joke had made her think about the whole temple gathering to watch her activate the Divine Weapon for the first time.
As she walked away Tiff heard the other members start to talk to Dawn as soon as she was out of the room and was happy the others would keep herpany. "Are you about to leave?" Hearing Gregs voice Tiff turned around and saw he was standing next to the infirmary door. "Yes."
Tiff had noticed Greg hadn''t been in the infirmary but she had figured it was because he was training like he always was. Seeing him silently wait out here made her wonder if he was up to something. "Are you leaving with that guy in the reading room?" Even if she found Greg strange sometimes Tiff trusted him enough to tell him what she was doing so she nodded.
"Well if you find the person who took the dagger and they don''t attack, you should tell them toe to the Temple. They''ll be very helpful for theter parts of the war." Hearing all Greg wanted was for her to try and recruit Jon if she found him she nodded and said. "Alright, I think that''s a good idea."
As she was walking away Tiff could tell she was unconsciously starting to be nicer to Greg because he was the only member of the 23 other than Dawn still talking to her. She felt this might be a good thing that would finally allow her to get over the grudge she had over how much better he had been treated as they were being trained.
Being treated how she was by the others she knew it was time to get over it and start being friendly to Greg. There was the problem that she didn''t really want to hate him and she was just unable to get past it but she felt if she tried harder she would be able to finally get over it.
...
Opening the book after finishing the rest of the sleep he needed to get back to top condition, Lake was about to start reading the first section of the book when he saw Tiff walk in again. He could tell by how her face looked and the bag she had that they were probably about to leave so he put the book back and stood up.
"Are we leaving?" It was the easiest way to start the conversation so Laske just asked anyway even though he already knew. "Yeah, do you have anything you need to do in the city before you leave?" Lake briefly thought about heading to the Alchemist guild after Tiff asked this but he had just been there and hadn''t needed to use any of the supplies he had yet so he said. "No, I''m ready."
Like always Lake could tell the energy between them was somewhat awkward so he pretended he didn''t notice and pulled out an arrow. Spinning it he didn''t actually use Detector but he did pretend he had picked up the dagger. "Alright let''s get outside so I know where we''re going."
As they were walking Lake didn''t want her to ask where it was saying they should go because she might know in which direction the Metal Domain was even while inside the Temple so he asked. "Are we not bringing anyone else?" He understood the benefits of traveling as a small group but he was pretty sure Tiff was important to the Temple by the way the Temple Head was acting while they went after her so he felt it was weird if it was only them going.
"No just us but if we end up having to go too far I might stop at a temple to request help." Hearing her n, Lake knew this would most likely not happen. He had run to the Metal domain and back a few times now and knew there weren''t any big towns or anything that were still standing that they could find help in.
Stepping outside Lake pointed and said. "We''re heading that direction. What are the odds it''s just down the street, how would you feel about that?"
...
Tiff heard Lake''s question but she was more focused on what he said before he asked it. The direction he had just pointed was the same exact direction the tracker the thieves had given them had pointed. "Alright let''s get going." It wasn''t until they ran out of city that she realized she hadn''t actually ever answered Lake''s question.
"It looks like it isn''t in the city. I guess I would have preferred it to be if I''m being honest." It would have been a lot safer for her if it had been right down the street from the Temple. She would have been mad at Jon for not keeping his word though if he was living so close.
Chapter 291: Barriers Or Wards
Chapter 291: Barriers Or Wards
They had been running towards the Metal domain for almost two hours already and while they had been traveling in silence Lake was about to break that pattern. "Hey Tiff, we''re going to catch up to the group heading to the Metal Domain soon and since it seems we''re heading there do you want to join them or keep going at our own speed?"
"I''m in a bit of a hurry to get the dagger. I can''t tell you why but the faster we find it the better." Lake was fine with that but he did want to chase them down to see if they were still fine. "Do you mind if we go and check on them? Actually, if the dagger is in the city there''s no way for us to get to it anyway so we should stay with them."
Lake had forgotten that he could just make things up to get what he wanted for a second. "Do you think it''s inside the Metal Domain barrier?" Lake nodded and decided to line up the fact that they would find it inside of a random building. "Yeah it doesn''t seem to be moving and that probably means whoever has it is trapped in the barrier."
There were other possibilities but Tiff seemed to take his word for it and didn''t ask any more questions for a while and Lake led them towards the group that Hin was in by using the magicpass technique.
Eventually he saw them off in the distance but he could tell they were in a fight. "They look fine but this fight seems to be a bit more intense than thest one I saw." Lake wasn''t sure how many they had gotten into since he had left but with four barriers visible from where he was looking he had no idea how long this battle could take.
"Wow it''s rare to see Demon Worshipers fight this way. I wonder who they''re being led by." Hearing Tiff''s words he wondered if she could tell him more about the Demon Worshipers army structure so he asked. "How does the Demon army work? I kind of figured most of them just kind of did their own thing most of the time."
When he had been clearing out Demon Worshipers in the Metal Domain most of the groups he had found didn''t seem to be involved in the plot that was currently holding the Metal Domain hostage. He was sure they would have helped once it started but they seemed to be doing random things when he had found them which made him think the army didn''t have much structure.
"You''re right, most of them don''t really have anything to do with the main army. But these that we''re looking at right now are from an organized group that has a special purpose to the army. There''s a good chance that there''s a giant nearby so let''s stay hidden." Hearing Tiff thought they should keep their presence hidden until something big happened he agreed and got into a more hidden spot.
...
Tiff couldn''t help but think this would be a great chance to get ahold of the next divine core so another member of the 23 could ascend. She knew she was being kind of reckless if she actually tried to fight a giant by herself with none of the other members of the 23 around but this didn''t really get in the way of what she was supposed to be doing.
If they just happened to get attacked by a giant there was nothing she could do about it and she would be forced to fight it. "Wow they took that barrier down like it was nothing. It looks like they n to take one down at a time." With three groups of Demon Worshipers it made sense for them to focus on one of them at a time whenever they got a chance to attack.
"How are they defending from the group that''s only attacking when the barrieres down?" Every time their group attacked they dropped the barrier and with three groups on the opposing side there was always a group that was able to attack them at that time so she could understand why someone would ask this. "It looks like one of the people in the group knows a masterwork shield formation. You see that formation that never seems to lose its power? That''s probably protecting them better than the barrier they''re using."
...
Hearing another term he had never heard before Lake didn''t let the moment pass and asked Tiff. "What does masterwork formation mean?" He could guess it was just how people described a formation that was designed much better than normal but he wanted to be sure. "Most formations that are taught to you in a ss aren''t always suited for you which causes them to be less efficient so it''s best to redesign the formation for yourself to better match your mana and once the formation passes a certain level of efficiency it''s considered a masterwork like any other crafted item."
"So why are they using the barrier at all if that shield formation is able to block everything?" He understood the benefit of more than one form of defense but he also understood asking questions that you thought you knew the answer to had its own benefits. "Barriers stop more than just spells; skills and intruders are the main reason to use them over a shield formation."
Lake had already known these two things about barriers but hadn''t realized a shield formation wouldn''t stop a skill or someone sneaking up on you. There was something else he wanted to ask about though he had already lost the ward ring when all of his gear had been destroyed he wanted to know what a ward was. "What''s a ward?"
"Wards are pretty much shield formations you don''t have to activate yourself. I don''t really know how they work but they can tell when something was meant as an attack and stop it while allowing it when there was no malice or no way it could hurt you."
"They don''t stop skills though, right?" There had been a lot of times that his ward ring hadn''t done anything when he felt it should have and he was guessing it was because the skill that had been used on him couldn''t be blocked by the ward. "It depends on the ward and the skill but it''s best to assume that a ward won''t help against skills when you''re in a fight. They''re really good at stopping people from seeing your stats though so it''s good to have one."
As an attack you really couldn''t seeing Lake guessed something like a ward was the best to stop people looking at your stats so he wished his hadn''t been destroyed or that he had taken the time to get a new one but he knew that with Detector he could find one as soon as he got back to the Metal Domain with all the bodiesying around.
"Alright I''m going to go sit over there, tell me if anything interesting happens." After he said this Lake did exactly what he said he was going to and sat down on a log that was nearby. These types of battles were really boring and he had watched one yesterday so he had no interest in this one.
...
"It''s time for the meeting where Rigbis is going to share the news. Get the Team ready to go." Hearing Keel talk for the first time in a few hours Donny was relieved that he finally got to hear what the meeting that had sent Keel into such a weird mood was about. Relieved probably wasn''t the best word since it was most likely going to be bad but after a few hours of knowing it wasing and having no idea what it was since Keel couldn''t tell him he did feel relieved.
It had been a type of mental torture just sitting here and wondering what was going to happen. "Wake everyone up and get ready to walk to the big room." Donny wasn''t actually sure where the meeting was going to be since Keel hadn''t told him but the room where they had been put into their teams was probably where they would end up since it was sorge.
Once the team was ready Donny walked back over to Keel who was still sitting at the table and said. "We''re ready." As he got up Keel looked back at the group and said. "We''re heading to hear bad news. I want you all to keep it together and don''t let yourselves panic. We''re still going to be fine."
Keel still wasn''t able to tell any of them what this was about but Donny was happy he said this and didn''t let whatever came out of Rigbis'' mouth be aplete surprise to the group. Donny had kind of wanted to do a simr thing but wasn''t sure if he was allowed and didn''t want to get Keel in trouble for telling him if he wasn''t supposed to say anything at all.
"Alright, follow behind Keel." Donny nned to walk in the back while they moved so he would be able to see anyone who tried to split from the group. This would be a perfect chance for anyone who wasn''t on their side to get out into the fortress.
Chapter 292: Orders Now
Chapter 292: Orders Now
As they walked in Donny saw they were the only group to arrive just yet and wondered if maybe Keel in his distressed state hadn''t kept the track of time correctly. He didn''t say anything about this though and just silently waited for other people or Keel to say something. He didn''t think that would happen though because when he looked at Keel he was just looking at the ground.
After a while Rigbis and his entourage showed up and Donny apologized to Keel in his mind for thinking he had messed up. It seemed they had only been a few minutes early in reality. Going back to waiting since none of the other groups had shown up yet Donny tried to read the faces of the people near Rigbis like he always did whenever he knew they had news for the fortress.
Like thest time he had done this he didn''t get much from the faces of the people close to Rigbis and he was pretty sure the people who looked upset were the same people that had thest time. Sincest time it had been good news about rescue Donny guessed trying to read the faces of any of them was aplete waste of time.
Like this they all waited till another group of people walked in. Donny looked at some of the faces and found it was the people that hadn''t been put into either team when he saw Fendis with them so all that was left was the other team and they could finally hear what Rigbis had to say.
After a while Donny started to get worried and when he saw the people in Rigbis'' group whispering he knew he wasn''t the only person who thought it was a bad sign that the other team hadn''te yet. As he was wondering if in fact they had been infested by Demon Worshipers and undead when they went outside a few days ago Donny looked around for the guy he had been yelling at all day to shut up about infiltrators so he wouldn''t cause a panic.
Donny would really hate it if this guy thought he had been the only person to see thising if it ended up being true because that wasn''t the case at all, Donny had just shut him up so no one would panic because what he had been saying was a real threat. There had also been nothing they could have really done about the other team since they weren''t allowed to leave their room.
"It seems we might be in the middle of a situation. I would ask the two groups that are here to move to either side of the room in case there are more threats spread among you." After they had all done what Rigbis had told them to he continued to talk. "I have just sent a group out to see what is keeping the other team. If it is what we all fear, we need to be ready to fight whoeveres through that door even if they look like our allies."
Donny had no problems killing someone who looked like someone he knew if they tried to attack him but he was sure there were others here that wouldn''t be able to do it so it was good Rigbis was making them think about this. It would help get them ready to do what they needed to if it came to a fight.
A few minutes Later all of them heard a scream from outside of the room and turned towards the door in preparation of what wasing only to be surprised by another scream from behind them. Since the second scream was closer they all turned towards the stage and saw a small fight had broken out between the people that had been with Rigbis and on the ground between the two groups was Rigbis obviously being the one who had screamed.
"Keel there already in the room, orders now!" Keel was in charge of their team so Donny gave him a chance to be the one to give the first orders. "Everyone near the wall. Donny get a barrier ready but don''t activate it yet." Donny was happy that Keel had snapped out of the mindless mood he had been in and did as he was told.
With his barrier ready toe up at a moment''s notice Donny was able to look away from it and look around to see if any other fights had started in the room yet. After checking the other group of people on the other side of the room and seeing them still calm and united Donny looked back up onto the stage to watch the fight that was still taking ce.
Since both sides looked like normal people Donny wasn''t able to tell which side was there or if they were winning so it was a weird feeling whenever someonended an attack. He didn''t know if it was good or not so it was causing constant confusion as he watched. "Hey Keel, what was the news Rigbis was going to break to us?"
Donny didn''t think it would matter too much if Keel told him what the big secret was since it seemed the fortress was filled with enemies. "The Metal Temple was overrun around seven hours ago. Rigbis was going to tell everyone what happened to some notable people that are popr to the people of the Metal Domain and the fact the forces that had been besieging the Metal Temple would most likely being this way soon."
Hearing the Metal Temple had fallen Donny couldn''t lie and say it hadn''t affected him at all. It was like a small chill ran through his body for a second but right now wasn''t the time for him to get caught up in his emotions. The screams from outside the room had happened a while ago so it shouldn''t be much longer till there were things attacking them.
Almost right after he thought this the door to the room was smashed open and Donny could tell almost right away that they were dealing with undead. Normal people didn''t have the ghostly appearance that mindless undead did so it was really easy to tell when you were dealing with them.
Seeing it rush towards the closest person to it and be struck with a spell Donny looked away from the door it hade in through and looked at Keel. "What are we doing?" They needed to go and reim the fortress before the intruderspletely took it over and opened a gate to let more enemies in and so far Keel hadn''t shown any signs he nned to do any more.
"Waiting." There were reasons for them to do this but since Keel hadn''t given any Donny started to worry that maybe Keel didn''t have any and was panicking too much to think. It didn''t make sense for someone at Keels rank to act like this but thest few hours made it clear the news about the Temple had affected him heavily and he wasn''t in top condition at the moment.
"Keel we need to move towards the gate and secure it." Donny was sure there were a few other smaller entrances but the gate should be their top priority. It would also make sense for him to make a barrier there since it would help protect the gate if there was going to be an attack from outside as this was happening. "You''re right. Give the orders."
Hearing Keel give himmand Donny yelled over the noise of the room and gave his orders. "Into the hallway!" He made it loud enough so if any of the people that weren''t in a team wanted to follow him they knew what he was doing. Of course this would allow any enemies who were hidden within this room to go with him but there was nothing he could do about this.
As they moved he could tell no one wanted to follow him out into the hallways that were infested with an unknown number of undead but they did as they had been told and a few extras from the other group joined them including Fendis. Like he had thought he felt very wary of the others that had followed them but he didn''t fear for his life just the other people in his group.
Knowing it wasn''t the time to hold back Donny started to weave a formation he had learned from the shield and held it in front of him. He could feel how unstable it was as they moved but the fact it was holding together this time really showed that he had made a lot of progress in mana control in just thest few weeks.
As they turned the first corner Donny saw arge group of undead doing something to a small group of bodies. Not wanting to give them the time to finish whatever it was they were doing Donny sent the shield formation forward to cut them in half.
This was the first time he had tried to use this formation to attack since he had never had enough control to keep it stable this long so he wasn''t sure if it would even work but when he saw it pass through the undead like the shield did he put his worries in the back of his mind and kept moving towards the gate.
Chapter 293: Hey Tiff
Chapter 293: Hey Tiff
Entering the room the gate was in, Donny saw the guards were already dead and feared the gate had already been opened and then closed to hide the fact something had been let in. There was also the possibility that mindless undead had killed them and then left to find more prey but the fact the bodies were justying here and hadn''t beenpletely ripped apart or turned into more undead made him think the first thing was more usible.
"Keel, I think we should abandon the fort." It probably wasn''t going to be much safer outside but with the real possibility the Demon Worshipers had let themselves in there would definitely be something here that was capable of killing them all. "Why would we do that? The gate is still closed."
Donny nodded before telling Keel what he thought had happened before they got here. "I think it''s been opened already. You see how these bodies are in good condition? This probably means whoever killed them wasn''t the mindless undead we seem to be fighting on the way here."
It took Keel a second to respond but When he did Donny''s face quickly fell into worry. "Where would we go? The buildings outside are filled with those things." Donny hadn''t thought of the real possibility they would end up running into one of those things if they tried to enter into a building to hide. All it would take was for all of them to get close to one and the barrier toe down and it would be over for them if they weren''t able to do anything about it.
Donny really didn''t have the confidence that he would be able to get them out if it came down to it so he didn''t want to risk it outside. This meant they had to stay here and try to survive inside the same walls as Demon Worshipers until rescue arrived. Dissipating his shield formation Donny got ready to make a barrier but remembered Fendis was here.
With Fendis he would be able to make a barrier that fed off of the mana in the environment instead of draining himself so he called him over. "Fendis I need your help making a barrier. Let me see what you''ll be using as a mana siphon?" After he got a look at the best Fendis would be able to do to power the barrier Donny quickly designed a barrier around it and activated it as soon as it was ready.
Once they were enclosed Donny turned his attention to the people that were with him. Every single one of them including Fendis and Keel could be a problem so he needed to get everyone spread out. "Alright everyone into two man teams." Once they were all split up Donny said. "Sit on the ground back to back. If your teammate tries to move, yell. Keel on the other side of the barrier and help me watch everyone."
Once he was in position Donny started to look at each person while he worked on a n for them to get out of here or at least survive for a few days. Help wasing in a little less than two days but that was just when they would get here there was no way for him to know when they would get through the barrier and show up at the fortress.
There was also the problem that at any second some Demon Worshipers could show up and start trying to break the barrier they were hiding in/using to keep the gate closed. They could also already be in the barrier which was almost as bad as the two other things he had stated as problems with their current situation.
The only good thing about thest thing was he didn''t think the Demon Worshipers that were inside with them would act up until there was a situation that they could use to make sure they got the upper hand in the fight.
...
Seeing a group of Demon Worshipers get wiped out in this most recent exchange Tiff dropped down and said. "Only two groups remain." Lake didn''t react much to her words but she could tell he was thinking of something so she didn''t let it bother her because she had done a simr thing to him earlier.
She did need to talk to him about something though so she tried to get his attention again. "I think we should move on a bit closer to the Metal Domain. There''s a good chance we could get caught up in the fight if the Demon Worshipers n to run now that the fight is lost." This wasn''t her real reason for wanting to move but she didn''t want to tell him about the fact the Demon Worshipers would sense her because of her holy affinity if she stayed here much longer.
...
Hearing she wanted to move down the road where they could wait for their group Lake was fine with it. He didn''t need to have his eyes on them constantly to know they would be fine after hearing that they had already taken one of the other groups out. "How far would you like to go?"
"Let''s just run for around ten minutes. If we go full speed we should get far enough away." Lake nodded and got onto his feet to get ready to go. "Do you want me to lead or, who''s following who?" Up until now Lake had been in front but he was now acting like he was waiting for her. "Either''s fine."
After Lake said this Tiff couldn''t help but think he was messing with her because they were still just standing here waiting on the first person to go. "Alright I''ll go first." Turning and starting to run around where the groups were fighting up ahead Tiff wondered if the people the Temple Head had sent out to look into the people that had taken Dawn and her hade back yet.
She was still thinking about it and ''the coliseum did it'' wasn''t a good enough answer for her. Looking back at Lake Tiff wondered if when he said he could probably find anything she could use him to find the group that was after her and why. Of course she would only ask for his help again if the Temple Head didn''t have an answer when they got back.
...
Lake wasn''t sure why Tiff had been staring at him instead of looking where she was going but he felt they had run far enough so he said. "That looks like a good ce to stop." He was pointing at a nice rock logbo that they would be able to hide in while they sat on the log. "That''s fine."
As they were sitting down Lake remembered the reason they had moved and set Detector to look for Demon Worshipers. It was unlikely that any would be close enough for Detector to pick them up but it was good to be careful. With that done Lake decided the best way to pass time was to talk to Tiff about the Temple of Light since the first time they had met she didn''t seem to like it that much and had been trying to hire him to help her run away.
Of course he had been Jon at the time so he couldn''t ask in a straightforward way. "So how did youe to join the Temple? I figure I''ll probably be a member soon and I''ve been wondering how it works." He felt this was a good ce to start and he could try to tell how she felt about the Temple by her answers to future questions.
...
Tiff really didn''t want to tell Lake about how her family had been killed so she wasn''t sure how to answer this question. It was nothing against him but they weren''t close enough to talk about something like that so she just skipped to the second part of the question that he had asked. "It''s close to how you join a guild but there are a few other requirements. The light Temple for example makes you prove you can use the Light element."
As she was saying this she was pretty sure they would make an exception for Lake if he actually wanted to join because of his skills and all the things he had done to help. Realizing just how much he had done Tiff wanted to ask him a few things really fast since she was sure he was about to ask her something.
"Why haven''t you asked for any payment? Even a member of the Temple gets some gold for the things they do." She understood if he had a grudge against the Demon Worshipers or something like that but she hadn''t gotten that impression from him at all. At this point she was sure they would give him a pretty good sized bag of gold for everything he had done.
...
Lake had never even thought about asking for money for the things he had been doing since it had all been because the Insider had wanted him to do it but now that she asked he guessed he should have even if it was just a little. You never wanted to make yourself seem like you were happy to do things for free when in reality you needed money because whoever it was you were working for would get into the habit of giving you nothing.
"I figured we could worry about payment after everything was over. You guys seem to be going through it right now and I didn''t want to halt our progress to ask for money." He had just made this up but it seemed like a perfect answer since it made him seem polite while still getting him paidter.
This would be nice if he ended up falling short of the one million he needed after getting paid by the Metal Domain especially if he never got paid because they failed to save it. Lake was about to go back to asking his questions so he could get a better read of the Temple and Tiff when he had to stop.
It had been brief but he had just seen something golden pass by extremely quickly and since Detector was set to look for Demon Worshipers he knew whatever it was was heading for the battle they had just been watching. "Hey Tiff, someone really strong just ran by heading towards the battle."
Chapter 294: Bad Timing
Chapter 294: Bad Timing
"Do you want to go back to see if it''s a problem for them and they need our help?" Tiff didn''t think it was a great idea for her to go fight and she needed Lake alive to find the dagger so she didn''t want to go. They did need the group alive to open the barrier though so she wouldn''t fight against it if Lake said he was going.
...
Lake felt the Demon Worshiper wouldn''t be running towards the battle if they were useless so he felt it would be for the best if they went. "I think we should go back but if it looks bad we''ll just run. It would be sad if the Metal Domain stays trapped but there''s no point in fighting a battle we can''t win."
...
Tiff wondered what the Temple Head would say if she was here right now. On one hand some very powerful people that were part of the Temple were in that group and it would hurt if they lost them but she was sure the Temple Head would say she was more important to the Temple of Light now.
"Ok lets go." If the person was as fast as Lake made it sound they needed to go quickly and not waste too much time talking. Around ten minutester they were back where they had been before she had suggested they move away and she could tell whoever this new person was they had really changed this battle.
"I know the fact the barrier is shaking is a bad sign but it doesn''t necessarily mean it will break right?" Lake was right if your barrier got destabilized all you needed to do was restabilize it but the real problem was the amount of time it had taken the new person to shake them. If this continued eventually whoever it was that was in charge of the barrier would lose focus or all their mana and it would fall.
"They''re still fine but be ready to act if it goes down." On their way over Tiff hadn''t nned to get involved so she was a little surprised at how fast she had made up her mind just now. Her words sounded like they hade from a person who wanted to fight.
...
Hearing Tiff and him might go into a fight together he wished he could just give her the dagger now without it making him seem like aplete lunatic that had just been lying to everyone to make them do what he wanted. With how much the Temple seemed to want the dagger back he was sure it was a powerful weapon to someone like Tiff who had the Holy affinity.
He decided that if this fight got bad enough he would just give it to her not caring how it made him look. At the end of the day his life was worth more than his image, especially since in a world this big he could just move and take a new identity to get away from any problems he had caused.
"That spell just now was probably the new person we followed." Hearing Tiff talk about the giant spell that had just flown towards their allies barrier, Lake had to agree and remembered he could be using this time to try and think of a way for them to win this battle if he did have to get involved.
The most obvious thing was for him to use Wave on the new Demon Worshiper but they seemed kind of fast so he didn''t know if it would work. There was also a chance this Demon Worshiper was who the group had been trying to draw out this whole time and if he and Tiff joined the fight they would be messing up their n to take the Demon Worshiper out.
For all he knew, getting in the way could mess this up entirely and not being able to decide if this was right or not he decided to ask Tiff what she thought. "Tiff do you think this might be what our group is after? I traveled with them for a while and they were going slow on purpose to draw attention."
"It''s possible and I don''t think we''ll have to wait much longer to find out." Seeing what she was pointing at Lake was surprised at how fast the new Demon Worshiper was able tounch these giant spells that were shaking the barrier. It had only been a few seconds since thest one while all the smaller spells the other Demon Worshipers wereunching took minutes to fire again.
"Is that a masterwork formation the Demon Worshiper is using to fire the spells?" He had just learned about masterwork spells but if the criteria was efficiency he felt this formation met it. "I would have to say yes even though there''s no way to know for sure without studying it for longer."
"So what wins a masterwork attack formation or a masterwork shield formation?" He was sure it would depend on the formations in the matchup but he wanted to know if one had an advantage for some reason. "Shield formations tend to win if the two of them are the same strength unless there''s an unfortunate elemental sh."
Lake had figured that would be the case but he wanted to know why. "Why do shield formations win in a sh if the two are equal?"
"Win isn''t really the right word, it''s more of a draw but since the shield formation was meant to protect you a draw is a win." Lake understood what she meant and decided to go back to what she had said earlier about elemental shes. "In this case who has the elemental advantage?"
"I don''t know, Demon Worshipers tend to use mainly Unholy and Dark mixed in their formations but the person on our side could be mixing any element and I can''t tell just by looking at it since color can be changed like any other principle." Lake nodded and understood this was actually in their favor.
If they couldn''t tell there was a good chance the Demon Worshiper had no way of telling either. "They got the barrier restabilized." Looking back at the barrier of their allies, Lake saw what Tiff said was true. The barrier had stabilized just in time for the Demon Worshiper tounch their next attack.
The Timing of it made him wonder if it too was a trick like the speed at which they were moving. He could see them pretending to be closer to losing their barrier than they actually were to draw the Demon Worshiper to overmitting to an attack. From there he was guessing they would use the few seconds they had to drop their barrier and attempt their first attack on the next group of Demon Worshipers.
Lake didn''t know what target they would prioritize though with there still being two of the original groups left in addition to the new Demon worshiper who was all on their own. Realizing that this was still going to take forever with all that had changed was how high the stakes were, Lake could feel himself start to lose interest but didn''t let himself look away in case he was wrong and the group would need their help soon.
"They just dropped the barrier." Lakehad been watching this time so he had seen it happen. It seemed his guess on what they nned to do had been extremely close to reality. This wasn''t that surprising considering you had to attack for it to be a fight you would win and they really only had a few seconds that they could in between the giant spell from the new Demon Worshipers formation.
"I wonder why they''re going for that group, the only one that seems to have an effect on them is the new guy." Lake didn''t know the answer but like everything else they were doing he was sure it was for whatever hidden n they were working off of. "I''m going to go sit down again." Lake was sure at this point that he didn''t need to be ready to move so he decided to just go back to where he had been waiting earlier.
...
Tiff was surprised at how fast Lake had lost interest and said. "If we don''t need to be here let''s move further away." She was even more worried about the fact one of the Demon Worshipers would notice her now that the much stronger one had shown up so if they weren''t here for a reason she wanted to leave.
It had also be increasingly clear that where they were going was going to take longer than she could stay outside so she actually felt it would be best for her to go back to the temple at least until the barrier in the Metal Domain was down. "That''s fine, lead the way." Hearing he was fine with leaving again Tiff went ahead and said. "I''ll be going back to the temple actually. When we set out I didn''t know we would be going to the Metal Domain so I wasn''t actually ready."
...
Hearing Tiff wanted to call it quits he wasn''t surprised, the timing had just been bad and him trying to slow them down so he could keep an eye on the group had been unnecessary. He should have just led them to the Metal Domain and hid the dagger in the first hole in a mountain they passed.
"I''lle with you. There''s nothing I can do until they get to the Metal Domain anyway so me being at the Temple will let us leave together to retrieve the dagger when it''s time." Lake didn''t know what he would do until the barrier came down but he guessed he didn''t actually have to wait. In her mind they were chasing after Jon who was the one who had the dagger so he could just tell her he was on the move again in a few hours.
This would make it seem like he had been sleeping and he just happened to be close to the Metal Domain instead of inside of it. Him being close would probably make sense to her since there were probably lots of strong people that would be involved in the Metal Domains crisis.
Chapter 295: Membership
Chapter 295: Membership
Donny had run out of things to think about at this point and had just resorted to counting the seconds to keep himself awake. It had been a long time since he had slept but with him being the person who was controlling the barrier he needed to be awake till they knew if they were ok or not.
Of course this meant if they weren''t he would be exhausted while they were fighting for their lives but he knew when it came to that his adrenaline would keep him going. "Donny, it''s been around four hours of nothing already. I..." He could tell Keel had almost just given him an order to drop the barrier but hadn''t because he knew there was no way he would have listened to it.
"Did you hear me Donny?"
"Yes, just a few more hours." Every second they were in the barrier could be seen two ways; a waste of time or one second closer to rescue and he was going to look at it as the second thing them waiting out the disaster in a safe space. What was a few more hours spent almost falling asleep whenpared to being chased down by Demon Worshipers and undead.
...
"We''re here." Snapping out of the daze he had been in while running back to the city again, Lake saw that Tiff was right and they were in fact about to walk into the temple. It was crazy that his body had gotten him all the way here without him even realizing it. He guessed that was what happened when you hadpletely lost interest in what you were doing.
Now that they were here though there were things he could do so started paying attention again and asked. "Are we about to go see the Temple Head?" He knew they hadn''t been gone for long but he felt the Temple Head would have something for him to do.
...
Tiff nodded to Lake question and headed for the Temple Heads office. She needed to tell the Temple Head that they hadn''t gotten the dagger back yet and let her know the reason was because it was in the Metal Domain. This made the situation even more unsolvable than it had been a few days ago even if they had someone like Lake who could just bring her directly to it.
Seeing the Temple Head''s door was closed Tiff knew this meant she was in a meeting but with her being who she was there wasn''t anything she wasn''t allowed to hear. "Lake, wait here for a few seconds." After telling Lake to wait she opened the door and interrupted the meeting the Temple Head was having.
"Wow, that was fast, where''s the dagger?" Tiff had expected the Temple Head to think this when she had walked in and had nned to say they hade back early before she could but it seemed the Temple Head was much faster than her. This wasn''t surprising when you took into the difference in their stats.
"No, we had toe back before we couldplete the mission. It seems the Dagger is in the Metal Domain." After she had started to talk the Temple Head had waved the other people that had been here out of the room so it was only them by the time she was done talking. "Where''s Lake?"
"He''s right outside the door." Tiff wasn''t surprised the Temple Head wanted to talk to both of them since he was just as much a part of this as she was. "Would you tell him toe inside the room so we can talk?" Tiff quickly opened the door and said. "Lake you cane in."
...
Walking in Lake waved to the Temple Head and sat down. He was sure they would already be talking about something so he just stayed quiet and let them continue. "So how do you know it''s in the Metal Domain already? There''s no way you went all the way there in the time you were gone."
This was actually a question that he would be able to answer better so Lake spoke up. "The direction of the dagger didn''t move the whole time we were out there and it was pretty obvious we were heading for the Metal Domain and Tiff seemed to think it would be better if we came back and waited."
After he was done talking Tiff quickly added to what he had just said. "There were a lot of Demon Worshipers where we were and I didn''t want to get involved." The Temple Head seemed to agree with their decision because she was nodding for a while before she said. "Well if you two are right it could be a while before you''re actually able to go get the dagger."
Lake didn''t think that needed to be added but he knew the Temple Head wasn''t done talking just yet because she was still nodding and he was pretty sure it was because she was still thinking about something. A few secondster she finally stopped nodding and said. "With the dagger there we have more reason to send forces to help. I should be able to get twenty or so more qualified people to go if I say it''s for the God of Lights newest..."
Hearing the abrupt stop to the Temple Heads sentence, Lake knew she had almost just said a secret she didn''t want him to know but he just let it pass while pretending he didn''t notice. "I should go get in touch with them now." As the Temple Head was walking out Lake turned to look at Tiff.
...
"What?" Seeing Lake shrug she knew he wanted to know what they were doing next but she didn''t want to leave in case the Temple Head came back and expected them to still be here so she just sat down as a way of saying they weren''t going anywhere. Lake seemed to get the message because he said. "Ok."
A few secondster he seemed to remember the conversation they were having before they had chased after that Demon Worshiper. "So how does one join the Temple, would now be a good time for me to ask the Temple Head?" Tiff was happy someone like Lake really wanted to join the Temple because there were moments that someone like him would be helpful almost everyday.
...
Lake could tell that not only Tiff really liked this idea. As soon as he asked the Insider moved around a little. This didn''t happen very often in situations where he wasn''t pretending to be someone else or stealing so he knew it was happy about his decision. "Yeah if you ask the Temple Head when she gets back she''ll take care of it."
Lake had expected this to be a pretty easy thing for him to aplish but there was actually something he wanted to ask Tiff about before he actually went through with it. "How much freedom will I have once I''m a member?" This had been his only problem with the Alchemist guild when he had first joined so he wanted to know if he was going to have any free time to do his own things.
"That really depends on you. We are at war though so you''ll probably be asked to do a lot of stuff by the Temple Head but it seems you were already fighting the Demon Worshipers on your own so I don''t think you''ll have any problems."
"So I can say no if the Temple Head asks me to do something I don''t want to do?" Seeing Tiff nod Lake felt good about this decision. "You can but there are certain situations where you''ll be penalized by the Temple if you don''t do what you''re told. This is really only done in emergencies though so your life will probably be at risk already so saying no doesn''t really make sense and its not like the Temple would send someone as talented as you on a suicide mission."
What Tiff had just said hadn''t changed his mind at all because he knew she was right about his value. It had been the same reason Lucas hadn''t let him leave the spire at first. Thinking about Lucas, Lake remembered the thing he had said about other guilds having to check with him before they allowed a member of the Alchemist guild join them and was about to ask Tiff but after thinking about it decided to just talk to the Temple Head about this.
There was a chance Tiff wouldn''t know anything about this since it seemed she was only a member of the Temple. He would also have to ask the Temple Head about this no matter what since she would be the one who needed to go talk to Lucas about him. With this out of the way, Lake was about to ask Tiff about what the dagger could actually do but was cut off by the door opening.
Chapter 296: Meeting Prelude
Chapter 296: Meeting Prelude
Seeing the person who opened the door wasn''t the Temple Head Lake wanted to ask them who they were but left it to Tiff to handle since she would probably know who it was. "The Temple Head is holding a meeting in the auditorium and told me to get you two toe." Tiff nodded after what the person said and said. "Thank you."
After the brief interaction Lake guessed that person didn''t have any actual importance and watched them leave with no introductions. "Are you ready to go? Sometimes meetings are kind of long so it might be a good time to go to the bathroom." Lake knew the reason Tiff was saying this was because they had been together for a while and he hadn''t stopped and with him not knowing the Temple well he wouldn''t know where the bathroom was but he didn''t actually need to go so he said. "I''m fine."
"Alright follow me." Being led down the hallway just a few doors, Lake saw a huge room with arge number of people already sitting looking up at the Temple Head. "I''m going to sit next to Dawn, feel free toe. I''m sure she would like to say thank you to you for saving her." Lake did as Tiff suggested since it would be weird if he went to sit with random people who didn''t even kind of know who he was.
"Dawn this is Lake." Lake could see Dawn had already kind of known this before Tiff''s introduction because her face didn''t change much. "It''s nice to meet you. The Temple Head told me about how you helped save me and Tiff from the coliseum. Thank you for helping us."
Lake didn''t really have much to say about this since he nned to get paid for it but it was good to be gracious when someone thanked you from the bottom of their heart so he said. "It was my pleasure. I owed the Temple a bit anyway since they kept me safe after I killed someone from the assassins guild."
He could tell by the fact that dawn didn''t look as surprised as most people did when he said this that the Temple Head had probably mentioned this detail about his past with the temple while they had been talking. "So how did finding the dagger go?" Lake decided to just silently take his seat and let Tiff exin what had happened to Dawn.
...
Tiff didn''t know how much time they had before the meeting started so she kept the story short. "It seems to be in the Metal Domain. We''re going to be waiting for a few more days before we try again." Dawn seemed to be a little disheartened by this news and said. "It''s never easy for you is it?"
If it had been just a few days ago Tiff would have just nodded to this since she had always had bad luck but with the amazing opportunity she had to receive a Legendary job from the God of Light she wasn''t sure if this was entirely true anymore. She couldn''t say this out loud right now though with Lake here so she just gave Dawn a small smile.
Dawn seemed to be reminded of this with nothing but the look she had given her and they both giggled a little. Looking back at Lake to see if he was watching their insertion she saw he was digging around inside the shaft of his boot with his finger. She had no idea what he was doing but she was happy he wasn''t just staring at the back of her head as she talked to dawn.
...
Trying to figure out what had happened to the inside part of the boot Lake eventually guessed the friction from the constant running had destroyed the cloth iy. It made him wonder if he had almost caused his boots to catch fire with how fast he had been moving.
He was annoyed at the fact that his gear already needed to be reced but did find the thought of him spontaneously catching fire kind of funny. The ripped up fabric was tickling his ankles though so he knew he needed to find some new boots.
Looking at Tiff, Lake saw she was talking to Dawn about something and decided to ask about new bootster. He was sure they would have something he could wear since the first time he hade to a temple there had been a room filled with clothes. Thinking about the robes they had for guests back then, Lake wondered if he would be wearing that style of clothes again soon since he would be joining the Temple.
"Alright, thank you all for gathering so quickly. I just wanted to exin a few of our current goals and how they seem to coincide now. The situation in the Metal Domain and the search for the dagger both require that we drop the barrier that is around the Metal Domain." Lake realized that maybe lying to Tiff and saying that the Dagger had started to move all of a sudden was no longer an option.
It was too bad but at least it gave him more time to get used to how being a member of the Temple of Light could affect his life. "Since the search for the dagger was a mission given to us by the God of Light I n to send more troops to reinforce the current group to make sure the Temple Has enough sway over the group to influence its decisions."
Thinking back to the group that was on its way to the Metal Domain, Lake was pretty sure the people from the Temple made up around 10% of its current members. This was already pretty high so he wondered what percentage the Temple Head was going for. "Any volunteers?" Lake had missed some of what the Temple Head had just said but saw a few hands near the front of the room go up so it must have been pretty convincing.
"Not as many as I would have hoped for but it''s still better than nothing. The rest of you can go." Lake understood as he watched all the people walking out that these people had been the people with higher positions in the Temple by how they looked so it made sense that the Temple Head hadn''t just told them what to do.
It was extremely simr to how Lucas treated the Masters of the guild. Once someone was as strong as you were it was kind of hard to tell them what to do especially if there were a lot of them. That being said he would have figured the religious aspect of this organization would have made them more willing to help than the masters of the Alchemist guild but he guessed he was wrong.
It probably had to do with the fact that if you wanted to live long enough to be old in a world like this you had to be selfish enough that you didn''t end up saying yes to heading towards an unknown situation like what was happening in the Metal Domain. People still hadn''t even figured out why they had attacked the Metal Domain as far as he knew which meant you didn''t know what would happen once they tried to drop the barrier.
Theck of obvious high ranking Demon Worshipers in the Metal domain made it even worse in his opinion. No giants, no Demigods, just seemingly normal people and undead were what he had seen while fighting in the Metal Domain. It screamed of a sinister plot that went a lot deeper than just killing all the people that lived in the Metal Domain.
"Alright the people who decided to stay raise your hand if you wanted to ask a question because I can tell there''s a lot more of you than the number that had raised your hands earlier." Seeing around ten hands go up Lake realized Tiff hadn''t been wrong when she had told him to go to the bathroom before the meeting started.
He still didn''t need to go but he could tell if he was someone who drank and ate a normal amount this would be a problem. "You first." Seeing the person the Temple Head had pointed at Lake remembered their face but not their name. It was the person who hade after he had used that other guy as a traitor.
Turning and asking Tiff. "What''s his name again?" Lake got a quick answer but not from her. "Ronnalis go ahead." The Temple Head clearly knew this person well because she used his name when telling him to go ahead. "Would this be a good time to talk about the Davin situation? I''m not saying right this second but everyone we need is here or was here."
Seeing the meeting had just gotten moreplicated with there now being something else to talk about, Lake wondered if he even needed to be here. He wasn''t actually a member and Tiff knew all the stuff he had said to her as good as he did. "Maybeter but you are right this would have been a good time to talk about it. It''s too bad most of us have already left the room."
Chapter 297: Hours Spent
Chapter 297: Hours Spent
The meeting had been going for about four hours at this point and Lake could tell it was about to end. The Temple Head had done a good job and was able to convince a few of the people who had stayed to ask questions to go with her to the Metal Domain. This probably sounded like good news if you weren''t Lake but with the fact his n had been to sneak away and hide the dagger so the more people there were the worse it was for him.
With the news that the Temple Head nned toe with the group, Lake had to try and think of a new n and the best he hade up with was to say the dagger made a break for it the second the barrier came down. This would lead them on a chase that he was sure he could use to hide the dagger.
"Alright Ronnalis go ahead and call everyone else back so we can go over what happened with Davin." Seeing Ronnalis walk out of the room Lake didn''t think he would be right back so he turned to Tiff and said. "You weren''t kidding about the meetings."
"They''re not usually this bad. There''s just a lot going on right now." Lake had figured this to be the case because no one would have shown up if they knew they were looking at a meeting that couldst upward of four hours. "How much longer do you think it will be?"
"I don''t know but at least this next part will be more interesting. I''m sure by now they''ve gotten a bit of information out of Davin. He shouldn''t have anything keeping him from talking like the loyalty curse considering the position he was in so the only thing keeping him from talking is his actual loyalty."
Lake understood Tiff was saying actual loyalty would break pretty quickly under certain circumstances. This was the reason the loyalty curse was invented in the first ce. "You''re right it will be interesting to hear who he was working for."
A short time after he said this, people started toe back into the room clearly because Ronnalis was spreading the word that there was another meeting. He didn''t remember the exact number of people who had left but looking around the room he was pretty sure most had alreadye back and when he saw Ronnalis he knew they were ready to start the second part of the meeting.
"Alright Ronnalis you know more so you can state the facts yourself." Seeing the Temple Head get off the stage and sit down and Ronnalis take her ce he opened his ears to the internal drama of the Temple.
...
Seeing Ronnalis was about to start talking about what Davin had done to them, Tiff couldn''t help but think back to all the things he had done to her over the years. He had been on the side that had been trying to rece her for years so she had heard some truly terrible thingse out of his mouth about her.
Of course none of this had been to her face since they hadn''t wanted her to know their ns to get rid of her but you never really forget someone suggesting a way of killing you that no one would be able to trace back to them. To think he ended up being a traitor after all of this.
"Alright I''ll just start with how long ago he was turned against us. I know this is what most of us wanted to know the most. From what he said a month ago a messenger brought some information from the frontlines and hidden in one of the sealed messages an offer from the Dark Guild Alliance that got his attention."
...
Lake didn''t think a month was that bad but Davin had been in a high position so he didn''t know how much damage Davin could have done in the month he had to feed information to the Dark Guild Alliance. "What was the offer?"
Lake had been wondering the same thing so he wasn''t surprised someone interrupted to ask this. "Like always they offered Davin a wide range of benefits for each piece of information they could use but we weren''t able to get what he actually got from this yet. We''re guessing he has yet to actually get paid so when we ask him what benefits he got he doesn''t have an answer."
Lake couldn''t help but think it was like something from a movie. He had seen movies in which people were tortured for answers they didn''t know but the ones doing the torturing didn''t believe them so they kept asking the same thing over and over. There was one difference though since Ronnalis could apparently tell when someone was lying.
...
Tiff was hoping the next thing Ronnalis would talk about was what had actually been told to the Dark Guild Alliance because there was a good chance Davin was the one who had tried to get her taken by the coliseum. He had always hated her so telling the coliseum or just the Dark Guild Alliance in general that she was the new demigod would put a huge target on her back.
"Alright so far we have been able to get a small list of things he told the Dark Guild Alliance that had been kept secret up until now. The most obvious is loads of information on the secret team of holy mages we have stationed here and the location of the ones that weren''t in the temple whenever they went out." Hearing Ronnalis confirm Davin was the reason she and Dawn had been targeted so well she was actually more grateful to Lake for catching Davin than she was for saving her.
If Lake hadn''t caught him, Davin would have continued to be a risk to every member of the 23 which eventually would have led to the deaths of at least a few of them. Him saving Dawn was still her number one though. "He also fed internal information about an incident one of our members had with the Assassins guild to them."
...
As soon as Ronnalis said this, Lake heard a good portion of the people in the room start to mumble. It seemed the fact Tiff had almost been kidnapped a while back hadn''t been spread around and this was the first time a lot of them were hearing about it. "Apparently the Assassins guild is looking for the same man we are at the moment. His name is Jon and he is suspected to be the one with the dagger but he also fought off a member of the assassins guild for one of our members a while back. Thankfully Davin was caught before our newest information on this so it wasn''t handed to the Assassins guild."
At this time a number of hands went up which caused Ronnalis to say. "I''ll provide more information about this incidentter. Let me get through the list first." After this Ronnalis said arge number of things Lake didn''t bother to remember since it just had to do with where troops were stationed and how many there were.
As someone who wasn''t actually a member of the Temple he hadn''t even heard of the ces they were talking about so he didn''t think he would have remembered it even if he had listened. "Alright back to the Assassins guild. First thing they aren''t after us for anything that happened all the me is being put on this Jon person and the Thieves who unknowingly sold them a member of our temple."
Lake could feel the tension in the room die down after Ronnalis said they weren''t about to go to war with the Assassins guild. He had heard how much people feared the Assassins guild but he felt like the Temple should have more confidence. He didn''t think the Assassins guild would have an actual god backing them so he didn''t know why they would be so freaked out.
...
In another meeting somewhere more evil a group of people were sitting at a desk receiving news about the same thing they were talking about at the Temple. "Davin was discovered." The man who had said this saw the faces of all the people at the desk turn sour for a while before one of them said. "At least we don''t have to pay him anymore."
Soon another of them agreed with the first one who spoke. "He wasn''t really that helpful anyway, all the information he was giving us would have been better for the Demon Lord and he was unable to give us a solid answer on the man we are looking for." After the man said this they all looked down at a drawing of a man Davin had told them was named Jon and at the bottom of the wanted poster a bounty that read 1000000 gold.
The assassins guild was known to add interest to your bounty for every day you hadn''t handed yourself over to them but once it got this high there wasn''t much chance a single person would have this amount so they were forced to look for alternate ways to make the money back. "We should sell the information Davin handed to us to the Demon Lord to make up for the losses the guild suffered."
They wouldn''t get rid of the bounty even if they made the amount of money this person owed them but it was starting to seem they wouldn''t be able to find them so it was better than nothing. "Agreed, who do you want to send to set up the meeting?"
The Demon Lord wasn''t actually part of their alliance so whenever they dealt with him they had to be careful who they sent on the off chance they were stolen and made into an undead. "Just pick one under 200. We should make more from this trade than the amount we spent on their training so we shouldn''t lose too much if they are flipped."
Chapter 298: Cleaned
Chapter 298: Cleaned
Donny could tell that if he didn''t get up onto his feet and start moving he would be asleep in a matter of minutes so he got up and started to stretch. "Keel, it''s been seven hours since I set the barrier right?" Donny didn''t actually have a real way to tell time at the moment and he knew Keel did so he wanted to know the exact amount of time that had passed.
"Seven hours and twenty minutes. Why are you thinking about dropping the barrier?" Donny nodded while giving a few of the more suspicious people in their group a nce to see if their faces reacted in a way that he felt warranted his suspicion at the news the barrier might being down.
Not really getting anything Donny said. "I don''t think we''re actually safe enough to drop the barrier because if the fortress was saved we would have seen someone by now but I do think we need to gather information." He wasn''t telling the whole truth as he said this.
His real n was to make the Demon Worshipers attack by appearing weak which would hopefully include the ones hidden amongst them. Once he knew there weren''t any more traitors he would be able to leave the barrier to someone else in the group and get some rest.
Of course this n had a load of problems but he was smart enough to know you couldn''te away from something like this without losses so he would happily trade a few of them for the safety of the rest. It wasn''t like he was telling a portion of them to go on a suicide mission or anything, all of them would be in equal danger so this n was fair.
The only regrettable thing was he was lying to the people who were listening to his orders and he wasn''t a big fan of that but it was for their own good. "Wake everyone up. I''ll be dropping the barrier in a few minutes." With them all sitting on the ground for thest few hours a lot of the people had fallen asleep and Donny didn''t like this fact with how tired he was but he understood they would be better off rested so he had let them get a few hours.
It had left the partners they were supposed to keep from moving free to do small things but that was why he had Keel were sitting on either side of the barrier. In thest seven hours he hadn''t seen anything that could be considered traitorous so all he had to go off of was the bad vibes he had felt from a few of the people in the barrier over the past hours.
Once everyone had gotten up and was ready Donny started to split the people into four groups making sure to put all the ones he had singled out as threats into separate groups so they wouldn''t think he had figured them out on the off chance he was right about them. Once they were all split up Donny gave each group their jobs.
"Team one will be going to the door into the room to guard it while we have the barrier down since that will be when we will probably get attacked. All you have to do is survive for a few seconds before I will give the order to fall back towards me. Team two and three you''ll be ready to receive orders from me and Keel and group four you''ll be watching the other teams. I put all the mages in your group so you have the most fire power."
All the orders he had just given them meant nothing since each team most likely had traitors in their midst which would make it impossible for them to do what he said if a fight broke out when he dropped the barrier. "Alright I''ll drop the barrier in five seconds, get ready."
After the five seconds passed Donny dropped the barrier and quickly backed off from everyone. As the person who had made the barrier he would be the number one target and he needed to stay away from everyone. Seeing the four teams do as he told them Donny wasn''t surprised since now would be a bad time to attack with all their attention on each other.
When team one got to the door and still nothing had happened Donny gave it a few seconds of time before he said. "Open the door and tell me what you see in the hallway." Donny had really not expected for them to get this far into the fake n but he knew just because an attack hadn''t happened yet didn''t mean they were safe.
He just needed to make them do a few other things that were slightly dangerous before he felt safe enough to go to sleep. After the group had checked the hallway and yelled that it was clear Donny yelled over to Keel. "What do you think?" This might actually be a chance for them to see what was going on inside the fortress.
He could set a barrier anywhere so walking around didn''t really do anything but leave the gate unguarded and that didn''t matter since by now the Demon Worshipers would have opened a few entrances into the fortress if they had taken it over. "We should go back to the room Rigbis was in. He''s most likely dead but it wasn''t confirmed when we left."
It was a long shot but if Rigbis had a good constitution or had been able to heal himself there was a chance they had turned the situation around and they were passing time until rescue in the main room like they had been here. It wasn''t like the situation back there had been unwinnable; he had just decided they needed to hold the gate more than the room they had been in.
"Alright team one first." Donny knew he was giving them the worst job but he would have done it if he wasn''t such a target like he had on the way here so he didn''t feel bad. Plus he would be taking the back of the group so it was almost just as bad for him. "Team two and Keel go next, then team four then team three."
Once everyone was out of the room Donny made the shield formation he had used on the way here and walked out. The people in the first team knew where they were going so Donny kept an eye on the people right in front of him and hoped he would hear anythinging up behind him.
Usually the person in the back wouldn''t be looking forward but surprisingly he was actually more afraid of his own group than what might or might not be behind them. He also had a very weak version of the shield right now so he was pretty sure he would be able to defend himself even if he didn''t see the attacking.
He didn''t know for sure though since this was only one of the many formations that were held inside the shield and he didn''t even really understand it with howplicated it was. All he was doing now was copying it out of the memory he had formed from the years of training from the shield so for all he knew this wasn''t the formation that caused it to intercept attacks he didn''t seeing.
He was pretty sure it was though it might not work right without all the other formations that he had to cut it off from to be able to weave it. There was really no way to know without being able to ask the person who had made it originally the God of Metal himself. "Keel have we run into anything yet?"
Keel wasn''t too far from him so he didn''t have to yell to ask this question. "No, it''s beenpletely quiet up until now." Like everything else that had happened so far Donny had no idea why they hadn''t been attacked but he decided it was a good thing. "Have you guys noticed how clean the hallways are?"
Donny didn''t know who said it but after they had he thought back to when they had walked these hallways hours ago. There had been bloody footprints and a few bodies then and now the floor was spotless. He didn''t get a bad feeling from this though so he didn''t tell them to turn around and just let them all continue towards the big room.
He knew the bodies disappearing could be the Demon Worshipers turning them but he had never heard of them cleaning up blood before. It was actually usually the opposite with the ces they gathered smelling like rotting bodies and so much blood you would think they used it to paint the walls. "We''re here."
Donny had to guess who had yelled that out since he couldn''t really see but knowing it came from the front of the group he asked Keel. "Can you handle this, I can''t see anything."
"Alright." Donny felt a little weird right after saying this because he had kind of forgotten the fact he had stolen themand from Keel and what he had just done kind of felt like an order but he got over it pretty quickly. If this caused a problem between him and Keel, Donny would just fix itter.
Chapter 299: Lunch In The Temple
Chapter 299: Lunch In The Temple
A minute or so passed after Donny had asked Keel to handle whatever was going on in front of them and they still hadn''t moved. This made Donny think maybe he should move forward and see what was stopping them on the off chance it was something Keel didn''t understand. This meant he would have to move through the people in front of him though and he still hadn''t been able to weed out the problems yet.
Depending on what was going on in front of them this might be thest chance the Demon Worshipers had to kill him and anyone else they had their eyes on so if he decided to walk forward into the crowd this could be it. This and the fact there hadn''t been amotion from the front made him think it would be better to just wait a little longer.
A few minutester this strategy paid off and he heard Keel call out. "They''re alive, they were able to hold out inside a barrier like us and held this room." Donny had a dozen questions he wanted to ask to the people on the other side of the barrier when he heard this but he settled for one. "Is Rigbis alive?"
If Rigbis had made it through the assassination attempt it raised their chances significantly. "I don''t know, they haven''t given us any real information yet because they don''t trust us to be who we say we are." Donny had the same feelings for the people iming to be another group of survivors so he decided to just end this little outing now.
"Alright let''s head back to the gate room. I don''t know what''s going on but the fortress seems to be intact so let''s go back to guarding the gate." Donny really wanted to get to the bottom of the cleaned floors but he knew it wasn''t safe to walk around the fortress looking for clues just because they hadn''t run into any obvious enemies yet.
"Alright, are you going to lead us back?" Hearing Keel''s question Donny said. "No, I''m not." It still wasn''t safe for him to walk in the lead of their group so he walked a few feet away into another hallway and gave the closest group to him an order. "Start walking back to the gate room."
With him out of the way he could let them all pass before taking the position in the back of the group again. As Keel passed Donny was tempted to have him join him in the back of the group so they could talk about what Keel had picked up on about the group in the main room but decided to just wait till they were back in the gate room.
They would have plenty of time while inside the barrier and while he nned to sleep once they got back he could stay awake long enough to have a conversation with Keel about whether the people in the main room were who they said they were or not. Keel had been here longer than him so there was a good chance he knew the person who he had spoken to.
...
"Lake, do you want toe eat with us?" Hearing Dawn speak to him, Lake stopped walking away and thought about eating normal food. It had been a while since he only needed a few bites of bread a day allowing him to eat the stuff Millie made but he knew Dawn just wanted to talk to him and he didn''t actually need to eat.
"Sure." Following them to a new room Lake sat down and waited for the two of them to get their food. "Are you not hungry?" Lake didn''t know the man who asked him this but they were at the same table so he answered them. "I just ate a few hours ago." This seemed to satisfy the person who asked him the question and he went back to eating his food.
A few secondster the two people he was here to talk to sat down and he could tell they were already in the middle of a conversation. Instead of interrupting what they were saying he just decided to listen and see if there was a ce he could join. "I''m saying if the war wasn''t currently being fought the Temple would be going after the coliseum."
"I really don''t think that would ever happen. The Dark Guild Alliance assures we can''t do anything to them for things like this." Hearing Tiff and Dawn were discussing their kidnapping, Lake stayed quiet to see how they felt about what happened. He had been considering the coliseum as a great target since it seemed they had a lot of money so more information on them would help him decide if this was realistic.
It seemed him being silent in this discussion wasn''t meant to be though because the next thing that came out of Dawn''s mouth was directed to him. "Who do you think would win, a coalition of the Temples or the Dark Guild Alliance?"
Lake knew nothing of the specifics of these two proposed groups or what would happen in a fight between them but he was currently sat in a Temple so he said. "The Temples. That being said, you all seem to have your te full with your current enemies so I don''t think we''ll be seeing the Temples wiping out the Dark Guild Alliance any time soon."
Lake thought his answer made it seem like he knew what he was talking about so he was happy with it until Tiff said. "There''s no way the temples would ever work together. They all act in the interests of the god they follow and not all of the gods like each other."
Lake saw this as a good opportunity to ask something he had been wondering for a while. "Do the Dark Guilds have gods that support them?" If her answer was yes he was sure the fight would be a lot closer than he had originally said. "There have been rumors forever about what you just asked. From the Fire God and the coliseum to the fact that the God of Antimagic was most likely in the Thieves guild at one point in his life there are undeniable links to some gods and the Dark Guilds."
Lake had known about the Fire God''s ties to the coliseum but the news on the God of Antimagic was extremely interesting to him. He had already wanted to go to the Antimagic Domain but this made him want to meet the god himself. A past thief who had made it to the level of a god was sure to be a great person to talk to if he found a way to make sure it wasn''t dangerous.
Maybe using the magicpass technique he had made he could start tracking down an artifact of the God of Antimagic. He was sure the gods were more polite to an artifact holder than just some random person who showed up in their domain.
Unless he stole it from someone who the god of Antimagic liked but he could just give it back if the God of Antimagic didn''t like his actions. He was sure a past thief would get it, maybe it would help them be friends.
Realizing the conversation hadpletely stalled as he thought all of this, Lake quickly said something so it would get back on track. "Any others? You only mentioned two while there are a lot more Dark Guilds." It took Tiff a second to answer his question but eventually she said. "The Assassins guild most likely has a god backing them that isn''t the Demon Lord even though a lot of people say it''s him."
"What makes you think it isn''t him?" Lake could already think of one thing before he even asked this question but he was sure Tiff knew a better reason than the Demon Lord wouldn''t worry about it being a secret. "The Temple Head exined it better than I''m about to but I''ll give it a try. So around the time the Demon Lord was injured and the Holy Goddess was killed the Assassins guild weed their first demigod, Mezull. No one was happy about this since Mezull hoped to be the god of Death and this included the other gods who quickly blocked the ascension of Mezull like they had Done With the Demon Lord. After this happen it was revealed that Mezull nned to leave the Assassins Guild and join the Demon Lord and the Assassins guild weren''t happy about this because they had been the ones who had done most of the work to let Mezull be a demigod and the fact that they were at odds over this shows the Demon Lord isn''t supporting the Assassins guild in the shadows."
Lake was easily able to follow everything Tiff said and felt it made sense. He would alsoe to the same conclusion if he had known all of this stuff ahead of time. "So do you have a guess on which god it might be if it isn''t the Demon Lord?" Lake knew gossiping about gods probably wasn''t a good idea, especially inside of a temple, but he wanted to see what Tiff thought. "No, in my opinion it makes more sense that the god that''s supporting them isn''t just one but a few different ones paying them to stop them from taking jobs on oracles and Temple Heads. It would be devastating to a temple to lose people to the Assassins guild constantly so it makes sense they are being paid since it never happens."
After Tiff answered this he stopped asking things so she could eat her food. He didn''t want to stay in the cafeteria all day and it would be seen as rude if he just got up and walked away even if he tried to give a reason and with Dawn almost done since she hadn''t been talking for a while he felt it was best to let Tiff start her meal.
Chapter 300: New Member
Chapter 300: New Member
"Are you two done eating?" Lake had been sitting here watching the two of them eat for a while now and he didn''t want to anymore. "Yeah just let us clean up and we''ll show you to a room you can use." Lake didn''t need to sleep yet but getting a room sounded nice since thest time he had slept he had been in a public room so he didn''t say this.
A few secondster they were walking towards an empty part of the temple where there were plenty of empty rooms that had beds in them. "Mark one of them as yours so no one else tries to move in while you''re here." Seeing Tiff was pointing at the door to the room that was closest, Lake got closer and saw there was a ce for him to write his name with chalk.
Getting his name onto the door Lake didn''t go into the room and said. "What are you two doing for the rest of the day?" Lake was fine with doing things on his own but it was always nice to have people around who knew stuff about the ce you were. "Well I''m going to go to bed, I need to sleep."
Hearing Tiff''s answer Lake looked at Dawn who didn''t seem like she was tired at all. "I''m going back to training. I would like to invite you but I can''t." Hearing he couldn''t go with either of them, Lake understood why they had shown him to a room; they had been hoping to get rid of him without what was happening right now.
If he had been tired neither of them would have had to turn him down like this. "Well in that case I guess I''ll be going back to the library." Lake wasn''t going to make it hard for them and just walked away to go read the book he had kind of started thest time he was in the library.
...
Watching Lake walk away Tiff looked at Dawn who was already looking at her. "Should I ask the Temple Head if he can go to train with the 23?" Tiff understood why Dawn felt guilty with the fact Lake had saved their lives but he wasn''t a member of the Temple or someone they couldpletely trust just yet.
"No, he''s probably safe to let near everyone but I don''t think it''s worth it to take the risk." All they would gain was Lake wouldn''t feel left out but he seemed fine when he walked away like he didn''t care if they were around or not. "Alright, I have to go to train. I''ll see youter after you wake up." Seeing Dawn start to walk away, Tiff headed for her room.
...
Entering the library Lake saw the room was a lot more full this time so he took one of the only floor pads that was empty and sat down after grabbing the book. Sadly it wasn''t the one he had sat inst time but he decided to ignore the fact they took his seat and would just focus on reading.
"Hello again." Looking up to see who talked to him before he could even open his book, Lake said. "Hello." It was the man from the cafeteria that had asked him if he was hungry earlier. "I was about to leave to train when you walked in and wanted to take the chance to talk to you. I''m Greg, I''m friends with Tiff and Dawn and I wanted to thank you for saving them."
Lake had expected some people to say thank you like this but it had actually taken longer than he had expected. "No problem. I''ve been nning to join the temple for a while so I wouldn''t say no to the Temple Head if she needed something." Greg didn''t react to what he said like Lake expected but that was fine because not everyone reacted with their face.
It made them harder to read but he wasn''t too worried about getting to know this person or figuring out how they thought. "In that case I hope we get to do something together once you''re a member." Lake saw this interaction as a bit odd but decided he didn''t need to worry like he would normally if someone was being overly friendly. He had just realized this was one of the people that had been in Davin''s office when he had looked for traitors so whoever Greg was in the Temple they were probably just a nice person he didn''t need to keep an eye on.
"Sounds good." This was the end of their conversation so after a wave goodbye Lake looked back down to his book and started to actually read. It didn''t take long for Lake to realize this book was worded in a way that you needed to be more knowledgeable than him in magic to understand it but he decided to just keep reading on the off chance something stuck.
Twenty or so minutes after he started reading someone tapped him on the shoulder and whispered. "The Temple Head wants to see you. She''s in her office." Seeing this as a chance to get bing a member out of the way, Lake put the book down and walked out of the reading room and towards the Temple Heads office.
Seeing the door open, Lake walked in and saw the Temple Head alone. "Hello." Lake threw out his go to greeting as he sat down in front of the Temple Heads desk. "Hello Lake I saw you walk off to lunch with Tiff and dawn and figured our business could wait. Did you enjoy the food?"
"I didn''t eat, I keep food in my bag at all times." Lake knew it would have been easier to lie in this situation but plenty of people had seen him not eating and while there would be no reason for the Temple Head to double check if he had eaten Lake didn''t think making such an obvious lie was necessary.
"Are you worried about poison? Wait, no that wouldn''t make sense." Lake couldn''t remember if he had ever mentioned what his skill did to the Temple Head when he had been kept safe inside of one of the Temples of Light but he felt like he did. "Did I tell you about my skill that reverses the effects of poison the first time we met?"
"I think it was you who told me but either way I did know about it. So why do you carry your own food if it''s not a safety thing?" It seemed Lake wasn''t the only one who didn''t remember their conversation very well. "Quality. There''s someone in the Alchemist guild that makes food that''s much better than the norm."
Lake didn''t think Lucas would mind if this was all he said about Millie''s food so he didn''t feel bad about telling someone who wasn''t a member of the Alchemist guild. "Oh, sounds nice. Do they n on selling it?" Lake felt like this was where he needed to stop the conversation so Lucas didn''t get mad at him in the future so he said. "If they do it would be sessful."
It seemed the Temple Head understood the fact he wasn''t supposed to talk about what she had just asked and she quickly changed the subject. "So Dawn stopped by a second ago and asked if you could join them in training and while I said no it did make me want to ask if you would want to be a member now. I remember you promising when you were leaving in the past saying you wanted to be stronger first and I think we both know whatever it was you did while in the Alchemist guild you''re more than ready."
"I was nning on asking actually. Tiff said something about you being able to make this happen if you wanted so I figured skipping the normal procedure would make it easier on me and faster for all of us."
"I already know you can use Light magic so there''s not really a point in giving you the normal tests. There is a question I need to ask you though. What type of member do you want to be?" Lake didn''t know what his options were so he asked. "What are my choices?"
"Well there are members that are part of the Temple and there are others that are in the temple''s army. While it''s possible to be both, I don''t think you''re the type to devote your life to the God of Light." Lake understood what she was saying. "Yeah I just want to join the fight against the Demon Lord. I''m really not certain on which god I''ll be devoted to yet."
"Alright if you just want to be a member of the army usually I would be sending you off to one of the ces our troops are but you''re too useful so you''ll be living here for now." Lake nodded slightly when he heard he would be living here for the time being. His situation in the Alchemist guild was much better but the Insider wanted him here for some reason so he would just listen to what it thought. "So am I a member now?"
"Not quite yet,e with me we need to get you a way to show that you''re one of us and you need to pick it out." Getting up and following behind the Temple Head, Lake thought back to the ring Hin had used to show she was a member of the Metal Temple and wondered if he was about to get something like that.
Chapter 301: Pretending To Sleep
Chapter 301: Pretending To Sleep
Looking down at his new ring Lake asked. "Does it do anything other than tell someone I''m a member of the temple?" Lake could have just inspected the ring but with the Temple Head here he figured he might as well talk to her about it. "No, you could have a better one if you want though. It will just take a while to get it to you."
Lake thought about it and said. "No, that''s alright. Knowing me it will get destroyed soon anyway." Lake had lost everything including his Fighters guild badge and all the stuff from the Alchemist guild like his scroll and badge when he had broken the barrier so something like that would probably happen again.
"Well if that happens just find me and I''ll help you prove who you are." Lake had been through a test to prove who he was before so he knew it was supposed to be done by someone who knew you, which here in the temple could really only mean the Temple Head. "Alright."
With this done Lake was about to ask if there was anything he could do for the Temple Head while he was waiting for the time to leave with Tiff again when he realized he should probably just leave it up to the Temple Head to ask. If he was constantly offering to help he wouldn''t have any free time. He also needed to be here when the barrier fell in the Metal Domain.
If he was off doing something else when that happened he could lose his chance to be paid. Thinking of a way to leave where he wouldn''t say anything that could lead to him getting an assignment Lake said. "Alright I''m going to go to my room to sleep." Everyone needed to do this so there was no way the Temple Head wouldn''t believe him.
"Alrighte see me when you wake up." As he was walking away Lake wondered if he had failed and now all that was going to happen was he would waste time in his room before being asked to go out on a mission. It was too bad he hadn''t just asked the Temple Head what she wanted from him before he walked away.
As he was stepping into his room he then remembered the fact the Temple Head was supposed to talk to Lucas about him joining before they allowed him to. Seeing this as an opportunity to go back and talk to the Temple Head instead of pretending to sleep, Lake went back towards the Temple Heads office.
As he was walking in he heard the Temple Head say. "That was fast." Not wanting her to actually think he had slept in that small amount of time he got right to the point. "Lucas once told me other guilds were supposed to check with him before I was allowed to join. Does that not affect people joining temples?"
"I''m sure he would like us to check with him but I really don''t have time for that. If he has a problem with it I''ll just tell him you had already told me you wanted to be a member before you joined the Alchemist guild." Hearing the Temple Head''s n was just to say she had actually been first, Lake thought back to how different countries back in his world had dealt with each other.
As long as the situation wasn''t that serious the exnation they gave was alwaysckluster because they knew the other country wouldn''t dere war over something so small. "Ok in that case I''ll be going to sleep. Oh actually I was also wondering why you wanted me toe talk to you after I woke up. I don''t think I''ll be able to sleep if I don''t know what you need."
"I was just going to walk you around and exin things you couldn''t know before you were a member for safety reasons. It shouldn''t take too long so I can do it instead of passing it off to someone else." Hearing he had been wrong about her needing him to do something, Lake was relieved. "Ok I''ll see you in a few hours then."
Walking back out into the hallway, Lake wondered if he could leave and go sleep in the alchemist guild instead of the room he had here. He hadn''t used this bed yet but by the looks of it it wasn''t going to be close to the quality of the one he had in the spire. The Temple Head had said he lived here now but the Alchemist guild was just a minute away.
Deciding to leave asking if he could leave till after he had been a member for more than an hour, Lake walked to his room. Closing his door as he entered the door, Lake locked it even though he doubted a lock like this could ever stop someone in this world if there wasn''t more to it like magic of some kind.
Taking his helmet off, Lake got into bed then remembered he wasn''t actually tired. He hade to his room because he had lied to get away from the Temple Head before she gave him a mission which turned out to bepletely unnecessary. Getting out of his bed, Lake wondered what he should do to pass the time.
The easiest thing would be to tell the Temple Head about the fact he only slept for a few minutes if she ever asked but he was pretty sure he could do what he was going to do here just as good as he could somewhere else. It was time for him to start training magic again with him having some time before he and Tiff had to leave to go to the Metal Domain.
This was a great chance for him to train in the solid principle again so he didn''t n to waste it. Getting his Wind mana into a cube shape Lake started to run the drill while he thought about the war. The situation in the Metal Domain didn''t have an exnation at the moment but he was probably the only person who had as much information as he did who wasn''t on the side of the Demon Lord.
This meant he had a good chance of figuring it out if he spent enough time trying to put the facts together. Trying to think back to the day he had gotten to the Metal Domain, Lake remembered the spy he had gone to meet. They had been dressed as a Demon Worshiper and they had handed them an amount of time before something bad happened before jumping out of a window for some reason.
After that they had rushed back to the Fighters guild and given the information to Masters. Thinking of Masterke couldn''t help but think about who was dead and who was alive out of the people that had been in the Fighters guild then. It had to be an extremely small number of them that were still alive.
Feeling the cube got to a point that he had started to struggle he stopped thinking and focused onpressing the cube. Once he got it to the starting size he started the expanding phase and wondered what round of this he was on. The first few times had been so easy that he hadn''t even had to think about it so he hadn''t counted.
He didn''t think this cube wouldst much longer though so he could just count on the next cube. Starting thepression again Lake didn''t think he was going to be able to do it with his current internal design so he started to add anotheryer when it started to deform. Knowing there wasn''t a reason to not try to save it, Lake did his best to get its shape back to a cube.
Once it was back to being a cube Lake went back to what he had been doing to add anotheryer to thepression. Lake could feel the strain on his ability to control the cube once the newyer was formed but still tried to shrink the cube. A few seconds after this slow process started the cube finally popped and he went into making the next cube so he could count how many rounds he could do before he struggled.
Flying through the first ten rounds Lake tried to remember how many he had been able to do back when he had first started training. He knew there were other factors like how much mana was in the cube when you first formed it but he was pretty sure he had only been able to do it to six or seven before he failed.
He still wasn''t done though because he still kept going at a good pace until he got to the fifteenth round. This was the point where he had probably failedst time so he got ready to try as hard as he could so he could make progress. If he didn''t try as hard as he could there was no reason to be pretending to sleep.
Chapter 302: Speed Is Important
Chapter 302: Speed Is Important
Lake didn''t know how long he had been at cube training but it had been at least a few hours so he nned to end this after his current cube exploded. He felt like he was hitting some type of wall and he didn''t think trying for much longer would actually be useful. He needed to go and find a book that could tell him if there were limits to how hard you could make mana.
He was on his twentieth round of this so he thought there was about an equal chance that he had hit his current limit or the actual limit for Wind mana. Once his cube failed Lake walked out of his room and went towards the Temple Heads office. He wanted to know about the limit thing he had just been thinking about but the Temple Head had been waiting for him.
The Temple Head would probably be a better source of information anyway since it would be hard to track down the exact knowledge he was looking for in the books they had here that were mostly about Light magic. Seeing the Temple Head''s door was closed, Lake wondered if he should wait or if knocking would be alright.
Deciding to just knock Lake did so and a secondter he heard the Temple Head''s voice. "You cane in." Opening the door, Lake saw the Temple Head was alone and asked. "Am I interrupting something?" Lake knew he had only been gone a few hours so the Temple Head was probably working.
This tended to happen whenever he walked into Lucas'' office as well so Lake had no probleming backter if she needed him to. "No, it''s fine,e on let''s get to the tour." Lake never even really got into the room so he just moved out of the doorway and let the Temple Head out into the hallway.
"I''m going to show you the training rooms first. That''s where a lot of people around your age spend their time so I''m sure you''ll like it for passing time there." Remembering what he had just been doing inside his room, Lake thought it was great that he got to see where he should have been training.
He also saw this as a great opportunity to ask his question since the Temple Head was already thinking about him training. "Speaking of training, are you aware of a limit to how solid you can make Wind mana? I''ve hit some kind of wall and I can''t seem to get past it."
"What method are you using? I saw you use the cube method a few days ago, is that still your go to method?" Lake nodded and asked. "Does this method have a limit?"
"No not the method but most people slip into tricks to make thepression easier when in reality its best topress the mana with no internal structures since they eventually get in the way. If this is what you did we can fix it pretty easily, all you need to do is go to a purepression method. Show me when we get to the training room, ok?"
Hearing the Temple Head''s word he knew she had to be right about the problem. He had by the end of it had five internal shapes to make the cubepress better. As they were walking into the training room Lake saw the Temple Head point at a door before saying. "Don''t go through that door until you are giving permission. Other than that you are free to use any of these rooms as you wish."
Lake was surprised by how nice this room was. He had expected the one here to be worse or at least smaller than the one inside the spire he had spent some time inside. "Wow, it''s really nice in here." There was no reason to keep this to himself since it was nice so he just said what he was thinking.
"Thank you, let''s go ahead and solve your wind magic problem. Step inside this room with me." Following the Temple Head into the private training room Lake saw this room was padded just like the one in the spire and concluded they were exactly the same to keep people from being hurt while they trained. "Alright let me see how you''ve been doing it."
Forming the cube and rocketing through the first 17 rounds Lake quickly got to the 20th cubepression before having to stop. "Well I have some good news for you. Once you get to the stage where you start training with your own mana I don''t think you''ll have any problems making formations. That''s some time away though so lets focus on your force not the amount of control you''re exerting. Change the cube to a sphere."
Doing as he was told, Lake slowly made the cube into a sphere which took a long time. "Ok now get rid of the internal structures you added to this method." Once again doing as he was told he was only able to get rid of half of thepressionyers before the ball exploded. "Sorry."
"Don''t be sorry I wanted that to happen to show you how you messed up. The cube method is perfect because it trains control and force in even parts but by over relying on control to make progress youck force in your mana control. You should be able to crush the mana without needing multiple rounds ofpression. For now switch to doing sphere training until you''re able to make it to 15 rounds. This will catch your forcefulness up to your control."
Lake was thankful for all of this help so he said. "Thank you Temple Head. I''ll do as you said." He could tell the Temple Head found his sincere thanks funny and was about to ask if they should move on in the tour when the Temple Head said. "How are you doing in the speed principle? I''m sure you have neglected it in favor of your own legs because of how fast you are."
She waspletely correct. If Lake knew how to measure how far he was in each of these principles he was sure the progress he had made in speed was tiny. "You''re correct. I don''t really fly very often since I have better ways to get around even in the air so I''ve almostpletely stopped training the speed principle."
"Well I would rmend you start putting more effort into it. The speed principle is a lot more special than the solid principle and it puts a limit on your magic so training it should be higher on your list if you n to be good at Wind magic." Lake was sure she knew what she was talking about so he nodded and said. "I''ll do my best to catch up in speed training."
"Good. Alright let''s move on there are still three more ces I have to bring you before this tour is over." Lake nodded and followed behind the Temple head. As they were walking to the next location Lake thought of something else he could probably ask the Temple Head about that pertains to speed. Fleet-foot was a job he was very interested in and with the magicpass he was sure he could start tracking down other people that had the job to level it up.
He wasn''t sure if it was a good idea even if it did give him perception on level up which was something he really needed. Deciding it would be fine to ask after the Insider didn''t stop him, Lake waited till he was sure they were alone and asked. "Do you know anything about the Fleet-foot job?"
Lake was relieved to find the Temple Head didn''t jump in surprise or anything when he asked this and waited for her answer. "Do you have it or is it just something you heard about?" Feeling he was already too far to lie he said. "I''ve had it for a few weeks but I''ve been too busy to find out anything about it yet."
"I wouldn''t rmend you use it but just in case you n to I''ll tell you what I know." Lake got excited when he heard the Temple Head take an almost worried tone in the way she was speaking. He knew this was a bad sign but with there being high stakes he was sure there was an interesting story.
"First it''s funny you ask about Fleet-foot right after I helped you with Wind magic since Fleet-foot is a job created by the God of Wind to find people worthy of being subordinate demigods to him. All the gods do tests like these just not always in the form of a job. For more information on these tests you should look into reading a book called Paths of ascension. It''s very good and you''ll find it helpful."
Lake took note of the name real quick before going back to listening to what the Temple Head was saying. "So thispetition job forces out those good at fighting that have Wind affinity out into the open so it''s easy for the God of Wind to find them but it''s almost impossible to find others with this job so it''s considered a waste of time."
After the Temple Head said thest thing she was silent for a while before saying. "Don''t think just because you''re able to find others it''s a good idea. You''ll be inpetition with others who are in most cases much older and experienced than you." Lake wasn''t about to run off to find these people he just wanted to know what kind of skills this job gave so he asked. "Do you know what kind of skills the job gives?"
There was no reason to listen to one warning after another so he felt this question was likely to give him the information he needed to know. "I would expect an increase in Wind affinity or a speed increasing skill but I don''t know for sure. You would have to find someone with the job to get more but like I said its a bad idea. There''s nothing some people won''t do to be a demigod in a safe manner that the Demon Lord won''t interfere with."
Lake had heard of the Demon Lord hunting demigods as a source of divinity so he wasn''t surprised a lot of people would be involved in this Fleet-foot test. "Anyway we''re here so let''s stop talking about this so I can show you which parts of our information room you have ess to."
Chapter 303: In A Hurry
Chapter 303: In A Hurry
"Alright make sure toe to the meetingter." They were about to part ways when the Temple Head said this and he guessed she saw the look on his face because she stopped walking and said. "Don''t look like that. There''s less than a day before we leave for the Metal Domain so we need to start discussing strategy."
Lake guessed this was true but he still felt like thest meeting had just ended. "Don''t worry I''ll be there. I know I''ll probably be important to whatever n we make and that I need to be there to add my input." Lake was the guide they would be using to track down the dagger so they would be going wherever he told them.
This made his input before and after they set out important. "Alright the time still isn''t set yet so make sure you''re easy to find." Lake was just about to go back to the training room so he said. "I should be training in the room we were just in if I don''t show up when I''m supposed to look there."
After he said this the Temple Head started to walk away again so he headed to the training room. Walking into the room where the Temple Head had shown him where he had messed up, Lake formed the sphere and started the training routine to see where he could get to without making the internalpressors.
He was only able to make it to the eighth round before his speed slowed down and he understood why the Temple Head had only told him to go to 15. Without relying on his old method it seemed he wasn''t as good as he thought he was. Trying to figure out how long it was going to take for him to make it to 15 Lake could only guess he wouldn''t have time to do it before it was time to leave.
It was too bad but there was nothing stopping him from continuing this goal while on the road. He was sure they wouldn''t be getting to the Metal Domain in a few hours like he would be able to if he was alone. As long as they weren''t constantly being attacked he would be fine to do this while walking. If they took carts it would be even better since he would be able to sit while he was training.
Seeing he had finished with thepression, Lake started to grow the ball of mana again and started to realize why the Temple Head had told him to switch the shape. Even while he was struggling he never had to stop to get the ball back into shape and could just keep pressing as hard as he could to shrink the ball.
At first he hadn''t really understood why this was better than just doing the cube method correctly but now he really got the fact that he was making good progress on catching up his ability to forcefullypress mana to his ability to control it. When he started the next round ofpression Lake knew there was a good chance he wasn''t going to be able to make it through this one without it popping.
Every time he would make any amount of progress on shrinking the ball one of the sides would bulge and since the only tool he had was to press the ball even harder he quickly lost control and the ball popped. Starting the process again Lake did this for almost two hours making ok progress each time he had to restart until he heard someone knock on the door.
Guessing it was time for the meeting Lake dissipated the ball he was currently working on and opened the door. "Oh, hello Lake." Seeing Dawn was the one who hade to get him, Lake was about to ask if the Temple Head had sent her or if she had knocked for another reason when he saw there was arge group of people behind her.
He recognized a few of them but he had no idea what they could want so he just asked. "What is it?" If they didn''t even know it was him he felt there was a good chance they didn''t need anything important. "We just got done training and were going to sit in on the meeting even though we aren''t going and I saw someone was in this room and figured I would let them know the meeting was starting in case they wanted to go."
"Well thank you, I did need to go since I''m part of the group that''s going." Closing the door to the training room, Lake started to walk to the meeting room with the group. Turning to Dawn, Lake asked. "How long do you think this one will be?" Dawn had been close enough to him to hear him asking Tiff when the meeting would be over so he didn''t think he needed to word this question better for her to know what he was asking.
"We should be out of there in less than three hours. There''s not much you have to n before you set out since you don''t know what will happen. The real nning will happen out on the road." Three hours didn''t sound that bad since he was sure there would be parts where he would be included in a discussion instead of just listening for the whole time.
Listening to something you didn''t feel pertained to you or interesting was really what made time drag, not how long it was. "So why aren''t you going? All of you were in the meeting after the Temple Head dismissed people who didn''t want to go?" Lake knew all of these people were probably important to the Temple in some way but none of them going was a bit weird.
Right after he thought this, Lake saw the weapons the people around him were holding and thought he should count how many of them there were. Once he counted up to 22 he realized he was right and these were all the weapons from the vault he had taken the dagger from and knew why they couldn''t go before Dawn even tried to answer his question.
"We''re being targeted so if we went we would draw in more enemies." Lake nodded like he didn''t know she was only giving him part of the answer and said. "I won''t be able to help in saving anyone who gets taken while I''m gone so make sure to be careful." They were to the meeting room so Lake said this as an annoying way to end the conversation.
Looking around he saw Tiff and went to take a seat next to her in the front of the room. He was guessing she was in the front of the room since she was one of the main people who would be going to look for the dagger and that meant he should be there too. "How''d you sleep?"
He could tell Tiff had just woken up so he felt this was a good way to say hello. "It was fine. Nice ring." Lake knew she was talking about the ring that showed he was a member of the temple now since it was the only one he had on. "It''s alright. Do you know when the meeting is going to start?"
"Probably as soon as the Temple Head walks into the room." Lake noticed the Temple Head wasn''t here yet after Tiff said this and looked around for her using a few of his skills. Seeing she was quickly heading this way he said. "Here shees." There was no point in hiding the fact he could see through walls after everything he had shown her so he went ahead and shared this information with Tiff.
Right after he said this the Temple Head walked into the room and climbed onto the stage. "Alright I need to keep this meeting short so I can get all the work I need done before I can leave. Does anyone have anything they think we should take into ount that would make our n differ from the norm?"
There weren''t that many people in the room so thankfully only two hands went up and the Temple Head quickly dismissed them. "I already know what you two are going to say, that''s already been ounted for. Anyone else?" No hands went up after that and the Temple Head went straight into exining how they would be getting to the Metal Domain.
"We''ll be taking six carts to the gate to the Metal Domain. Four for people and two for supplies. This will give us three weeks of food and enough potions tost a few hard battles which will be more than enough to get us through this mission with minor difficulties. We''ll be leaving as soon as we get word the barrier is down." After the Temple Head said all of this she quickly left the stage and walked out of the room.
He could tell some people had wanted to ask some questions but Lake wasn''t going toin because this was the ideal meeting for him. Plus they would have more than enough time to ask questions on the cart ride there. Looking at Tiff, Lake was about to ask her what she thought but he could tell she already had something nned since she was walking off in a hurry so he let her walk away and got up to head back to the training room.
Chapter 304: A Few At A Time
Chapter 304: A Few At A Time
"Donny wake up?" Being shaken awake Donny was excited to find he was still alive. He had been tied enough to think going to sleep was a good idea in a situation like this so he could tell he had been out for a while and still being alive meant they were close to the three day deadline they had been given for rescue.
"What is it?" His eyes were open at this point so when he saw Keel pointing at the barrier they were in he looked and saw a person on the other side. "Do they want something?" This was kind of a dumb question because them being outside of the barrier waiting meant they did but he wanted to know if contact had already been made or not.
"They seem to want to talk. We''re guessing they were sent by the other group as a messenger so we think it might be good news." That would make sense if he had slept for as long as he felt he had so he said. "I''ll talk to them if you would like." Keel had clearly thought this was a matter he needed to be awake for so he felt this was what Keel wanted.
"No, I just wanted you to have a second barrier ready to activate in case something bad happens. I or anyone else can talk to them." Hearing Keel wanted him to have a barrier ready he quickly made a formation that would be around the strength of the one he usedst time before saying. "I''m ready." To Fendis who was the person who was in charge of the barrier while he had been asleep.
Getting a nod from Fendis, Donny watched as the front of the barrier opened slightly to allow them to talk to the person on the other side. "We''re asking you all toe back to the main room. Rigbis wants to talk to you." After the messenger said this the barrier closed again and Keel looked at him.
Donny knew Keel wanted to hear what he thought soi he said. "There''s a good chance it''s the truth." Donny had already started to think the people in the main room were actually the people from the fortress and the timing lined up with when the barrier was supposed to fall so there was a good chance it was good news and Rigbis wanted to get everyone in the fortress ready to move out.
"So you think we should go?" Donny nodded to Keel''s question before looking at Fendis. "Go ahead and drop the barrier." He still had his ready to activate so if this was a trap they would be mostly fine. As soon as the barrier was down the guy that had been waiting outside asked. "Have you been able to weed them out already?"
Donny knew what the man was asking so he answered. "No, if there are any they are ying the long game." The man didn''t seem surprised at this and said. "Alright let''s go in groups then." Donny saw the guy start to pint at people before saying. "You four first."
Donny didn''t like this because they still couldn''t trust this guy 100% so he said. "I would rather give the orders. Feel free to leave now if you don''t feel safe traveling with us." Donny could tell the guy thought about fighting him over this but in the end he said. "Ok, I''ll see you there."
Watching the guy walk out of the room Donny called out. "We''ll be using the same formation we didst time. I''m sure you remember your group number and position." Once everyone was into their groups Donny switched what he had just said and pointed to group three. "Go look into the hallway."
It wouldn''t be fair to use the same group as the ones to check the hallway since it was the most dangerous job so he made the group that had been in the safest positionst time do it. Watching them approach the door and peer out. Donny could tell by the way they reacted that they hadn''t seen anything that scarred them and asked. "Is it clear?"
"Yes sir." Donny was about to start sending people out when he realized he should probably have Keel look as well. "Keel, would you mind taking a look as well." There was a good chance the people who had just looked could be Demon Worshipers who were lying about how safe the hallway was so he just wanted to make sure.
"No problem." There was a good chance that the hallway was safe so the fact he was asking Keel to do what seemed like something dangerous really showed that he just trusted that Keel would tell the truth. Keel seemed to understand this as well which was why he agreed so easily.
A few seconds after Keel had stuck his head out of the room he said. "I don''t see anything. We should probably go ahead and go before they start without us." Donny saw the way Keel''s words affected the people and realized they had all just collectively thought the same thing; they were going to be safe soon.
He understood them thinking this with both of the people in charge seeming to think the group in the main room were theirrades but he wasn''t going to let them drop their guard just yet. "Everyone please keep an apprehensive attitude. Even if it seems we''re almost out of the deep end we can''t be swayed so easily."
He tried to keep his words from being harsh so they would crush everyone''s hopes since that could be as bad as them dropping their guard. He seemed to have struck the bnce he was hoping for because he saw the faces of the people around him harden instead of falling so he started to give orders to the groups to move into the hallway.
"Go out in the same order asst time." This ced group one back in the front which was the worst ce to be but their enemies wouldn''t be attacking them in the halls if they existed since they would be in the main room so it didn''t matter. Once everyone was out of the room he dissipated the barrier formation he had ready and formed the shield formation.
Once it was ready he walked out of the room and took his ce at the back of the group who was already slowly moving towards the main room. After a few turns they were to the ce where they had been turned awayst time. He could hear talking in the line ahead of him but that was all spection on what was going on so he called out to Keel. "Are you handling this or do you want me to go?"
A second passed before he heard Keel call out. "I''m doing it." Guessing Keel sounded annoyed because he had interrupted whatever was going on at the front Donny just stayed quiet and wanted for them to be let in. A minute or so passed before the group started to move again and Donny was excited to get back to the main group even if there was a slight chance they were Demon Worshippers but after a few steps the group stopped again.
Hearing the people in front of him start to ask questions like "Why did we stop?" and, "What''s going on?" Donny waited for Keel to tell them. "We''re being let in a few people at a time. They say it''s so they can check everyone before they''re let in." Donny felt like Keel wanted to add a bit more to the end of what he just said but there was no reason.
He could already see another reason why they would only be let in a few people at a time. It would make killing them much easier. He wanted to ask Keel if the barrier was the type you could see through or not but decided to just go up there and look for himself. "Everyone out of the way."
It was dangerous for him to walk through the group at this time since this would be thest chance for the Demon Worshipers to do anything if the group in the main room was actually able to detect them but he had to take care of whatever was going on at the front of the line before too many people went inside.
Getting to the front was a slow process with him shoving people who had nowhere to go out of the way but he eventually got to the front safely which actually made him worried. If the people hidden amongst them didn''t feel pressure to attack him he felt it meant they were slowly being fed into a trap a few people at a time.
Keel seemed surprised to see him emerge out of the crowd next to him and asked. "Are you that impatient to go in?" Donny didn''t think this was what Keel was actually thinking but neither of them could say how worried they were out loud without giving away what they were thinking. "I figured you have it handled out here."
Donny really didn''t know any other way to make sure it was safe for them to go in so he was going to go next. When he saw the barrier open again he and two other people walked forwards and after a few people stared at him for a few seconds they were waved in. Once he was inside he saw it seemed fine with no obvious problems for them so he realized it was safe and went to look for Rigbis.
Chapter 305: Details Please
Chapter 305: Details Please
Seeing Rigbis was in fact alive even if he looked a little rough, Donny went towards where Rigbis and his noticeably smaller group of attendants were standing. A fight between the loyal attendants and the traitorous ones had been taking ce when they were running out of the room so he wasn''t surprised there were less than half left now.
After he thought this he realized he hadn''t seen any bodies yet and when he looked closer he noticed there weren''t even any signs a fight had gone one here almost exactly like how the hallways were devoid of the bodies and blood that should have been there. Wondering if this meant Rignis'' group would know where all the gore had gone and how the damage was fixed he made a note to ask if he got a chance.
He didn''t think he was allowed to just walk up to Rigbis and ask right now. Even though Rigbis didn''t seem that busy at the moment Donny was sure he had asked for the guards near the stage to keep anyone from getting too close since he had almost just been assassinated. If he was in Rigbis'' shoes he wouldn''t be letting anyone new near him anytime soon.
After thinking this, Donny integrated into the crowd of people that were probably also waiting for whatever Rigbis nned to tell them and found a ce to sit. He knew it would probably take a while for their whole group to make it inside even if there didn''t end up being any Demon Worshipers hidden amongst them so there was no point in standing around watching the door for Keel.
Even if he did want to talk to Keel about what happened outside the barrier Keel would most likely wait tillst toe through so he could keep everyone out there under control. He could already picture the mess that would ur when a person who a lot of people liked or were close to was discovered to be not who they said they were.
Donny could also see what he would do if a friend of his was used, he would say he had about a 50% chance of not believing it and using the people who were checking them before letting them in of being the ones who were Demon Worshipers. This would cause the situation outside to quickly turn into two sides where the actual demon Worshipers would have a chance to get an upper-hand.
"Donny is that you?" Hearing his name in a voice he didn''t recognize, Donny turned around to see the person talking to him had taken a seat behind him. "It''s me." Donny didn''t want to ask who they were since it was considered rude but he didn''t deny his own identity. "I''m happy you''re here. I thought I had lost my chance to thank you when I saw you lead a group of people out of the room the other day."
Donny could tell the man had been trying not to say he had thought they would die when they had run towards the gate and quickly asked. "Thank me for what?" There was a good chance this was another person who he had saved on his way to the fortress but he just wanted to make sure. "I''m one of the many people who owe you their life. I really mean it when I say this."
Donny had a lot of practice at downying everything he had done when saving people from the gargoyles with all the practice of having to do it multiple times a day so he just said. "Yeah we got close to dying there didn''t we." As he was saying this he couldn''t help but think back to Peter, one of the people he had been working with while they had been trying to stop the Demon Worshipers from doing this to the Metal Domain who hadn''t made it long enough to get to the fortress.
"It was almost over for all of us for sure." Seeing his n to make the guy start thinking about how harrowing the experience had worked in making them leave him alone he turned back to stare at the stage where Rigbis was. A few seconds after he did this he realized he had missed a chance to start a conversation with someone who had been here to see what happened while they were gone so he turned back around.
"Were you here during the battle?" This was definitely something he could just assume but he wanted to make sure. It was also a good way to start this line of questions. "Yeah I was one of the people who didn''t volunteer to be part of the teams that went outside so I was here from the beginning."
"So what happened after we left?" It took a while for the guy to answer and Donny could tell it was because they were trying to sort everything in their head into an answer that was in order. "I''ll start with what happened right after you left the room. The fight was already going by the time you all had left so you know that half of the people that were with Rigbis flipped. We aren''t sure but we think only one of them had originally been a Demon Worshiper who had silently turned others through a few different methods."
That made a lot of sense. He had felt it was a little crazy that that many Demon Worshipers had been able to get Rigbis to trust them while staying undetected but if it was only one who turned others it made a lot more sense. The Demon Worshipers had a fewmon methods to make people flip sides like curses or turning them into undead so it probably hadn''t taken the one very long to get ahold of the others and attack.
For all he knew most of the attendants had beenpletely fine up until that attack where the Demon Worshiper had ced them under some type of curse. There were plenty of curses that were meant to be used in battle so the Demon Worshiper could haveunched the attack on Rigbis and flipped the people closest to him all at the same time.
"Our barrier didn''te up until the fight on the stage ended so all of us were focused on the enemies that started toe into the room. There weren''t that many undead that came through the door but it still kept me from watching the fight on stage so I can''t really tell you too much about it. All I know is by the time the barrier came up and I looked at the stage Rigbis was being pulled onto his feet."
Donny didn''t like the way the guy was saying these details and it made him wonder if his suspicion was bleeding through even if he wasn''t trying to say the people on stage could be under the control of the Demon Worshipers.
There was really no way to ever not be suspicious in situations like these unless you were able to see details about people like race and name when you looked at their stats but your perception had to be much higher than your target or you needed special skills to achieve this so people like that were rare.
This meant every person in this room would be trying to put small details together like a detective would to try and find out the truth about if Rigbis had been healed and survived, killed and revived as an undead, or ced under a curse. Wanting to get a look at the person in question Donny looked forward for a few seconds while the guy told him details about the first day of being inside the barrier, seeing Rigbis'' sickly appearance Donny knew it meant nothing.
An undead looked like a normal person unless they were mindless since they tried to trick people and them looking nonhuman would be a huge disadvantage so he needed to look deeper if he really wanted to get a better clue. It was too bad he barely knew Rigbis and couldn''t really even see him through the others on stage.
He guessed he could use the way the people around Rigbis were acting as a clue as to weather Rigbis was actually him or not. If Rigbis waspromised the people around him would have been the ones to do it so the fact they were kind of shielding him from view could mean he was acting weird and they didn''t want people to see.
He really didn''t think that was the case though but he would keep an eye on them all when Rigbis started to talk. "There you are." Looking up Donny saw Keel was finally here and held up his hand to the guy who was still feeding him details about what happened while they weren''t here before asking. "How''d it go outside?"
"Like you would expect, instead of making a break for it the Demon Worshipers let the people checking everyone call them out and then tried to turn all of us against each other." Keel was right about that being what he expected to happen. "How many were there?" This was really all that mattered to him about what had happened outside the barrier while he hadn''t been there.
Chapter 306: Persistent Suspicions
Chapter 306: Persistent Suspicions
"Not as many as you would think, only two were detected." Donny was a bit surprised by Keel''s words but like Keel said that was how many were detected. There could be a lot more depending on the people who were checking and what they could see when they looked at people.
"So everyone''s in?" Keel just nodded and took a seat next to him. Seeing Keel really didn''t have anything to say Donny pointed at the guy behind him and said. "My friend here was just telling me about what happened while we were gone." Like the guy had known he wanted him to tell Keel exactly what he had told him, he leaned forward and introduced himself before going back into what he had said about the fight on the stage.
"Hello I''m Himlin, I was just telling Donny here about the fight that took ce on stage between the people close to Rigbis and how no one really saw how it went." It didn''t take much for Keel to get the gist of what they were trying to say without actually saying it. "Well it seemed to go well enough."
As Keel was saying this Donny could tell he was trying to get a good look at Rigbis which was exactly what he had done after his suspicions had been reignited. After a while Keel looked away from Rigbis and gave him a look. Doing his best to read Keel''s face Donny could tell he was as uncertain as well.
The three of them settled into a silence after this and none of them said anything until finally a few minutes after Keel had firste into the room the people on the stage started to move. Seeing this as his first real chance to see Rigbis, Donny scanned every inch of the man''s body. This didn''t tell him anything because Rigbis looked and acted exactly like someone who had been gravely injured a few days ago.
Even if they had potions or a healer there was nothing you could do for some types of injuries with normal means and since the person who had tried to kill him had been a Demon Worshiper he wouldn''t be surprised if there had been poison or a death curse involved. Either of those things could make the recovery almost impossible no matter how many potions you downed.
"Alright now that everyone is back together in one ce I wanted to get down to what we had nned for the deadline we were told for when the barrier will being down." This was what he had assumed this would be about but he would have preferred if Rigbis opened with saying the barrier had alreadye down.
This wasn''t him criticizing Rigbis though since it wasn''t up to Rigbis when it fell and there probably wasn''t a way for them to get news from outside anymore so they wouldn''t know when or if it came down. "I wanted to tell you we originally nned to stay in the fortress during the beginning of whatever chaos urred when the barrier came down but with the fortress almost out of mana from using it to clear out the intruders we changed it."
Donny wished he could stop Rigbis there and have him exin what he meant by using the fortress to clear out the intruders but Rigbis had flown past it and was already telling them the new n. "The new n is to send out a scout every few hours until they bring back news of the barrier being gone. Once we get that news we''ll head out using thest of the fortress'' mana to protect our escape."
Donny took this chance to look around to see if anyone else looked confused. Seeing no faces that said they wanted to ask a question, Donny guessed histe arrival had made him miss out on some information about the fortress.
He had wanted to know where it hade from when he had first seen it but had answered his own question when he realized it was made of metal and this was the Metal Domain assuming it had been an emergency precaution built into the city that activated during attacks that breached the wall but now he wished he had asked someone.
It wasn''t toote though and he would be able to ask Keel as soon as this meeting was over and everyone started to talk again. "This n has some obvious ws but we aren''t any help to anyone hiding here waiting for the fortress to run out of mana." Rigbis seemed to be done talking at this point and backed off of the front of the stage back towards his entourage.
Not wasting a second Donny asked Keel. "What''s so special about the fortress, can it move or something?" Keel seemed vaguely amused by his question and said. "Something like that." Donny could tell he wasn''t going to get any real information from Keel if he just asked again so he thought about turning around and asking his new friend Himlin but found the thought to be vaguely embarrassing so he just stayed silent for a while.
Eventually this silence got to Keel and he said. "The fortress is something the Temple Handed off to Rigbis to hold people they didn''t feel safe letting in. It''s some type of golem that transformed into this fortress after walking here from the temple. I didn''t know it could turn back or had its own mana supply so I''m as surprised as you that our n is to use it to guard us on the way out of the city."
Getting the Information he wanted he asked. "Do you know what type of golem it is?" There were a few things that looked like golems that were actually tied to the God of Metal or one of his subordinate Demigods and if it was one of them he could see them getting out of the city no problem. "No idea."
It was too bad but Donny just decided to believe the Temple had sent them the best they could. Turning around to get Himlin''s attention Donny asked. "Is there any food?" Donny knew this room wasn''t the ce people had been equating so it was unlikely there was a lot but he hadn''t eaten in something like a day so he was starving.
The important stuff was done so it was time for things like food and going to the bathroom and he was pretty sure he could kind of smell both of those things. "Not much but if you head over there you''ll be given a ration." Hearing Himlin''s words Donny tapped Keel shoulder and asked. "Are you hungry?"
"I am, but I''m not sure what a ration will do about it." Realizing this was the second joke Keel had told in just a few minutes Donny realized just how much of a difference good news could make on a person. Keel had been upset since they had heard the news about the Temple but now he seemed happier than Donny had ever seen him.
"Well it''s still better than nothing." As he was getting up Donny took a better look at the ce he had been told to get his ration from. There was a bit of a line consisting mainly of people from their group but there also seemed to be some kind of hold up. Hoping that the food hadn''t run out Donny walked over and joined the line with Keel before it got any longer.
Speaking to the person in front of him he asked. "So you know why it''s taking so long?" As the person turned around they saw it was him and said. "Captain Donny, it''s something with the amount being less than what was promised per ration."
"They''re probably reducing it because there are now more people to feed with us here." The guy ahead of him started to nod to what he had just said before adding. "Probably but I don''t think causing a problem will do anything about it."
That was for sure but he understood losing control if you were starving and were handed less food than you expected. If it hadn''t been the person who was currently yelling the next in line would have probablyined in this fashion. Eventually the person handing out the food got tired of being yelled at and got mad themself before chasing the person away.
"Next please." Seeing the guy throw the food at the next person in line without even saying anything to them or giving them a chance toin Donny was happy with this new system since it was much faster and he was in the back of the line. When it was his turn he caught his food and went back to where he had been sitting to eat it.
"We''re about to open the barrier to let the scouts out." Hearing one of the people up on the stage yell that the first check was about to be done Donny looked at the group of scouts and watched them walk out of the barrier while he took the first of three bites of food. He couldn''t help but think that they should go get more food before they headed outside.
Chapter 307: Magic Deal
Chapter 307: Magic Deal
Losing control of the ball of mana in front of him Lake weathered the explosion and stood up from where he had been sitting for thest two hours. Training had gone well and he had gotten really close to the 15 rounds ofpression he had been told would get him equal on the two factors the cube method trained.
Stepping out into the main part of the training room Lake saw a lot of familiar faces inside all doing various tasks to get ready for their trip. Taking the fact they were in here to mean he had time to do a few other things he tried to think of what he wanted to actually do. Usually most of his free time was spent running from ce to ce but with him not traveling right now he was running out of things.
Reading and training were both usually good time sinks but he wasn''t in the mood for either. While thinking, two people sparring with swords caught his attention and Lake wondered if it would be safe for him to fight someone he didn''t want to kill. Just activating two of his skills at the same time could cause an explosive effect on his stats and he could end up killing someone by ident.
Deciding he was willing to take the risk he walked towards the people who were also watching the fight and asked. "Are you waiting to fight next?" There were two of them so it made sense to him that they were going to have a duel next. "No, one of us will be fighting whoever wins if they''re up to it."
"If they aren''t up to it?" There was really only one answer so he wasn''t surprised when the guy said. "Then the two of us will go." Hearing how this worked, Lake got in line and started to wait for his turn. After about twenty minutes he realized why the other two were doing other things while waiting passively and formed his ball of mana back to continue his training as he waited.
After a while he made it to the 13th round ofpression which was where he had failed earlier right before he had decided to be done training magic for the day. Squeezing the mana ball as hard as he could, Lake made slow but noticeable progress but really started to struggle towards the end and eventually hit another wall like the one he had asked the Temple Head about where she told him what he had been doing wrong.
He was about to give up and dissipate the ball of mana before it exploded when he heard. "What''s your goal?" It took him a second to realize they were actually talking to him but once he saw them looking at him and motioning with their hand towards the ball of mana he said. "To make the ball smaller."
"No, you''re forgetting to control the mana''s principles. This is training your ability to control the mana''s principle that gives it its state but all you''re doing is pressing it together as hard as you can. You need to be doing both at the same time." Thinking back to when he had first started training with the Wind mana the guy was definitely right.
Back then he had been actually feeling the properties of the mana that were its different principles but he had stopped doing so when he had started to feel like this training was easy. It was deeply ingrained in people to only do what was necessary if they were sessful from the very start of something and never had to try a bunch of different things and he had fallen into this pattern as well.
"Thank you for the help. I was about to go and find the Temple Head to see if she could help me." The guy who had helped him started tough at what he had just said before saying. "It''s best to ask others who are close by first. The Temple Head is very busy and this problem could have been solved by almost everyone in this room."
Lake guessed this guy didn''t know how close he was to the Temple Head but Lake didn''t say anything in case this man could help him more as he trained next to him. Tuning himself to the mana so he could actually control the principles, Lake started to picture the ball of mana growing more dense and solid.
Seeing the ball start to shrink again he wasn''t the only one who reacted. "That''s great. It takes real talent to fix a mistake that fast." Hearing what the guy said he was happy he hadn''t told him off earlier because he would have missed out on thisplement. "Thank you."
"No problem, so are you interested in fighting me using Wind magic only? It might not happen naturally right now because of the way we''re taking turns but fighting people with one hand tied behind your back is a great way to train a certain skill." Hearing the guys offer, Lake was interested but he wanted to make sure of something first because he wasn''t sure about the original offer.
The way the man had asked made it seem both of them might be using Wind Magic and with the fact this guy had helped him with his problem Lake felt there was a good chance the guy had Wind Affinity as well. "Will you be using Wind magic as well?" Seeing the guy''s Head start to nod, Lake quickly agreed. "That sounds good to me but I don''t really know any spells."
Lake had a few but they were so weak he didn''t think he could cut through more than a few inches of wood. "That''s fine. You''re clearly able to unlock higher rank spells and since I know them you can just try and copy any I use during our fight." Lake guessed that worked for him and he said. "It''s up to you to make this happen since you''re in front of me in line. You better win your fights."
The man who had helped him was in the front of the line so he would be next to fight whoever won the current fight and would need to win against the reigning champ and the person in line between them. "If he wins I''ll let you go next. I''m fine with waiting."
Hearing the person in between them would give up their spot to Lake if the guy ahead won his first fight Lake said. "Thank you." He really had no idea how strong the guy he would be dueling with was so this could have really helped them. "It''s no problem just promise whoever wins your fight will duel me. No one has lined up so if neither of you want to continue to fight I might have waited for no reason."
Lake and the man he had made the deal with agreed at the same time. "Good. It looks like the current fight will being to an end soon so get up there." Right as the guy in the middle said this one of the two people fighting on the tform when flying into a wall that softly caught them. A secondter the person who had lost climbed out of the wall and yelled. "Good fight." To the person who had won.
Watching them walk away, Lake turned back to the one still on the stage who seemed ready for another battle. With their decision to fight again it became necessary for the guy he had a deal with to win so as they were walking away Lake reminded them to be serious. "Don''t mess this up for us."
Lake was tired of waiting already so if they ended up losing they would have to set the battle up forter and the amount of time they had before leaving the Temple was uncertain so it might never happen if it wasn''t soon. "Don''t worry, me and Kell have fought before and I won." Seeing how certain they were that they would win as they climbed onto the stage, Lake stopped thinking about them losing and went back to focusing on the ball of mana.
He was really close to getting to the 15 rounds ofpression now that he was doing it right so he wanted to get it done before his battle started. He also needed to start on the speed training since he still hadn''t fixed how far behind it was to the solid principle. Starting the expansion on the 15th round the ball of mana had gone through Lake started to struggle.
Usually this was much easier than thepression but you couldn''t let the new mana you were gathering into the ball drop its density or you failed so the amount of mana he was gathering was thousands of times greater than the first round since it multiplied each round and he guessed his affinity just couldn''t handle this amount of mana at once.
This made him wonder how he was supposed to fix this problem up until now the problems he had faced were on him but now his affinity was what was slowing him down and that was granted through a skill. He guessed it was time for him to ask someone like the Temple Head what he was supposed to do about a skill that you thought wascking at level one.
Chapter 308: How will this work
Chapter 308: How will this work
After a while he finally got the ball to the right size and was able to startpressing again. This actually caused his speed to be faster than it had been when he had been growing the ball. Getting the ball to the final size Lake dissipated it while congratting himself for rewatching his goal.
After the tip given to him by the guy who was currently fighting in the ring Lake had made fast progres so he needed to remember to ask for this guy''s name in case he ever needed help in Wind magic again. He always forgot and for whatever reason people in this world didn''t seem to be too keen on telling you their name unless you asked.
He was guessing this was just one of the small ways this world differed to his since your name could be used as a way to have you killed if they gave it to the Assassins guild. There were probably other bad things they could do with a name that he didn''t know about so he understood why people did this and it was only a problem because he forgot to introduce himself all the time.
He also needed to ask if they would be going on the trip or just happened to go to the meeting. If they were going it would give him a better chance of having people around to make the trip less boring. He would most likely be in a cart with the Temple Head since he was the guid but if that didn''t happen he could end up around people who treated him like a nuisance like the group he had been walking to the Metal Domain with.
He knew that had probably been because they were busy and he wasn''t helpful to their group in any way they understood but that could be true for the people he was in a cart with as well. Deciding the fight that was going on on the stage didn''t seem close to being over he started on the other training method he knew.
Forming the small vortex out of wind mana Lake started to think back to how exactly he had been doing this exercise. He was pretty sure all he had to do was slow down the vortex before making it go as fast as he could in a pattern but he wasn''t sure if that was exactly how you were actually supposed to do it or if that was just how he had figured it out.
Guessing that it didn''t really matter if it was wrong until he hit a wall in his training, Lake started to go back and forth between speeding the vortex up and down for a while until he felt the noise was getting kind of annoying. Deciding to activate Mute instead of actually stopping Lake got back to his training until he heard someone start talking to him. "That''s a cool trick, I wish I could make my spells silent."
Turning around to see who it was because it wasn''t the person sitting next to him, Lake saw the guy who had talked to him almost every time it was just them. Quickly deactivating Mute and stopping the vortex so it wouldn''t make noise Lake said. "Hello Greg." He wasn''t sure what Greg wanted from him but it usually was just a short hello before he walked away so Lake was fine with pausing his training for a few seconds.
"Are you in line to fight or just watching?" Lake could kind of guess where this was going so he told the truth since he would be fine with dueling Greg if he won his fights. "Yeah, I''ll be going next if that guy wins and it''s his turn if that guy wins." After Lake got done exining the current situation to Greg he was expecting some kind of response like, ''I''ll fight you after that'' or something but instead Greg turned and said. "I gotta get going, I''ll talk to youter."
Lake guessed it was possible Greg hadn''t wanted to wait thinking it would take too long to get a match against him but when he saw Greg head into the door the Temple Head had told him not to go through Lake though maybe it was the truth and Greg really only had a few minutes to talk.
He wasn''t sure what was going on back there but with Greg being one of the people holding the holy weapons he found in the vault, Lake assumed it had something to do with the group of holy mages that had protected the city when it was being attacked by the Demon Worshipers.
It made sense to him if they had their own training room since they were supposed to be a secret and there was a constant threat of the news of their strength and progress leaking out from some type of spy. A room separate from the others would make it a lot harder to observe them and depending on how tight lipped the people around were you might not even be able to tell they had the Holy affinity.
His skill mana vision allowed him to see what type of mana people had around them but he was sure that wasn''t the case for others so they wouldn''t even know if they were living in the same building as a force of Holy Mages. He was sure the people inmand would know but before the war started he was sure no one knew.
This would also make sense of the fact the holy weapons had been somewhere separate from the temple hidden instead of with the holy mages the whole time. It would kind of give away who they were if they were walking around with weapons that glowed slightly goldsen and gave off an aura of Holy magic.
The aura was actually strong enough that it made him worry about being able to nt it somewhere without anyone noticing when it popped up all of a sudden. He had it in his bag which was able to hide the aurapletely but that would change as soon as he took it out and ced it somewhere for the group to find so he felt he couldn''t just go around a corner and pull it out.
He needed to find a way to get far enough away that he could nt the dagger while making it seem like he hadn''t just run off to nt the Dagger which meant he would need to be captured or something. Then he could save himself but tell everyone it had been a guy named Jon who gave him a dagger and said he had been meaning to give it back.
Right after he thought this he decided it sounded stupid and no one would believe it so he tried to think of something like that that was believable. Tiff though Jon had the dagger so using his other identity wasn''t a bad idea he just needed to let them see him like that which he could do while they thought he had been taken and then after he could hand over the dagger before disappearing again and going back to being captured where they coil save him.
Happy with this n, Lake was about to stop thinking about it when he remembered how dangerous it would actually be to be captured by the Demon Worshipers. If they had him they could curse him to be loyal to them forever. This meant he couldn''t go back to them afterwards to let the people from the Temple save him.
He needed to make it seem like he escaped on his own before the Demon Worshipers had been able to do anything to him and were able to make it back to them. Actually it would probably just be better to go back to the Temple and say he could find them in all the chaos. Wait no that didn''t make sense since the Temple Head had seen him track people down on multiple asions so he needed to reappear just not right after Jon disappeared.
It would make it seem weird especially since it seemed Tiff had already thought he was Jon for some reason in the past. This could easily reignite her suspicions which might get passed on to the Temple Head. He also needed to find a reason why Jon would show up all of a sudden after them not being able to find him for a long time.
"Looks like it''s your turn first." Hearing the other guy in the line say that it was his turn, Lake looked up to see the guy he had made ns to fight send the other guy flying with a punch to the chest. Getting up Lake was about to go onto stage but the guy he was going to fight started to get down and Lake stopped in case they had been hurt and couldn''t keep their promise. "Is there something wrong?"
"No, I just need to take a second to let my manae back. I used quite a few spells there. It will only take a few minutes though so don''t go anywhere." Hearing their duel was still on Lake decided this was a good time to ask for the exact rules so he did. "How will this work?"
Chapter 309: Trying To Win
Chapter 309: Trying To Win
"Well I was thinking we could do a ssic mage''s duel where we both stand in ce on either side of the ring and try to hit each other with spells. It''s been a while since I was able to duel someone with the Wind element so it should be fun." Hearing they wouldn''t be able to move, Lake lost confidence in actually winning but he still agreed.
"That sounds good, other than not moving are there any other rules like taking turns?" If they couldn''t move he wouldn''t be surprised if there was something like that in the rules of this type of duel. "You''ve never seen anyone duel before?"
Lake shook his head no. "Oh in that case I''ll tell you everything about them. To answer your question there aren''t any turns but you do have to let the weaker opponent make the first move so you''ll be able to start the battle, other than that the duel is a normal fight where you can''t leave where you''re standing."
"So we can''t fly? That seems kind of weird in a battle using the Wind element." The guy didn''t disagree with this statement and said. "We can fly if you want a rematch after I beat you." Hearing the way they said this, Lake could tell they were ready to start the fight and asked. "Is your mana back."
Instead of getting a normal answer to his question the guy jumped to the stage and said. "Why don''t youe and see." Seeing how much fun they were having, Lake didn''t ask anything else and jumped onto the stage in a dramatic way adding a few dozed flips to what the other person had done. "If it has to be this way then take this."
Lake fired his pitiful first spell to which the other person quickly blocked it and fired what could only be described as a tornado at him. Lake didn''t know any real wind spells other than Fly so he decided in the half a second he had until it hit him to try and just use the Wind mana around him to condense a shield.
This wasn''t a spell and just a shape made out of Mana he had changed slightly to be solid but his goal was to just let the tornado pass him by like he was in a tornado shelter. After being blown around a bit even with his shield in ce Lake dropped it and saw the tornado was gone.
He hadn''t forgotten this was a real fight though and didn''t look around too much before converting his shield into a giant vortex of his own. At first he thought he had failed in some way when he didn''t hear the name of the spell he was trying to use right away but as he sped the vortex up he heard someone say. "Whirlwind."
Repeating this name Lake sent his vortex at the guy he was facing shouting its name as loud as he could. "Whirlwind." Unlike the guy he was facing there was no advantage to hiding the name for him since the other guy already knew the spell. The guy heunched the attack at actually started to smile when he saw this and while they didn''t have time to talk Lake was sure he would have congratted him if they did.
Watching the man not only block the attack but absorb the mana from his spell Lake realized since they were using the same element it waspletely possible to use any spellsunched as an easy way to increase how much mana you had at your disposal. It seemed all you needed to do was wait till it got close enough to you.
This made him understand why it wasn''t necessary to move in this type of duel. It was going to be almost impossible to beat the other person even if they weren''t allowed to dodge. You had topletely overpower someone who could disarm youpletely. He saw only one way to do this and it was to make it so the other guy had no ess to any mana.
Under the surface of this duel there was a mana tug of war going on that you couldn''t really see and Lake would need to at least get close to winning this before he couldnd an attack. The problem was they seemed to be pretty close to each other in how well they were able to gather mana so he wasn''t sure how he was supposed to win.
He had noticed in the past there did seem to be the possibility to go past the stated capabilities of a skill if you used it a lot but he wasn''t sure if that was because of the description beingcking and not exining the skill fully or if you were actually making progress in how strong the skill was.
He also didn''t think he would be able to make enough progress in any of the skills that mattered to win the mana tug of war so he needed to find a different way and he was sure he could figure something out if he found the time to read all the skills he had received from Wind Mage. It had been a while since he had looked at his skills or even his stats so he didn''t even know what he could do.
A fight like this wasn''t a good time to study though so he needed to focus for now. The guy across from him was clearly about to cast another spell Lake had never seen before so he needed to get ready to react to the new spell that could take almost any form. After a while Lake saw them stop speeding the mana up and do a hand motion that caused a constant stream of wind to start pushing on him.
Lake guessed they had nned to send him flying from where he was standing since that was one of the ways you could win but Lake was able to hold his position by splitting the stream of wind by taking control of the mana just enough to divert it. After a while of it not working the guy stopped and started to gather mana again so Lake got down to imitating the spell he was just subjected to.
It was just a constand gust of wind so Lake didn''t think it would be that hard to figure out he just needed to get his mana spinning first like the guy had done beforeunching the attack. He knew this was just to get the speed principle within the mana high enough that the wind would be going fast enough to push the other person but he was slow in this aspect so he was afraid by the time he got it going he would have to abort the attack because the other guy was alreadyunching another spell towards him.
This didn''t happen in the end, though he wasn''t sure if it was because he had beat them to it or if they had wanted to give him a chance to unlock a new spell. Sending the mana at the other person, Lake heard the name of the spell in his ear and repeated it. "Wind st."
Like he expected the other guy was able to stop the stream of Wind with no problem but it didn''t end there and before he knew it his own attack had been redirected at him. Not knowing how to react to this while continuing his attack Lake stopped the stream of Wind prematurely before recapturing the attack that had been redirected at him and adding it back to the spinning mana that it hade from.
Lake wished this wasn''t a fight so he could stop and talk to the other person for a second because he wanted to understand how this was supposed to end. He didn''t think either of them could actually beat the other in a timely manner unless the other guy was holding back to help him out and could end it whenever they wanted.
He didn''t have actual time for this though because he had to watch how they were getting ready for their next spell so he could do the same thing to unlock the spell. It seemed this spell was going to be a lot more dangerous just by the look of it so he wanted to be able to unlock it.
Once they finallyunched the attack it was in the shape of a giant sharp ring that was rotating at a high speed and like always Lake had almost no time to think of a way to deal with it. Not being able to think of a way to redirect or destroy the spell without being hit, Lake decided his best option was to try and slow it down by taking control of the mana it was made of.
If he was able to do this he would just use the mana to cast the same spell so he could unlock it for himself. As the rotating disk got closer to him than it was to the other guy he felt himself start to wrestle control of it out of the other person''s hands and by the time it was a few feet away he had itpletely stopped in ce other than its spinning.
Lake briefly thought about just throwing it back at the other guy but he didn''t think that would unlock the spell for him so he decided to y it safe and destroy this disk before making one of his own and using that as the attack. Getting his mana into the right shape and doing just that Lake heard the name right as he was about to throw it. "Air Slicer."
Like everything up until that point this new spell was stopped in a slightly fancier way than he was able to do by the other person and Lake expected them to send it back towards him but instead they started to talk. "That''s all the high level spells I know so from now on I''m just going to be trying to win."
Chapter 310: No, More Like This
Chapter 310: No, More Like This
Hearing he had been right and the other guy hadn''t been taking this seriously up until now to let him learn the spells the man knew, Lake wondered if he should thank the man after he lost the duel. He had already struggled a few times and was sure he would have been thrown out of his spot already if he had to worry about a few attacks at once.
There was a bonus to the other guy not showing him new spells anymore and that was he didn''t have to watch the guys movements as much and could focus on the attacks that wereing at him. As long as he felt out the mana around him correctly it didn''t really matter how many attacks there were since all he needed to do was control them and send them back before they hit him.
This might sound hard but Lake had found his level of control was pretty good and he was practiced in splitting his attention on multiple things at once already. Seeing the first wave of spellse flying towards him, Lake wondered why the man had decided to go with weak spells now instead of trying to overwhelm him all of the sudden.
If you were going to send a wave of attacks making them strong enough to actually do something was necessary. Absorbing all of the wind des that got too close to him, Lake wished he could ask his question instead of just continuing to wonder while they fought. He felt like it could end up distracting him if he wasn''t able to focus on what was going on.
Deciding the best way to stop thinking about it was to attack since he would need to n the spells he was going to use so he could get them ready. Lake started to spin his mana up while making up his mind on what he should do to win. The first attack was unlikely to beat your opponent so you were really better off not showing your hand and going for a probing attack to see if you could identify an area that your opponent leaked in but he didn''t think he knew enough about magic to n something like that.
The areas he knew of that someone couldck in were force and control and that was just something he had heard from the Temple Head so it might not even be the best way to measure how good someone was at Wind magic. They also seemed even in affinity and the guy across from him had a lot more experience so Lake doubted he coulde up with something the other guy had never seen before.
This made Lake think the best way to win was tounch as many random spells as possible in the hopes he could get an unblockablebo by ident. He knew this was leaving this battle up to fate but he had already run out of ideas he thought would work the second he started to think about how to win.
Once all the mana he had was spinning fast enough Lake started to cast spells. "Wind st, Air Slicer." Lake stopped with just these two because the twobined already took most of his mana and he needed a bit to keep Wind st going. Like he expected both of his attacks were redirected back at him but Lake didn''t stop Wind st this time and just fed the mana back into the supply for the spell.
None of the mana was being lost in this process so he had made a spell that would Last until the other person redirected it in a direction where it wouldn''t enter his influence. He also spun the Air Slicer around right back at its original target so both of his two attacks were headed back towards his opponent.
Enough time had passed for him to gather more mana so he also went ahead and sent another Air Slicer right behind that one. Lake was hoping both of these would be sent back to him and he could throw in a Whirlwind to have all three of the spells he had just learnt active at the same time but it seemed the other guy understood what he was trying to do and they absorbed all of the mana from his spells before starting to talk.
"You need to be more creative. Use them more like this next time." After they said this two Air slicers came flying at him from opposite directions. Likest time Lake nned to take control of them once they got close enough to him but he never got the chance because before the spells got close they exploded.
Understanding the real attack this time would be the shockwave that had been produced by this Lake formed an Air Slicer of his own and threw it forward. His n was to cancel out the wave of air that was heading towards him but the reality of the interaction was his slicer just passed through like it hadn''t hit anything.
Understanding his mistake Lake wished he had used Wind st instead but it was toote and he didn''t have enough mana to cast that spell so his only option was to try and make a shield out of the small amount of mana that he had at the moment. Barely getting a solid te in front of him before he was hit by the wave of air, Lake felt his feet move across the floor slightly and realized he had just been beaten.
"It''s good to remember just because Wind mana isn''t the same as the air around us that the interaction between the two can be used if you know what you are doing." Lake knew what the other person said was true because the wave of air that had moved him from his spot wasn''t all mana.
He guessed he should have figured this out himself before now. He didn''t know the amount of times his hair had been blown about as he was training with Wind magic. Almost every time one of his cubes of spheres had failed a st of wind had gone out in every direction that had the same mixture as the attack he had just lost to.
"Alright, thank you for the match. I''ll move to allow you two to go ahead." If no one had been waiting Lake would have probably asked for a rematch or maybe even a regr fight but the person who was waiting had actually let him cut in line so it would be rude to do that now. "You should stick around and fight again even if it isn''t against me. You should still be in top condition since all you did was use Wind magic."
Lake nodded to this since he still wanted to talk to this man and had already nned to get into line even if they hadn''t said this to him. As he was getting down the person who had been waiting stopped him briefly and said. "It was interesting to see you learn a spell and fight with it in the same duel. Don''t take the loss hard."
Lake gave them a smile and walked to sit on the side of the ring. He was starting to realize that the people in the Temple were much nicer than normal which wasn''t too surprising to him. He was pretty sure it was only because they were all on the younger side though. This made him guess they were all hoping to befriend him which he wasn''t opposed to.
The Temple was the best ce for him to make progress in magic and instead of reading and getting all the information he needed that way he would much rather just have people tell him what he should be doing. It was very obvious that everyone around would know at least one type of magic well enough to help him make progress quickly.
Remembering that he had wanted to take a look at his skills that affected his wind magic, Lake went ahead and pulled them up. It didn''t take long for him to see he had never actually gotten Wind mage to level ten and that he only had two shills which wasn''t what he remembered.
He had thought he had maxed Wind Mage a long time ago down in the catbs of the Alchemist guild but it seemed he was wrong. Switching his job over from Thief Lake guessed the next time he went out he could get the other two skills and a few more points in Intelligence.
He was a little worried about doing this since Intelligence was so close to 200 and he would hit the limit soon but decided it was worth it to max out a job rted to an element he was interested in. Looking back up from his skills he saw the fight between the two in the ring was a normal one and started to watch it with interest to see how strong the two of them were.
Chapter 311: Get Ready
Chapter 311: Get Ready
It wasn''t long before Lake realized if he was to fight either of the people in the ring normally he would win. All of their moves were too slow to ever get anywhere near him and this was good for him in a lot of ways. People would be much more interested in fighting him in magic duels once they saw how fast he was able to beat them normally.
This was for a few reason like them wanting to beat someone they normally wouldn''t be able to and not wanting to fight someone they couldn''t even see moving but he didn''t care about their reasons and just wanted to spend as much time dueling people as he could so he could start getting used to fighting using magic.
At the moment the only time it made sense for him to use magic instead of just killing someone with a normal attack was when he was using his bow and Imbuing Fire so whatever he hit burst into mes. "Head to the auditorium, the Temple Head just called a meeting for everyone going. No one else is allowed toe."
Lake turned his head to see a person near the door to the training room and guessed they were the one who had yelled out this message. He didn''t get up and head for the door right away though and instead went towards the two people getting down from the ring. "Are you both going?"
They were both nice so if they were he was just going to introduce himself to both of them. Seeing them both start to nod, he said. "I''m Lake." After he said this he waited for the other two to introduce themselves but eventually he realized they weren''t going to. "You don''t have to tell me your real names if you don''t want to."
After he said this, Lake made a note that he could at any time look at their names if he wanted to by using inspect on them. He didn''t n to do this though because people could tell when you looked at their information. "Sorry about that, we''re both restricted in sharing our identities because of our jobs in the temple."
Lake wanted to know more but he just decided to ask someone like the Temple Head more about why he was allowed to know the names of people like Tiff and Dawn but not two seemingly random members of the Temple since he was sure neither of them would tell him if they couldn''t even say their names.
"That''s alright. I just wanted to introduce myself so I could find you twoter. I know we''ll be going out on the mission soon but afterwards I wanted to train some more."
"Well we know your name and you shouldn''t have any problems finding us. The Temple is big but most of the time we''re in here training when we have time for something like a duel so juste and line up if you see us." Lake nodded and waved for them to walk with him out of the room.
"So we''ve never seen you until a few days ago. Are you new to the Temple?" Lake started to nod before exining. "Yeah I actually just joined a few hours ago. I''ve had ns to join for a while but I was in the Alchemist guild up until now working on alchemy and it got in the way."
"Did the war make you think it was time toe and help?" Lake started to nod even though it wasn''t exactly right. It was close enough and he didn''t think telling them the truth. The main two reasons he had joined were he had heard the Demon Lords voice and it had scared him and the Insider wanted him to join the Temple and neither of them were good things to tell people.
"You being an Alchemist makes your ability to learn spells make more sense. I was wondering how a beginner in magic could have such high Intelligence. It''s the most important stat in the Alchemist guild right?" Lake wasn''t sure but he nodded anyway because that sounded right to him.
"Yeah just a few days in the guild and my Intelligence maxed out." Lake didn''t get into the Elixir because he wasn''t sure if it was something he should talk about but he didn''t have any problems saying his Intelligence was at least at 100 because they could tell after seeing him fight with magic.
Your Intelligence affected how fast you could gather mana just like your affinity did so it was very obvious to people who knew how magic worked that he was at least maxed out. "Where are you two going to sit?" They had just walked in and Lake wanted to know since he didn''t see anyone else he knew in the room yet.
"Over there. Feel free toe and sit with us." Lake took the invitation and sat at the end of the row next to the guy he had dueled while in the training room. Instead of asking where the Temple Head was like he normally would, Lake just used his own eyes and looked around to see if she was near the auditorium yet.
...
"So you''re saying the barrier isn''t down yet?" Tiff could tell she hadn''t gotten it quite right and the Temple Head quickly corrected her. "No, I''m saying it might be down. Our scouts havene back yet but we''re going to go now anyway." Tiff wanted to ask why but she knew that was what the meeting they were about to have was going to discuss so she didn''t ask and instead just walked into the auditorium and sat down in the front.
As the Temple Head was walking onto the stage Tiff took a second to make sure Lake was in the room on the off chance no one had remembered to tell him about the meeting. He was still new so if he had been in his room she was really the only person who could have told him.
Seeing him sitting on the other side of the room she stopped thinking about anything and listened to the Temple Head. "The original group we sent to the Metal Domain should have arrived there today. We''ll be heading out in two hours to follow them." Tiff wasn''t surprised the Temple Head didn''t go into too many details as she exined what they would be doing since this was more like she was giving orders.
If she had been asking for volunteers or they needed to make the ns still the tone of what the Temple Head was saying and the amount of details would be a lot higher. "Everyone get anything you n on carrying on your person ready and be in the bay by then." Seeing the Temple Head start to get off the stage after saying two short sentences Tiff assumed the Temple Head nned to go get ready and quickly went for her room.
...
Seeing the Temple Head start to walk away, Lake turned to the person next to him and asked. "Do you know where I can get a new pair of boots?" That was really all he needed before he would be ready since he always carried everything on him at all times. "Go out and find a guard then ask for the equipment room. I''ll see you in two hours when we''re setting out."
Lake guessed they all needed to go get ready so he did what he had been told and found a guard who took him to get new boots. It didn''t take him long to find a pair that fit and even though they were white he liked them and quickly took a second pair on the off chance he wore through these ones as fast as he had thest ones.
If this counted as stealing he would have actually taken more but sadly when he tried to put these boots into the extra space Booster Bag made it didn''t work so he only took one to avoid filling his entire bag with shoes. With that he was done and ready to go so he headed back towards the training room to waste the rest of his time on speed training.
They had a way for him to tell what time it was in the training room so he wasn''t afraid of missing the deadline. He also felt the Temple Head would send people to find him even if he waste so it didn''t really matter at all where he went or if he knew what time it was.
Opening the door, Lake didn''t go into a private room and just sat on the first bench in the room. This ce waspletely empty at the moment so the whole thing was private. Getting the small vortex spinning on his hand, Lake closed his eyes so he could focus on the mana better and started to pass the time until they left.
Chapter 312: In A Few Days
Chapter 312: In A Few Days
After a while Lake realized just how simple speed training was and remembered he had changed the method slightly in the past by doing two vortices at one. He had two hands and there was no reason to not do it like this since he couldn''t see it hurting your progress in any way.
It was also good for your control so it was a little bonus which made your usage of time more efficient. Once he realized he had changed the method he had learned in a book to lean towards control again he put one of his hands down because he realized he had done the same thing which had made him hit a wall in his cube training.
The Temple Head had said force was important and in this training force probably had to do with spinning the vortex as fast as possible each time you sped it up. If there were two he guessed there was a chance you didn''t give it your all since your effort was split. He also thought there was a good chance he wouldn''t notice if he hit a wall in speed training since he had a hard time telling the exact speed he was at at a given time.
It would be a real problem if he had hit a wall without noticing it and wasted a huge amount of time just because he felt he could make a change that actually made a method that had probably been around for as long as magic better. If what he was doing was better it would be written in the book as an advanced method which it wasn''t.
...
Knocking on Dawn''s door, Tiff hoped she wasn''t waking her up. This was around the time that Dawn slept but there was a slight chance it had changed because of the kidnapping. A few secondster Dawn answered the door and before she had a chance to say anything Dawn asked. "Are you about to leave?"
Tiff just nodded having to take a second toe up with what she should say since Dawn had taken her opening line. "You have time toe in?" Once again Tiff just nodded before walking in. It had been a while since she had been in Dawn''s room so it actually felt kind of weird being inside even though she used to sleep in here when she was afraid the people in the Temple were trying to get rid of her pretty often.
"Man, I wish I could go with you. I think this thing in the Metal Domain is one of the biggest things that has ever happened and I want to know what''s going on." This was a feeling all of them had at the moment since there still wasn''t a real reason they could identify for the Demon Lord to have picked another fight now when he was hiding from the God of Light.
The Temple had enough history with the Demon Lord to know there had to be a reason though so it had been on everyone''s mind so much so that whenever you walked down the hallway you heard people talking about it. So far the best thing she had heard was that this had been a failed attempt to trap a Demigod that had been living in the Metal Domain.
It would exin the giant barrier and the Demon Lord was known for killing Demigods to take their divinity. It didn''t exin why it was still going on though so she just thought it was the best guess she had heard and wasn''t actually right. The right answer would have to exin why they were killing as many of the people in the Metal Domain as they could and why it had been the target.
"I don''t think anyone should be going to be honest so it''s good you''re staying here." Tiff was more than happy for Dawn to be stuck inside the Temple so these were her real feelings. "Then why are you going?" Tiff didn''t answer this because she didn''t need to. Dawn knew what they were going after and who it was for.
She instead just asked Dawn a different question that changed the subject almostpletely. "What are your orders on the off chance the Demon Worshipers attack while we''re gone." Another guess was that this was being used as a distraction so the Demon Worshipers would attack once the Temple sent their troops to help the Metal Domain.
There were problems with this being the Demon Lords goal but she felt there was still a good chance something would happen while the Temple Head was gone especially if they were gone for a while. "We''ll be engaging like normal. We can''t just ignore why the Temple raised us even if we know it''s a trap. I really don''t think anything will happen though."
In the past hearing how ready Dawn or any other member of the 23 were to die for the cause bothered her but now she was in the same boat since she had expected the Legendary job. She just hoped she had some time before another deadly battle kicked off.
If she was able to kill a giant or something while they were in the Metal Domain she would be able to bring back another point of divinity which could go to giving one of the better fighters amongst the 23 a Legendary job. "You''re probably right. The amount of forces they would have to move here to beat all of you isn''t something they could get here without us noticing."
As she was saying this Tiff thought back to thest time they had fought the giants. One had shown up originally before somehow summoning more out of thin air. They were still unsure how that had happened and were just hoping the giant who had done it was one of a kind.
"So have you and the Temple Head talked about how long she''ll let you stay out there?" Tiff understood why Dawn was asking this, usually the Temple didn''t let people like her with holy affinity out for anything longer than a normal battle and she would be going out while the rest of them were banned from going out at all.
"Yeah we talked about it. She said she would suggest that Ie back after two days." The Temple Head had made it clear that she couldn''t tell her to do anything that Tiff thought went against her orders since she had be a proto Demigod. "Suggest?"
"I have orders to get the dagger back from the God of Light so she can''t tell me toe back. I''ll probably take her suggestion though since I''ll just be a burden once the Demon Lord knows where I am at all times since it will lead them to us over and over." Tiff had faith that the Temple Head could bring the dagger home with the help of Lake even if she wasn''t there.
"So you''ll be back in a few days no matter what?" Tiff nodded even though there was a slight chance something could keep her from keeping her word. She really didn''t want to talk about getting killed with Dawn right before she left. "That''s good, that should give you just enough time to get back before they sense you."
Wanting to talk about something that wasn''t rted to any of their problems for a while since the conversation had been kind of heavy the whole time Tiff asked. "How''s training?" Dawns was very talented so her training actually had a noticeable effect and you could identify obvious improvements every few months.
"It''s been good. Ever since we unsealed the weapons gathering mana had been easier so we''ve been using Holy spells sparingly in training. Dennin also came up with abo spell called Holy Ground that''s good enough for actual battle." Hearing one of the other members had been able to make their own spell Tiff was excited.
Dennin was actually closer to her level of strength in fights as well so it made it more impressive that he hade that far. "Maybe I shouldn''t have stopped going to training." She had stopped goingpletely when the dagger was taken since she had been going out to find it but once the Temple gave up on finding it shepletely lost any reason to ever go back.
She had instead started training with a new scout group that she would be leading into battle to scavenge whatever they could from fallen enemies which included dead giants for their cores. That had also stopped though when she was chosen to be the one to get the Legendary job. "Well you''ll probably quickly surpass us once you start leveling up so there isn''t really any point to train with us until another of us gets a job from the God of Light directly. The Temple Head will probably be a better partner for you."
As Dawn was saying this Tiff looked at what time it was and went in for a hug as soon as she was done. "I have to go now." Feeling Dawn hug her back Tiff squeezed a little harder before letting go. "I''ll see you in a few days." Hearing the same exact thinge out of each other''s mouth they both started tough for a second before she actually left the room.
Chapter 313: Setting Out
Chapter 313: Setting Out
As Lake was guided into the room where the carts were being loaded by a guard he saw the Temple Head and started to walk towards her after thanking the guard for helping him. There were still a few minutes until the time they were told to be here so he was hoping the Temple Head would have time to tell him what she wanted him to do.
All it took for her to start talking to him was for him to get close. "Just stand here next to me. We''re going in the same cart." This is exactly what he had expected so he did as he was told and stayed quiet while the Temple Head told everyone else where to go and what to do. They would have plenty of time to talk while in the cart so he didn''t need to get in the way of what she was doing.
Once she had put everyone in the room into one of the carts the Temple Head looked at her list and said. "It looks like everyone showed up on time. We''re ready to go." Lake wanted to ask where Tiff was but he knew he could just find out himself if he used Detector so he looked around for her while the Temple Head got into the cart.
He found Tiff as he turned around to get into the cart himself because she was sitting right next to the Temple Head. Lake guessed it made sense for her to be in this cart but the fact the Temple Head made him stand outside until now made him think no one was going to be inside. Surely if there were already people in here waiting he could have been one of them.
"Why did you make me wait outside if people were already in here sitting down?" Lake couldn''t help himself and ended up asking this right after he thought it. "I didn''t want you to take my seat." Realizing there was in fact only one ce left for him to sit, Lake closed the door and sat next to the only person in the cart that he didn''t know.
"Hello I''m Lake." Lake wasn''t sure why the Temple Head wanted to sit next to Tiff so badly and wanted to see if it had to do with the guy he was now next to. "Nice to meet you." Like usual the person didn''t give their name right away but they still answered in a friendly voice so he didn''t think they were going to be unpleasant to be next to.
Lake was about to say something else to the man to see if they could talk on the trip to pass the time but the man cut him off as soon as his mouth opened. "It''s alright for you to talk if you want to but try to keep it short. I need to be able to hear what''s going on around us and it''s already hard enough in a cart."
Hearing this he looked at the Temple Head who was currently whispering to Tiff and realized why this seat was so much worse. It looked like he was in for apletely silent trip to the Metal Domain to keep the guy next to him happy. That was fine though since he had things he could do to pass the time.
Holding his hand out and forming a small vortex, Lake started to spin it to get back to speed training. He also went ahead and activated Mute to keep this from making any noise since he felt he would be asked to stop if it made any noise that the guy next to him could notice.
...
Looking across to the other side of the cart Tiff wondered if Lake even understood why the guy next to him needed him to stay silent. Henry was the best scout they had at the Temple before Lake got here but since his ears were how he gathered information so when he was making use of his skills you needed to stay almostpletely silent for it to work.
Seeing Lake hold one of his hands up Tiff thought he was about to start spinning an arrow so he could start to tell them which direction they should go but instead a small vortex formed and started to spin. Tiff expected Henry to ask Lake to stop right away because this type of magic made noise but when this never happened Tiff realized Lake was able to cancel out the noise his magic made.
"That''s an interesting skill. Do you think it would be more useful than your stealth skill?" Hearing the Temple Head had started to talk to her again Tiff turned and said. "I would rather be heard than seen." In reality the two together would be ideal but it was unlikely that anyone would ever get so lucky.
Looking back towards Lake Tiff wished she could ask for details on this skill that was canceling the noiseing from the mana on his hand. If it was just a skill that made his Wind magic silent that was good but if it could affect any noise at all it was an amazing skill that would probably be Legendary.
Thinking back to her training she tried to remember someone the Temple had her trained by that had a skill that made their movements silent and tried to remember what job he had said it came from. If she was recalling correctly it was Hunter and that would make sense for Lake since he carried a bow the only problem was she distinctly remembered it not affecting her trainers magic.
This made her think she was right and it was some mage skill she had never heard of before. Thinking of how helpful silent magic would be, Tiff thought back to her training days once again. Back then they had been told to not cast any spells while they were trying to hide because anyone with high enough Intelligence would be able to feel the magic and find where you were by following this and wondered if this skill maybe wasn''t as good as they thought.
She could still tell there was some type of magic being used near her even though she couldn''t hear it so the skill didn''t really do much to help you hide. This made her think that maybe the silence of his magic was something he was doing by messing with the principles instead of something a skill was doing.
It was well known that evenmon skills were never useless and she kind of felt that silent magic that could still be felt was pretty close to useless unless you were fighting against someone with close to 0 in Intelligence and a skill that helped in a fight like that would still be considered useless.
"Temple Head there are people following the carts." Snapping out of her current thought pattern Tiff reacted to what Harry said by looking at the Temple Head. "That was fast wasn''t it. I was expecting them to let us get further from the city before they got this close."
Seeing how calm the Temple Head was made her feel a bit better but it didn''t change the fact that if they saw her they would know what she was almost instantly. The Temple Head seemed to know what she was thinking because she said. "Don''t worry about it Tiff we brought people with us that will take care of it. We don''t even need to get out of the cart to fight. I do need to get word to the other carts that there''s a fight about to happen though."
After she said this Tiff saw the temple head knock on the top of the cart a couple times before the person outside driving started to talk. "I just let the other carts know madam." After the man said this Tiff expected something to happen but they just kept driving like there weren''t people following them.
...
Seeing the fight didn''t kick off right away, Lake went ahead and used Detector to look around them for Demon Worshipers. Not seeing any he guessed they were out of his range and switched over to using Mana Vision. This allowed him to see much further and identify what looked like people in the distance keeping pace with them.
Quickly counting them up, Lake was about to tell the Temple Head how many of them there were when he remembered she had just said they wouldn''t be helping in the fight. This meant it didn''t really matter to them unless the Temple Head had a way to get that information to whoever would be taking care of this.
After thinking this he just refocused on his training while wondering if they really wouldn''t be forced to fight on the way to the Metal Domain. He felt it was unlikely that the Demon Worshipers wouldn''t focus on the only cart that didn''t stop when they attacked but he guessed he would just have to see what happened.
Chapter 314: On The Way
Chapter 314: On The Way
It had been half an hour since the guy next to him had announced they were being followed but they still hadn''t been attacked and he clearly wasn''t the only person who thought this was weird. "I guess they are letting us get further away from the city." Hearing the Temple Head say this, Lake looked outside the cart using Mana Vision again just to make sure they were still being followed.
There was a chance whoever was out there wasn''t after them and just happened to be traveling towards the Metal Domain like they were but Lake really didn''t think that was the case when he saw them still right next to them. If they were just two random groups one of them would have fallen out of sync with the other already.
It was very clear that whoever was out there was waiting until the perfect time toe in and attack the carts, probably unaware that they had already been detected. Pausing his training so he could turn off Mute Lake said. "Maybe it would be good to stop. If they are following us, maybe we''re being led into something." Lake knew the guy next to him gave him a dirty look as soon as he started talking but he had to say this so he didn''t care.
"No it will be alright. I don''t really care what kind of traps they are setting up for us." Lake guessed he really didn''t have anything to worry about since the Temple Head seemed so confident he was sure they would be fine.
...
Tiff couldn''t help but agree with what Lake said and wished he had tried to convince the Temple Head that they could be heading into a trap a bit more but she guessed it was good he knew better than to second guess the Temple Head. She really didn''t want to watch the Temple Head exin howmand structure worked to a new member when a fight could break out at any second.
It did make it important for her to speak up though since she wanted to ask something. "I can tell you made preparations but can I know what they are?" The Temple Head hadn''t really mentioned what they were going to be using to keep them safe from any thing that attacked them while not even stopping to make some type of shield.
"I''m sure you recognize the cart we''re in right?" Tiff nodded to the Temple Head''s question since she clearly knew the carter the Temple of Light used to transport people like her who had Holy affinity. It was their fastest and had a few enchantments that made it much tougher than a typical cart so it was perfect for people you didn''t want dead to use.
"Then you know that actually getting us to stop is slim. Even if they''re fast all we need to do is increase our speed and we should leave most of whoever is attacking us behind." That was true but she was really more worried about them driving into a pit or something that had been dug ahead of them.
If that happened they would be forced to abandon the cart and fight their way to the Metal Domain on foot. The four of them were fast but it would still take a lot longer to get there like that. She just hoped this cart was a lot stronger than she had originally thought.
...
Looking in the direction of the people following them every few minutes Lake eventually noticed they seemed to be getting closer. He wondered if this was unintentional or if maybe they were trying to use this slow approach as a way to make it harder to detect them. Either way eventually they got close enough for Detector to pick them up and he knew whatever was about to happen was close.
He looked at the Temple Head for a second wondering if he should mention what was going on outside but decided to just let them handle it since he didn''t think when or how they were attacked would matter to whatever the Temple Head had nned. She was kind of acting like they were impervious to outside forces so he decided to just believe her.
A few more minutes passed before he felt the cart elerate like crazy and when he looked out he saw the people were just a few feet away but were quickly being left behind. Wondering if the other carts were speeding away like them he looked behind them while switching Detector to look for carts.
Seeing the rest of them keeping up he guessed this particr group of Demon Worshipers really weren''t enough to get them to stop and the Temple Head was right about them being fine. He did want to know if this was all the carts could do but he decided to just let it be a surprise. He really didn''t have much to do since the guy next to him wanted silence so the cart was really his only form of entertainment on the way to the Metal Domain.
...
As they were speeding up Tiff wished she could see what was going on outside so she knew if they were getting away or not. Looking at the Temple Head''s face she could see she didn''t seem to be reacting to what was going on at all and took that to mean the n of running away was working just fine.
She did have a new question she wanted to ask though. "Do you think they knew we''re in the carts?" If the Demon Worshipers were aware of their identities there was no chance a few low level Demon Worshipers would be the limit to who showed up. Thest time they knew she was outside they had sent a Demigod to kill her and that would be the same this time.
There was actually a good chance it would be more than one likest time since the God of Light would probably send a few Demigods to protect them meaning the Demon Lord would need more than one to actually get to them. "No. It would make almost zero sense that they could guess we would risking out of the Temple now. They don''t know what we''re after so they will think we''re just reinforcementsing to save the Metal Domain."
That was true for now but once they got there it wouldn''t take long for the Demon Worshipers to realize who she and the Temple Head were and start to target them. There would also already be a few enemies on the level of the Temple Head around since of what was going to be happening while they were looking for the dagger.
...
Hearing what the Temple Head and Tiff were talking about, Lake realized he shouldn''t have led them into this. He had already started to regret this decision a while ago and had even thought of a way to change it by telling the Temple Head that the arrow was saying the Dagger wasn''t where it had been thest time he checked but he had never done this.
To be honest at this point he should havepletely given up on the money he had been expecting to earn from helping the Metal Domain and could have already made enough money toplete the Insiders mission by doing other work for the Fighters guild for thest few days. It was really too bad he hadn''t just stopped to think about this before this point.
In the future he needed to remember to give up way before he got this involved in something ever again. If he had just realized how much of a hassle this was going to be he wouldn''t have had to waste so much of his time going back and forth between here and the Metal Domain.
"Something justnded on the cart." All of a sudden the guy next to him shared some startling news which caused him to look up. When he didn''t see someone Detector saw as a Demon Worshiper he calmed down slightly but was still about to pull out a weapon. That was when he heard someone start to talk to the person driving the cart.
"Madam, there''s someone here saying they are the scout that was supposed to deliver the news from the Metal Domain." Lake recognized the voice of the cart driver was the one who said this but he ignored what they were saying and used Detector to confirm whether this person on the cart was really a member of the Temple.
Once he saw them start to glow he said. "They''re from the Temple like they said so we can listen to what they''re saying." The Temple Head gave him a brief nod before she started to talk back to the driver. "You can send them in. I have some questions for them."
Chapter 315: Nevermind
Chapter 315: Nevermind
Seeing the door open and a person climbing in Lake wanted to make room for them to sit down but when he was the only one who scooted over he didn''t think it was going to happen. "Oh I can stand, it''s fine. I probably won''t be here for long anyway." Lake shrugged and said. "It''s up to you."
After their brief interaction the person who came in looked at the Temple Head and waited for her to ask him anything before he started to talk. It took her a second but eventually the Temple Head had her first question. "Is it good news?" Lake could understand why this was her first question because he remembered how unsure all the people they had sent to take the barrier down were.
He had watched them try to decipher the formation for hours and every time one of them opened their mouths it had been bad news. "A mix, when I left the barrier was down but the things in the city were moving into a new formation that we think will bepletely different." When Lake heard this he pulled out his arrow and started to spin it because he saw this as his chance to fix his mistake of bringing them to the Metal domain.
This was something he had thought about before but had abandoned it because he wasn''t going to be there when the Barrier fell so he wouldn''t know when to say Jon was on the move. After a while he saw everyone in the cart looking at him and when he knew they understood what he was doing he said. "It''s on the move."
It didn''t take long for the Temple Head to ask. "Which direction is it headed?" Lake just used his finger like always and started to point slightly to the left of where they were heading. "That''s still inside the Metal Domain I think. It''s too bad you can''t tell how far it is from here." Lake knew if they were tracking a real thing it was possible to get an estimate of how far something was by changing the description to include a minimum or maximum distance but he was fine with not giving a real distance since he was lying.
The less details he gave the better because he never knew when his opportunity to pull off his disappearing act would show itself so them not knowing how close Jon was would be good for him. This did make him realize the guy next to him was another problem he might not be able to predict.
He should have put it together that another person with skills that were useful in tracking people would be a problem a little sooner but now that he was thinking about it he wondered if maybe he should just kill them at the first chance he got. They were heading towards a warzone still so it wouldn''t be hard to kill someone without being med for it.
He knew it was a little silly to kill someone who was clearly important to the Temple just so he could get away with the stupid lie he was caught up in but with him here the guy next to him was unnecessary. The Temple would lose nothing from him dying and then they would actually be able to talk while in the cart on the way back to the Temple.
"Well keep us informed on which direction it''s in. So how hard was it to drop the first barrier?" Hearing the Temple Head ask the next question to the scout after telling him to keep an eye on the arrow he listened as well so he could hear how tough the barrier ended up being. He had thought there was a chance he could have taken it down but hadn''t done it because he was afraid of retaliation from the barrier.
The small one he had broken had destroyed all of his gear and the one around the Metal Domain would have been much worse. "It took us longer to get to the weak spot than it did to break the barrier once we were there." Hearing this, Lake guessed Hin had been the one to bring them to the barrier''s weak spot.
He had originally nned to do this himself but had kind of forgotten about it when the Temple Head had sent that person to bring him back. It was good Hin had been with the group because they wouldn''t have known where to go otherwise. "So even if anotheres up they should be able to break it as well as long as they are able to find the weakness?"
The scout nodded to this before saying. "Yes, Temple Head. It seems the barrier is just big and not that much stronger than a normal sized one when you find the weakness and know what you''re doing." Lake was about to ask why the Temple Head of the Metal Temple had failed in bringing down the Barrier if that was the case but then quickly remembered the fact everyone inside the barrier were unable to use Metal or Earth mana which was what dwarves like the Temple Head relied on.
...
"Looks like they''re back." Hearing what Keel said Donny opened his eyes to get a look at the scouts that had just been sent out to see if the barrier was still up. "I think we''re about to be moving out." Donny knew he should wait for the announcement before saying this where a bunch of people could hear him but the looks on the scouts faces said everything and he wouldn''t be the only one who could see it.
"Let''s wait till they tell us to get up." Everyone which included him and Keel were starting to feel the effects of not enough water and food so he could understand Keel not feeling like getting up but he still did though. Other people could decide what they wanted to do but he wanted to be on his feet now so he would be ready to walk right away once Rigbis said it was time to move.
He had been dehydrated before and knew it was going to take a few minutes to get himself moving and if the barrier was down this wasn''t a good time to be slow. He knew well just how fast a barrier could be reced since it was usually the role he had been taking in fights since he had lost his shield.
There was a chance the tentacles that were making the formation wouldn''t be smart enough to do this but they were probably being controlled by someone in the city somewhere so he didn''t think they would be that lucky. As he was doing a basic stitch he heard Rigbis yell. "We''ll be moving in a few minutes. Get up or be left behind."
It seemed Rigbis understood how fast they needed to be to get out of the city and nned to just leave behind anyone who was too slow. Realizing he could help with this if he was given just a few minutes Donny started to head towards the stage. As he was getting close enough to actually speak to the people on the stage some of the guards got into his way and asked. "What do you want?"
"I wanted to ask if Rigbis would be ok with me using a formation to move some of us faster out of the city." He couldn''t make a formation big enough to carry everyone but he could probably carry around 80 people if Rigbis gave the go ahead. "We''ll go and ask him." As he was waiting for his answer Donny looked around to see how the people were doing and to look for some candidates for people to carry.
"He said it would be unsafe to move in the air." Hearing he was shot down Donny was about to walk away when he heard the rest of what the guard had to say. "He did want to ask you about something else though soe up here." Donny guessed he should have expected to talk to Rigbis when he came up here but thinking about the fact he still didn''t really fully trust him he didn''t want to.
He didn''t feel like he could say no though so he climbed up onto the stage like the guard asked and let himself be led to talk to Rigbis face to face. "Hello Donny. How many people would you be able to carry if you were to make the formation that brought you here again?" Donny wasn''t surprised by the fact Rigbis had heard of the formation they had arrived on and wondered if he had actually seen it.
There was a good chance Rigbis had been in themand room when they flew to the fortress and had been able to see it. "Around eighty. I''ll need help from my friend Fendis if you want me to make it again though since he''s the wind mage that powered it." Rigbis seemed a bit disappointed with his answer and Donny guessed it was the amount that was causing this.
"That''s too bad. The scouts said people are trying to escape the city and the roads are littered with wounded who didn''t quite make it. I was hoping you would be able to do something simr to what you did in the past and save them as we were leaving the city."
Donny understood what Rigbis wanted from him and said. "Eighty is better than nothing." Rigbis started to shake his head hearing this before saying. "It''s not worth making ourselves so slow for eighty people who probably won''t even survive without healers avable." Donny could tell their conversation was over when Rigbis turned and started to say something to someone else.
Feeling the guard who had brought him to Rigbis start to lead him away, Donny let it happen. It was too bad that he hadn''t been able to meet Rigbis'' requirements for saving people on their way out of the city but Rigbis was right about it being too much hassle for just a few heavily wounded people.
Chapter 316: Leaving The City Pt.1
Chapter 316: Leaving The City Pt.1
It hadn''t been long after he climbed down from the stage that they had started to move out of the barrier. Soon after that Donny found that they had entered the Gate room where his group had been. A second after they walked in Rigbis had someone open the gate without even checking if it was safe and gave the order for them to go outside.
Donny understood they were in a hurry and that there wasn''t really a way to make this safe but he felt just a few seconds to check outside first could have made this process much safer for them. As they were stepping out Donny took a look towards the sky to see if the Barrier was really gone or not.
Seeing the sky Donny tried to tell what time it was but the sky was kind of cloudy so he couldn''t tell if the sun wasing up or going down. Turning to Keel Donny asked. "Do you know what time it is right now?" Keel took a brief look at his timepiece before answering. "It''s morning."
That had been the answer he was hoping for since it would give them a full day before another night which was when Demon Worshipers tended to attack. He was sure they would attack at day if it was necessary but the sun was aforting thing to see after all this time in the barrier.
Sadly none of them had time to stand around and watch the sunrise since Rigbis was still leading them away from the fortress. As they were leaving the fortress behind Donny thought back to the n Rigbis had told them which had included the fortress protecting them as they escaped.
This made him want to keep looking over his shoulder so he wouldn''t miss anything that happened even though he knew he should look where he was going. This changed when he heard someone scream for help and his head quickly snapped forward thinking they were being attacked already.
When he saw everyone around him looking around for the problem like he was and heard another scream a secondter Donny realized whatever they were hearing was just close, not actuallying from their group. This made him calm down but only until he remembered what Rigbis had said about the streets being littered with wounded people who had tried to run as soon as the barrier came down.
He didn''t know what it would be that was getting these people but he was sure it wouldn''t be long until they were attacked as well if the fortress didn''t hurry up ande to protect them. Seeing Rigbis at the front of their group stop and turn around Donny looked back again to the fortress to watch whatever was about to happen.
He was guessing Rigbis hade to a stop because they had gotten far enough away from the fortress for it to be safe to turn it back into its golem form. That or the scream had made him realize they didn''t have the luxury to walk any further without a protector. A few seconds after they had all turned to watch Donny could tell there was something happening even though it was barely noticeable.
He wasn''t sure why the speed was so slow but he thought it might have been because of what Rigbis said about it being on low energy but without knowing more about how it was made there was no way for him to know. After a while the process got slightly faster and he and everyone else were able to start calling out parts of the golem like its head and arm.
"Alright, start moving. Something that big will draw the Demon Worshipers here and it''s almost ready to start moving." Donny reluctantly took his eyes off of the golem before it was done forming and started to walk with the rest of the group. After a few minutes of moving Donny heard the giant steps of something massive and guessed the golem wasing and in his opinion just in time.
In front of them was part of the massive creature that had been used to make the barrier in the first ce and it was moving like a giant worm across the street and buildings in front of thempletely blocking them off. He wasn''t sure how they would get past something like this without something equally as massive that could lift it out of the way so none of them had to touch it.
There were other ways of doing this including him making a formation that could lift the ones unable to get to the other side but the golem was already here so there was no reason to waste his mana on something like that. Soon after he thought that the golem caught up with them and Rigbis or whatever was actually controlling it had it do something he hadn''t really expected which was turn one of its arms into a pathway over the tentacle.
Not wanting to waste time he and everyone else started moving forward again and crossed over to the other side where they were faced with another fleshy obstacle soon after. He wasn''t sure what part of the changing grand formation they were passing into but it seemed it was pretty dense so he expected there would be more on their way out of the city.
It was fine though since they had the golem and the arm bridge worked fine the first time. It took enough time for it to form into a bridge that they had to stop to wait but it was only like a minute so he was sure it would be fine. As they were crossing over the second Donny felt the people behind him start to push and knew it had to be bad news so he yelled for the people in front of him to go as fast as they could.
When he got to the highest part of the bridge he looked over his shoulder to see he had been right and something was happening in the back of the group. Like always it was hard to tell from a distance because undead looked like regr people but he could see some type of fight had broken out.
He didn''t know if this had been an internal attack by another hidden demon worshiper or if these people had rushed out from the surrounding buildings but it didn''t end up mattering because soon after he looked back he heard a loud noise and when he looked up at the golem to see if it had been what cased it he saw it had moved the rest of its body and the arm that wasn''t a bridge was now down on the ground.
He couldn''t really see what had happened because he had already passed over the tentacle but he could put together the golem had acted to protect them like Rigbis had said it would. It had taken a few seconds but that was considered a swift response in a situation where the two sides looked simr and you had to figure out who was bad and he was sure it had been fast enough to save the ones who were fighting in the back of the group.
He had seen the intensity of the fight and it wouldn''t have ended in just a few seconds if the golem hadn''t gotten involved. It wasn''t long before they were attacked again and this time it was in front of him so Donny got a good look at how the ones who attacked them hade from the surroundings and not from within their group.
This didn''t mean thest one had started like this but he felt it made the chances that it did better. It didn''t take long for the undead that came towards them to get dealt with since there weren''t a lot of them and it didn''t really even cause the group to stop moving. If this was all they had to deal with on the way out of the city they would be just fine.
He really didn''t think whoever was controlling the undead would care too much about them since there were only around 400 of them at this point and in the grand scheme trying to kill them was more of a hassle than it was worth with the golem here. If they sent all the undead they had in this part of the city at them they would probably kill less people than keeping them split up to catch the other people trying to get out of the city.
In the short amount of time they had been walking they had already seen a few hundred fresh bodies and he was sure there would be more as they got closer to the edge of the city since if he was trying to catch people he would put his troops near the wall. It would be much easier to spot them since they would have to go out into the open to climb the wall.
Chapter 317: Leaving The City Pt.2
Chapter 317: Leaving The City Pt.2
As they were getting closer to the wall Donny started to think how they were going to get over and out. The most obvious thing was the golem would form into stairs or something but that would leave them open to being attacked if he was right about the Demon Worshipers being near the wall trying to catch people escaping.
Donny knew they were able to fight off undead even without the golem; he was just worried about how much they would have to slow down if there were a lot of them. He could see the battle that would take ce as they tried to climb the stairs over the wall and fight at the same time.
It wouldn''t matter what they tried to do, some people would die or be left behind and there was a chance he could be one of them. After thinking This Donny had an idea that he felt would make this climb much easier and started to push his way towards the front where Rigbis would be.
As he got closer likest time he was held back by some people near the front but he didn''t let it stop him from calling out to Rigbis. "Commander Rigbis what''s the n to get over the wall?" He was pretty close so Rigbis heard him and turned around to answer. "I was just going to have the golem transform into a path over."
That was what Donny had thought so he told Rigbis his worries about this n. "I think there''s a good chance we''ll be attacked while we climb. I would like your permission to take some of our images into the air on a tform so we can cover the climb." It didn''t take long for Rigbis to give him a nod of approval.
Donny was about to go and find Fendis so they could get to work but Rigbis stopped him and asked. "Are you able to do it in the time it will take for the golem to transform?" Donny was sure they wouldn''t take much longer than that so he nodded. "Good, I''ll send some of our guys to round up the mages for you."
Donny gave Rigbis a quick thanks before running towards where he had seen Fendis. "I need your help making the wind tform formation we made to get to the fortress." Fendis agreed quickly but still asked. "Why? Is there a problem?"
"No, we''re just going to be covering everyone else while they climb by taking some mages into the air with us." Fendis was able to picture what he meant after Donny said this and followed him to the front of the group so they would be able to get to work as soon as they got to the wall.
After passing over onest tentacle with the golems help they had a clear shot to the wall but they all stopped knowing once they made a break for it there was a good chance something woulde to stop them. Rigbis decided to give a small speech to exin exactly what was about to happen to everyone that was here.
"The golem will be moving forward first and once it reaches the wall it will start to transform so we''ll have to protect ourselves while it''s changing. After a while I''ll give you an order to move forward and we should do our best to stay as a group so don''t move too quickly or too slow."
Donny and Fendis had already gotten to work as Rigbis was talking so he wasn''t really listening since he had to focus to make sure he didn''t make any mistakes while quickly weaving the formation with Fendis'' help. He did look up when the golem started to move forward though since it was hard to work though something that shook the ground.
He wanted to watch the golem change into their way out but he and Fendis had a lot of work still so he looked back down and started toy the formation again. It wasn''t long after that that he heard the first person start to yell that they were being attacked but Donny was able to put his trust that the people around them would keep them safe as they worked so he didn''t pay any attention to it.
Fendis seemed to be having a hard time doing the same though so Donny got him back to work by saying. "Stop paying attention to that, we have a job to do." He didn''t have to say anything more to get Fendis back to work and it wasn''t long before they had a formation that was ready to be activated at any time.
Looking up Donny saw the situation around them wasn''t really that bad so he didn''t join the fight and instead looked to where the golem was. It hadpletely changed to the point where he was no longer able to tell it had been the golem but it still hadn''t reached the top of the wall so they still had some time until they would start moving.
A few minutes passed as he watched both the battle and the golem slowly forming a way for them to get to the top before he heard Rigbis start talking to him. "Go ahead and get into the air we''re about to start moving." The mages he was supposed to bring up were already near him waiting so he waved them over before asking Fendis. "Are you ready?"
Getting the nod from Fendis he unsealed the formation and started to lift all of them into the air. Right after they lifted off he heard Rigbis give the order for them to move towards the golem that had finally stretched itself from the ground to the top of the wall. Keeping them in the air above the group on the ground the mages on the tform opened fire and wiped out the undead that tried to get in their way.
Like this they were able to run in a straight line all the way to the wall and start climbing. Donny didn''t start going up right away though and kept them near the ground so they would be able to kill any undead that tried to start climbing the metal pathway the golem had transformed into. After a while all of them were on the path upwards and Donny saw the stairs near the bottom disappear.
He guessed the golem, or Rigbis if he was controlling it, didn''t want anything to be able to climb up after them and this freed him to start flying them to the top of the wall since they had all safely made it off of the ground.
Once they reached the top of the wall Donny was able to see while they climbed one side of the wall the golem was already making a way down the other side and he realized this was another reason it had been getting rid of stairs people had already climbed. The wall was huge and with the golem only having so much material to work with, reiming what had already been used and putting it towards the other side made perfect sense.
Eventually the people in the lead made it to the top of the wall and started to descend towards the ground but Donny didn''t go for anding and stayed here since their job was to watch over the group he nned to only go down once everyone else made it to the ground. He did move them over to the other side of the wall though just in case the barrier came back all of a sudden.
He really didn''t want to get trapped on the inside since he was sure whoever was would end up dying in a battle of attrition since they would no longer have something like the fortress to hide in. It was really the only reason they had been able to stay alive while outnumbered so heavily and with the way the Demon worshipers turned every dead body eventually the number difference got wider by the second.
"Have you looked at the new shape it''s taking?" Hearing Fendis ask him a question Donny turned and asked. "What?" Fendis was obviously looking back at the city so Donny didn''t even need an answer to figure out Fendis was most likely talking about the flesh that had been moving around as they were running.
"It doesn''t really look like it''s trying to make a new formation and only a few parts are moving inwards towards the top of the city." Donny wasn''t surprised to find out the parts of the formation that were still working were stationary since Metal and Earth mana were still gone but hearing Fendis say the flesh was going to the top of the city all he could think of was the Metal Temple which was situated at the pinnacle of the city.
The Temple had apparently already been destroyed so he didn''t really get why all of the tentacles would be heading there. His best guess would be that the person controlling them had started to stay in the destroyed temple after they had taken it and was just bringing all the flesh there to do something new with it.
Chapter 318: They’ll Find Us
Chapter 318: They¡¯ll Find Us
With all of the people climbing the wall reaching the bottom it really hit Donny that they had been able to escape the city. It had also been rtively easy, which was something to celebrate to him. It did raise the question of what the Demon Worshipers were doing that kept them from being here to stop them though.
The fact that the only thing that hade after them the whole time was mindless undead screamed that every Demon Worshiper that could think was off doing something else entirely. "I think we cannd now." Hearing what Fendis said Donny looked down to see if everyone had made it to the ground yet because he didn''t n to stop watching until that happened.
"Almost. I want everyone on the ground first." Donny knew that just because nothing had happened yet that it wasn''t smart to give up their lookout position. If they didn''t see somethinging, this perfect escape they had just pulled off could be a disaster pretty quickly. It was extremely unlikely though since it didn''t make any sense to let them get over the wall before attacking.
A few minutes passed before Donny said. "Alright I''m bringing us down." Thest person had just gotten off of the stairs and the golem was starting toe off of the wall to take its original form so Donny wanted to get down there so he wouldn''t miss whatever Rigbis said to the group now that they were out of the city.
Landing on the ground near the group Donny was about to dissipate the formation when he decided against it and asked Fendis to turn off its mana supply. Once it was out of mana he sealed it in a magic circle and walked towards the group who had just finished walking over the wall.
They were all obviously still recouping after the climb so Rigbis hadn''t started his speech yet so Donny walked towards him so he could ask if Rigbis wanted him to keep the air formation in the air once they started walking again. Unlike thest few times no one stopped him from talking to Rigbis but Donny still didn''t get too close as he asked. "Would you like us to go back up when we start moving again?"
Rigbis seemed like the hike up and back down the wall hadn''t affected him so he didn''t take long to answer this question. "Yes, that would be good. There''s probably some Demon Worshipers out here as well so a lookout would be good. It''s going to be a while before we start moving again though."
Donny wasn''t sure what caused it but as Rigbis was saying this he realized just how thirsty he was. He had somehow been able to forget this while they were moving since they were in danger but now his mouth felt like it was full of sand every time he breathed in. There was no easy way around this either because the Metal Domain was dry.
Every bit of water that the people drank inside the city came from pipes under the ground that came from runoff from all the nearby mountains. "Sir, is water and food our biggest problems right now?" Donny wasn''t sure why he hadn''t really thought about the fact that once they were out of the city they would no longer have ess to food or water.
"Maybe food but look." Seeing a ball of metal start to form in Rigbis'' hand Donny realized they had regained ess to Earth and Metal mana which would make it easy to find ground water or even a pipe that held water. "I''ll get to work on finding water." Donny was able to forget the dryness of his mouth because of the realization that he could use Metal spells again and quickly walked towards the group of mages that had been on his tform with him.
"Are any of you able to use Earth magic?" Half the hands in the group shot up and Donny told them to spread out and try to dig up a pipe for water. Donny was able to match his Metal mana to the principles of Earth close enough that he could actually fake the affinity but people with the affinity for Earth mana would always be better than him when it came to detecting something like a water pipe if it was an earthen pipe and not made of metal.
It didn''t take long for one of the people he sent out to start to dig and a few moments after that they heard a stream of water. Seeing arge portion of the people in their group rush towards the sound of water Donny understood they all nned to start drinking right away but he knew the city had enchanted pipes for a reason. "No one drinks until we inspect the water for metal."
Unsurprisingly the Metal Domain had arge amount of metal in its mountains and since this water was runoff it would be toxic unless you were a dwarf. "You''re a Water mage right?" A healer or alchemist would have been better in this case since they might need to purify the water but they had neither so Water magic would have to do. Seeing the person he had spoken to start to nod, Donny pointed down at the water and said. "Just do the best you can."
With that taken care of he walked back to Rigbis who was watching from a distance and asked. "Are we going to be trying to find the people who brought the barrier down or running?" Finding the people who hade to help would be his preferred option but he could recognize they weren''t exactly in good condition to fight and the people who hade to help might not have supplies for them to take.
This meant running to one of the other domains nearby would be their best option to find food and recuperate. "We''ll be staying here to help. I think whoever brought down the barrier will find us soon so we really don''t even need to move to find them." Donny gave Rigbis a smile and said. "I''m happy that''s your answer."
He felt like he had barely done anything to help at this point and wasn''t ready to leave even if it was the best decision they could make to live. The fact the counter attack was about to begin would make it even worse to him since they had been so close to being able to help after all this time cooped up in the fortress.
...
"We''re about to pass into the Metal Domain through the mountain gate." Lake looked up as the cart driver yelled this to them from outside. "Would you use the arrow to see if the dagger is still in front of us?" Hearing the Temple Heads request, Lake took the arrow out of his bag and started to spin it.
After a while he pointed off to one side slightly and said. "It''s that way." Lake wasn''t sure where exactly he was pointing but he was pretty sure it wouldn''t be the city. The road through the mountains was pretty straight so off to the side slightly would probably be a mountain or something.
"We''ll continue straight in that case. We can''t drive the cart directly to the dagger because of the terrain so this is the best option for now." Lake nodded like everything the Temple Head was right because he didn''t feel like getting out of the cart and running through the mountains right away.
"What did you call the one with the dagger again?" Lake was a bit surprised when the guy next to him asked this since they had been almostpletely silent this whole time but he didn''t answer since the question clearly wasn''t for him. "His name is Jon." Tiff was the one who answered and Lake looked at her and was about to ask a question himself when the guy did it first. "Did he really tell you he would give it back?"
Tiff nodded to this and Lake could tell she briefly looked at him, which he didn''t like, before saying. "He did but something must have gotten in his way from keeping his word."
"Or he was lying." Lake wasn''t the only one who disliked this but he still just kept his mouth shut and let Tiff say what she wanted to since he would if he didn''t really know what they were talking about. "We''ll see if he''s still the one in possession of it when we get there." Her tone as she said this was pretty heavy and Lake took it to mean she was still grateful for the time he had saved her life.
It was just too bad he hadn''t kept his word then and handed her the dagger because they wouldn''t be wasting their time like this now if he had. "Tiff don''t be rude, his point is valid even if you don''t agree with it." Lake kind of wanted tough when he heard how the Temple Head spoke to keep an augment from happening but he didn''t because it would probablye off as rude as well.
Chapter 319: Mountainous
Chapter 319: Mountainous
After a while Lake assumed they were getting kind of close to the Metal Domains city so he pulled the arrow out again and let it spin. He nned to have them get off of the road and head into the mountains because he didn''t want whatever he was doing to get too intertwined with the battle that was probably going on in the city right about now.
He would like it if there were at least some enemies he could use to disappear but if that didn''t happen naturally he would just lead them closer to the city until it did. All he would have to say was the dagger was heading in the direction of the city all of a sudden and the people here would think whoever had it was ready to get back to the fight.
"It''s directly that way. If there isn''t a road in that direction I feel it would be good to get out of the cart now." Lake left the actual decision to the Temple Head after making this rmendation and thankfully a few secondster she agreed. "Alright." After she said this she knocked on the top of the cart four times and they started to slow down beforeing to a stop.
He was about to get out but the Temple Head beat him to it so he just waited until everyone else got out of the cart. As he was stepping out he briefly thought about putting the bag that had the dagger here in the cart but decided there were to many risks in a n that involved him leading them on a chase where they eventually ended back here at the cart since he was sure the driver would realize almost as soon as they left that the bag had appeared out of nowhere.
It would have been nice if that wasn''t a risk though since he could have made it seem Jon had known they were after them and had given the dagger back like he had said he would but hadn''t wanted them to catch him for some reason. He also felt there was a chance the guy here would notice him putting the bag in the cart with his magic ears so being caught right away would be just as likely to happen as the driver putting it together right after they walked away.
"Alright Lake, lead the way." Lake got the arrow spinning even though they wouldn''t really be using it and started to climb into the mountains that were on the road side. After getting over the first few boulders that had been piled up on the side of the road Lake looked back and asked. "How fast are we as a group?"
It was obvious why he would want to know that since it would be best if they could go as fast as possible. "Don''t worry everyone here is above normal limits. Just go however fast you need." Getting the Temple Heads approval to go at his top speed, Lake gave the guy who wasn''t really necessary for this mission a look before he took off running.
He had traveled with both the Temple Head and Tiff before so he knew this was a speed they could handle and hoped the other guy couldn''t. His tricks would be much more likely to work if he wasn''t around and it would allow Lake to focus all of his effort on tricking the Temple Head.
He had kind of failed on their first trip together when she had called him out on hiding his strength so he knew she was capable of seeing through him if he didn''t do a good job. This made the fact that if there were two people around putting his lies through the ringer he would be unlikely to get away with what he was doing.
Looking back and seeing the guy still right next to the other people following him, Lake wondered if his thoughts of killing this guy would actually be a reality. It had really been more of a joke when he had first thought of it but Lake knew he would get rid of the other guy if it raised the chances he was able to get through this trip without losing all of his credibility.
...
"Alright everyone gather up." Donny wasn''t surprised to hear Rigbis finally give an order for them to get out of the water ande listen to what they would be doing next. "I was hoping the group that dropped the barrier would have noticed us on our way out since we have this." Rigbis was obviously pointing at the golem when he said this. "But for whatever reason it hasn''t happened yet so I want us to get a bit further from the city for now."
Donny wanted to ask a question at this point but Rigbis had already started to point to where they would be going. "That mountain over there would make a great ce for the golem to take its final form since it would act as a new fortress for the forces that wille to help us take back the Metal Domain. It has enough mana to transform onest time so we need to get moving before this is no longer true."
Hearing Rigbis nned to make them take a new ce that they could use to gather the future army that they would need, Donny was more than on board. It was a great n since they would need an obvious ce like a metal fortress on top of a mountain to gather all of the disparate forces that probably wouldn''t have a way to talk to each other and gather.
It would be like a beacon that drew everyone in and the fact they didn''t have any food would have to wait. The people here were tough so no food wasn''t as big of a deal as no water since they could allst at least a few weeks before not eating started to kill them. By then they would have had more than enough time to hunt or send people to bring back food.
"You can get into the air now." Snapping back to reality Donny nodded to Rigbis and went to get the people who had ridden on the formation with him so they could get back up in the air. Once he had them all gathered he and Fendis unsealed the formation before taking off.
As they started to make their way to the mountain Donny wondered how many people back in the city could see the golem walking away from them and what they thought it was. If he wasn''t part of this group he would have probably seen the massive golem as some type of savior and expected it to help them so seeing it seemingly run from the fight was probably upsetting.
He just hoped once it transformed and they saw the new fortress overlooking the city they were able to realize they weren''t actually trying to run to save themselves while forgetting the people of the Metal Domain. It would also probably give them a target to get to if they tried to run from the city so he could already see a massive amount of people being there before they were even able to get an army together.
This would make them a bigger target since the Demon Worshipers would see the nonfighters amongst them as a way to take the fortress. All they would need to do is get a few of them to switch sides and they would have a repeat of what happened inside the fortressst time but there would be a big difference this time since he was pretty surest time Rigbis had used the fortress itself as the weapon that cleared the Demon Worshipers out.
With the Fortress out of mana the next time they were infiltrated the only thing that would be able to stop it was them. "A fortress on a mountain is pretty simr to how the Metal Domain started." Donny wasn''t sure who had said this throwawayment but he was kind of moved by this because it was extremely close to when the city was first founded.
The God of metal had sent the original people who followed him out of the Earth Domain to build in the mountains and it was said the God of Metal personally formed all the metal that was used to build the Temple that was the center of the city. In the future once they got through this he wondered if their new fortress would slowly develop into a sister to the original city.
"Where the city is built was really more of a mound to begin with so it''s a little different." He knew who said this and gave them a bit of a dirty look for bringing him out of his hopeful thoughts. It was true they had built the now mountainous city in the only real t area around but they hadn''t needed to say that.
Chapter 320: Silver
Chapter 320: Silver
"I guess it wasn''t that mountain." They had just passed over another mountain in their look for the dagger and Lake decided this would be their first break. Coming to a stop, Lake waited for everyone else to gather up. "Why are you stopping?" Lake pointed at a nearby stone and said. "I''m going to sit down for a second while I ask you about who we''re chasing."
They had been running for a long time already so he was sure at least one of them wanted to sit down for a while. Walking over to the rock he sat down and opened his bag to dig out something to eat while they talked. Eating was his real reason to stop but he might as well ask them about who they thought they were after while he did this.
"What do you expect this guy to be like? Tiff you seem to think he''ll be nice but if he isn''t is he strong?" Lake really only needed a couple bites of bread so they wouldn''t be here long meaning he should get straight to the point. "He seems pretty strong but I don''t think he''ll be anything the four of us can''t handle."
Lake wasn''t sure if that was actually true since the guy they were after was him but without knowing if he could beat the Temple Head Tiff was probably right. "What about the dagger? He isn''t able to use it right?
"No but even if he was it wouldn''t really be something that would be more dangerous than a normal weapon. Holy magic is really only deadly if you''re an undead." Hearing the Temple Head start talking about Holy magic Lake saw an opportunity to ask about something he had wanted to for a while. "What''s so good about the dagger if that''s the case. I understand it''s a weapon against the Demon Worshipers but is it really worth this much effort."
"It''s not really something I want to exin to you just yet since you''re still new but just know something like the dagger is important to more than justbat and is irreceable with the Holy Goddess gone." Lake could make a few assumptions to what that could mean but decided to just finish his bread and get up so they could start running again.
"Ok, in that case let''s get after it." When they started running again Lake took it kind of slow and didn''t rush off right away so no one got left behind. As a group got bigger, moving got moreplicated and it didn''t really matter what speed you were talking about because there was always a chance someone could trip or turn the wrong direction after an obstacle.
Once they got moving though they were able to get over another mountain every few minutes and Lake realized he was quickly running out of time if he wanted to make it seem like they were actually after someone. "I''m starting to think whoever we''re after might be resting. The direction they''re in hasn''t seemed to change for a while. This is the perfect time to move in."
After he said this he raised his speed as high as he could because with the stakes this high the Temple Head would probably be fine if just the two of them were able to move forward while leaving Tiff and the other guy behind to return to the carts. He just hoped he was actually fast enough for them to start leaving the other two behind.
...
When Tiff saw Lake speed up again she couldn''t help but widen her eyes for a second. She hadn''t known just how much he had been holding back and figured he was already going near his top speed up until now. "Temple Head, he needs to slow down or we''re going to get left behind."
It seems she wasn''t the only one who had been thinking this because before she was able to say anything Henry spoke up to have the Temple Head do something about this. "If he thinks this is our chance I''m not going to have him stop so we can all go together. Henry go back to the carts and tell them we''re on the trail of the dagger."
Tiff was about to ask the Temple Head what her orders were but before she had the chance the Temple Head reached out and grabbed one of her hands. "Would you rather I carry or pull you?" Tiff didn''t have to think about this for long and said. "Carry is fine, let me onto your back." When the Temple head heard her she swung her around onto her back and said. "Hold on."
This wouldn''t be the first time she had been carried by the Temple Head so she knew she wanted to get on her back opposed to being in her arms. It was pretty obvious but having someone carry you in their arms like you were a baby was rough. She would much rather have to hold onto the Temple head than have to go through that.
After a few seconds of being on the Temple Heads back they had already caught up to Lake who gave them a brief look before asking. "Am I going too fast? I''ll slow down if you need me to." Tiff felt it was a littlete to say this but she understood he had probably thought they would be able to keep up with him through some means."
"No it''s fine just get us to the dagger." With the Temple Head saying this it was set that this was their new speed for the rest of this trip. This meant that no matter how long it took for them to get to the dagger she was in for a ride. It was worth it though if this did actually result in her finishing her first mission for the God of Light.
...
"It looks like Rigbis has picked a spot, should we go down?" Usually Donny would have said no since they were able to see for miles up this high but he wanted to hear what was being said down below so he started to lower them to the ground. "Don''t split up in case he wants us to go back up."
Donny had had to find them all before he was able to take offst time and it had taken longer than they would have if there was a reason to go back into the air. Once they were on the ground and he had sealed the formation again he walked over to hear what Rigbis was telling the group.
"Spread out to find if there is anything else nearby but don''t go too far. Donny guessed Rigbis was setting up a guard rotation to make sure they were alone but he felt like he would have been a better choice since he could move through the air and get a good look of the area but he wasn''t going to interrupt so he let Rigbis continue to give orders.
"You split up and guard this clearing." Donny was surprised when the next thing Rigbis did was split all of the mages that were around and was about to follow his new orders when Rigbis stopped him. "Not you,e with me."
Letting himself be dragged away from the rest of the group by Rigbis, Donny asked. "What is it?" He knew it had to be important if Rigbis was ok with making skin to skin contact with someone else this soon after almost being killed. "I need your help with the golem. It''s out of mana and it won''t be able to transform by itself. Me and you are probably the only two who know anything about silver magic and can do anything to solve this problem."
"Silver, is that what this golem is using?" Donny hadn''t really expected for the golem to belong to a Demigods element instead of the God of Metal''s which would have made it a lot more to him but he guessed there would be a reason like the fact silver had a purifying effect like Holy magic did.
He didn''t think that was a good enough reason though. "The Temple knew that there was a mana siphon aspect to the Demon Worshipers n so they chose to make the golemst as long as it could since they knew it wouldn''t be able to gather mana inside the city. They also got rid of some of its internal formations and reced them with mana storage so that''s why me and you have to help it recharge."
"Ok but I don''t know Silver magic." When it came to nonelements like Silver you had to be able to make the element yourself by changing the principles in mana and he wasn''t able to control the principles that were in Silver so he wasn''t able to make the mana the golem needed to recharge. "That''s fine I just need you to help me make a formation."
Chapter 321: Charge
Chapter 321: Charge
"How are we supposed to make a formation that can convert Metal mana into Silver when neither of us are able to use Silver magic?" Donny knew through formations it was possible to produce any type of mana you needed but there was the limitation that you had someone around who could use all the principles you nned tobine.
It didn''t even need to be from the same person as long as you had a team that held the right principles they could work together to make it work but as far as he knew someone with a Holy affinity wasn''t going to be just standing around and that was really the only way to get ess to the purifying effect that Silver mana needed unless there was someone here who had an Unholy affinity and knew how to flip the corrupting principle.
Donny didn''t think that would fly here though so he didn''t even ask and let Rigbis answer his question. "We don''t need to control the principles since we have the golem. It has a connection to the Silver Demigod so all we need to do is guide thest of its mana into a formation that will allow it to start transmuting the metal mana in the environment."
Donny was happy he hadn''t brought up Unholy mana since he was right about it having nothing to do with their n. "So the golem has an active connection to the Silver element?" When he saw Rigbis nod he knew all of his earlier suspected problems with what Rigbis wanted from him no longer mattered so he asked. "Have you already designed the formation we''ll be casting into the golem?"
Rigbis started to shake his head before saying. "That''s what I need your help with. We''ll need to make the formation fit into the space of another formation so it was going to take a while if I did all the work myself and I need this to be quick because I want everyone here to think the golem is out of action after it takes the shape of a fortress again."
Donny understood what Rigbis wanted out of tricking people because a hidden trump card was always worth more so he said. "Let''s get to work then." Following Rigbis to the side of the golem he listened to what Rigbis still needed to say while getting his first real good look of the metal the golem was made from.
He had thought it was just normal so up until now he hadn''t taken the time to study it. "I want it to seem me and you are just helping the golem transform like it can''t do it itself any more from a lock of mana so we''ll have to get to work doing that while we design the formation." Donny nodded and asked. "Where will we be putting the formation?"
"It''s on the inside so we can work where no one will be able to see once the golem partially transforms." This was good news because the work they would be doing to cast the formation into the golem would be very different to what they would be doing to shape it. This would make it very hard to actually trick anyone who would be looking at them.
"Alright I''m ready whenever you are." Rigbis nodded and a secondter the golem started to widen at its base making them have to back off of it to give it space. "How long do we have before it will stop?"
"Just a couple of minutes, we''ll have to design the rest of the formation after we go inside." After Rigbis said this he crouched and started to draw in the dirt in front of them. "This is the best I could think of. Do you think it will work? It will be about four timesrger once it''s actually in the golem so take that into ount before you make any changes."
Crouching down so he could get a better look Donny pointed and said. "This is the part that will make it into silver mana right?" It was the only part of the formation he didn''t know so this had to be the case so when Rigbis nodded he wasn''t surprised. "In that case we''ll have to go with this because I don''t know silver formations well enough to change it."
Donny had never seen a reason to study magic that was almost impossible to even use with the right affinity so he would be leaving it to Rigbis but the rest of the formation was going to underperform in his mind so he started to change parts one after another. "This will raise the rate of absorption about 40%, What do you think?"
"We''re going to have to test it once we get inside but if it works that will shorten the amount of time it takes for the golem to recharge by a few days."
"So you think it will be able to transmute the principles fast enough that it won''t get overwhelmed at this volume?" Rigbis nodded and said. "We''re going to be using Silver mana to make the formation so it should be a lot stronger than if we used normal Metal mana even if we don''t change the formation any."
Rigbis was right but Donny had one more question before he would befortable with how shoddy this design was. "How many chances will we have?" This golem was a mana vessel for the Silver Demigod until it ran out of mana meaning they wouldn''t have to operate the formations they cast or even weave them since it could do it itself after they made the shape in the metal of its body but if they didn''t get it right and used all the mana in forming dud formations they would fail.
"Six tries. It will have enough mana to form six formations before itpletely runs out." Donny had been hoping for a higher number but six was good enough since he had confidence this first formation would work well enough to slowly recharge the golem but he didn''t want it to take weeks since they could get attacked at any time.
With the rest of the time they had Donny made a few notes of ways to improve this formation if this one''s efficiency was too low for him while they waited to be able to go inside. Once the golem stopped its transformation halfway to being a fortress he and Rigbis entered its half formed halls and he was led to where they would be working.
"We''ll be recing this mana holder with our new formation and feeding it into this one next to it." Rigbis was showing him two formations that held mana for the golem that were exactly the same. "We''ll need to change this one slightly since its twin will be gone and they''re intertwined but we can do that after the new formation is functioning so we don''t waste any silver mana before we have someing in."
Donny nodded before cing his hand on the wall that held the mana pathways that they would be changing to make their new formation cast. "Do you want me to do it? Since I''m the one who designed the formation mostly I''m less likely to make a mistake." Rigbis gave him a nod so Donny was about to get to work but Rigbis stopped him by saying. "Let me let the golem know we''re about to start so it can move the mana out of this formation."
Donny let him do this while patiently waiting. It didn''t take long for Rigbis to tell him they were safe to get to work and Donny started to change the shape of the formation that was inside this wall. After checking to make sure the new shape matched the one that they had drawn out on the ground he said. "It''s ready."
Once he let Rigbis know he felt the golem move its mana into the pathways he had made to weave the new formation. After a while he was able to tell the process had seeded and asked Rigbis. "What''s the output?" It took a while for Rigbis to answer but it was good news once he finally did. "It would take the golem 18 days to refill its mana."
With how big and powerful this golem was Donny felt that wasn''t bad so he asked Rigbis. "Is it worth wasting this formation to try again?" If they made the golem destroy this formation so they could put a new one in its ce they would spend the mana that had been used in making this formation. "I don''t think it''s worth the risk. Good job."
Donny nodded to what Rigbis said and pointed to the wall next to the one they had just worked on. "We''re not done just yet,e on." They still needed to fix the formation they damaged so it wouldn''t leak or anything once the golem started to fill it with the mana it was now producing before they could get to work shaping the halls of the fortress to make it seem that was what they were in here doing.
Chapter 322: Smoke
Chapter 322: Smoke
Seeing as they were about to reach the top of a mountain, Lake went ahead and stopped because it was a perfect ce for them to look around. He felt this was something someone who was actually looking for someone would do so it would make the lie he was living more believable. "Are we close?"
Hearing the Temple Head question Lake just shrugged and said. "I have no idea but this is too good of a ce to have a look around to just pass it." This mountain was the tallest they had been on up until now so it really did have a great view of the surrounding area. "Are you hoping to see some smoke or something?"
Lake just nodded as he scanned the skyline for anything that could be considered interesting. Surprisingly eventually he saw some wispy ck smoke on the horizon and pointed it out to the others saying. "You were right, there''s smoke over there." When Tiff had suggested this as a possibility he hadn''t felt there was even a slight chance someone would be out here with a fire but he guessed other people could get out here if they had a reason.
"We should get going before they move on. If all they''re doing is cooking they will start moving again soon." Lake loved the fact this small stop had added so much credibility to the fact they were chasing someone through the mountains, he just hoped they didn''t end up finding someone near this fire because it wasn''t really where the dagger was.
...
Seeing the smoke Tiff couldn''t believe that they were so close to tracking the dagger down. When the God of Light had made this her first mission there was a part of her that felt it would actually be impossible since at any time the Demon Worshipers could have found it first and destroyed it but it seemed fate was on their side and brought them Lake.
Without him she didn''t think there would have ever been a chance that they could have found it on someone who likes to hide out in the mountains of the Metal Domain. It seemed the Temple Head was as excited as she was because as they started moving again she could tell the Temple Head had started moving faster than earlier.
At this speed it would only take like an hour to climb the mountains that were between here and where the smoke on the horizon had seemed to being from. She just hoped the person they found was actually Jon and he was as nice as she expected him to be based on theirst meeting.
It would also be nice if he didn''t bring up her ns to run away that they had discussedst time they had met. She no longer wanted to run away but having this brought up would be kind of awkward since she now held a position like the Temple Head''s in the temple.
...
It didn''t take long for Donny and Rigbis to straighten the halls inside the golem to make it seem the two of them had been the ones who finished what the golem was too weak to do. Now that they had Metal mana back it was as simple as walking around touching walls and of course with the golem not actually out of mana it helped slightly as well.
Once they had everything livable they went out and did more work on the exterior where everyone could see them and added to the trick that the golem was useless now. A few hours after they arrived the fortress was ready to be filled with the people they had arrived with and Rigbis gathered everyone to give a quick speech about what he expected for them to do.
Donny was quickly reced in his position next to Rigbis once the speech began by the people who always surrounded him and went to join the rest of the people to listen. Donny wasn''t sure if Rigbis''ckeys were in on the n to trick any of the traitors that were still hiding within their group or not but he had already been told by Rigbis to not tell anyone so he didn''t n to ask.
"For now we will just go back to how we were while inside the barrier with one group sleeping while the other group guards but we now have actual rooms and space to be alone. This is nice since it means we won''t be crowded any longer but with privacyes the fact any bad actors could cover their tracks easier so be on guard of your neighbors ande report anything you see."
Donny guessed this was a good thing to say to everyone but he would have probably kept that unsaid if it was up to him. Donny was pretty sure people knew to be suspicious without being told so saying it like it was going to happen made him think people might over do it. This made him wonder if Rigbis was going for something by saying this.
If the Demon Worshipers thought it was safe to n in their rooms maybe Rigbis could use his connection to the golem to take advantage of this in some way. It would be really funny if they all ended up giving themselves away because they dropped their guard thinking there was no way anyone knew what they were talking about.
"Alright everyone can go inside now. I''ll send people to tell you what your jobs are in a few hours." As he was walking in Donny went towards a room he had seen earlier while he and Rigbis were forming the hallways because it had caught his attention at the time for being in a good ce andrger than average.
He knew this meant someone else might think it was their room but Donny was pretty sure the room was malformed from the golem doing an obviously bad job turning into a fortress thisst time so no one else would know it was extra luxurious. Being the first person to this part of the fortress he had no problem iming the room as his own.
Closing the door He went ahead and made some simple furniture for himself and sat down. A metal bed wasn''t exactly what one would want for their room but all the furniture that had been in the fortress before it moved was gone as far as he could tell so he didn''t have any other options.
He guessed they had gotten all the beds they had been using up until this point from the city before the fighting had started but he had no idea if that was right or not. He felt like by the time the fortress had taken shape the fighting would have been too intense for them to take the time to salvage for beds and chairs from the buildings around them.
"Growwl." Donny was snapped out of his thoughts about furniture by his stomach making a loud noise reminding him how much they still needed to get food. Being reminded of this he walked out of his room knowing this would make it possible people could think it was empty and take it to go look for Keel.
At the end of the day having a slightly bigger room didn''t matter when he was actually hoping to be one of the people that was sent to find food. After walking a few of the hallways he finally saw Keel standing next to a room and walked over. "Has Rigbis given you any orders yet?"
Keel shook his head before telling him what had happened in the couple of minutes they had been inside the fortress. "They havene out of the room yet." Donny didn''t find this surprising since it would take more time than he had given them to n how to keep them all alive with no obvious ways to get resources.
It took a while for either of them to say anything since neither of them actually had anything to say but eventually Keel went into small talk. "I know you two were trying to get done as quickly as possible but you didn''t do a great job at making the floors even."
Looking down Donny knew Keel was right and he should have ttened the floors before they stopped but he and Rigbis had been trying to keep the rough shape of everything to make it seem like the golem was unable to finish its transformation. "Yeah but there''s always time for that in the future."
They would probably end up being here for a while so once he had more energy he could pass the time by making the floors perfect. He could probably do it while he was patrolling the halls as a guard if he didn''t get to leave to go find food for the fort to eat.
Chapter 323: Split Up
Chapter 323: Split Up
"It seems to being from down there. Are you going to carry Tiff in or is it just going to be me and you who move in?" Lake didn''t think the Temple Head would want someone on her back if they were to get into a fight so he felt it made sense to give her the choice. "Tiff, just do the best you can to follow us. It should take you less than a minute to catch up if you move as fast as you can."
This n made sense to Lake so he didn''t say anything and a few secondster he had him ran down towards where the smoke wasing from. On the way down Lake couldn''t help but think whoever they were about to find really had bad luck. He could tell both Tiff and the Temple Head fully believed this was going to be at least a clue to finding the dagger so if there was a person here they were in for an intense integration.
This was after he had mentioned that the dagger didn''t seem to be in the exact direction of the fire on the way here but it was close enough that a few degrees didn''t seem to matter to the Temple Head or Tiff because there really was no reason for anyone to be out here.
As they got down close enough that they could actually see a fire Lake noticed what seemed to be people around it and was about to mention this to the Temple Head but she stopped all of a sudden and said. "What are the chances?" Lake had no idea what she meant but didn''t get a chance to ask because she instantly called out to the people below. "Hello."
Lake was able to see the people at the fire stand up after the Temple Head let them know they weren''t alone and it gave him a better look of what they were wearing. It took him a few seconds to remember where he had seen the armor they were wearing for a second but once he did he asked the Temple Head. "Are they the guards that protect the Oracle?"
All of them had the armor that he had stolen off of a body and given to Wezz which if he was remembering correctly was supposed to belong to the oracles personal guards. "Yes, I''m surprised you know that." Lake decided to not tell the Temple Head how he knew this since stealing off of a body probably wasn''t something you wanted to bring up when you were about to meet the group of people the body belonged to.
"Who''s there? Come out so we can see you." The Temple Head was about to walk out but Lake grabbed her shoulder and said. "Lets wait till Tiff gets here." Lake could hear hering down the mountain and they would only need to wait a few seconds before they could all go out together.
"What''s happening?" Once she got there Lake let the Temple Head handle exining what was going on since he didn''t know as much as the Temple Head about the people they had just run into. "We''re about to go out to talk to the Metal Oracles guards. Just stay calm, they won''t attack us once they see my face."
After the Temple Head said this she started to slowly walk out while yelling. "We''reing out." As they were going out into the open slowly Lake saw an opportunity to use Detector to look for the oracle to see if she was here but decided against it on the off chance they were able to tell someone was using a skill to find her.
He didn''t think it would cause a fight but he didn''t want to strain the meeting of the two groups. Once they were face to face Lake looked around their base while the guards reacted to the Temple Head being here. "Hello ma''am what brings you to the Metal Domain."
Lake wasn''t sure how truthful the Temple Head was going to be while answering this question so he stopped looking around the really basic camp for someone who could be an Oracle and started listening. "We''re after the dagger that went missing a few weeks ago."
"I heard that one of your divine weapons had been stolen. What made you think it was here?" All of a sudden a new voice he had never heard before came from one of the nearby tents but Lake was able to assume it was the oracle who had spoken even if he couldn''t see them.
"We''re after someone and we saw smoke which brought us here thinking they had stopped to cook food." Lake was happy the Temple Head didn''t get into his skills or how they were able to get this far and kept it vague because he didn''t want to get involved in the reason the Metal Temple''s oracle was out in the middle of nowhere.
As soon as they realized he could track anything no matter how far there was no reason to think they wouldn''t have something they wanted him to help with and he didn''t have time to get involved with another thing right now. "Well we''ve been out here for a few days and haven''t seen anyone else so I don''t think we can help you."
The Temple Head gave him a look after she heard this but he could tell it wasn''t because she thought he was lying about the dagger being out here. It was more of we made a mistake stopping here look. "Well we have to get going in that case. Sorry for disturbing you."
...
Tiff was surprised by the fact the Temple Head was already trying to leave after running into someone as important as an oracle out here in the middle of nowhere but she guessed they really didn''t have time to be curious right now. They weren''t able to get far before they were asked. "Would you mind staying for a few more minutes?" By the Metal Oracle though.
It seemed that not having time to talk wasn''t going to let them leave before hearing more about what the oracle was doing out here. "We can stay but only if you''re in trouble. We don''t have time to just talk." Tiff understood why the Temple Head worded it this way but it was kind of rude for something you said to an oracle.
"If you really need to go I''ll just tell you what I need. Our transport beast was killed in an attack a few days ago and we''re pretty much stranded." This wasn''t something they were really able to help with in her mind but she would let the Temple Head try to think of something.
...
Hearing the Oracle needed help, Lake saw an opportunity to get rid of both the Temple Head and Tiff and wanted to speak up but he didn''t want to get in the way or seem too eager to get rid of them so he waited to see how the Temple Head yed this. "Give us a minute to discuss our options."
It seemed the Temple Head wanted to find a way to help so when she started to walk off somewhere they wouldn''t be able to be heard, Lake followed. It didn''t take long for the Temple Head to start talking once they were alone. "Lake, would you be able to track down the dagger if you were on your own? I know it''s a lot of pressure but I have to help a fellow leader of a temple in a situation like this under treaty."
Lake couldn''t believe he wasn''t even the one who had to introduce this idea or talk anyone into it because it was exactly what he wanted from the beginning. "I think so but even if I can''t, we can just try again at ater date." Lake didn''t want to sound too confident because what would be happening after he was left alone was he would just summon the dagger to his hand and head back to the Temple.
"Alright, let''s go back and offer them help out of the mountains and a ride." Lake followed the Temple Head even though he felt he should just leave now to track down the dagger but he felt she would tell him to leave after the n waspletely made. "Alright we have some carts a few hours from here but I can only carry you and keep a fast pace."
When the Temple Head said this, Lake pictured her carrying every person here out of the mountains on her shoulders and wondered if she would actually be able to do that. "That''s fine. My guards wish to stay here in the Metal Domain anyway." Coming to a quick agreement, Lake watched as the tent that the oracle was in opened and a tiny dwarf crawled out covering her eyes from the sun.
Lake wasn''t sure why he hadn''t expected the oracle to be a normal person but it had almost made himugh and he quickly turned away to stop himself. "Temple Head I''m going to go now." He covered his turn by making it seem he was about to run after the dagger.
"Alright be safe and remember we can always try again if you don''t think you can beat whoever has it." As he was running away he opened his hand and took the arrow out to make it seem he was actually using it to tell him where he needed to go. Even though his trick had worked and it was over leaving no reason to be expected of lying was important.
Chapter 324: Find Hert
Chapter 324: Find Hert
Lake crossed over a few mountains because he knew he had to stay out here for a while before he could go back with the Dagger and this was a good chance for him to unlock some new jobs. He had been needing to hunt to unlock more jobs that gave perception so out here in the wilderness was the perfect ce to look for things to shoot at.
It would probably take a while for most people to find stuff to hunt out here since it seemedpletely deste but with Detector and Mana Vision all he needed to do was look around while running and he would see something eventually and even if he didn''t he would be able to find something to hunt on the way back through the holy domain which had a lot more life.
...
For the past few minutes Tiff and the Temple Head had been listening to the Metal Oracles story of the past few days and both of them were stunned speechless even though there were dozens of questions they wanted to ask. There was an obvious first question though. "How were you able to get away and uncurse yourself?"
Tiff couldn''t believe someone would be able to get away alive after being shot out of the sky by a Demigod who nned to not only stop you from escaping but wanted to make sure you were dead by using around ten death curses on you. "I travel with more than enough guards to make sure I can get away if something terrible like this happens. This isn''t the first time someone tried to kill me while I''m in the middle of nowhere. If all of us had been able to get away after the attack we would have been able to keep moving through the mountains without help."
Tiff was about to ask if the oracle meant they had someone who could have carried them all out of the mountains but the Temple Head finally found what she wanted to ask the oracle first. "You said the God of Metal told you to run in case the Demon Lord was after you but did he tell you where to go or just left that part up to you."
This was important since they were going to be helping the oracle run from the Metal Domain so Tiff understood why the Temple Head wanted to ask this before they got to the carts. "He told me to leave the Metal Domain and that was all so I am fine with going to the Holy domain so I''ll be close in case he asks me toe back."
"Good we''re going to be working closely with each other once the God of Metal deres war so this will give us a chance to set the groundwork for joint operations." Tiffpletely agreed with what the Temple Head just said but surprisingly the next thing out of the oracle''s mouth went against it. "I''m not sure if the God of Metal will dere war."
"What do you mean the Demon Lord has destroyed his domain?" Before Tiff knew it she had already said this even though this was more of a discussion between the Temple Head and the Metal Oracle. Thankfully she had kept her tone civil so no real offense had been made. "You''ll understand why this could be the case after I exin that what''s happening here isn''t a solitary event. The God of Metal is pretty sure the demon Lord is using this as a way to show all the gods what he could do to their domains if the God of Light does not stop chasing him."
...
"There''s one." Lake had passed over a few more small mountains looking for something to hunt but finally he found something. Changing his direction he started to head towards the core he had sighted so he could figure out what it belonged to. It didn''t really matter since he could take any kind of creature living out here but he was hoping it was something his bow could kill without needing to use too many of his skills.
He felt that if he had to use Magic Arrow and Crunch to kill whatever it was it would take away from the fact he had used his bow and make it less likely that he would unlock Hunter. As he got closer he went ahead and activated Mute so whatever it was wouldn''t hear himing until he got close enough to realize he wasn''t dealing with an animal.
He decided to not think about the odds of running into another person all the way out here and move on but had to stop when he realized something else about the person he was looking at. He didn''t know what it was but he could tell there was something wrong with them and he wanted to know what he was seeing so he would be able to identify it if he ever saw someone''s core with simr markings on it.
As he slowly got closer he started to make some guesses on what was happening to them. A curse was the most obvious thing and the color of the markings yed into this since they were the color of Unholy mana but this would be the first time he saw a curse like this if that was indeed what it was.
He had met a good number of people who had been cursed by the loyalty curse and he had never seen markings along the surface of their core. Once he was close enough for the person to be in range of Detector he stopped and set it to look for cursed people to see if his theory was right or not.
When they started to glow he took it as he was right and started to move forward again. He really didn''t want to get involved but he was curious enough that he felt it was ok to at least get a vague understanding of what was going on and to do that he needed to see the person with his own eyes.
It was probably finance since they seemed to have been cursed by a Demon Worshiper there was a good chance they would be on the same side. Once he was around 100 feet away from the person he saw they were covered by rock and decided this was another sign that they were friendly if they had used Earth magic to protect themselves.
It also made the likelihood they were rted to the group he had just run into very high since they were attacked while flying through the air it was possible this person had fallen here away from the others. If they ended up being one of the other oracle''s guards that had been split from the others he guessed he wouldn''t mind bringing them back to the others on his way out of the mountains if they were healthy enough to move.
Deactivating Mute Lake said. "Hello." This was the easiest way to get someone''s attention and Lake wanted to see if they were still alive enough to be awake and able to speak. "Who''s out there?" Lake was about to say he was a friend but had to instead dodge a spike of earth that shot from below him all of a sudden.
It seemed the person hiding didn''t think for even a second a person who found him here would be friendly for whatever reason but Lake decided to just forget them trying to kill him and call out like he had originally nned. "I''m a friend. How are you doing in there?"
"A friend, that''s too vague, how did you find me?" Lake felt he wasn''t supposed to hear the first part of that sentence because it had been whispered but he was sure he would question what he had just said like this if their roles were reversed so he just answered the man''s question to give more information. "I was just walking along and sensed someone nearby."
Lake felt this statement was unbelievable and it seemed the guy inside the rocks felt the same because he instantly said. "Who would be walking around out here. I''ve traveled these mountains dozens of times and never seen a person a single time. Stop lying and tell me who you really are."
It took Lake a while to think of what he should say next because he felt this first meeting had already fallen apart and it was unsalvageable but not ready to give up just yet he said. "My name is Lake. I''m from the Temple of Light. I''m after someone who stole something from us, that''s why I''m out here."
"Do you have anything that can prove you''re from the Temple of Light?" Lake instantly looked at the ring on his finger and said. "Yeah my ring. Do you want to see it?" He wasn''t sure how he was supposed to make that happen but a few secondster the guy called out. "ce it on the ground."
Understanding they were probably going to use Earth magic to get a good look at his ring he took it off of his finger and ced it down on the ground. As soon as he had ced it down the ground shifted slightly and swallowed his ring. "Ok I trust you. Get in here and help me out."
After the man inside the stone said that Lake saw all of the rocks covering him disappear and what was left was a small cave he could just crawl into. The situation inside the cave wasn''t great either with the person who turned out to be one of the guards after all lookingpletely dead covered in blood and three of four limbs going the wrong directions.
Lake wasn''t sure what to say but this was fine because the guy on the ground started talking as soon as he got close enough. "Here''s your ring." as the guy said this a small dirt tform held his ring up to his face so he could take it. "Thank you." Putting his ring back onto his finger he looked down at the guy and got right to the point. "Are you going to live?"
It was kind of rude to say this probably but the guards appearance was bad enough that Lake didn''t think he could beat around the bush. "That depends, do you know anything about curses?" Lake decided his scarce and sporadic knowledge from the book he tried to read wasn''t good enough to say yes to this question so he answered by saying. "No."
"Then No I will not be living unless you can find the rest of the group I was with within the next few hours and get them here to disperse the curse that is currently fighting its way into my core to kill me." Trying to think if this was possible Lake decided it was if he only had to bring one person so he quickly asked. "Do you only need one person from the group or all of them?"
"One if a man named Hert is alive and you can get him here in time." Lake quickly set Detector to look for a man named Hert and started to crawl out of the cave while saying. "I''ll try to be back before you die." As he ran away he remembered the potions on his belt and wondered if they could have made the man live longer but decided to keep going because he didn''t want to waste a potion if a curse was going to kill them anyway.
Chapter 325: I’ll Carry You
Chapter 325: I¡¯ll Carry You
As he was retracing his steps through the mountains to find Hert, Lake decided to give up on passing the time by hunting. There didn''t seem to be anything out here that was alive other than a few people so there wasn''t a point in looking for small animals when he had something else to focus on to pass the time.
He wanted to spend at least two days out here before he went back to the Temple to make it seem like he had actually tracked someone down so small tasks like these were perfect. He also found the guy he had just met funny since he looked like he had been fatally wounded but still had an upbeat attitude so it was worth keeping someone like that alive.
...
"This is thest mountain before we reach where the carts were when we left. I''m not sure if they will still be in the same ce but we''ll be able to find them so don''t worry." They had been worried about being attacked since they had started their journey back to the carts so it seemed the Temple Head thought the Oracle felt the same but Tiff wasn''t so sure.
Since they had met the Oracle Tiff had noticed she seemed calm the entire time and it made Tiff think the Oracle wasn''t too worried about what was going on. Tiff found it odd but knowing a bit about what kind of abilities they had she figured there was a chance that being warned in advance whenever you were in danger made you a lot calmer than people who never knew what was about to happen.
Maybe in the future once she was closer to the God of Light he too would feed her information about what was going on near her to help keep her safe. "There they are. It''s good they haven''t moved because it probably means they haven''t been attacked."
As theynded Tiff waited for the Temple Head to set the oracle onto the ground before she got off of her back. "Are we leaving right away?" She knew the situation to get the oracle to safety was urgent but she needed to take a bathroom break before they got into the cart since she hadn''t had a chance since they left the Temple.
"We have a few minutes." The Temple Head seemed to understand what she was actually asking and pointed to some rocks nearby while saying this. Tiff wished there was a better ce to go but with no nts around a rock was going to have to do. Once she was done she walked to the cart they arrived in and got in to sit in the same ce she hadst time.
Soon after everyone else got into the cart with the Metal Oracle taking the seat that Lake had been in on the way here. Once they started moving it didn''t take long before Henry asked. "So what happened to Lake, he didn''t die or anything did he?" Tiff could tell Henry didn''t actually think Lake had died by the tone of the question and let the Temple Head exin what had happened.
"Lake continued on alone since we ran into the Metal Oracle and she needed help to escape the mountains." This was probably the shortest answer to this question and thereforecked any detail so Henry asked a follow-up question. "Why didn''t Tiffany go with him? He''s still new and this was too important to leave to one person."
She didn''t think this was a question that needed to be asked since her running around the mountains was never a great n to begin with since she was a huge target. The Temple Head wasn''t the one to answer though. "I think she didn''t want a boy to carry her."
Tiff didn''t know what made the oracle say something like this but Tiff refrained from ring at her like she would have done if someone with less status had said something like this out of nowhere and instead said. "It''s true I wouldn''t have liked it but I would have let it happen if it was necessary for the mission. The main reason I came with you two is I''ve already been out for too long."
Thest thing Lake needed was a bunch of Demon Worshipers showing up making them turn around before they were able to get to the dagger. Alone he could stay out there for as long as he needed toplete the task. "What do you mean too long? Oh I see you''re a Holy Mage."
Tiff wasn''t surprised the Oracle had been able to tell once she gave her a good look because it was actually really easy to notice if you had high enough Intelligence or could see mana since They were constantly surrounded by the mana they had painstakingly gathered.
Holy mana was so sparse that you couldn''t let it just go back into the environment and regather enough at a moment''s notice to cast a spell like you could with other elements. This was probably one of the reasons it was so easy to track them for the Demon Worshipers.
...
Lake had arrived at the camp they had found earlier and was happy to find the guards were still there. He could also see Hert, the guy he had set Detector to look for was alive and sitting near the fire. "Hello again." Lake called out and waited for the people at the camp to be aware of him before he walked out to speak to them.
"Why are you back so soon?" He didn''t think it was any of their business what he was doing so he just told them why hade back. "I found one of your guys and he said I should bring a guy named Hert to him as fast as possible because he''s cursed."
"What''s his name?" Lake hadn''t spent much time talking to the guy in the cave so he didn''t know. "I don''t know, I didn''t have time to talk to him. Which one of you is Hurt we need to leave. Come on, I''ll carry you there." He had figured they would have been a lot more willing to go but they didn''t seem to believe what he was saying for some reason because they stayed quiet after he said all of this.
Feeling like they didn''t have time to waste Lake just asked. "What''s the problem?"
"We don''t believe anyone could have survived the fall and a curse until now. We feel like something bad is going on like you or someone else is lying to draw Hert away." When Lake heard this he had to agree that most people wouldn''t still be alive if they looked like the guy in the cave but it had happened. "Well I guess it''s up to you. Goodbye."
Lake couldn''t think of a way to prove there was someone that needed help to them so he guessed he just had to leave. It was too bad though since he had spent the timeing all the way back to tell them. "Wait, I''m Hert. Please take me to them."
"Hert you can trust him just because he was with the Temple Head of the Light Temple earlier. It''s been hours and he could have been turned in that amount of time." Now that Hert had offered to go, Lake knew he had already done enough to convince them so he just ignored everything all the other guards said and told Hert. "Get on my back. I''ll be running as fast as I can so you need to hold on."
None of the other guards stopped Hert as he walked to him and got on his back so Lake just ran off in the direction of the cave without even taking any time to talk to Hert one on one to get to know each other or answer any questions the man might have. At this speed they had around an hour before they arrived so they really didn''t have time to talk since at any moment the guy in the cave could die from the curse.
...
"There are people on the road ahead of us." Hearing the Oracle''s words Tiff wanted to ask what she meant by people since she hadn''t called them enemies but she didn''t have the chance because Henry confirmed what had just been said. "They''re nning to stop us but they haven''t said why or said anything to confirm their identities."
"They''re Demon Worshipers. The God of Metal just told me." Hearing all of this Tiff looked to the Temple Head to see what she would do. After a second she reached up and tapped the top of the cart to tell him to stop. "You all can stay in the cart. I''ll be right back." After the Temple Head said this she stepped out presumably to go deal with the roadblock they had just run into.
Chapter 326: Grateful
Chapter 326: Grateful
"He''s right down there." Lake didn''t stop as he said this so he wasn''t sure if Hert had actually been able to hear what he said or not because of the speed they were moving but it really didn''t matter since they were almost there and he could just say it again once they stopped.
When they got down to the bottom of the mountain where the hurt guy was hiding, Lake stopped and yelled. "I''m back, let us in." Seeing the entrance to the cave reaper a half secondter, Lake was happy to know they had made it back in time to save the guy because finding him dead would have been a real bummer after all the effort he had put in.
Alright go ahead and crawl in first, there isn''t much space and you''ll need to be able to get close enough to get rid of the curse, right?" Hert nodded after Lake said this and got down on his hands and knees to go into the cave.
Lake briefly thought about leaving since he was supposed to be taking care of something for the Temple of Light and word of his king could get back to them but he decided to just go in to see what this getting rid of a curse would look like.
Once he got to where the other two men where Lake could see the process had already started and turned on Mana Vision so he could get a better look at what would be going on around the man''s core.
Right away he was able to tell the process was a lot more fierce than he had expected with what seemed to be internalbat going on between the curse and Herts mana strings that wereing from his hands.
Lake really hadn''t expected for the curse to fight back since it kind of looked like a formation originally to him but he guessed it made sense that if you knew what you were doing you would want to make something called a curse as nasty as possible. It did make him wonder what the process of creation was like and if it was actually a lot different to making a normal formation.
After a while Lake saw one of the parts of the curse dissolve and a few secondster the whole curse started to fall apart from where the mana strandsing from Hert were holding onto it. He guessed this was the end and was about to ask if they needed a health potion when the guy on the ground suddenly sat up and started vomiting.
This was quite gross to watch since the man on the ground was still wearing his helmet but eventually it ended and Lake offered the potion. "Do you need this?"
He figured that now that the most life threatening injuries were physically they would take him up on this offer right away but surprisingly Hert turned him down by saying. "No, it''s fine I have some here in my bag." After he said this he pulled one out and took the top off. "Dek I''m going to take off your helmet so I can give you this potion."
"Go ahead. I would do it myself if I could move my arms." As Hert took off the helmet Lake got his first look at the man he had been trying to save for thest few hours and had no idea how the guy was still alive. His flesh waspletely gray and it looked like his head had partially split open. It was all really bad except for the man''s eyes that looked lively somehow.
This all quickly changed as the potion started to enter his mouth and Lake sat and watched in silence as the man''s limbs untwisted themselves. "The Armor is getting in the way because it was damaged in the fall so help me get it off of him so the healing isn''t affected in any way."
Lake didn''t say no and carefully started to take the dented metal that seemed to be getting in the way off of the man''s legs and arms. Once they were done he watched as Dek was given one more potion to fix anything else that might have still been broken and was about to leave when Hert started to talk to him.
"Sorry about the others not believing you. It seemed they were right that no one should have been able to survive a fall like that though. Those are probably the worst injuries I''ve ever seen someone survive after all of these years of being a healer."
Lake loved it when people gave him thanks so he quickly epted in a way to look humble by saying. "It''s no problem. I have to go back to my mission now so I''ll be leaving. Good luck."
"Wait, take this with you. Once this is over, bring it to the Temple and I''ll make sure you receive an award for helping us even though you are in the middle of something. The treaties only cover important people like an Oracle or a Temple Leader so you didn''t have to help at all. You''ve probably saved the rest of us as well so you really don''t know how much this mattered."
"How did I save all of you? You were fine in the camp, right?" Lake wasn''t opposed to taking more credit that he deserved but he wanted to understand what Hert meant. "We were kind of stranded but with Dek we''ll be able to get back to the city in a matter of hours on a stone tform. If we were stuck out here we would have probably starved before we made it back."
Hearing this exnation Lake took the piece of twisted armor that was some type of reward token and turned to leave. "Well in that case I''ll see youter. Like I said, good luck out here." As he was leaving the cave he was happy to know he had helped another high ranking person here in the Metal Domain and actually received a promise of a reward this time.
All his other actions were kind of hard to get credit for since the amount they actually helped were hard to calcte but saving the guards of the Metal Oracle probably was easy to put into cash value since they would know how expensive it was to rece them all.
Just because he was promised didn''t mean it would happen though; with the situation the Metal Domain would be in even if they did somehow win to a point they could start paying people the financial situation would probably make getting one million gold from them impossible.
...
"It''s dealt with but I don''t think this will be thest time we are attacked on the way back." The Temple Head started talking the second she opened the door to the cart so Tiff wasn''t exactly ready for what she was saying and asked. "What?" Even though she had clearly heard it all.
"We''ll probably be attacked again and I wouldn''t be surprised if the gods have to get involved to protect us." The Temple Head was saying now that they would be traveling in the Holy domain again a Demigod belonging to the Demon Lord would probably appear thinking they had to since the Light Temples Temple Head and one of their newest demigods in training were in the same ce as the God of Metals Oracle.
If they were somehow able to destroy this cart they would get a huge return on whatever they lost to get it done. Being such a bid target wasn''t great so Tiff asked. "Should I get out and try to sneak back on my own." With her not here all the important people wouldn''t be in one ce so the risk wouldn''t be as great.
"It''s up to you but I believe we should trust in the God of Light to keep us all safe. If we split up there will be more demigods that have to get involved if you are discovered." Tiff guessed the Temple Head was right and decided to stay even though she apparently had a choice. It was still weird to her that the Temple Head no longer got to order her to do things since it had been that way for so long.
"Do you think the God of Metal will send a demigod to help protect you if we''re attacked?" Hearing this question Tiff turned to the Metal Oracle to see what she would say. "Probably not. With no war sending any divine beings down would be against the foundingws of this world."
"Maybe he should dere war then." Once again something came out of her mouth identally before she could think about it and Tiff realized that she didn''t like the Metal Oracle for some reason. She wasn''t usually rude or even able to talk to someone as important as an Oracle so her acting like this meant she was mad at her for some reason.
"No, I think he knows what''s best." It was obvious the Metal Oracle didn''t appreciate Tiff openly questioning her god but it seemed she didn''t find it offensive enough to lose her cool. Tiff was actually grateful for this because she knew her animosity towards the Oracle was misced since she was at the whims of their gods like the rest of them and probably more so because of her position within the Metal Temple.
Chapter 327: Dark Turn
Chapter 327: Dark Turn
"Which fortress would win in a fight in your opinion." Donny and Keel had eventually given up on waiting outside of the room Rigbis was nning their future in and gone outside to look at the city. From up here on the mountain they were able to watch as the flesh tendrils crawled and gathered into a massive ball of skin in the center of the city which was what he was guessing was the other fortress Keel was asking him to decide between.
"Theirs. I would say it was closer if ours wasn''t out of mana but I think the fact that theirs is still moving makes it win if the two were to fight." Donny knew Keel hadn''t actually meant which would win if they fought and was actually asking if they would be able to hold the fort if they were attacked but Donny felt it would be funny to give a dumb answer.
"What about the people, which group would win?" Since there were others around Donny couldn''t let them hear his real opinions on a possible fight so he said. "We would if they came here to attack us. The fortress is strong even if it''s out of mana since the people with Metal Affinity have ess to Metal mana again."
Donny made sure to say this loud enough that everyone would hear how confident he was in protecting the fortress in a battle. Everyone had seen him and Rigbis getting the fortress into shape so they knew he was a Metal Mage with quite a bit of skill who could make formations so his confidence should be pretty convincing and word should spread.
"Donny Rigbis has called for you." Donny had to stop himself from saying ''Finally'' when he heard this because it really had taken way too long for Rigbis to get into contact again. To him it didn''t make sense to let the one person who knew about the fortress'' secret to roam around unsupervised but he guessed with the fact the fortress was probably listening and watching everyone Rigbis would be fine with him telling people since it would give him away as a traitor if it was to happen.
Still Donny wished he had been allowed into the meeting because he felt they would have already decided on who to send to look for food which would make it so he would have to convince them to rece the person they had chosen with him. "I''ll see youter, Keel."
Climbing back down into the fortress Donny quickly arrived in front of the room Rigbis had been holding the meeting inside and walked in. He was surprised to find Rigbis alone and it made him wonder what they were about to talk about and if it would be another secret. "Hello Donny We don''t have much time before the others return so I need you to listen."
The Way Rigbis started confirmed this conversation would be another secret like he had expected. "Alright go ahead."
"I need you to round up these three people without anyone noticing. The fortress has marked them as suspicions and I need you to see if it''s true before you kill them. Get rid of the bodies by putting them in a wall or something." Donny hadn''t expected to be asked to kill people but if they did turn out to be traitors he had no problem with doing this job.
"You want it to be a secret because if any other traitors are still hidden they''ll figure out the fortress is still active and go back to hiding, right?"
"Yeah, if there are others they''ll probably notice them going missing rtively quickly and figure out what''s going on but we might get lucky and hear them talk to each other about it or something." Donny nodded and was about to leave when he realized he would need to somehow figure out if these people were traitors or not so he asked. "How am I supposed to figure out if they are loyal or not?"
He really didn''t have what could be considered a skill to get secrets from people and had to just rely on the actions of others like everyone else so it would take a while for him to get to the bottom of this if he didn''t have any help. "Ask them to drink this so they can go on a secret mission for me. If they say no to the loyalty curse there''s a good chance we can''t trust them. I know it isn''t ideal since innocent people would say no as well but if they''ve been able to get past all of our detection methods we have nothing else to use against them."
Taking the small dark vials from Rigbis Donny tried to think if this was really ok to use as a detection method or not but quickly remembered the fortress had already identified some behavior that made them suspicious so it wasn''t like it was out of the blue. "Alright I''ll get to work finding the three of them. Is the fortress going to help me find them?"
With a list of names he would have no problems finding the tree people even if the fortress was pretty big. Especially if the fortress knew where he needed to go. It could just fluctuate a small amount of metal mana to lead him directly to them all. "Yeah I''ll have it make it easier on you to find them but nothing big because I don''t want anyone to notice it helping you."
After Rigbis said this Donny left the room before anyone else returned to hear what the two of them had talked about. As he stepped out he got his first clue which was the floor below his foot moving slightly in the direction of one of the hallways in front of him so he walked towards it guessing that was the direction of the closest of the three people.
A few more turns like this and Donny was walking down a hallway that had rooms people were living in. He thought about stopping to ask about the names on the list but he didn''t want anyone knowing he had been looking for the three exact people that were going to go missing. It was unlikely someone would know who lived next to them anyway since they had just gotten these rooms so he was better off relying on the fortress to tell him when he passed the right door or person.
As he was passing the fourth door he felt the floor point him towards the door slightly and stopped before knocking. After a few seconds the door opened and Donny saw a shortdy he recognized from his team he and Keel had been in charge of. Looking at the list for the first real time he took the time to read the names before asking. "Can Ie in?"
Her name was on the list so he knew he was in the right ce. "Sure, what''s this about voice captain Donny?" Donny didn''t start talking until he was in the room so no one would hear him ask her to drink the loyalty curse. Once the door was closed he started his spiel to see if she was going to live past this meeting or not. "Commander Rigbis asked me to go around and ask people who we think would be useful on a secret mission if they would be willing to take the Loyalty."
Donny could see the unwillingness start to appear on her face and cut her off before she said no and he was forced to get rid of her by saying. "The Temple is able to get rid of it in the future once this is over and there''s a heavy reward as well. This isn''t really a request either so I''m sorry if I made it sound like you could say no Jehna."
After hearing this any normal person would have about an 80% chance of saying yes so Donny felt alright in killing her if she still refused. "I''m sorry but I can''t risk dying on this secret mission. I have a son so even if you have to throw me in a cell I wont drink it."
Donny couldn''t help but wish he hadn''t let her finish because he knew he would remember the time he had to kill someone who might or might not be a traitor for the rest of his life. His mind was made up though. Using a small amount of mana to open the floor beneath Jehna''s feet. She was gone and turned into minced meat before she could make a sound or figure out she was being killed so he hoped the speed at which it happened made it painless.
With her gone he took the time to get rid of her belongings in the same manner so that if anyone came looking for her they would think she had moved rooms for some reason. As he was walking back into the hallway he could tell no one was even paying attention to him leaving and knew no one would ever know what he had just done except for him and Rigbis.
Chapter 328: Beginning Of A Two Day Vacation
Chapter 328: Beginning Of A Two Day Vacation
Donny had just finished up with the third person. Sadly not a single one had taken the loyalty but it did make him trust in the golems abilities to detect traitors slightly more. The three he had just killed also made almost the exact same excuse which made him think it had been practiced in case they were asked to do something that could blow their cover.
It was expertly chosen because the excuse that you had a child really tugged at the heart strings and most people would have probably backed off if it had been a real request to go on a mission that required the utmost secrecy. Unfortunately for them his request had been a lie to test them and they had all failed.
He just hoped there weren''t any more so he wouldn''t have to do something like this again because even if they were enemies this was truly unpleasant to even think about let alone perform. Just the thought of what happened to them after the floor ate them was enough to turn your stomach if there was anything actually in it.
As he arrived at the door to the room Rigbis was now using for meetings he saw the door closed but decided a small nod was all it would take for Rigbis to know the job was done so he tried to enter the room. Not only was the door locked which stopped him, the guard next to it told him. "He''ll call you when he''s ready for you."
"Ok I''ll be where I wasst time." He was too hungry to just sit in his room where he would do nothing but think about his stomach so he would go watch the city to pass the time. As he stepped out he saw Keel was still standing where he had been when he left so Donny took his position next to him like he had never left in the first ce.
The truth was he hadn''t been gone long since his conversation with Rigbis had been rushed and the three people he killed had gone down instantly so in reality he could continue the conversation they were having without it being weird. "Has anything happened while I was gone?"
The city looked the same to him but he could tell more of the flesh had piled up at the top in the short amount of time he had been gone. "We saw a short fight but it ended too quickly for it to be anything important."
The next ten minutes passed in silence as everyone who was out here watching the city had run out of things to talk about already and most of them were too low on energy to want to talk. Eventually he thought about going back inside to test out his metal bed for the first time but he didn''t do it because he had told the guard that he would be here if he was needed.
...
Looking at the cave in front of him Lake could tell it was empty so he walked in to see if it would be a good ce to sleep. The mountains were devoid of life so there wasn''t a real risk of dying in his ten minutes of sleep but it felt wrong to sleep on the ground when the sun was still out. The cave was nice and dark which made it much better in every aspect one would look for in a ce to rest.
Once he found the back of the cave he got on the ground and took his nap. It took longer for him to fall asleep than it did for him to wake up but he wasn''t worried about wasting his time since he was only pretending to work. At any moment he could summon the bag that held the dagger to his hand and return to the Temple to return it.
It was too early though since this should be difficult and a few days worth of time would prove how hard he worked for the Temple. He didn''t have to pass it here though. This ce was the worst and all he had to do was move out of the mountains and he could actually hunt to unlock some new jobs.
He didn''t want anyone to see him though so he was going to move out of the Metal Domain in a direction that wouldn''t go straight back into the Holy Domain. Seeing new stuff would be nice and even if the journey was a bit longer he could think of it as a nice vacation.
He hadn''t really taken any time off sinceing to this world because he felt like his life was in danger constantly but now that he knew this part of the world was embroiled in a war he should have looked for a new ce to live a long time ago. He knew the inside wanted him to work for the Temple and that had kept him here but really he only needed to be here sometimes and he was fast enough to make that happen.
Once he was able to increase his perception even more his speed would rise even higher so the journeys he would be taking in the future would be even faster. Standing up, Lake took out one of his arrows and turned it into a Magic Arrow so he could use the magicpass to look for the closest forest to him that wasn''t in the Holy Domain.
Once he had his target he set out without really knowing where he would end up. Being able to run on air with Wind magic he used the mountain tops like stepping stones and it wasn''t long before he could see the end to the mountain range. It transitions into what he would call a hilly desert and then into a river that was at the bottom of a ravine.
He wished he had a map that had some detail to it so he knew where he was but he got over it when he saw a small town off in the distance. With no trees around he guessed he was going to be running for a long time and decided it was worth it to stop and see what was going on here in desertnd.
He didn''t think he was inside the Metal Domain any longer and he figured the people here would be able to tell him what Domain this actually was. Hended away from the town so they didn''t see hime from the sky and walked in looking for any guild buildings. He eventually found a joint guild branch and walked in.
It wasn''t until he got to the desk that he realized he didn''t have a guild badge for the Fighters guild any more and used his Alchemist guild badge to get thedy to talk to him. "Hello sir alchemist, what can I do for you today?"
Lake didn''t really need any information other than where he was so he kept it short and asked. "What Domain are we in?" He didn''t think it was that crazy for a traveler to ask where they were so he was happy to get his answer with no attitude from the person behind the desk. "This is the Earth Domain. Would you like help finding where your destination is? We have a cart out back that will take you all the way to the Holy Domain if you would like."
"No, that''s fine, I''m not lost, I just wanted to know how close I was. Have a nice day." It was too bad to turn down a ride that would bring him to where he was technically going but he wasn''t trying to end his trip just yet. He was also pretty sure the cart they had here would be close to torture with its speed being to low for him.
Once he was back outside he just ran into the air not worried about anyone seeing him since no one would be able to stop him to talk like they could have as he came into the town. Once he was high up enough he got the arrow back out and started to follow it to the forest it said was over here.
Less than an hourter he finally started to see the nt life start to thicken and knew if he wanted he could probably stop here to hunt small animals but decided he preferred therger prey that would live in a forest. More Exp and bigger animals were probably more impressive to whatever decided if you unlocked a job or not.
An hour or soter he started to see trees big and dense enough to call a forest and he descended from the sky and pulled his bow out. Switching Detector to look for animals and activating Mana Vision Lake started to see small animals and what they would call their cores hiding all around him but he ignored them and went deeper.
Chapter 329: Hunted
Chapter 329: Hunted
Lake had just killed his fifth animal sinceing here to this forest. He still hadn''t unlocked a new job though so he continued his search. It was kind of annoying that jobs weren''t avable to everyone for the same reason or frequency since he didn''t have an unlimited amount of time to stay here and kill animals.
The amount of Exp also wasn''t impressive since these were just basic animals so if he didn''t get the job within the hour he nned to move on and see a bit more of the Earth Domain before he had to head back. Finding another animal, Lake walked up to it with Mute active and shot his arrow into the back of its head like he had done thest few times.
It didn''t quite match the spirit of hunting to kill like this but at the speed he could move it was kind of ridiculous to shoot at them from a distance since he was faster than the arrows his current bow shot out. With this kill also failing to unlock a job Lake moved on to find some more things to shoot.
After a while he identified another way he wasn''t really acting like a hunter and wondered if the fact he just left the meat of all the animals behind made it so he wasn''t actually hunting. This was truly more like killing so he decided to make a meal out of the next thing he shot to see if that would help the forces that granted jobs give him what he wanted.
Finding some type ofrge animal hiding in a hole next Lake decided it wasn''t worth the time to get it out and left it alive. This ce had something he could shoot at every minute or so so leaving something alone wasn''t really much of a setback time wise. He also didn''t think something that lived in a hole would taste very good to someone like him who had eaten almost exclusively the finest food on the for months.
After a while he saw something he could see himself eating even in hisst life and decided to handle it like he was actually hunting. Getting low he slowly moved forward and once he was about 30 feet away he took an arrow out and drew the bow back before taking the shot.
He was truly still inexperienced when it came to actually shooting an arrow that he couldn''t just control as it flew so he was slightly surprised when it hit close to where he had been aiming on the animal. It seemed the bow wasn''t strong enough to kill right away with anything other than a headshot so when the animal started to run he just closely followed it by tracking the blood like a normal person would have to.
Before long he found the deerying on the ground and finished it off with his knife. He was about to get to taking the meat off and taking its core when he heard the noise and saw the message that he had finally unlocked Hunter. Lake didn''t look at the details right away though because he still nned to cook the meat and this would give him something to do while he ate.
His decision didn''t stop him from getting excited though since he had long suspected that Hunter might be an Unique job like Archer was but the amount of trouble he had while unlocking it did make him question if that would be the case since so far he hadn''t struggled in getting a single job that was Unique.
Once he had a nice piece of meat off of the deer, Lake left the rest for the animals of the forest to eat and started a small fire with the help of his magic. Once it was cooking he pulled up the details of the new job.
Hunter (C) Lv.1
On level up:
Agility 1
Perception 1
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Kills On Animals
Skills from job:
Lake was slightly disappointed in the fact this wasn''t a Unique job but got over it when he remembered he really just wanted more Perception and Legendary skills which were just as good as Unique were possible with even Common jobs. He had a very small chance of getting something really good that could open up new possibilities for him to fight differently if he was ever in a situation where his current capabilities werecking for some reason.
Setting Hunter as his new job, Lake turned the meat in front of him so he could cook the other side as well. He wasn''t someone who had done much cooking ever but he understood the basics enough to know if you didn''t flip meat one side would burn while the other would be raw especially when it was as thick as the piece he was cooking now.
...
"There''re clouds spinning up ahead. This is exciting, it''s been years since I''ve actually seen a demigod." Tiff found the Oracle being excited odd but she understood this was another sign of just how much the Oracle trusted in the God of Metals decisions. The God of Metal believed she would be safe so so did she.
It was kind of nice but Tiff didn''t think she could ever trust in a god that much. It would be one thing if there was only one or they all got along and were working together but the gods were fighting against each other and eventually one would probably win. She didn''t think the oracle understood this fact well since the God of Metal hadn''t been at war and she had never had to worry about how tricky the Demon Lord could be.
Any time you went into battle with people who were taking orders from the Demon Lord they could do something that you weren''t expecting and you could lose your life. Feeling the mana sweep across her body Tiff tried her best to identify which demigod it was who had just descended.
She was pretty sure it was death mana so that meant Mezull had been sent after them. She wasn''t sure though because it was hard to identify the principles of a type of magic that you couldn''t use. "The God of Metal said it''s a demigod named Mezull." It seemed she had gotten it right but it was only because she was pretty sure it was the same mana that she had felt during her trip to the Light Domain.
"He''s the Death element. I''m sure you''ve heard of it since you were dealing with Death curses just the other day." The Oracle didn''t seem surprised by what the Temple Head had just said and Tiff guessed it was because the God of Metal had mentioned that already. "Yes it will be a real shame when it bes a real element. Dealing with those curses was already dangerous."
Tiff seemed to be able to find fault with everything the Oracle said and wished she would just be quiet. Saying Mezull would eventually ascend was the same as saying they would eventually lose the fight against the Demon Lord. She wasn''t saying it couldn''t happen eventually since they had been fighting for a very long time and the Demon Lord came back every time they killed him thanks to his followers but she hoped it wouldn''t be during this war.
She was also hoping they would be able to clear out some of the Demigods and giants that followed the Demon Lord on the off chance he was able to ascend so it would only be him alone. A single god wouldn''t be able to affect them all as much as two or more and it would only be really bad in the ce the Demon Lord chose to be his domain.
"Hopefully that never happens. With a god like Mezull this world won''t be much different from the ones the original six came from." It seemed the Temple Head had heard the same hidden meaning to what the oracle had just said as she had. The Temple Head never spoke about the world the gods came from because they didn''t know much but most people had heard just how dark older worlds tended to be.
Not just from the gods either since people sometimes traveled worlds with knowledge about other ces and Tiff knewpared to the stories she had heard this world was paradise as long as you weren''t around Demon Worshipers who gained power from killing others. If she had never been given Holy affinity she would probably still be living a peaceful life with her family.
This was truly one of the only selling points in the argument that had kept an evil god like the Demon Lord from being allowed to ascend. As soon as they gave up in stopping him the world would get darker permanently since you could never truly extinguish a god from their world. Even the Holy Goddess would be back eventually no matter what the Demon Lord did to slow down the process.
Chapter 330: Time To Plan
Chapter 330: Time To n
After a few more seconds Tiff finally felt another wave of unfamiliar mana pass by and knew their protector had finally arrived. She couldn''t help but think what it would be like for her to be the one who was sent down from the sky to fight like this in the future. She had never really been suited to face to face battles but now that she held a Legendary job that could easily change.
Even if it didn''t, that didn''t mean she couldn''t be sent into a battle where she snuck around and tried to get an assassination on one of the Demon Lord subordinates. In the end it really didn''t matter how you killed them if you were able to win the fight.
It was really more of her style of fighting anyway and the God of Light said her skills were based off of the ones Akal used and he was supposed to be sneaky like she was. If this was true maybe the future her wouldn''t be much different to her right now when it came to how she fought.
"The sh has started. They''re pretty far still though so I don''t think they know exactly where we are yet." Tiff wasn''t that surprised they were having a hard time noticing the cart since it was designed to keep noticeable passengers hidden for a long time. She wasn''t the most powerful mage either so the amount of Holy mana around them wasn''t as much if one of the other members of the 23 were here instead.
Some time passed with them all waiting for the Oracle to feed them more information. Tiff was guessing the fight was a stalemate like it usually was since there was no news to share but that made her think the next thing the Oracle would say would be about more clouds starting to swirl.
This ended up being wrong because the next time the oracle opened her mouth was to say. "The God of Metal can''t really see ahead of us anymore. We''re getting too far from his domain." Tiff hadn''t realized oracles worked like this but when she started to think about it it made sense for the gods to try and block others'' vision of what was going on in their territories.
She wasn''t sure if it worked like that or it was just because they were too far away and the gods vision had limits that had nothing to do with the influence of another god blocking them but she guessed this was something she would learnter into the process of bing a Demigod.
Right now she hadn''t even truly been to the divine realm the gods and Demigods spent most of their time in. What she had gone too was more like an illusion in her mind since her body had never moved from next to the Oracle. This meant she had really only seen what the God of Light had wanted her to.
At one point she had gotten a brief look at some other people who the God of Light told her were Demigods while she had been in the false version of the Divine realm so that made her think she was seeing a realistic version of what the divine realm would be like. It had felt very simr to the world they were in now so she thought maybe there was somewhere else Demigods could go that she didn''t know about yet.
When she had been there he had shown her a fake version of the Light domain that were future ns so it wouldn''t make sense that the God of Light could see what was going on down here while in the fake version of the world. There was probably a way for them to look down on the world from the sky.
That would be nice if one day she would be able to look down from above to gather information since it was kind of like the Oracles ability which she would be getting for free. There was also just a chance that the gods Perception stat was what let them see what was going on down here and it worked best where there was more of their mana.
It was always fun to try and think what weird effects stats would have once you got them to around one thousand. She had heard you started to get weird abilities at 200 so the things you could do past that had to be crazy.
"Herees another one." Right after the Temple Head said this Tiff felt another wave of mana that clearly belonged to the other side pass their cart. She wanted to know if the Temple Head had been able to identify what demigod it could be so she asked. "Who do you think that was?"
"I don''t know. It seems to be Dark in nature though so it narrows it down a bit." Tiff just nodded and started to picture what the fight probably looked like. She knew the giants were weaker than the actual Demigods but she could base estimates of the Demigods strengths off of what she had seen from the giants in the past.
...
Lake had been traveling for a while now and he finally saw something he felt was worth stopping for. It was like the city in the Metal Domain in shape but it was a bit smaller. It didn''t stop him from wanting to go inside though. He had been meaning to rece all the items he had lost like his ward ring and he was sure he would be able to do so here.
With the ability he had to summon anything he had touched to his hand at any time all he had to do was walk into a shop and touch some stuff before leaving and calling everything he had touched to him. It made stalling easy but it was necessary since he didn''t want to get caught without knowing more about what the guards here could do.
He wasn''t the only person with overpowered skills and a town this size probably had something or someone that could find him if he was suspected at all. That was even with his skill that made magic unable to track him since it seemed some skills could break the rules of others under certain circumstances.
He also knew items were much easier to track then him so a ring he took could draw anyone to him at any time in the future. This is what had happened with the dagger he was currency retrieving for the people he had taken it from. Tiff had somehow been able to figure out he was in the alchemist guild and brought the issue to Lucas.
The only thing that had saved him was that they had the wrong name and Tiff knew he didn''t look like Jon. With that Lake took off his helmet and changed his face into Jon''s again before he walked into the city. It had been a while since he had done this but every time he changed his face before doing something illegal had helped him in the long run.
Also a sighting of Jon around the area that he retrieved the dagger from would lend some credence to him actually chasing him down if word somehow ever got back to the Temple Head. He was too far for that to really be possible but you never knew what could happen if he drew a lot of attention while here.
He felt a guying into town before stealing everything from a shop in the middle of the day was worth talking about but he would probably have to do something bigger if he wanted it to travel all the way to the Holy Domain.
Once he was actually inside the city walls he started walking around to get a good idea of what this town was like until he made it to the peak of the city. He had been able to tell from a distance that this was something important but wanted to get a good look so he could decide if it was a castle or temple.
In the metal Domain they only had the one big city and at the top there had been giant homes for important families and at the very top there was the massive metal Temple. It was like this because with only one city everyone had to share space but here in the Earth Domain not everyone would have to live in the same city and families probably had their ownnd depending on how important they were.
Once he got to a wall he couldn''t cross he realized he wouldn''t be able to get close enough to figure out what this building''s purpose was so he stopped someone and asked. "Is this the Temple?"
"No, this is the Shallow city, our temple is built underground. Would you like some directions there?" Lake just shook his head to this offer and asked another question. "What''s this then?"
"It''s the city''s keep. The mayor lives there." Lake was surprised to hear the word mayor because he thought there would be someone like a duke or something but it really didn''t matter because it was all he needed to know that if he was to break in it wouldn''t be him stealing from a temple which he would be afraid to do.
"Ok thank you." After he said this he walked away because right now he didn''t have a way to sneak in and he would need some time to make a n. Once he was around the corner and could tell no one was paying attention to him anymore he jumped up and found a ce where he could get a better look at the walls.
Chapter 331: Jillings
Chapter 331: Jillings
There were multiple reasons he had decided to go into the keep instead of a shop. The main one being the Insider seemed to like the idea the moment he had thought about it and it made him think about the amount of money there would probably be in a ce like this.
Even if he wasn''t able to find a ward ring or whatever his real goal should be gold because it was the only thing keeping him from finally leveling up the Insider to the first level. This was also a great chance for him to get more experience far away from where he actually lived.
It wasn''t everyday he got to leave the area around Holy Domain so if he returned without trying his luck once it would be a real waste. He was also sure he would find something better than some dumb ring in a giant castle like this and to keep it a surprise he nned to not look using any of his skills.
He knew this was stupid but he could take all the surprise out of this if he used Detector and some of his other criminal skills. He could always decide to do itter on as well if he changed his mind so for now he wanted to make this more of like the experience someone without a bunch of crazy skills would have while breaking into a castle.
He could already picture how much his heart would race every time he found something worth taking or almost got caught by guards. Sadly he did think he was going to have to use one of his stronger skills Impersonate to be one of the guards to get inside so that was a bit of a copout but there was still a chance he could get caught if he was acting weird so not all the risk would be gone.
Now he just needed to find a way to get one of the guards out here and get a hold of their core so he could take their ce. The most obvious way would be to cause some type ofmotion in the city that would draw them out to deal with it. He thought a botched robbery where he ran away after getting called out for trying to steal would probably do.
This kind of yed into the reason why he was here anyway but the thought of pretending to rob a store to draw the guards out was ridiculous but if he touched some good items he could call them to himter so it wouldn''t be a real failure even if he didn''t carry anything out of the shop with him.
He would need to get a hold of some new clothes before he did any of this though so that was his first goal. Hopping down from where he had been watching the guards walk around along the top of the walls he started to look for a house he could get something to wear. It didn''t take long to find a house he couldn''t hear anything from and using Mana Vision he confirmed it was empty.
This didn''t mean he could go inside without any problems since there were rms that seemed to alert nearby people without making noise. He wasn''t sure how these worked but he didn''t want people toe running without him knowing as soon as he touched the door.
He had a skill that showed him the owner of a building when he was trespassing so he might see them start to run towards him but the owner wasn''t always going to be the one living here or be the one who was alerted if the rm went off. He would be fast but it would take him a few seconds to find clothes he could wear especially if dwarves lived here.
He was pretty sure by the size of the door that this was the home of a normal sized human but he guessed anyone could prefer arge front door on their house. As he was about to walk in Lake realized there was a much better way for him to get new clothes in his size.
All he needed to do was look around at the people around him before making contact with some clothes he wanted. Then he could call the clothes to him a few minutester when he wasn''t anywhere near them. He knew disappearing clothes would draw a lot of attention but it wasn''t much more than robbing a house.
It would probablye off more as a prank than a robbery as well since peoples shirts and pants would be disappearing. If something like that happened to him he would think some passing mage thought it was funny to make people''s clothes disappear because why would someone who could do something like that need your clothes to wear.
Any mage that could take the shirt off of your back without you noticing would be wealthy no matter how you looked at it. Going back out to where the streets were packed so he could run into people without it being weird he started to look for clothes that could fit him.
He didn''t really need armor or anything, just something that didn''t look like the clothes he was wearing now that he could wear into a store that wasn''t his. Clothes were usually remembered better than someone''s face when it came to describing suspects to the police or in this case the guards.
This meant with someone else''s face and clothes there was no way anyone would see him and think they had the right guy once he changed again. He was also hoping to turn into a guard soon after the attempted robbery so there wasn''t going to be much time where he could be spotted to begin with.
After he had a shirt and a pair of pants he could call to him. Later Lake looked down and wondered how he should get a chance to touch someone''s shoes. The road was crowded soying down would probably make people think he had passed out and that could give him a chance to touch shoes when people crowded him or identally stepped on him but there was no way to know if they would be the right size.
He also needed to know what it was that he was trying to call to him for it to work so not knowing what the shoes looked like since the only contact he had with them was when they stepped on him would be a problem as well since there was a good chance he wouldn''t see them as it happened.
Deciding this was something he would have more luck in in a less crowded ce he walked until he found a street with less people and started to look for shoes he thought would fit him. Eventually he found a dwarf with the same size feet as him and moving as fast as he could he bent down and tapped the shoes.
With all that he had a functioning set of clothes so he went and found a ce that he could change in peace. He would have loved to see how people reacted when their clothes disappeared all of a sudden but standing that close might let them spot him as the person who had done it.
Once he was alone he called both shoes first to make sure they were his size because if they weren''t he would have to go and get another pair. Once they were on his feet he took a few steps and decided they would work even if they were kind of loose around the ankles and changed his shirt and pants next.
With that he gathered up all of his stuff and brought it to a ce where no one would ever see it. Truly he really wasn''t too worried about people stealing his stuff even if they did notice it because as long as it wasn''t destroyed he could just call it back to him at any time in the future.
With all of this done the next thing he needed to do was find a store close to the castle that he could cause a problem in so they would have no choice but to call the guards. For this he decided the best way to find a ce like this would be to ask someone to see if they knew any nice ces to buy jewelry.
Stopping the first rich looking person who he passed, Lake asked. "Do you know where the nicest jewelry shop in town is?" It only took the person a few seconds of thinking before they answered him. "That would probably be Jillings. It''s pretty far from here though so you''ll need to ask someone else once you get to the upper part of the city."
"Alright, thank you." He quickly walked away and got closer to the caster before he asked another person. "Do you know where Jillings is?"
"Keep going that way and eventually you''ll see the sign." Lake didn''t thank this person because they had started to walk away before he got the chance but their directions worked and he saw the sign that read Jillings after walking for a while longer. He didn''t waste any time and started to walk towards the door.
Chapter 332: Real Robbery
Chapter 332: Real Robbery
As he was walking in Lake had to say this ce was very nice. Every surface sparkled with countless jewels and when he said it was the surface he meant it. He wasn''t sure why they had chosen to encrust the entire shop but they had and it made him wonder if maybe jewels weren''t very valuable here.
The stuff you could buy looked nice as well once he got over looking at the floors and walls. Now all he needed to do wase into contact with as much stuff as he could before he caused amotion. As he walked around and touched stuff Lake was able to tell all the really good items weren''t out here where anyone could touch them but he didn''t think he looked like someone they would let hold the stuff in the counters.
He was just wearing in clothes and it was obvious to anyone who looked at him that he didn''t have anything to hold money in like a bag or purse. This would cause the people behind the counter to turn him away if he was to ask to hold the nice stuff. This gave him an idea of what he should do to get the people here in the shop to call the guards.
There were a few obvious guards that belonged to the shop so if he did something small they would probably just handle it and the guards from the castle wouldn''te out here to chase him. So not only would he have to smash the case to get at the nice things inside he would have to get violent with the guards to draw bigger fish here.
He didn''t want to kill them though because a murder was a bit too far in his opinion because he felt the guards would get their best guys on it to catch him while a small attempted robbery wasn''t worth their time.
That would probably change once he called all the items he had touched because a thief who had taken so much was worth catching but by then he would have already robbed the castle so they would probably be after him anyway.
He didn''t think they would chase him all the way back to the Holy Domain though so it wouldn''t matter to him because he was too fast for them to catch him. As he walked up to the counter Lake could tell they were ignoring him like he expected so he just went right into the robbery.
Smacking down with his hand the ss in front of him was busted right away but his hand was stopped before it made it to items by some type of barrier he was unable to see. It made sense that they had something like this that activated when the ss shattered but he wished he had been able to at least touch something before the fight with the guards. "Stop right there!"
Hearing the guards give him an order to surrender he turned around and smacked the first guard on the top of their helmet. "Arrg." Once the guard had fallen he turned and slowly ran away. If he sped away this would probably be the end of it so he wanted to go just fast enough to be chased.
Like this a lot of people would see him being chased and eventually word should get to the real guards even if the people in the shop didn''t report him. "Stop running!" The guard who was the closest to him continued to yell as they made their way around the city and After about ten minutes Lake finally saw what he wanted.
Guards wearing the same armor as the ones that had been on the walls of the castle were finally pushing their way through the crowds towards him. He didn''t know if these were actually guards that had juste out of the castle or not but the clothes were right so that was all that mattered to him.
Now all he needed to do was get one of them alone long enough to change into their clothes and harvest their core. He would also need time to hide the body once he had taken everything he needed from it so they didn''t know there had been a murder but that woulde after he got one alone.
Stopping in ce, Lake made it look like he was giving up by putting his hands up and let all the guards get close to him. Once they were all gathered around he was about to start taking them out when the one in front said. "Why did you run if you''re just going to give up?"
Lake was happy to hear his acting was so good but he didn''t have any ns of actually giving up. "I''m not surrendering." When his words were processed by the people around him around half of them took out their weapons and pointed them at him. "Stop with your games and follow us to the dungeon."
"Dungeon, where''s that?" Lake couldn''t lie to himself, he was actually interested in being put into a dungeon just to see what it was like but he knew this was a terrible idea. There was a good chance there would be some type of formation or something that would make it really hard to get out unless he went all out and used one of his most dangerous skills.
"It''s underground now, move, we''ll tell you where to turn?" Lake could tell they weren''t taking him seriously because he didn''t have a weapon and he went along with it because once they got somewhere less crowded he could knock them all out without worrying about people seeing how he did it.
There was no way to make it not weird that they all lost to an unarmed thief but as long as they didn''t see how they would probably guess there had been other criminals that came to help him fight off the guards. As they got closer to wherever it was they were taking him like he expected the roads got less and less popted and before long it was only them.
He didn''t waste much time once that happened because he didn''t know when they would get to this dungeon. Going much faster than he had earlier, Lake knocked all the people around him out by smacking their helmets being careful not to kill them because like he said he didn''t want the people who investigated murders to be after him.
"Bang." He hit them all fast enough that it sounded like one hit and once he was sure they were all out he grabbed the one he had hitst and dragged them into the alley. He had to kill one to get the core so he might as well pick the one he hitst since they would have had the best chance of seeing what happened just now.
The others were more likely to be confused since he had moved too fast for them to really see him. Once he had their armor off he quickly put it on and used their knife to get their core. This made a mess but it didn''t take too long for him to use their core and turn into them. Next he had to hide the body and thankfully he was fast enough that he could just transport it into some garbage nearby.
By the time it started to stink he was sure he would have already left the town and since it was now an item he could just call it to him while he ran to dump it into an area where animals would eat it. With all that done he ran back to the group of unconscious guards and started to shake them to get them up.
One of them had to wake up first so once they saw his dented helmet they would think he just happened to be the one and they would have no reason to think he was a fake. After a while one of the other guards finally regained consciousness and quickly started to ask questions. "What happened?"
Since he was the only one who seemed to get back up after being attacked he was able to spin the story easily. "We were ambushed. I''m guessing by the friends of the guy that we were taking to the dungeon." Lake could tell they guy believed him and it wasn''t too long that they turned their attention to the others.
"Don''t worry they''re all alive. I already looked." Some time had passed since they had all been knocked out so it was fine to say he had already had time to check the pulse of everyone here. "Help me wake a few more of them up so we can go back to the barracks to get healed. With just a few more we''ll be able to carry everyone back."
Lake would have loved to ask where the barracks were since his goal was to get inside the castle but it would be weird if he didn''t know so he just crouched down and started to shake the next person. He had tried to keep the blows from killing anyone but it was impossible to hurt everyone the same amount since some of them would be stronger than the others so it might take a while to get enough of them awake to carry the others.
Chapter 333: Guarding
Chapter 333: Guarding
Once they woke three more people they all helped the ones who were yet to wake up back to the barracks which turned out to be in the castle like he had hoped. There all of them were healed including him just in case their heads were more hurt than it seemed.
Once that happened the guards from the jewelry shop left and headed back to work to tell their bosses that they had failed to catch the guy who tried to rob them. "Alright since you''re the only one who kind of saw what happened you should go and do the paperwork about the people who attacked us."
"I really didn''t even see any of them. I just know all of us were knocked out at the same time so there had to be more than one of them." Lake was backing off of what he had said earlier a little but he didn''t want the reports he did in a second to seem weird when they had no information. "Just do your best. None of us expect the report to actually help us catch them."
Hearing this, Lake felt a little better to go ahead and activate y The Part and let this identity do its job until he got a better look around. He had no idea what kind of paperwork he was about to do so there was no way to avoid using this skill now. As he was walking around he got a good look at how many other guards there were around in the courtyard.
He had to guess the total amount though since this was just one small part so while he was sneaking around he was going to have to look out for about 200 guards. There were probably others like servants and the people who lived here as well so maybe he would have to change identities againter.
If he was to take the identity of someone like the mayor he would be able to do anything he wanted while he was here. It would be hard to get rid of the body though since it would probably take ce in a small office or something with no where he could put a body.
Walking into the next room Lake was able to tell this was some type of office and it made him think back to the time he had been in a police station when he was really young. He had been in to answer some questions but because of his age they hadn''t brought him into an interrogation room and he had been able to see all of the cops desks.
The only real difference between that ce and this one was there were noputers on the desks and the uniforms were made of metal. His body quickly went and sat at one of the empty desks and before long took out a nk scroll and started to write. Like all the other times he had used this skill Lake wasn''t able to see what was going on perfectly but he was able to read what the body was writing and was surprised to find there was a lot of untrue information.
y The Part made the identity take over the actions so he guessed this meant the person he was currently would have made stuff up in a situation like the one they were in now. He wasn''t surprised by this since a good proportion of people were willing to lie to make themselves look better, especially at work.
The way this read made it sound like it hadn''t beenpletely one sided and there was a lot of detail on how they had arrested someone and not too much on how they had been knocked out and lost the criminal before they got them to the dungeon. Once there was about a page of details that had mostly been made up, his body went and put it into a box with twenty or so other scrolls.
He was guessing these would be the other reports from today but he didn''t try to read them because he wasn''t really interested in what the other criminals here were doing. It was nice to know that there was probably a ce he could sell stolen things in town even if he didn''t end up using it.
Once his body walked back outside he took back over and started to head to a less crowded area. He was sure guards weren''t supposed to just walk around randomly but if someone tried to stop him he would just lie and say he was looking around for another person for some reason.
Eventually he was on the walls looking down on the rest of the city and he started to n how to get inside the main building while he pretended to work. There were a few windows near the top that might be able to be opened but Lake really couldn''t see himself being able to crawl into one of them without being seen so he wanted a better way.
His next option would be the doors that were around. He was sure one of them would eventually lead inside if he tried them all but all it would take for him to be caught was for someone to see him open a door he wasn''t supposed to and that would be it. This left the only option of walking in through the front door. There were guards but he was a guard so they would probably just let him in without even asking why he wanted to go into the castle.
He could check this as well before he tried his luck by hanging around and seeing if they stopped others from going in. He did think it would look weird to the guards if he just stood there and watched what was going on so Mana Vision and his amazing sense of hearing would have to do in this case.
He didn''t really need to be close to gather evidence so there wasn''t really a point in making himself look suspicious by hanging around somewhere as important as a gate into a castle. Getting closer so he could listen to the guards at the gate while still looking like he was looking out over the city, Lake eventually heard the gate open and when he looked he saw it was someone with guard armor on and like he had hoped the guards at the gate didn''t do anything to stop them.
He knew this wasn''t enough to go ahead and head inside since he would want to see this a few more times but it was a really good sign. After some more time another person came through the gate and Lake didn''t hear the guards say anything this time either so he looked to make sure the person going in was a guard like him.
Sadly it looked like a servant of some kind so he had to disregard what the guards did in this case because a servant would have ess to the house part of the castle for sure. It was too bad he didn''t have any way of bing them because it was sure to let him go straight inside without all of this extra stuff.
Next time he nned a robbery like this one he would go ahead and use Detector to find a servant that worked in the ce he was trying to break into and save himself a load of time. He had no idea why he had thought a guard would be the best choice now that was thinking about it because there were bound to be people like cooks and such that lived out in the city.
He guessed not wanting to use Detector had made him not even try to find a way in that would be hard to think of. It was also true that without Detector it would be really hard for him to find these people that worked in the castle. He was doing this for excitement though so making it too easy would have ruined it.
This was supposed to be like a vacation for him since he hadn''t had a chance to rob anyone for a while and probably wouldn''t once he got back to the Temple. The Temple Head herself had told him he would be living there and he still didn''t know how strict she would be about keeping him inside where she could have ess to him at any time.
This could really be hisst time stealing anything for a while so he wanted to savor it as much as he could. He wasn''t the only one who was enjoying it either with the Insider moving ever so slightly since he had turned into the guard. As far as he could tell, sneaking around in a disguise was the Insider''s favorite and stealing was really just a secondary thing to it.
Chapter 334: Stats At Last
Chapter 334: Stats At Last
By now Lake had three examples of guards being able to walk through the gate uninterrupted and decided that was enough for him to try. If he was stopped there was always the option of activating y The Part and letting it exin what he had been trying to do. He wasn''t sure how that would go but it would probably be better than what he came up with.
Once he was at the gate he could tell the other guards weren''t even looking at him so he just walked in like it was what he was supposed to be doing. Once he was inside he saw he had a few choices on which direction he could go and not knowing which one he should pick he activated y The Part to see if this identity would take over.
He had been slightly worried that this identity would see they were somewhere they didn''t want to be and walk out but that didn''t happen and they quickly picked one of the hallways in front of him and walked down it until there was a door. They opened the door and started to take the stairs down until they reached a room that had ten or so other guards in it all holding drinks.
He hadn''t expected to find a bar under the castle but he guessed it made sense for it not to be out in the open if the mayor or whoever was in charge of the guards didn''t know about its existence and they had hidden it down here to sneak away here to get drunk during work.
With this and the fact they had lied earlier Lake was starting to think he had done the mayor a favor by killing whoever this guy had been because it seemed they were bad at their job and whoever they hired to rece them once he left would probably be much better. "Daneg it''s not your turn yet. Why are you here?"
Lake was smart enough to guess this was his name even if he had never bothered to look so he deactivated y The Part and said. "I guess I lost track of time. My bad." Turning around to leave he waited until he was back on the stairs to activate y The Part again to see if he would end up somewhere else.
When he got back to the lobby he thought he was about to head outside but right before he deactivated y The Part he turned and headed down another hallway. He couldn''t picture another secret ce like the bar so he was hopeful that he would end up somewhere important this time.
After a few turns he opened another door and found himself in a bedroom. He had no reason to think this was his room since there were dresses and other things that made him think this room probably belonged to ady that was somehow rted to the mayor. He didn''t know if it was a daughter or wife but it didn''t really matter whose room it was when he saw what he was doing here.
His body had dropped down to its knees and had started digging around in dirty clothes in a hamper. It took him a second to react to this and deactivate y The Part because of how much he was surprised by his identity''s behavior. After it was deactivated he quickly left this room and did his best to get back to the gate without anyone seeing him.
He almost walked out still thinking about fleeing the scene of the crime but was able to stop himself before he ruined all the progress he had made so far. He hade to realize this guard had been a creep and Lake never wanted to let them take over again so he was going to take the fact he hadn''t really seen anyone in the halls so far and start walking around himself.
This made him think that as long as he used Mana Vision and his top speed to move around that no one would notice him. Activating Mute and Mana Vision Lake started to run down a hallway he didn''t see anyone in to see if he could find a staircase upwards. This ce seemed like a maze if you didn''t know where you were going so he knew this would probably take a while even moving as fast as he was.
After opening a few doors and dodging people moving around on the same floor that he was, he eventually found a set of stairs that went up that didn''t have anyone guarding them. He wasn''t sure why they would only have guards at some of the stairs but he guessed the confusing paths though this castle had something to do with it.
There was also a chance the ce these stairs led to weren''t important or even connected to the other parts of the upper floors so guarding them waspletely unnecessary but with this being his only option he still nned to climb them to see where he would end up.
As he climbed he found this set of stairs quickly turned into a spiral staircase that passed each and every floor with no way to enter them and once he got near the top he realized that this was the way into the castle''s spire. He wasn''t sure why there weren''t any guards up here but being at the very top of the castle alone made him think this might be the best way for him to get to the upper parts of the castle with no one seeing him.
The Sun would be setting soon and if he climbed down from here into one of the windows he saw earlier he would pass all the guards and enter directly into the most important part of the castle. From there all he would need to do is get a new identity and he would have free rein of the castle while he looked around for treasures.
While using Mana Vision earlier to get around he had been able to see there were things giving off a lot of mana at the top of the castle so he knew there would be good things for him to take as he made his rounds pretending to clean. He wasn''t going to have to actually move anything either since he was able to summon anything he touchedter after he had already made his escape.
This would all depend on if he was able to climb down to a window without being seen though. Night time was a great way to hide but people who had jobs for guarding had a really high chance of having a high perception so he felt they would have no problems spotting him if he was out there for a long time.
There would be a small chance for him though if he was fast since the guards were mostly paying attention to outside the wall and he hadn''t seen a single person look up to the spire. That meant he would be fine to wait here for the sun to go down before he climbed down to a window that led to an empty room.
This was great because it gave him an opportunity to look at not only the skills he would have unlocked for getting Hunter past level 1 but finally take a look at his stats. It had been a long time since he bothered because it was only a few points here or there but he wanted to see what his Perception was at the moment.
Race: Human Lv.16 ( 6/10 )
Job: Hunter Lv.4 ( 26/80 )
Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 4/5 )
Stats
Health 160
Stamina 160
Mana 160
Strength 128
Endurance 17
Agility 114
Dexterity 123
Perception 127
Intelligence 156
Charisma 43
Free stat points: 150
Like he had expected he wasn''t even able to see the difference since none of his stats had improved a good amount but this wasn''t the end since he saved the new skills for seconds.
Track (G) Lv.1
Animals wounded by you are easier to hear and smell.
(Scales off of Perception.)
Blood Clean (E) Lv.1
Gets rid of blood in or on items held.
(Consumes 10 Mana Per activation.)
Lake was almost disappointed when he read the first of the two thinking they would both be like that but when he saw the second one''s utility he was excited. Getting blood off of things like clothes was always a worry of his when he killed someone to disguise himself since blood was a giveaway that something was wrong but if this skill worked how he thought this was no longer a problem.
He wasn''t exactly sure how it could be useful to a hunter though unless this skill could be used to help drain blood from meat to preserve it. He had seen people hand up meat to let blood drip out over time but with this skill it could be done instantly which would make the hunters job much easier.
Chapter 335: Bright And Shiny
Chapter 335: Bright And Shiny
The Sun had slowly set as Lake waited and he felt it was now dark enough for him to move so using Mana Vision he started to look around down below him to find which window he should target to get an empty room. As far as he knew there were at least seven windows to choose from so there was bound to be at least one that no one would be in.
As he was trying to make sense of what he could see below him with Mana Vision he eventually noticed that there seemed to be someone slowly climbing the stairs up to where he was. They were moving at a snail''s pace so Lake still had time but this ced a time limit on how much longer he could stay here.
He had no idea why the person would being up here or if they would mind that there was a random guard but he really didn''t want to take his chances in seeing who they were even if this might be a great ce to get himself a new identity.
Going back to looking at the rooms below he made up his mind on which he should enter and making sure Mute was still active he started to climb out of the spire and down the side towards the window below. When he was half way he heard the person that had been climbing through the wall and knew there was still over a minute until they reached the top at their speed.
It was funny to think he was faster at climbing down a brick wall than they were at walking up stairs and wondered who they could be. An old person was his best guess and this made him almost positive that they weren''t just a guard and he wished he could have gotten a brief look at them before he had to start his climb down.
He didn''t have time for that though because it was too much of a risk in his opinion just to satisfy his curiosity. As he made it down to the window he had chosen he quickly got to work trying to open it only to find it was unable to slide in any kind of way. This was unexpected but he was fine with breaking a window since he had Mute.
He also didn''t have to shatter it and went to work taking the wood between the pieces of ss out so he could slip though. It was more time than he had wanted to spend out here on a window where anyone could look up at any time but a pieces of falling ss was sure to make people look even if they didn''t hear the sound of it breaking or hitting the ground.
Once half the window was gone he slid into the room and got to work covering his tracks. He was unable to fully rebuild it since he had broken the wood in some ces but there was enough left that the ss stayed in ce and no one would notice unless the wind blew and knocked it all over.
With that done he turned his attention to what was going on outside of the empty room he was in. There were items he wanted to look at in here with him but he wanted to make sure no one was going to walk in while he was doing it first. Once he was sure no one wasing this way he went to looking around the room.
He couldn''t tell right away what kind of room this was since it had a mixture of furniture in it but there were nice things on the shelves that seemed to be decorations. As he got close to touch the first of the items Lake put together that this was most likely where the mayor met with guests and drank tea and these things were here to show off a bit or start conversations.
That was the only thing that made sense to him because he couldn''t see someone sitting in here if this was where they lived when their rooms probably had a better ce to have things like tea. After thinking this he decided that if these items were good enough to show off they probably had some value and they were definitely worth looking through.
Opening the fist case he saw what he thought were gems at first but quickly realized that they were cores. He wasn''t sure what made these ones special and he wasn''t going to inspect them all one by one but this case was worth summoningter once he ran away.
Going on to the next thing he opened the case and found another type of treasure but was unable to tell what it was just by looking at it because he had never seen anything like it before. It was like a giant ck orb but there wasn''t anything else he could get from looking at it so he used inspect to see what information came up.
Giant ck Pearl
Lake stopped reading after he saw the name because all he cared about was how expensive this item was and the name told him everything he needed to know. If the description included the word giant this thing must be worth something. Its color was also very nice so he knew he would have no problems selling it once he found the Thieves guild in this town.
Moving to the next case he looked through the top of it because this one had a ss top and wasn''t able to be opened. This made him think this next thing was something you wouldn''t want to touch or was possibly fragile. He was also unable to identify this item so he went ahead and used Inspect while wondering if it would work through ss.
The ss didn''t seem to get in the way and he was able to get the name of the thing in the case and found it was some type of wood from the Life Domain. After reading a bit more of the information he was able to figure out that it was in the case to keep anyone from touching it because this action would ruin it.
Apparently this would work simrly to a health potion and could heal people from the brink of death as long as they touched it. He wasn''t sure how this worked but he was sure it would sell so he nned to take it like the other items he had seen so far. He was about to look at the next item when he decided he needed to take a few seconds to have another look around because it had been like a minute since he had lookedst.
After deciding he was ok to continue with what he was doing, Lake was about to start again when a sudden noise and sh of light stopped him in his tracks. "Vooom!" Looking at the door he realized no one hade into the room and he had to look around a few times before he realized all the light wasing from the window.
He had no idea what could be lighting the whole room like this so he moved over to the window to see what it could be. When he got a good look he realized it wasn''t just this room that was lit but the whole city and after figuring out the source was above him he realized the spire was being used almost like a lighthouse to light the streets below just enough that people would be able to see.
Normally onerge lightsource would fail at this since things like buildings would get in the way but the room he was in was having no problems being lit and he couldn''t even see the spire so this light was special and was keeping the level of light in the city at an even level somehow.
He had no idea what kind of magic this was but he was just happy he had made it down here before the person climbing the spire had activated this light because he was sure it would have made everyone in the city turn and see him on the side of the spire. That would have been the end of this and he would have had to run away before getting his hands on even a single item.
Figuring he could just ignore this light now that he knew where it wasing from, Lake went back to the shelf to continue touching things forter collection. He was almost done in this room with only three more things he had yet to look at so soon he would have to find a way to get to another room.
The next three things were all just shiny things that would probably sell for a lot but weren''t exactly what he would call useful and he put them all back exactly how they had been and started to use mana vision to see if there was someone close by that he could use to get to the other rooms.
Chapter 336: Time To Go
Chapter 336: Time To Go
Lake eventually got tired of guessing who the people close to him were and cracked the door slightly to see if they were even close enough to him to notice him if he walked to the next room. Once the door was open he saw that this was just another hallway and the two people that were the closest were around a corner or something and couldn''t even see the door to the room he was in.
He didn''t think he had wasted his time since he was being careful but he wished Man Vision had a bit more detail to things that weren''t giving off any mana because he would have been able to tell there was an obstacle separating them. Opening the door a bit more he looked around and found the next room he wanted to go into was just down the hall from him and there was no one in his way.
With Mute active he waspletely silent so he quickly moved down the hall and opened the door to go in. This room had a bed in it but with no one inside Lake decided to not spend much time in here in case they would be here soon to go to bed. Using Man Vision to look for valuable items Lake quickly walked around and touched everything that glowed even slightly.
He didn''t take the time to figure out what any of the things he didn''t know by sight were so he wasn''t sure if he would remember all of them but he really didn''t want anyone toe into the room and see him poking around. Once he was done here he moved to look around the halls again to try and get to the next room.
He was pretty sure there were only two guards on this floor and they were the two people near him earlier so the others were probably all people that lived here. This meant he couldn''t go into any of the rooms those people were in but that left two more rooms with things for him as far as he could tell with Mana Vision.
Getting to them should be easy as well if everyone had already gone into the rooms they would stay in for the night and the guards didn''t move from their spot. Running to the next door that he was pretty sure led to an empty room, Lake cracked the door slightly before he went in to see if someone would ask. ''Is anyone there?''
When there was no reaction or sound from the room he entered and quickly figured out this was an office and guessed it belonged to the mayor. To him this meant this would probably be the best out of all of the rooms on this floor because it would probably have a vault or something simr.
Using Mana Vision he quickly found one of the two things in the room giving off mana and opened the desk drawer that held it. Seeing a weapon he wasn''t surprised since it made sense for an important person to keep a weapon close by just in case someone came in while they were working.
A small crossbow that was obviously enchanted was perfect for a surprise attack on anyone who came in on you. Poking the weapon he moved from the desk to the next thing in the room that he had seen with Mana Vision to see if it was the vault like he was hoping. The shape made him think it was going to be some type of storage but that didn''t mean a vault necessarily.
Moving everything out of the way, Lake saw a metal box built into the bottom of the wall, obviously a wall vault. The outside didn''t have a handle but he guessed there was probably a way to open it if you knew how. So far every vault he had opened had some type of trick to it so he was sure this one not having a handle must be to stop thieves like him.
He had plenty of ways to figure it out though so he wasn''t worried about it unless it ended up that he needed a key from somewhere else. He also had thest resort of just summoning it to himter without ever opening it. He wasn''t sure if it would work since it seemed to be built into the wall but it was worth a try if he was unable to open it.
Getting closer to the vault so he could see if there were any obvious formations that he could use Decrypt on Lake didn''t see any but he went ahead and used the skill anyway. Seeing some lines start to glow he was happy that he didn''t just try to pry it open since this formation would probably be some type of rm.
Once Decrypt had revealed the formation Lake was able to tell it wasn''t an rm but the way to open it and recognized that this vault was opened by password. Not being able to make noise at the moment because he was sneaking around he chose to move on even though he really wanted to open the vault with an attack using Crunch.
Since it didn''t have an rm formation on it he didn''t have to worry about anyone being alerted if he was to damage the vault meaning it was the best way for him to get at the things on the inside. Moving to the door Lake used Mana Vision to look around at the rooms around him.
This room was between two upied rooms so the chances of being seen by someone was much higher than earlier meaning he needed to make sure no one was about to walk out of the room they were in before he opened the door.
Once he was done making sure no one was moving around he opened the door and headed down the hallway to thest room that no one was in. Opening it he was able to tell right away that this room was different from the others. The walls weren''t decorated and it was pretty obvious that this was some type of work room for someone that lived here because there were wooden tables with tools.
It reminded him of some of the setups that people in the Alchemist guild used but it was missing anything to mix big vats of potions in so it was most likely rted to another type of crafting or research. Like the other room that had a bed Lake felt it was likely that someone could walk in so he decided to make thisst room quick on the off chance the old person that had climbed the spire owned this room and was currently on the way back here now.
The glow that was currently lighting the whole city was magic so it made sense to him a mage of some kind would probably own a room like this one to perform their work inside. He had seen just how much work making a single potion could be so magic in general must need tools like these.
Using Man Vision, Lake followed his sight to the only thing in the room that seemed to be giving off mana, which was a shelf that held all sorts of items from books to what looked like rocks to him. Once he had touched everything he took some time to inspect the rest of the workshop in case there were other valuable things that didn''t give off any mana.
It didn''t make sense to him that someone like a mage would keep all of their items on one shelf so there had to be a secret stash somewhere. In the past he had seen things like barriers or vaults that made it harder for him to see the things inside of them like the vault that had hid the Holy dagger so there could be something like that here.
After some time he was unable to find anything and moved to the door knowing at most he had only gotten half of the things that were here. There was nothing he could do if he didn''t want to use Detector though and he needed to start thinking of his way out. He had already touched enough things that he was bound to forget some of them anyway so he really wasn''t giving up on anything.
Once he made sure it was safe to go out of the room he made his way back to the room that he had climbed in from and got behind the couch to think about how he was going to escape. The most obvious thing was to fly out of the window knowing that someone would see him but betting on his speed to escape.
That would probably work but he really didn''t want to be seen because he wanted the first time they realized he had been here to be when the items he touched started to disappear. To make this happen the best way for him to get out would be to wait until the light outside disappeared before climbing back to the spire.
The spire had a staircase that led directly to the bottom floor with no guards around so he would be able to walk out the front door and pretend to be a guard for a while before making an excuse to leave. That would mean he had to stay here all night though so that wasn''t going to work for him.
Chapter 337: Gone Forever
Chapter 337: Gone Forever
After some time Lake decided to look at his skills to see if he had one that could help him. He had so many at this point he didn''t know all the things he could do and with the fact he was sitting behind a couch safe for the moment there was plenty of time to read them again to jog his memory.
After a while he found a skill called Ghost Touch and wondered when he had even received it. He didn''t even remember seeing this skill but he knew there was a chance he had used it in the past and just forgotten about it. He tended to not remember everything he did or thought so there was really no telling.
Ghost Touch (L) Lv.1
You can turn things you touch ethereal for a short amount of time.
While they''re ethereal you can still interact with them.
Doesn''t work on living things as well.
(Amount of time scales off of Intelligence)
The second part said he could still interact with the things he made ethereal if he wanted but that might mean he could just slide through them if he didn''t. If that was the case he could just slide through the floors and walls to get to where he wanted.
He needed to be careful because the other things on the floor would probably fall through as well but he was hopeful that he could control how much of something he turned ethereal with the skill. He was going to test it on the couch he was sitting behind to see if this was true. Touching the side of the couch, Lake activated Ghost Touch and could tell right away this skill had enough control for him to use it the way he wanted. Not only could he control what percentage of the item was ethereal it seemed he could shrink the area as long as he was still touching it.
With that test done he just needed to see if he could pass through the area that was affected and he would be ready to make his escape. Passing his fingers into the couch cushion, Lake ignored the weird feeling and made sure he was ok if he did this a few times in a row.
Once he was done he flexed his fingers a few times to make sure there weren''t any side effects before turning his attention to n a way through the building. It looked like most of the people that were still in the castle were in the lower levels and the ones that weren''t were stationary meaning they were probably guard.
With these two factors he should have no problems making his way to the lower levels but he wanted to make sure no one discovered one of his ethereal spots if he ended up having to use it in the middle of a hallway. Once he knew where he needed to go on each floor on the way down to make sure no one was around he turned a small part of the floor next to him ethereal and dropped down to the next floor.
He ended up in an empty room like he expected and he quickly did the same to go down again. Those two floors were easy but he couldn''t move down like this anymore because there were guards under him now so he was going to move over through the wall before going down to the next floor.
After passing through a few more walls and floors he was finally back on the ground floor and could pass through the front gate to enter the courtyard. He didn''t go right away though because he was kind of worried people would wonder where he had been if they saw him walk outside.
He was sure the person he was currently had things he was supposed to be doing all of this time and as soon as they noticed him they woulde and question him about what he had been up to. There was a way to avoid this though and all he had to do was walk through a few walls including the big one out onto the street.
There he could find a ce to change and get out of the city to hide the body of the guard before someone found it. From there he mighte back to the city to sell stuff but he didn''t think he would. The glow that epassed the entire city kind of made him feel like going somewhere else to break thew so he was going to follow his gut and leave probably.
If that was the purpose of the light he had to think that there wouldn''t be much crime in this town to begin with so it would probably be better to go somewhere else to sell the stuff anyway. This would also make it harder for whoever they sent after him to find the items he stole and sold since they would be further away.
He wasn''t sure if that would stop them from being able to track him but he figured it would help. Since he was someone who could look at item''s details he knew the name of the person who stole it could be found that way and he didn''t want that to happen to him because with a name it wouldn''t take that long for them to find him.
Getting ready to start walking through walls with his path nned, Lake was able to go straight for a while before he had to switch directions to avoid people in the next room ahead of him. After two more walls he made it outside and didn''t stop heading right for the wall ahead of him.
There was no one looking this way and he didn''t want to spend a lot of time out where someone could turn and see him so even though he would have liked to test his skill on something as thick as this wall before he walked into it he didn''t. If he wasn''t in constant contact he would be more worried but he was able topletely control Ghost Touch while inside the wall.
After an estimated twenty feet of wall Lake popped out on the other side and just walked away like he was supposed to be. Now that he was outside the other guards up on the wall would see him so how he acted as he walked away needed to be normal enough that they didn''t think about where he hade from.
They would all know the wall''s gate hadn''t been opened so a guard outside all of a sudden would look weird. It wasn''t important enough for them to think about these facts though if he wasn''t running so none of them would put this together and start asking questions.
They would just think someone was heading home or had something to do in town and go no further to put things together. Once he was about to turn the first corner to go behind a building he felt the amount of attention on him go up slightly and knew one of the guards probably saw him but a few secondster the feeling went away and he knew the guard had already forgotten about him.
Being out of sight he picked up speed and headed to where he had ced his things earlier in the day to get changed. If someone had been chasing him he would have left the items here and recalled them to himter but since he had made a clean getaway there was no reason to not get changed before he headed out of the town.
Once he found his stuff, which was all still there, he quickly got everything including the clothes he had stolen earlier off of him and put his own clothes back on. He decided to take all the stuff that he had just taken off with him and destroy them once he made it out of town because they could be used as evidence like anything else he had taken.
Once he was outside of the city he took off and flew to a nearby rocky area to burn all of the evidence. Getting everything into a pile he started the burning using Fire magic before calling the body of the guard to him. This was the biggest piece of evidence that could lead them to him so leaving it in a pile of garbage with its face intact had been a mistake.
All that would have had to happen for him to get caught was someone to discover the body before calling the guards who would recognize the face of the person he had turned into and the guards would have spread word that he had died. Then they would see him alive and it wouldn''t take a genius to put together that there was something wrong.
None of that had happened though and he was able to destroy the body now with no one ever knowing what had happened. He was sure they would find it weird that one of the guards disappeared around the time they were robbed but he would be gone by then and all the evidence was going to be dust.
Chapter 338: Real Quick
Chapter 338: Real Quick
"I''ll bring you around the Temple so we can speak in private." They had finally made it back to the Temple and Tiff couldn''t wait to go inside. Being home was nice but to be honest the main reason she wanted to go in was to get away from the Oracle. As they got further and further from the Metal Domain the Oracle lost her usefulness and just became annoying to listen to.
"That would be nice but I would like to be shown to my room first. I''ve spent a few days in the mountains and I would like to have the chance to fix my appearance before the people see me." Tiff stopped listening to what the two of them were talking about at this point because it had nothing to do with her and climbed out of the cart to go inside.
She wanted to go say hello to Dawn since she had just gotten back but after that she would be heading to her room to sleep. It had been more than long enough for her to need to sleep and if the oracle hadn''t been with them Tiff would have probably done so in the cart. Arriving in front of Dawn''s room Tiff was able to tell she was already asleep and decided to just wait till tomorrow to tell her that she was back.
Walking into her room Tiff went to go sit on her bed when she heard a knock on the door. Figuring it was something important that had happened while they were gone she got back and opened the door even though she didn''t want to. "The Temple Head wanted to see you."
The two of them had been separated for only a few minutes but she guessed something had alreadye up that required them to have a meeting. "Alright, thank you for letting me know." Walking out of her room Tiff was about to walk to the Temple Head''s office when the person who had delivered the message said. "She isn''t that way? I''ll bring you."
Following the guy down a different hallway Tiff tried to think what this could be about and why the Temple Head would need her to meet her in an empty part of the Temple. They had been put through training to notice weird situations like these and judge if they were in danger or not because the biggest threat to them were traitors.
All it would take for the Temple to lose their biggest weapon against the Demon Worshipers was one poisoned knife in the back and they would be gone like the god that mothered the element that the Temple valued so highly. To keep this from happening they had been walked through how people ended up getting assassinated and being led away from people by someone you didn''t know was definitely on the list.
She did question if she was just being paranoid though because Lake had apparently been able to check for traitors and the like and that had only been a few days ago. She wasn''t saying it was impossible for the Demon Worshipers or some other group to get a new person on the inside in that amount of time, it just seemed unlikely to her.
"Could you stop for a second?" There was no way around stopping their progress to ask some questions though even if she felt it was unlikely that anything nefarious was going on. "Do you need to go back to get something from your room?" Tiff could see someone who was actually bringing her to see the Temple Head thinking that but a good spy would say things like these to diffuse suspicions at every turn.
"No, I wanted to ask where the Temple Head was before we go any further." She saw the look on the man''s face change as the meaning of her words dawned on him. "Oh, I guess this does seem kind of weird. She''s up ahead with the Oracle. The Oracle is eating at the moment but they wanted you to be there for the discussion they''re having."
"Can I take some other guards with us just in case none of that is true?" There were guards all over the ce so getting a few to apany her would only take a few seconds. "It''s up to you." It was true she hadn''t needed to ask the man this and the only reason she had was to gauge their response.
It hasn''t worked but really all that meant was that she could be dealing with a spy that had been trained well. Once she had a small group gathered she sent one ahead to make sure that the Temple Head was actually in a room at the end of this hall. When the guard returned and confirmed it was the truth Tiff continued her walk but waited till she saw the Temple Head with her own eyes to apologize to the guard that had originally sent to bring her. "Sorry for doubting you."
"No, I understand." After the guards had all left she walked into the room and sat next to the Temple Head on the other side of the Oracle. "Now that you''re here we''ll catch you up. The Oracle has continued to get updates from the God of Metal about what''s going on in the Metal Domain."
Tiff found that interesting but surely she didn''t need to hear it right now. The Temple Head seemed to be able to tell what she was thinking because the next words out of her mouth were. "Don''t worry we''ll let you head off to sleep soon. I just wanted to tell you that the God of Metal passed on some information about Lake."
Hearing this Tiff instantly perked up a bit. There was no way around wanting to hear about the person that was after the dagger. "Did something happen to him?" It had been a big fear that leaving him to go forward alone woulde back to bite them so she hoped it was nothing bad but for a god to take notice it had to be something big like arge fight or something.
"No, he took some time to help the guards we left behind before he moved on." Tiff guessed that was weird since it was a waste of time and the mission they had left him toplete was time sensitive but she knew some people had a hard time turning a blind eye to people that needed help. "He already moved on though, right?"
"Yeah, after he helped the guards he quickly left the Metal Domain. It seems whoever had the dagger moved from the Metal Domain already. So we have no idea when he''ll be back." Tiff understood why the Temple Head had wanted her to hear this because when she was in her room she kind of assumed Lake would be back in a few days. Now she understood that was wishful thinking.
"Is that all you wanted to tell me?" It was bad news but it wasn''t anything she could change so going to bed was still more important to her. "Yes that''s it." Getting up to walk back to her room Tiff gave the oracle a brief nod because they were in her room and she hadn''t said anything to her the entire time she was here.
Once she was back to her room she didn''t waste any time and got into her bed. She really didn''t have anything to do tomorrow which wasn''t that rare for her so she figured most of her day would be spent talking to the Temple Head and the Oracle about what was going on in the Metal Domain.
With the oracle here they had ess to information about anything going on in the Metal Domain so it was possible for them to finally understand what was going on there. The People they had sent hadn''t sent any messages back as far as she knew so they still didn''t know what was really going on.
The Oracle herself would probably already know a lot so they would probably get the full story of what had happened already and that should help understand more about the things the Oracle said on the way here. Saying that the God of Metal wasn''t going to dere war after what the Demon Worshipers did was insane to her and she felt there had to be more to it than a vague suspicion that the Demon Lord was going to force a truce using this situation as leverage.
She understood that it was possible that the Demon Worshipers could pull this same attack in other domains but if that happened some of the gods would finally join them in the war against the Demon Lord which was something they had wanted for a long time.
Realizing she was thinking about something that she should save for tomorrow Tiff rolled over onto her other side and closed her eyes. If she let her thoughts keep her up for too long the sleep would leave her and she wouldy here for hours before she was able to get the rest she needed.
Chapter 339: Reinforcements
Chapter 339: Reinforcements
"Donny there are some people who just arrived outside of the fortress apparently." They had expected this to happen so Donny asked Keel. "Do you know if we''re allowed to let them in or not?" Keel had been called for a meeting with Rigbis most recently so Keel had a chance to know if they were letting people into the fortress or not.
"We haven''t discussed it yet as far as I know but I think there will be a meeting soon because of who''s outside." Hearing it was someone with enough status that it might affect their decision making Donny had to know who it was. "Who''s outside?"
He had figured it was just going to be people from the city but now he was thinking he was wrong. "The Oracle''s guards."
"Her guards, what about her? Is she not with them?" Donny really couldn''t see the oracle''s guards abandoning her so something bad had to have happened if Keel said no. "I didn''t see her but it''s possible she will only show herself once they know it''s safe toe in." Donny hoped that was the truth but with how the past days had been he didn''t think it was going to turn out that way.
"Has Rigbis been told?" Donny was sure Rigbis had ways to be alerted to something like this but he figured Keel or someone else had tried to tell him in person already. "We told the guard outside of Rigbis'' room."
Hearing this Donny got himself ready because the meeting could be called at any moment if Rigbis had already been told. A few minutester they were in front of the room Rigbis held the meeting in but the door was closed and guarded still. "It looks like we''re too early."
They still didn''t really have anything else to do in the fortress yet so both of them decided to just stay outside the room and wait. There was no guarantee that they would get invited to the meeting if there was one but they might as well be right here just in case.
After some time the door was opened and some of the people Donny knew as Rigbis'' council walked out. None of them stopped to say anything to either of them though and while Donny wondered what they were off to do he took advantage of the door being opened and went to walk in.
He half expected the guard to stop him but when that didn''t happen Keel joined him in walking through the door. Seeing Rigbis alone at the table Donny thought back to thest time they had met with none of the other people around and wondered what would be said if Keel wasn''t with him.
Rigbis hadn''t said anything about any other traitors but that didn''t mean there wasn''t a list that was waiting to be passed on to him. That was a separate matter though so he went ahead and asked about what they were here for. "Have you decided about the people outside already?"
"I sent the others to go get a look at them and if they''re real they''ll let them in. If they''re here they might need our help with something important to the God of Light and I don''t want to let them wait." Donny was ok with the decision to let them all in since they were from a more important tier of people to the Temple which made him think they would have real ways to prove who they were that normal members wouldn''t have ess too.
"In that case we really don''t have a reason to be here." After Keel said this Donny started to follow him out of the room because he was right when Rigbis spoke up to stop them. "If you want you can stick around for this. Depending on what they have to say, your presence mighte in handy."
Both of them stopped in ce as they heard this because being part of the discussions was something they had both been hoping for and now that their opportunity had arrived neither of them had a reason to say no. "Go ahead and take a seat if you''re staying."
There were only enough chairs for Rigbis and the people that had been in here but Donny wasn''t worried about sitting down because he or Rigbis could make as many chairs as they needed using magic. After a while he heard arge amount of boots on the metal flooring towards them and assumed the people outside had been let in and wereing this way.
A few secondster this assumption was proved correct when arge group of people walked into the room. Donny recognized both groups that made up the whole as the people that were always with Rigbis and the guards that protected the Metal Oracle. Seeing the guards themselves was as rare as seeing the Oracle but he had grown up here so he had the pleasure of seeing them on multiple asions.
This was the first time he was this close though so he was enjoying getting a good look at their armor that he had heard so much about. It was pretty rare to see a fully enchanted set of armor even here in the Metal Domain because it could be expensive and ones as high quality as this were even less frequent since the enchantments held back your ability to work the metal making it harder to increase the level of the item.
Once he had gotten his fill of the armor he looked at the faces of all the guards to see how they looked. He knew he was probably about to hear their story but if the Oracle was dead he felt their faces would look distressed.
People like the guards usually didn''t let their situations show on their faces but something like this where they failed their sole purpose would probably break their defenses and he would be able to get a hint at what was about to be said.
Seeing all of them with steel faces Donny was able to calm himself a bit and he got ready to listen to the discussion Rigbis was starting. "It''s nice to see you all in good health. I can''t say I haven''t thought about the Oracle''s health a few times during all of this."
Rigbis wasn''t the only one who had thought of the people closest to the God of Metal because it felt like they would be the biggest targets for the Demon Worshipers to go after if they really wanted to cripple the Metal Domain and its people''s spirit. "That''s very kind of you to say and don''t worry she is safe. I won''t mention where she''s gone in case we aren''t among only friends but just know it''s much better than here."
That was a load off of their minds but it did make him and he was sure the others wonder what had caused the Oracle''s guards to leave her side. Even if she was safe they were never meant to leave her side as far as he knew. He didn''t feel like he should talk to ask though and he just let the conversation unfold between Rigbis and the neers.
"So what business do you have? We''re looking for people to join us here in the fortress but we were expecting like normal people from the city, not anyone as important as you all."
"We were nning to head into the city to rejoin those at the Temple but we saw on the way here that this fortress was really the only option we had left." It seemed the Temple had been destroyed while the guards weren''t around to see it so they hade here in hopes of finding what was left of the people fighting for the Metal Domain.
"And you just want to join us?" All the guards nodded to this and Donny could tell he wasn''t the only one that was surprised that they didn''t want anything from them because they all started to exchange looks. After a few seconds where all of their eyes met at least once Rigbis spoke up. "Well we would be fools to turn you away in a situation like this. Please take a seat and we can trade stories of what''s happened to us so far."
Donny was excited to know h would get to be a part of a meeting like this and hoped everyone would be open in sharing information because there was still a huge mystery in why any of this had even happened in the backs of their minds and since these men were from the temple he felt like they might now something that hadn''t been shared to the people form the Fighters Guild from the beginning.
The Metal Domain had just hired them to kill Demon Worshipers and they really didn''t need to know any big secrets to do this job to an eptable degree but now any new information could be the difference between their victory or ultimate loss.
Chapter 340: Supplies
Chapter 340: Supplies
Rigbis had gone first and broken down everything that had happened so far to the guards leaving very little as far as Donny knew. The Guards hadn''t reacted to anything that was said no matter how crazy and this made Donny think they were in for a story now that the guards turn was here.
"We weren''t in the city when the attack started and while we figured it was bad we didn''t know just how bad until the God of Metal told us to escape as fast as we could and what was happening a few days ago." Donny would have loved to know what they had been out doing but he could guess it was the Oracle''s normal duties which were rted to metal detection so he didn''t stop them to ask.
"Once we got our orders to run from where we had beenying low it didn''t take long for the first attackers to show up. We were in the air so we had a good chance of getting away under normal circumstances but it seems the Demon Worshipers came prepared because we were shot down almost right away. I don''t know if we were just unlucky but it felt like they were after the Oracle''s life to us with how prepared they were for us."
Donny had already thought the Oracle would be one of the Demon Worshipers so this kind of confirmed his suspicions but the guards had already said the Oracle was safe so it took the edge off for him as he listened to this. This was how he wanted it because being on the edge of your seat was really only nice when there were no odds for you or the people you cared about.
"We were also hit with a few curses during the fall but after wended we were able to fight them off and hide in the mountains until some trustworthy people found us and took the oracle out of the mountains."
Donny was able to sense this was the end of the story and had to say it felt kind of underwhelming but he was pretty sure they were getting a very iplete version of everything they had gone through but he didn''t me them for wanting to keep their secrets because there were things Rigbis had left out as well.
"Is there anything else that we can know or is this really everything you can share?" Rigbis was obviously as let down as Donny was but they were just going to have to deal with it because the guard who had been telling the story up until now said. "We weren''t in the city like we said so we aren''t up to date on what has happened."
This sounded like an excuse but everyone knew they would share if it really became necessary to do so and they were all fine with leaving it at that. "There isn''t anything else that''s really important to mention but we were hoping to ask how you''re doing on supplies." The guard had said this matter was unimportant but this was incorrect because they were still without food and the water they were drinking wasing from small streams on the mountain that were questionable as far as drinking from them went.
"We''re in a bad ce as far as food goes but we have a source of water that''s big enough for us and whoeveres to the fortress from now on. It does need to be purified just in case though." Once Rigbis was done saying this two of the guards stood and one of them said. "We can help with the water problem."
Rigbis didn''t waste any time in pointing at one of his subordinates and saying. "Show them to the water." After that the three people who had just been assigned to the water left the room and Donny saw this as his chance to finally volunteer for the mission to find food. "Sir, if we''re about to send people to get food I would like to go."
He had originally wanted to lead this mission but with these guards here there were probably multiple of them that were more suited for this role so he just said he wanted to go. As soon as he got done saying this and took his seat again another person from the guards stood and said. "I can make it to the Earth Domain in just a few hours so a round trip will take about a day. I''m sure they''ll let us have some supplies once they see my armor."
It seemed the guard that had been taking the leadership role up until now was fine with the others splitting off from the main group because he said nothing to stop this guard that could move fast from leaving.
"Are you able to take others with you or can you only move at this speed alone?" Hearing Rigbis'' question Donny realized his involvement heavily factored on the guards answer so he stared at the man and waited for the answer to this question. "I can bring as many people as you like. It will probably help with moving the supplies so I would like around ten people at the least to apany me."
As the guard said this he gave him a look and Donny knew he had a good chance of getting to go as long as Rigbis didn''t stop him. "Alright Donny help him find nine more people to go with you two." Upon hearing this Donny stood while giving Keel a brief nod. Receiving a quick no when Keel shook his head in return Donny took the guard with him and went towards where the other mages had chosen rooms.
Even if they were only able to get one or two people who could use magic to go with them it would help them a lot. He especially wanted to ask Fendis because if the two of them worked together they could make another tform that could move things like food over the mountains if they were attacked and something terrible happened to the guard.
It wasn''t a nice thought but not nning for emergencies was stupid and could cause everyone here to starve when they failed to bring anything back. To keep that from happening he nned to get as many people who could moverge quantities of food through the mountains to go with him as possible.
...
"Finally." Lake had been running for most of the day at this point and he had almost given up on going to another town before he left the Earth Domain. That was no longer necessary though because the town the arrow had been pointing him towards was finally on the horizon.
When he had told it to bring him to the closest town in the Earth Domain that he had never been to he really only thought it would take him an hour at most but it seemed the Earth domain was much more spread out whenpared to the Holy Domain.
There it really only took a few minutes to find a new farming town if he ran as hard as he could but he guessed theck of nice rockless dirt here kept them from farming everywhere. That or they were farming a different crop that couldn''t be seen on the surface like they did in the Metal Domain.
Once he made it inside of the city he wasted no time in setting Detector to look for a Thieves Guild branch and started to walk around the city. He could use the Magicpass to make this faster but he felt like scoping this ce out was something he could do at the same time as look for the Thieves Guild.
After a while he made it to the center of the city and stopped someone to ask. "Is that the Temple?" Getting a nod, Lake stopped thinking about robbing this city like he had thest one and put his full attention on finding a ce to sell the items he had touched in thest town. After a bit more walking he found himself in thess nice part of town and like he expected a building started to glow.
Heading towards it, Lake decided it was fine if he just wore his clothes in because no one was really looking at him. Getting to the door Lake knocked and when he was told toe in he walked inside to see a room very simr to the jewelry store he had pretended to rob. The only big difference was the type of person that was behind the counter.
Lake didn''t think it would be possible for someone to even look vaguely more criminal than this man did. "What do you have for me?" Lake decided to start with the small things from Jillings and started to pretend to pull item after item out of his bag using Retrieval. Before long there was a small mountain of shiny objects on the counter so Lake stopped here and let the man get to work appraising everything.
Chapter 341: Keldon
Chapter 341: Keldon
After Lake waited some time the man behind the counter had split everything into two piles and said. "Everything here is above my level so you''ll need to go to an actual branch office to get it apprised or you can take my best guess if you are ok with that."
Lake was about to ask where he should take it because if these items were too good for this man the things from the castle would be too when he realized he no longer had his badge for the Thieves Guild. Like everything else he had on him it had most likely been destroyed when he had smashed a barrier with his bare hands.
He was about to ask the guy behind the counter what he should do to get a recement when he remembered there was actually some other time that he could have lost the badge. During the fight where he had been getting hit in the back constantly his bag had been destroyed and he didn''t think he had remembered to use Retrieval to get his badge back after all of his things had fallen out of his bag.
Sticking his hand into his bag he tried to call his badge back and when he felt a coin sized thing appear in his hand he knew he had been right. "Where''s the guild branch at?" As he asked the question he showed his badge to prove he was a member. "It''s in a different town, are you sure you want to travel that far for just a few pieces of jewelry?"
"Well how long will it take a cart to get there?" Lake didn''t actually know how fast he was but he had heard cart travel was usually how people described distance in this world even though every cart was different. "A two day trip. You want a name for a cart that will take you there the fastest?"
"No, just tell me the name of the town." Lake was more than capable of getting there himself and just wanted to know the name so he could set the magicpass to point him there. "Alright the town is called Keldon. You want me to get your money for this ready?" It seemed the man still wanted to buy the lesser items he had brought in so Lake nodded and said. "Sure." While putting the other stuff into his bag.
A few minutes Later Lake was walking out with a huge bag of gold that he quickly got rid of once he got out of town along with all the stolen stuff the man hadn''t bought. With recall there was no point in carrying stolen goods since he could call this bag to him at any time.
Once he got that out of the way he used the magicpass technique and set it to point him in the direction of Keldon. He knew he had a bit of a journey ahead of him but from the things the man behind the counter had said while he was giving him the gold Keldon was worth the trip. Apparently it was one of the three biggest towns in all of the Earth Domain and might also be the first that was settled depending on who you asked.
Lake found it odd that no one had asked the God of Earth but maybe this was something that had been forgotten because it hadn''t mattered when the first cities were being settled here in the Earth Domain and no one including the God of Earth had bothered to write down exactly which town had been built first.
It could have also been a situation where a lot of little settlements were established around the same time so it was hard to know which was the first out of the ones that were still around today. He could see the god not even knowing if the actual first one had been destroyed making one that had been settledter the new oldest.
It was just too bad he was already running out of the two days he had given himself before he headed back to the Holy Domain and would probably have to go back before getting a good look at Keldon. He still wanted to see what it was like though so even if it was going to make himte he was going to go.
...
Opening her eyes Tiff didn''t waste any time and got up and ready for her day. She was sure the Temple Head would have things to tell her with how long she had been asleep and she wanted to stop by Dawn''s room to see if she was there or not. Dawn trained a lot and they both had other things to do as well so Tiff needed to make sure to look for her every chance she got or it could be days before they would see each other.
Finding Dawn''s room empty Tif wasn''t surprised and she went towards the Temple Heads office to see if she was there. Finding this room empty as well Tiff decided to go see if there was a meeting in the big room. She had noticed no one was around and the halls were usually only this empty when a meeting was going on so this made sense to her.
Opening the door to the auditorium Tiff instantly saw she had guessed right and tried to figure out if this was a meeting she had to be in before walking in by listening to what was being talked about by the Metal Oracle. "Like I said earlier, the God of Metal hasn''t made up his mind yet."
This was all Tiff had to hear to decide she wanted to be in this meeting and walked in to take a seat as she listened to more of what the Oracle was saying. "It just seems like we''re going to be forced into a truce with the Demon Lord soon if the God of Light isn''t able to find where he''s hiding."
Tuff had no idea what had caused them to have a meeting about something as explosive as this or why she hadn''t been woken up for it but she felt like maybe more information had been shared to the Oracle by the God of Metal for her to spread to them. "You''re saying this like we aren''t already trying to find the Demon Lord."
Tiff wasn''t sure who yelled this towards the Oracle but the Temple Head quickly took the stage to calm everyone clearly sensing that the crowd was getting out of control which tiff understood, she hadn''t been happy about what the Oracle was saying when she first heard it either. "Alright everyone I ask that you stay civilized and remember who you''re talking to."
After the Temple Head said this she returned to where she had been standing and the Oracle went back to talking. "I''m not saying you all haven''t been trying, I''m just trying to warn you that it looks like you''ll be out of time soon." Tiff wished she had been here earlier so she knew everything that had been said up until now but she would just have to ask after this was over to know how much spection had happened or if this was confirmed information.
"So does the God of Metal want us to go all out to try and help or stay out of the situation in the Metal Domain? You''ve been giving a mixed message this whole time."
"The God of Metal wouldn''t give another Temple orders. He just wanted me to pass on what is going to happen if the God of Light is unable to finish the war soon. We don''t want it to be a surprise to the other temples or gods when we stop fighting back in a few days and sign a peace treaty with the Demon Lord."
After the Oracle said this she got off the chair that she had been sitting on and walked over to the Temple Head. Tiff took this to mean the meeting was over but stayed in her seat until most of the people had left. She was about to walk up onto the stage to join whatever conversation the Temple Head and Oracle were having when she saw Dawn and decided to go talk to her instead. "You''re finally awake."
Tiff wasn''t sure just how long she had been sleeping but she knew it had to be a while if this was the first thing Dawn said. "Yeah. So what did I miss?" She knew this was kind of an annoying question since Dawn would have to break down everything that had happened no matter how much had been said but it would give her an excuse to talk to Dawn for a while before she had to go and speak with the Metal Oracle.
"It was actually pretty short. You came in right after the Oracle got done with her opening statement and just a few questions were asked." If that was the case Tiff guessed she didn''t need to worry about this too much so she looked over her shoulder briefly before turning back to Dawn and asking. "Are you about to eat?"
Chapter 342: Traveling
Chapter 342: Traveling
"This is a lot faster than I expected." Donny couldn''t help but agree with what Fendis just said because the earth tform they were moving over the mountains on was practically flying. "How long did he say it would take for us to get there?"
"He didn''t give an exact time but just a few hours at this speed apparently." Most people who were in the Metal Domain had been to the Earth Domain at least once so a few hours was a good speed and they knew it. Depending on the way you were used to getting there this could seem like taking a fabled teleporter.
He wouldn''t expect any less than this from one of the people assigned to guard the Metal Oracle and it made him hopeful that by the time they got back a lot of the other problems they were having would be solved already.
...
"There you are." Hearing the Temple Head''s tone Tiff was able to tell she spent too much time talking to Dawn and should havee here sooner. "Sorry, I was catching up with Dawn while eating."
"Forget about it. Me and the Oracle are going to the light Domain, do you want toe with us?" Tiff had to weigh her options for a while before she answered. "No, I''ll stay here in case Lakees back." She had more reasons than what she stated to stay here but she did wish to hear what the Oracle had to say once she got to the Light Domain but not enough to go there herself.
"That''s probably for the best. We''ll be leaving soon so I''ll spend the time that''s left to tell you all the information the oracle has shared with us while you were asleep." Tiff had been expecting this and it was part of the reason she had spent so much time with Dawn who had already told her everything she had missed in the meeting while they were eating. "I had Dawn break the meeting down while we ate."
"In that case I''ll just tell you the things we didn''t share with everyone." Hearing that they had more information that they couldn''t tell everyone, Tiff got ready to hear some upsetting news. "First the group we sent to destroy the barrier is most likely dead and that includes the Metal Temple''s Head."
"How did they die?" Tiff wasn''t too surprised but she wanted to know what had happened to them. "We''re not sure like I said, this is just the most likely situation. The God of Metal said he lost contact with the Metal Temples Head soon after the barrier fell."
Tiff just nodded and hoped that some of them had survived whatever happened. "Now all that''s left of the people fighting for the Metal Domain are people in a fortress close to the city and the God of Metal ns to use them to strike a peace treaty in a few days to end the situation no matter what he has to give the Demon Lord."
"Does the God of Metal have an idea what the Demon Lord might ask for to end the attack?" Tiff wasn''t expecting an answer to this but she just wanted to know if the God of Metal had figured out just what he was going to lose for peace. "Just the peace treaty so far but the God of Metal has no real power in the negotiation and the Demon Lord will know it and take advantage of it."
"So you''re saying anything could happen after the negotiation including the God of Metal bing an enemy?" When the Temple Head started to nod Tiff realized why the Metal Oracle was being used of sending a mixed message earlier. She had probably been walking around the fact that the God of Metal was going to be forced to do something he didn''t want to and was hoping they would stop the Demon Lord before that happened.
"Is there anything else you needed to tell me?" The first two things hadn''t really been anything to keep quiet about if they had already told everyone about the possible treaty in her opinion so there had to be something else. "Yeah there''s one more thing."
After the Temple Head said this part there was a pause and it took enough time for her to say the rest that Tiff figured out she wasn''t going to like what was about to be said. "This is information based on what I know about the God of Light and not from the Oracle in any way so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I think we''ll be heading out to war as soon as I get back from the Light Domain because I don''t think the God of Light is just going to let us waste possibly thest few days we can attack the Demon Lord without trying to find and kill him."
Tiff fully agreed with what the Temple Head said now that she thought about it and understood why this was a big deal. If they were fully mobilized and sent towards the God of Light''s best guess where the Demon Lord would be, the casualties would be massive for them and the posts they would be abandoning which included most of the Holy Domain.
By the time the surviving members of the Temple returned he wouldn''t be surprised if most of the Holy Domain had been destroyed or conquered by the demon Lord who they would be unable to attack any longer to reim thend without the new treaties the Demon Lord had signed with other gods taking effect.
This made this an all or nothing gamble if it actually ended up happening. "Is that thest thing you have to say?" The Temple Head had started thest statement saying this was thest thing but it felt like she had more to say to Tiff. "No I want you to be ready because if he really decides to go all out that will include the 23 and this will be the most exposed any of you have ever been. Make sure they''re getting ready the best you can while I''m gone."
Tiff just nodded to this because she didn''t think there was really anything she could do to help the others be any more ready than they were already. All of them were more skilled than her even with her fancy new job because she was still yet to get any real benefits from it, not yetpleting her first mission.
This made her new position above all the other people herepletely empty since she couldn''t back it up with any real strength so her going to them trying to act like some type of leader would just be sad and would probably make their strained rtionship worse.
She wasn''t going to say this to the Temple Head though because she already had too much to worry about. "I''ll try my best to see how they all would fair if we are forced to go into a battle outside ofnd controlled by us."
"Alright, good. I have to go now, make sure you take a bit of time to train. It''s been a while and being rusty isn''t good during war." After the Temple Head said thisst thing she walked out of the room leaving Tiff alone to think about going to train with the other for the first time in a while.
...
Looking forward, Lake was happy to see his decision to run along the ground to go at his top speed had paid off. He hadn''t known how far Keldon had been from thest ce he was so when he picked to go as fast as he could he still hadn''t been sure just how much time he would save but now it looked like he was going to get a few hours here before he had to go back.
In a few hours he would have no problems finding something interesting to do here and make the end of his trip worth his time. Coming to a stop a few minutes away from the city to find where the entrance to the city was since there was a giant wall Lake eventually saw a small line of carts going through a gate.
The line didn''t look too long so Lake didn''t try to fly into the city in case that was illegal and headed towards the line. Once he got there he realized there was a ce for people to go through and went there instead of lining up behind the carts. The line for people was going pretty quick so before long he was standing in front of a guard.
"What''s your business?" Lake just shed his Alchemist guild badge instead ofing up with a story. "Alright have a nice evening sir." It had the effect he had hoped for and he was let directly inside the city. Setting Detector to look for a Building owned by the Thieves Guild before picking a street to walk down.
Chapter 343: A Quarter
Chapter 343: A Quarter
This city was as big as he had been told and Lake still hadn''t found what he was looking for but he didn''t mind because he was enjoying looking around the city. It was very obvious whenever you walked into a newer or older part of the city because the style the buildings were in would change and it made him want to try and figure out what the oldest part of the city was by stopping someone and asking where he should go.
He had an actual goal right now though so he would save that forter if he had time after selling the stolen goods. Finding another part of town that seemed to be more worn out, Lake knew he might have found where the thieves guild would be. He had thought that a few times already though so there was a good chance he was wrong.
Taking a turn he saw the street open up into a za and realized he had run into the guild street by chance. He guessed it made sense that the guilds would be in an older part of the city but it wasn''t really what he was looking for so he kept walking after making one of the buildings in case he wanted toe back hereter.
Depending on how much money he made from selling the things he had taken in the first town he might decide to make the rest of the money he needed by doing some jobs at the Fighters guild or something. It would make him miss his deadline but finally making the gold he needed was worth being slightlyte; especially when the deadline was self imposed.
After exploring a few more parts of the city Lake finally saw a building light up and headed for the door. Like always all he had to do was knock and someone called for him to enter. As he walked in he was able to tell that this was probably not the building that the main guild branch was in because this just looked like a small shop.
"Hey I''m new to town and I''m looking for a ce to sell some rare items." Lake figured the guy would understand what he wanted with just this much and he was right. "I''ll give you directions. It''s a big city so make sure to pay attention. I''m only going to tell you how to get there once." A few minutester Lake was on his way to the other side of the city and as he stepped outside he felt arge amount of people looking his way.
It only took him around a minute to realize that he was being followed after he left the thieves shop and he guessed this was the shopkeeper of thest ce trying to get the rare items he had mentioned for free. He wasn''t surprised by this behavior since he was dealing with criminals so Lake decided he would just let theme to him when they felt it was time.
He really didn''t have time to mess around so he wasn''t going to try and go after them because that would just take more of his time and they probably wouldn''t try anything until he got to a less popted area anyway. It would be annoying to hide the bodies as well so he really just hoped they would go away if he moved fast enough.
After thinking this he picked up some speed but all this seemed to do was make the people following him realize he had noticed and get close enough that he could see them. This was most likely an intimidation attempt on their part but he really didn''t mind because it gave him a chance to make them all and gauge their strength level using Insider Information a skill he hadn''t used in a long time.
Quickly reading the stats he found these people following him were no threat to him so he just focused on getting to where he had been given directions to. A few minutester he was on the street that he had been told the Thieves guild was on and he used Detector to make sure he wouldn''t pass it as he walked down the mostly empty street.
He could tell that the few people that were around were most likely also criminals so he expected the people who had been following him to try and stop him at any moment. Like he expected only a minute after he got onto the street someone behind him called out to him. "Give us the bag!"
Lake had already decided not to kill these people because the many bodies in the middle of the city were bound to draw attention to him and possibly even get him arrested so he just ignored it and continued to walk. If they didn''t understand by him ignoring them that he was above their level he would take off a few hands or something as a warning.
He knew it was possible to regrow limbs with potions and magic so he didn''t think this would be much of a crime even if the guards decided to care he had protected himself from the people robbing him. "Did you not hear what I said?"
When The Sight activated Lake understood he was being attacked and was surprised by how little patience the people robbing him had. Using Burst for a brief moment Lake moved away from the guy who was the closest to him and realized a dagger had beening for his back. Using Crunch, Lake used one of his fingers like a de and removed the man''s hand before returning to where he had been before he had moved.
Continuing to walk He was only able to take two steps before he heard the man realize his hand had fallen off. "Ahhhh!" Thankfully that was thest he heard from the group behind them as they quickly retreated after they all realized what had just happened. It was good that they understood the implicit threat in his action of cutting off one of their hands faster than they could even see.
It wasn''t surprising that it had worked though because if their roles had been reversed he would have also understood that he was lucky to keep his life after trying to rob someone much stronger than him. Mercy for thieves was pretty rare even back in his more civilized world so here it was probably almost unheard of and the thieves who had just run would probably never forget what had just happened.
After passing a few more buildings he finally saw a building start to glow up ahead and picked up his speed so he could finally finish selling the things he had touched back at the castle. The mayor would put his best people on this case after this so he was going to be looking over his shoulder for a while but he was still excited to see how much he was going to make.
Stepping inside the building Lake saw a person behind a desk and assumed this would be the person to show his badge to so he got it in his hand to be ready. Getting to the desk the Lake expected to be asked what he wanted but when that didn''t happen he took the initiative and said. "Here''s my badge."
After they got a good look he heard a small noise and the wall next to the desk opened and Lake went inside the passage. After walking down a small hallway he arrived in a room with more desks and remembered a simryout at the Thieves guild back in the Holy Domain.
None of the desks had any people selling so he just went to the closest one to him and asked. "Can I sell here?" Getting a nod from the man in front of him Lake pretended to reach into his bag and summoned one thing after another. After about five minutes of this he stopped because he had to think hard about the less exciting things from the castle like the books from theb.
The man took this to mean this was everything though so he started to appraise the things in front of them. Lake decided to spend this time remembering a few more items that he wanted to sell because he knew the appraisal could take a while with this many things.
Twenty or so minutester the man asked. "Do you want the gold put into our vault?" Lake wanted to know what the amount was before he answered so he asked. "How much am I getting?"
"Oh sorry I thought you could see the number I had written down for you." After the man said this he moved the thing that had been blocking the piece of paper and Lake was able to see the number and while it wasn''t as high as he had been hoping it was a good portion of the gold he needed to finish the mission the Insider had given him. "You can ce it into the vault."
"Alright can I see your badge?" Giving the man his badge it was returned to him a few minutester. "Your new bnce is 235,560 gold." Hearing he had about a fourth of his goal here in the Thieves Guild Lake gave the man a small smile and wished him a good day before turning to leave. With the amount in the Fighters guild he was probably halfway there he just needed to get a recement for his badge and move the gold here over.
Chapter 344: Best And Brightest
Chapter 344: Best And Brightest
Once he was back outside he quickly left the location of the Thieves guild heading back towards the fighters guild. He knew they wouldn''t be able to help him get the gold he had made with them previously because they had never seen him before but this couldn''t stop him from getting a new badge and taking new jobs if they had any lucrative jobs.
Then in the future he could go back to the guild that he had worked for in the past and ask them to help him im the gold he had there with them and add it to his new ount. He was sure they would remember him because he had finished a lot of jobs in around two days. Something like that left a big impression and the clerk he had worked with should remember him even though it had been a couple of weeks.
As he walked into the Fighters guild he noticed there were a lot less people inside and when he took a look at the jobs listed he realized this city didn''t seem to have much of a problem with bandits. Seeing this he couldn''t help but think of the thieves who just tried to rob him and wonder if there was some reason they didn''t have jobs dealing with the Thieves in town.
If the Guilds had a treaty or something he guessed trying to make money here by working for the Fighters Guild was a real waste of time. Walking back outside he looked over at the Adventurers Guild and wondered if it was worth bing a member there if they had better paying jobs.
Deciding it was worth going in to at least look since there wasn''t a line he entered inside and moved towards the job wall. He didn''t have to get close to see the wall was almostpletely empty of jobs. He wanted to see what the few there were paid before he left though so he got close enough to read the small writing.
Seeing all the missions were long term jobs that didn''t really pay all that much, Lake decided that the Earth Domain seemed too peaceful to make any money in legit ways and decided to go out to see if he could steal more stuff. He had a reason to go back since he had finally been able to remember some of the other items he had touched inside the castle and not selling them would be wasteful.
...
"Sir mayor it seems the only things they weren''t able to get to were the ones inside your office vault and the things that had been hidden by Hampton in hisb." After hearing the guards report the mayor asked a question that had been bothering him since he saw things around the castle were missing. "Was anywhere else in town robbed?"
He really didn''t care but he figured it was their only option left to find evidence if Hampton was unable to find anything that could point them to whoever did this. "Yes sir, I brought the report that was filed yesterday by one of the other guards." Receiving the report the mayor quickly read through it and said. "It says nothing was taken but the thief escaped before they were brought to the dungeon."
"That is correct sir but some of our guards are at the shop now because half a day ago items from their shop suddenly vanished." Hearing this the mayor finally realized why the guard had brought him the report at all. "Are you the one who wrote this up?"
"No sir. I can bring them to you if you would like to ask them more directly." After thinking about this suggestion the mayor nodded and said. "Please do." Watching the man leave the room he was about to get to work again because it was starting to pile up when the door opened again and Hampton came shuffling in. "I haven''t found anything that will lead us to them but you shoulde with me to see this."
Getting to his feet he slowly followed Hampton to the tea room. When they finally arrived and he entered the room he saw they had put up a barrier around an area behind the couch and asked. "What is it that you have blocked off?" It was still on the other side of the couch but if it was evidence but as he walked around he still couldn''t see anything so his question still stood.
Hampton didn''t answer though and instead took a stick that had been propped up on a wall close by before putting it through the floor. "A guard fell through shortly after being told to look around the room for clues."
"Is this some type of magic?" Hampton was a mage and an old one at that so he felt there was a good chance he could identify this effect if it was the result of a type of magic. "No, no. It''s much more likely to be a criminal skill. Though I''ve never seen this exact one before. This also isn''t the only ce in the keep that''s lost all substance like this."
After hearing that this wasn''t a one time use kind of skill he put an inconsistency together in his head and shared it with Hampton. "If they were able to do this why didn''t they get into the vault?"
"That''s a good question, let''s return and inspect the vault more closely. It''s possible something about it stopped the skill from working." After a short walk back to his office they both crochet down next to the vault and started to stare at it. After a short time of silence he suggested. "Maybe they missed it. I wouldn''t call it well hidden but if they were in a hurry maybe they didn''t bother to look here."
"I don''t think that''s it but I don''t have a better suggestion." After Hampton said this he stood and walked back towards the door to leave. "You should stay. I have a guard bringing us someone who wrote the report on the robbery at Jillings."
"Jillings was robbed! I had my amulet being repaired there." Hearing Hampton might have lost his favorite amulet he felt sorry but he wasn''t done sharing information yet so he continued like the outburst hadn''t happened. "Yes and it was like the one here with items just disappearing all of a sudden. I have the report here if you would like to read it."
Passing the report over to Hampton he waited until it was returned to add the things that weren''t in the report. "The things disappeared hours after this failed robbery."
"In that case this was probably a test for a new member of an elite thief gang." He felt like Hampton was jumping to conclusions here but the old man had proven himself to be very intelligent over the years so he wanted to hear him out. "What do you mean?"
"Like in every profession the day you get your first Legendary skill is a life changing event for thieves and older thieves know this and keep their eyes out for inexperienced younger thieves they can use. My guess is they sent the young one into Jillings to show them that even with a Legendary skill they''re still vulnerable if they are alone and if they''re arrested this new skill will just be wasted."
"But they saved them before they actually went into the dungeon so it was just showing them what could happen before they took them on a team job which was robbing the keep to show them how much safer it was to work as a group."
"Correct. Now they''ll train the new guy on how to use their skill and give them a small portion of the money they make while doing this." He was about to ask Hampton if he thought it was even worth trying to find what had been taken when the guard finally reentered the room. They were alone though so it was obvious they had been unable to find the one who had written the report.
"What is the problem? Where is he?"
"Sorry sir but he didn''te to work today. I had someone sent to see if he is at home or if he''s actually missing. If he''s gone I''ll make sure we find him and charge him for the theft, don''t worry sir. I''ll get everything back."
He could tell the guard was worried they would all lose their jobs if it turned out to be one of their own who had done this but he didn''t think that was the case so he said. "Don''t worry about any of that and just bring me his file so I can see how he did on the job."
"Right away sir." As soon as the man left he looked at Hampton who had stayed quiet during that and asked. "Do you think it was the guard?" Getting a quick response when Hampton shook his head no he said. "I don''t either. What do you think we should do? Should we just go on like it never happened or send someone after them?"
"I don''t think we should try to recover anything that was taken. They left us the gold we need to continue our task and that''s all that matters. We should go after them though."
"Why would we go after them if we don''t want the things they took?" After asking this he was able to find the answer himself as soon as he finally started to think about what this town had been suffering from for a long time. "Are you saying we should try to hire them?"
"Yes it''s been three years with no progress and we know for a fact whatever is causing the growth is inside the door. With their skills we''ll be able to get through even without the key and finally end this curse."
He could tell there was no reason to disagree with Hampton on this because they had long run out of ideas on how to get inside the underground door. "I''ll leave this up to you then. Take whatever gold you need to find and hire them to get us inside." Right after he said this the guard returned again with the file on the missing guard. "Thank you, you can go now."
After the guard left he read the file and was relieved that the guard that was missing wasn''t one of their best and brightest because it meant not only had they not lost anything if they were dead because the man was on the verge of being fired anyway they were probably not the type that could pull something like this off.
Chapter 345: General Magic Pt.1
Chapter 345: General Magic Pt.1
After a while thend had ttened out but all that had done was make them move forward even faster. "There''s a wall up ahead. Is it the Town we''ll be going to to ask for food?" Hearing Fendis'' question Donny was unable to answer because it wasn''t something they had nned out before they had set out for the Earth Domain.
After a while he noticed they hadn''t turned to go towards the town Fendis had pointed out so Donny used this as a clue to answer even though he was sure Fendis had already figured it out as well. "I don''t think we''re going in that direction."
This made Donny think there was a good chance the guard that was moving them had a goal in mind and just hadn''t bothered to share for whatever reason. Either way Donny was sure it wouldn''t be much longer before they arrived at whatever town they were heading to.
...
Pushing the door that led to the 23''s private training room Tiff quickly went in and stood by the wall. Like the main training room this one had more than one room and only five of the members stood out in the main room and none of them were Dawn. This was too bad because her n had hinged on Dawn being around and helping her integrate into whatever was going on.
Now her best choice was to stand here and pretend she was watching until Dawn came out of whatever room she was in and invited her to join them. She had thought of another way to seamlessly integrate back into the group and make the others forgive her faster but a possibly empty promise of helping them get Legendary jobs would really blow up in her face in the future if she was unable to actually do it.
It was too bad that she wasn''t able to just say this though because it would probably end the jealous feelings that hade between them instantly and allow them to prepare for the possible mobilization that could be happening as soon as the Temple Head got back.
Eventually what she was waiting for happened and Dawn emerged from one of the individual rooms and Tiff wasted no time in getting her attention by waving. Dawn looked surprised to see her but it didn''t stop her froming over and asking. "Are you here to train with us?"
The others werepletely ignoring her presence so she just gave Dawn a small nod as an answer instead of saying something that made it clear she was here to try and make up with everyone. She knew just spending time around them no matter how awkward it was for all of them would make them realize she hadn''t actually done anything to them and they were being childish.
She knew this would work because she had gone through a simr thing when they were younger being the weakest of them for so long. Then seeing the fact she was still much weaker than them after all this time would probably make them see that nothing had actually changed and she was still the weakest member of the 23.
...
After walking around the city with Mana Vision active Lake had finally found a ce that seemed to be worth his time. He didn''t exactly know what kind of items were inside since the sign just said it was a general store for magic items he had been won over by the quantity of items that were inside and the number of people that were there.
With this many people inside they would never remember him poking around for a while before leaving and would most likely me people that were inside at the time that the items started to vanish. To make sure no one ever med him he would also wait at least an hour after he left to start taking the items.
Depending on how the inside was organized he might also limit himself to things that were far away from the people inside so no one would see them actually disappear. Stepping inside he saw the ce to buy the things you were interested in were close to the door and that there were three staircases that led upwards.
There weren''t any items in this front room so he took the first stairs on the left up to the next floor. He was guessing there were multiple ways up because each set of stairs led you to a different type of item but he nned to look at everything so it didn''t matter which way he went first.
Once he got done climbing the stairs he was met with a room filled with potions that had price tags around their necks. He wasn''t too interested in these things since he could probably get any type of potion he wanted back at the Alchemist guild but he still went ahead and nced at the prices for the various types that were scattered around the room.
Seeing the most expensive thing in this room cost only 100 gold he knew these weren''t the type of items he wanted to waste his time on so he continued his way upwards to the next floor. The next room also held potions but they had a higher value and there were less of them.
The top price in this room was 10000 gold and he was interested but there was actually a guard here who had been watching him since he had entered the room so he didn''t spend too much time looking at anything here and moved up the stairs again to see if there would be guards from now on.
Entering the next room he saw the amount of items had dropped drastically while the guards had increased to four. Wanting to know what was in the bottles in the middle of the room he walked closer to read the tag. All five things on the table were exactly the same and the price was 200000 gold for one.
Seeing such a high price he went ahead and got closer so he could read the description even though he was pretty sure he knew what they were based on color and having seen them before when he had helped Lucas retrieve Elixirs from thieves who had stolen them from the guild.
Reading the name he was able to confirm his suspicions and was confused to find these were actually the lowest level of elixir that was only able to raise your max stats by ten. If the price was already so high for the lowest level it made him wonder what the price of the Elixir he had been given by Lucas would be.
This was thest room though so he guessed he wouldn''t be able to go upwards to find out. Turning around because the Elixir were all inside a barrier making it impossible for him to touch them he went all the way down and took the next set of stairs to see what types of items would be on the next path.
As he was climbing the first set of stairs he started to think this might be a ce that was worthing back at night for. All the good things that were here were protected meaning he would be unable to touch any of them and there was no way around this with guards right next to the barriers he would have to destroy to get at what was inside.
As soon as he tried anything they were probably told to attack even if it was just odd and not something obvious like hitting the barrier. Waiting till night was sure to make him miss the two day time limit he had ced on himself but after finding a ce like this with such valuable things in such numbers he would be a fool if he didn''t try to finish the mission once and for all.
He wasn''t sure what percentage of the gold the Thieves guild would give him but he was sure it wouldn''t matter if he took all the best items from here and brought them to the Thieves Guild. It would also mean he wouldn''t have to waste his time trying to get the gold he had stashed with the Fighters guild which would save him a lot of time in the future.
Entering the first room on the new path, Lake took the room in and realized there was actually a guard stationed here even though there hadn''t been one where the cheapest potions had been held. There were also a few customers and Lake guessed the fact this room was more popr made them ce people here.
"Someone grab him!" After someone suddenly yelled this out he got scared that someone was able to read his mind or something but he quickly realized they were talking about one of the guys he had seen when he had first walked into the room. Seeing this as a chance to touch a few things since no one was paying attention to him, Lake moved towards the shelves while the guard tried to stop the man running towards the stairs.
Chapter 346: General Magic Pt.2
Chapter 346: General Magic Pt.2
Lake wasn''t sure what the man had done for the guard to try and stop them but the fact they were running meant they didn''t want to be caught. Getting close enough to see the type of items were on the tables in the room, Lake didn''t bother trying to figure out what the fabric was and just started to touch everything in front of him.
When he was done touching everything in front of him he was about to move to the next table when guards started to emerge from the staircase up. These would be the guards for the room above them which to him meant that if he waited for them to move out of the way he would be able to go up to the next floor and if all the guards hade down he would be able to touch things up there which would be more expensive.
There was a chance that there were guards still up there though so he used Mana Vision to look up while the guards were stilling into the room from the stairs. Seeing there were a load of people in the rooms above them Lake realized they could be customers so he used Detector to see if they were or not.
After he had set Detector to look for guards he saw there weren''t any in the next room up so he started walking up the stairs as soon as the guards were done filing down. He went up as fast as he could and only slowed down when he got close to the top so no one in the room would think he was suspicious for moving so quickly.
When he finally got to the top and entered the room he saw everyone was looking at him. "What''s going on down there? Why did the guards run downstairs?" It wasn''t because of anything he had done though and they were all just curious about what was going on so to get them all to stop looking at him he said. "I think someone was trying to steal something."
"I''m surprised someone would try with the increased guards." Hearing that there were more guards than normal he wanted to ask why but decided to start touching stuff because the guards coulde back at any moment. Getting close to the table, Lake touched a few things of cloth before he realized some of them were actually clothes.
This made him understand that these must be clothes or cloth to make clothes for people who dealt with magic but he still didn''t know why it was so expensive. He was guessing it was enchanted to make it tougher or something but a single shirt was around 5000 gold and he just couldn''t see that many peopleing here to buy a shirt for this much.
There was still another room above them as well so there was probably going to be some type of elite clothes up there that could be ten times more than these ones here. After he had touched and remembered the patterns of around twenty shirts Lake stopped because he knew there was no way he would remember even this manyter when he tried to sell them.
That was the one downside to stealing this way but it was still better than trying to stuff a bunch of things into his bag when no one was looking at him and getting chased out of the store when he eventually got caught. That would be fine if he had taken the time to change his clothes and face but he didn''t need a description of him going around and guards stopping him to ask questions.
Deciding there was no point in hanging around in this room if he was done touching stuff here. Going towards the stairs he started to climb. Getting to the next room he saw six guards including two right next to the entrance but he didn''t n to take anything in this room and was just here to look so he ignored them.
This room held full outfits inside a barrier in the center of the room and as he got close enough to read the price he also saw the name and figured out why the guy earlier had said there were more guards than normal, these clothes were imported from the Wind Domain and apparently they were a raremodity.
For the full outfit from the Wind Domain you would have to spend just slightly over 100000 gold but it was probably a good price if they actually did what they said they did. Apparently the enchantment on this outfit in front of him not only held an extreme amount of mana as it was a mana vessel it was tougher than most metal armors of the same level.
Of course he knew they were trying to see these clothes so it was best to take their ims with a grain of salt but he didn''t think they would be exaggerating by too much. The clothes were also extremely thin so he was sure you could wear them under armor if you wanted and it would be like you had twoyers of extremely strong armor.
You would probably have to have a special set of armor made to go over the clothes because of the mboyant style they were in but he didn''t see that being something a rich person would do since they would most likely only wear these clothes to show them off because of the price they had paid to acquire them which was why the clothes were so mboyant to begin with.
Done looking at the clothes, Lake left the room to go see what was on thest of the three paths to see what was being held there even though he really didn''t need to. He had already decided to try his luck at robbing the ce tonight. Knowing in advance what he was going to take really didn''t matter because it wouldn''t change what he would have to do.
This ce was much nicer than anywhere else he had ever tried to steal from and that included the castle he had robbed the day before so he already knew there was a good chance he would leave empty handed after failing to get through a barrier or being spotted by guards. It was too bad no one was here buying the expensive stuff because stealing from them on the way back to their homes would actually be a lot more simple.
He guessed he could use Detector to seek out expensive things in town but once they got the items holm there was a good chance it would be as difficult for him to break in and take what they had bought and there would probably be less of it as well since at most they would have only bought like one or two things.
Add those factors to the fact the houses he would want to go after would probably be pretty spread out and the amount of time he would have to invest to make the same amount of gold as he could if he pulled of the robbery here would be uneptable to him since he was on a mission for the Temple of Light already and was on a loose deadline.
After making it back down to the lobby, Lake climbed thest set of stairs up into the first room to see what this part of the store was dedicated to. When he saw what seemed to be random items he guessed this was the general part of the store the sign outside was talking about and he got to reading tags to see if there was anything here he found interesting.
After a bit of looking around he realized most of this stuff would be considered junk if you didn''t know what it was used for being things like dried bits of monsters and nts and since he was in that category he quickly went towards the stairs to see what was on the next floor up.
The trend continued but with the prices growing on this floor he found the things held here more interesting but the best things were still just cores which he had no interest in so he climbed the stairs again. He had expected this to be thest room but there was actually another case of steps upwards so he didn''t take too much time here even though some of the items in this room were priced over 10000 gold because he was really just interested in the best they had.
Getting to the next floor he was greeted with a simr scene as thest two times he had climbed this far up with guards and a barrier holding items there was just one difference, there were actually still more stairs to take upwards. Wanting to know what was above them because he couldn''t see anything with Mana Vision Lake turned to one of the guards and asked. "Are there more rooms with items?"
"No. We hold auctions up there when we get something that''s really rare but there isn''t anything up there right now." Hearing it was empty at the moment exined why there wasn''t any glowing when he had looked earlier. Putting the room above them to the back of his mind, Lake got closer to see what they had in the barrier in front of him.
Like always nothing but the price listed on the items really stood out but that didn''t stay the case for long because after he read the first description he had already found something he wanted. For the price of 350000 gold you could acquire a core that gave you a Legendary skill that made you fireproof. There wasn''t much more information but if it meant the element and real fire he would say this was a steal even if he was to pay for it.
After that the next five things were duds to him because he didn''t n to try and figure out how you were supposed to use them since their description just said ''ingredient'' and had no more information but he would still take them if he had the chance tonight. Done looking around Lake quickly left so he could start the n he would use tonight to get inside.
Chapter 347: Outburst
Chapter 347: Outburst
"Is that where we''re headed?" This was the first town since the one they had first seen which they had ignored and the fact they were headed right for it made him think they had been headed for it the entire time. "Yeah, it''s the closest big city to the Metal Domain so I think they''ll have enough food to spare."
They got an answer to Fendis'' question from the guard who was really the only one who knew the answer so Donny didn''t have to share his guesses. Taking advantage of the fact the guard seemed willing to speak, Donny asked a question of his own. "How long do you think it will take for you to convince them?"
"A couple of hours at the most but if I am unable to we''ll just buy as much as we can using the small amount of gold I have with me. It won''t be enough tost us a long time but it''s better than nothing." Donny was a bit relieved to hear they had some gold because as they got closer to the town he had started to think there was no way they would get to leave with a giant amount of food for free.
When they had first left he had been on board with the n because he really didn''t see any way around begging for food but the trip had been long enough that he started to wonder if it was realistic. The Earth Domain was close to the Metal Domain and their people were friends but they were just asking a single town for help so they might not get the help they wanted.
If they instead headed to the center of the Domain and asked all of the Earth Domain for aid they would most likely get a yes but the amount of time it would take to get there was a bit too long because of the size of the Earth Domain. They would then have to wait there as word of them spread which was an unknowable amount of time and then add time back and he wouldn''t be surprised if it took a week for them to return to the fortress with the food.
As they came to a stop the tform they were on disappeared into the ground and the guard turned to them and said. "You can all follow me but try not to interrupt even if it seems to be going poorly." Donny was fine with that since all of them interrupting each other would just get in the way so he nodded before following behind the guard towards the city.
It didn''t take long for them to start drawing attention once they made it into town because everyone was able to recognize the armor of the Oracle''s guard even outside of the Metal Domain and before long a group of local guards came towards them to ask what they were here for.
"We''re hoping to talk with whoever is in charge of the city." Like they had been told none of them talked and let the guard handle getting them to the person who was running the city. It didn''t take long before they were in a tea room in the castle in the center of the city because of the status a person who was closely rted to an Oracle carried.
"You all can sit if you''d like, just be careful of the area that''s blocked off behind the couch. The floor was damaged by thieves around a day ago and it''s still not been put back to normal." Wanting to see if there was a hole or something Donny looked at the floor behind where they were sitting but when he didn''t see anything he guessed the damage was on the other side below them.
"You won''t be able to see it. Now let''s get to business, what did you need to see me for?" Donny appreciated the mayor''s ability to get straight to the point because they were in a hurry to get back so when the guard didn''t just ask straight out for food he wanted to face palm. "You said a thief was here, did they get anything important?"
"Mainly just knick knacks but it''s still an unpleasant feeling to know someone could havee into my roomst night and sliced my throat. But, that''s not why you came, so let''s move on." Donnypletely hated thieves because of the years of fighting them off because of his brother and would have probably shared his experience to make the man feel better if the guard hadn''t told them to be silent during the meeting.
"Well if you''re looking for someone to track these people down we would be willing in exchange for as much food as you could spare." It was very obvious the mayor found this offer kind of odd but after a few seconds it seemed he was on board because he asked. "What do you need so much food for?"
"I don''t want to get into it but an army of people." This was all the guard had to say for the mayor to stop asking questions and make an offer to them. "I wont have you go after them because I already have someone on it but we need someone to protect the city because our mage isn''t here and he''s usually the one who deals with the problem the city has. If you''re willing to watch the city tonight and there''s no loss of life by morning I''ll give you half of what is in our stores."
"This sounds like a good deal but I would like to know what we''re going to be protecting the city from so I know if we''re up to the task." Donny liked that they would be working for the food instead of begging for it but he did worry the ones back in the fortress would have to fight off a raid while starving.
"It''s hard to exin but I would be surprised if you haven''t heard of it vaguely in the past. Let''s just say it''s a lingering problem that has gued the city since the disappearance of the Demigod that ruled it in the past. Did that jog your memories?" Hearing What the mayor said he didn''t stop himself in time and asked. "Is this Shallow?"
Everyone gave him an odd look because of his sudden outburst but soon they all remembered the name of the city they were in because stories of the odd happenings here that used to circte in the past. "That''s right, I know our name has fallen off a bit since Hampton found a way to keep the, let''s call them phantoms to stay underground at night, but the problem isn''t solved and with him gone tonight we need all the help we can get dealing with them because I don''t think the guards are truly up to it."
After all of this was said it didn''t take long before the guard to say. "This sounds like a deal we can make. When will the attacks start?" Donny could have answered this question because he was very interested in what was going on here in Shallow in the past with it having to do with a Demigod and knew almost every detail there was to know but he wasn''t supposed to be saying anything and cutting off the mayor would be rude so he kept his mouth shut.
He was actually kind of surprised at how long it took for him to notice where they were but he guessed it was in the back of his mind since he was thinking about getting the food. "As soon as the sun starts to go down the light level in the city will fall enough that they''ll start to appear in ces like allies but they''re unable to move at that point so it''s easy to destroy them. The real problem will be after the sun is fully down."
Donny could feel the obvious question form in all of their minds at once and wanted to answer it before they could even ask it but he let the mayor take care of it. "Before any of you ask, normal torches don''t really help. The light has to be from the sun or the formation Hampton made to protect the city at night."
Donny wanted to ask if he could see the formation but once again stopped himself because there was no way he would have the right affinities and the formation itself might be a secret they didn''t want to share with just anyone. "Alright if we have time would you mind if we ate something none of them had had any food in a couple of days."
"Of course I''ll have them bring you food right away, feel free to wait here for it to arrive. I''lle back after you''re done eating." After the mayor said this he left the room leaving all of them to finally speak after so long of being unable to speak. Not wanting to miss his chance he made sure he was the first to talk. "Sorry about my outburst."
Chapter 348: Rash Robbery
Chapter 348: Rash Robbery
In the hours he had waited for the sun to go down Lake had been able to make a pretty decent n to get inside of the general magic store but after that his sess became very uncertain. If he wanted to use force he was sure he could take every item in no time but he didn''t want to resort to killing everyone because he didn''t want a magic detective after him for the rest of his life.
This made what he wanted to do much harder to n for since he still didn''t even know what type of defenses he would be dealing with once he was inside. He still had everything he had touched while inside earlier to sell if he was unable to get anything else so it wasn''t like he was going topletely waste his time either way which made the idea of failure much more ptable to him.
Moving from where he had passed thest few hours he made his way to the top of a building nearby the magic store before diving towards its wall while using Ghost Touch. As soon as his outstretched hand touched the wall it became ethereal and he passed right through itnding on the very top floor of the store.
It didn''t take a genius to figure out the best option was for him to enter onto the top floor where no one was and since it was right above where the best things were held which would hopefully decrease the amount of distance he would have to move while trespassing.
He hoped this would make it much easier for him to keep from getting caught since if the guards started to walk towards him all he would need to do is jump and use Ghost Touch to go through the ceiling and back into the empty room at the top.
Using Mana Vision to look down he eventually saw that his hopes that the guards would be moving around while patrolling were only partially true. It seemed they knew what the thieves would really want and had ced a guard who didn''t seem to move right next to the barriers that held the items he was after.
This was fine because it was still less annoying than the barrier itself since he knew how to get the guard out of the picture and had no idea what he would need to do to get the barrier to go down. He had some ideas that were moreplicated than just smacking it really hard but he had a feeling deep down that a smack or some type of violence was what he would resort to when none of them worked.
Picking to go for the clothes first since it was the furthest from the room he was currently hiding in which would make this room thest ce they would look for him if he was discovered buying him time he used Ghost Touch to walk through walls and floors that separated him from the room the clothes were inside.
This building seemed to have a lot of secret passages through rooms that weren''t being used to disy items and he guessed they were extra store rooms they could hold excess stock for items they had a lot of and these were empty because they didn''t have anything extra when it came to the really expensive stuff at the top of the store.
He didn''t remember seeing these extra rooms filled with items anywhere in the store when he used Mana Vision though so maybe they were just used to let the guards move around the store without using the stairs so they didn''t get in the customer''s way when they needed to change rooms.
It didn''t really matter what they were for to him he guessed since it gave him a way to get around that was a lot easier than he had expecteding in. Arriving at the room he used Ghost Touch to make a small part of the wall in front of him ethereal he stuck his hand through and smacked the guard that was in the room to knock him out.
After he did this he grabbed the man so he wouldn''t make any noise as he fell from the effects of Mute before stepping into the room fully. Setting the guard onto the ground, Lake didn''t waste any time before walking towards the barrier in the center of the room and using Decrypt.
Before long the part of the barrier formation that was outside the barrier had been revealed to him and he got to work feeling it out to see if there was any weakness he could use to to destroy it even though he knew there wouldn''t be.
Once he confirmed all the important parts of the formation was on the inside he got down and inspected the floor that was what held the formation inside of it to see if there a chance he could just cut this part of the floor free before summoning all of it to himter where the amount of strength he used to break the formation wouldn''t matter.
Of course the guards would probably notice an action like this no matter how fast he moved and would do their best to remove the items and ce them in a safer ce guessing he was up to something after he left. There was a way around this, it was just going to leave a huge mess on the street outside the building.
Pulling his sword, Lake used Crunch and sliced the floor around the barrier in the center of the room. Only pausing briefly to touch the newly freed chunk before running off to the next room through all the walls that divided them he heard people start to yell right away.
The voices made him realize he should have thought out his auctions more before he went straight into the messy n he had crafted within a few seconds but it was toote for him to stop now. It was just too bad he spent all that time waiting for the sun to go down because a n like this that had no finesse involved could have been done during the day.
After he sliced through the second and taped the chunk that was slowly starting to fall he went towards the third and final one. At the speed he was moving he should be able to get outside before it slipped free and fell onto the floor below. After cutting thest one and tapping his hand onto it he used Ghost Touch on the wall next to him to slip outside.
Outside he saw people on the street below all looking up most likely because they could hear all of the guards on the inside yelling but ignored them and used Retrieval to summon the three chunks from inside into the space around him. After confirming the items on the shelves inside the barriers were still there he cast Fly and started to make his break for it.
Every few seconds he would use Retrieval to keep the chunks from hitting the ground. He didn''t have infinite mana so after a while he had to drink a bit of a mana potion to continue this. After a while he made it out from above the city and lowered himself a bit closer to the ground in the hopes he could find a ce to put the chucks down onto the ground and summon them again once he was further to stop the constant mana expenditure.
It took a bit longer than he would have liked it to to find a good spot but once he did he put all three chunks down and sped off in the direction of the Holy Domain while keeping his eyes peeled for people following him using Detector even though anyone around here being able to follow him at his top ground speed being very unlikely.
...
"Sir, someone just robbed the magic store down the street." This was bad news but it wasn''t the first time this had happened so he was unable to keep the uncaring look from taking over his face as he asked. "Why are you telling me and not the city guards?"
"Because of the message Hampton sent out yesterday about looking for a group of elite criminals." Remembering the brief message they had received a few hours ago from Hampton that had gone out to all the mages that watched over the towns in the Earth Domain.
"Does the robbery that happened just now match the description we were told to look out for?" Seeing his servant start to nod he stood up quickly and started to walk towards themunication formation to send out a message of his own to tell Hampton and everyone else there had been a possible sighting of the people Hampton was after and that they needed to be on guard.
Chapter 349: Night Life Pt.1
Chapter 349: Night Life Pt.1
"Alright, please follow me out into the city while I exin the defense situation in more detail." They had already finished the food they had been brought and were now about to be led out into the city to help with the defensive actions that had already started about an hour or two ago.
They hadn''t missed much though so he guessed when the mayor had said there wasn''t much danger to the phantoms until the sun was fully down he wasn''t lying. "You all look like you can fight so I''ll skip most of the warnings and just say it''s best that you don''t use any type of Earth magic when trying to defeat them."
As they were walking Donny was only semi-listening because he didn''t expect to hear anything he didn''t know already and he was finding the fact the streets seemed full of people interesting. Since the phantoms were able to move through solid things they were more than capable of going into people''s homes so he guessed it made sense no one was trying to sleep but he had never seen so many nobatants this close to a fight while not trying to run.
It was easy to figure out their attitudes towards what was going on by how they were standing and just speaking to others like it was a social gathering and he assumed acting like this came from the fact they lived here and were kind of used to the idea of the phantoms.
The people still living here after everything that had happened would also be the ones who had refused to move away so them acting brave was probably part of their natures and not just them failing to understand the danger the phantoms posed. "Magic is still the best way to stop them though so don''t hold back if you have a different affinity."
Donny couldn''t help but look at the Oracle''s guard after this was said and wonder if they were only able to use Earth Magic. They had all arrived on a giant earthen tform and if this was a normal person he would expect they spent all their time training Earth Magic to be able to use it so well but he didn''t think doubting them was a good idea since every person chosen to guard the Oracle was exceptional in at least a few things.
"Alright this is the area that most of the phantoms emerge from. The Mayor told me to bring you here because you''re most likely stronger than the guards." Donny felt like the person leading them would have continued to talk for a while if he hadn''t been cut off by something slowly starting to emerge from the ground near them.
None of them moved right away because they all wanted to get their first real close up look at what it was they would be fighting. Once it was fully out of the ground it slowly started to drift towards them and he could feel a sense of dangering from it as it got closer. "Alright go ahead and give it a try. They aren''t really that tough and react to damage in a simr way to a tough bag. Once you rip enough holes in them they fall apart."
Donny was ready to give it a go but he and everyone else here was looking at the guard waiting for him to make the first move. "You ten give it a try first. I want to see if any of you are able to take it out on your own." Donny felt this was the right decision and was about to form a Metal Spike below the phantom when he realized he didn''t know if Metal Magic was ok to use on them.
He assumed it was fine because in all the information he had heard he had never heard anything that said Metal magic wasn''t ok to use but he just wanted to make sure before he did something that was bad for them. While the others who could use types of magic other than Earth got their spells ready Donny turned to the man and asked. "Metal''s fine right?"
Getting a nod Donny didn''t hold himself back any longer and quickly wove his shield formation since it was what he liked to fight with. The others all waited for him to finish this process but not much longer and he had to send the shield formation forward almost as soon as it was done.
All the spells including his formation flew through the phantom like they were hitting a piece of cloth and ripping holes in it and once it was over they all watched as the phantom seemed to dete and fall back down into the ground. "Looks like all of us staying together will be overkill. We''ll split into four groups and spread out a bit."
With eleven of them the four groups didn''t have equal numbers but the amount of damage each group was about the same so their killing potential was the same. He was put with Fendis because as a Wind mage he didn''t have a very good damage output while Donny himself had the best of the people following the Guard.
After they had split up Fendis started up a conversation he was sure the other groups that didn''t have anyone who knew a lot of information about Shallow were having. "What do you think happens if you use Earth Magic on them?" The other groups would have to have this conversation for the whole night as he and the guard were probably the only two who knew but Fendis was in luck. "It makes them faster and stronger. They also apparently grow the more earth mana they consume which is why you have to rip holes in them until they sink."
"So they''re kind of like bubbles. Does popping them kill them?" This was actually unknown so Donny didn''t have a real answer. "There''s a good chance they survive it and after spending enough time underground they''re able toe back to the surface. No one knows for certain though."
After he finished saying this the conversation paused for a while because a phantom started to emerge from the ground pretty close to them. "Do you want to see how long it takes you to deal with it on your own?" He was sure he could defeat alone in just one or two hits but Fendis was probably less sure so it was a good use of this opportunity to see just how capable Fendis was in this situation.
"Yeah let me give it a try." After Fendis said this they both waited until the phantom had fully emerged from the ground before they got a bit closer. After Fendis had a spell ready to fire Donny expected to see the first of many holes form in the phantom''s body but Fendis held the spell and asked. "Do you think it matters where we hit it?"
Donny took a few seconds to answer to give him a chance to rey the only experience he had fighting the phantoms. "I don''t know, we can try that next." After he said this Fendis finally started to fire spells one after another and after about ten the thing started to sink back down into the ground.
"That wasn''t that bad. If they''re all like that I don''t see us having any problems tonight." He knew the amount was supposed to increase as the night passed but with the two of them there shouldn''t be any problems. "Alright the next one is yours I''m going to make a formation to increase my damage."
Donny nodded because he had assumed Fendis would give this a try eventually because of the formation he was using and started to look around so they wouldn''t give any phantoms that emerged around them time to grow because they didn''t see it happen. After a few minutes another one started to pop its head out of the ground and he quickly used the shield to decapitate it to see what would happen.
Like he hoped, slicing it into two pieces caused it to sink right away. Knowing he was able to take them down with a single attack like he hoped he dropped the threat the phantoms possessed even further in his mind. He knew as long as no one cked tonight there wouldn''t be a single problem and in a few more hours they would be ready to head back to the fortress with the food.
"Hey Donny there''s two over here with me." Fendis was still working on his formation so he needed Donny to take care of the two that were heading this way before they made it to him and made him have to stop what he was doing to defend himself.
After Donny sliced the two phantoms apart he was about to walk away again to watch another area when Fendis stopped him by saying. "Alright let''s see if this works." Looking down at the formation Fendis was about to activate he asked. "Is this something you''ve been working on?"
Getting a nod, Donny decided he wanted to see what the formation Fendis had created could do and stood back to get a view at the first activation. He loved seeing stuff like this so once it had been activated and he still couldn''t tell what it was doing he said. "Let''s go test it out."
Chapter 350: Night Life Pt.2
Chapter 350: Night Life Pt.2
It didn''t take long for another phantom to show up which let Fendis try out his new attack formation. Like most attack formations his shot out an attack which quickly poked thousands of tiny holes into the phantom. "Was that what it was supposed to do?"
"Yeah, I didn''t make it for a situation like this but I figured it would still be effective so this was a good opportunity to give it a try." Donny had assumed this wasn''t something Fendis had made up on the spot because it took a while toe up with formation when you were first starting your training.
"What kind of enemies is it meant to be used on?" After his question Fendis pointed at the sky. "I''m sure you know this but when you''re flying it can be hard to aim especially at small fast things so I was hoping to make a formation that could do a good amount of damage in a wide area. You really only need to hit something like a small wyvern with one of the air spikes to kill it."
Donny could see the usefulness of a spell like this but he had to point out a problem. "You''ll need to get a lot better at weaving the formation if you hope to do it in air." Fendis seemed to already know it had been too hard for him to weave the formation to sessfully pull it off in a fight now and said. "I n to do it a few times before I sleep each night until I get better."
This was a known method to get better with a certain formation so Donny left this problem for Fendis to solve on his own since it seemed he knew what he was doing and said. "Do you want to finish this one off so we can move on?" The one Fendis had tested his formation on was heavily damaged but it still hadn''t fallen below ground so it still needed a bit more.
"Give me a second, it''s still powering back up." Hearing this Donny wanted to ask if Fendis wanted some help increasing the efficacy of his formation but decided not to because if someone helped you all the time it wasn''t good for your future prospects. "Ok I''m going to look around by myself again, call if you need any help."
Fendis was fine even if his formation had a long cooldown so splitting up to cover more ground was still the best option even if Fendis nned to stop and work on the formation at times. "Alright I''ll probably stay here, so could you cover the rest of the ground we''ve been assigned, please."
Donny nodded to Fendis'' request while walking away because he had already nned on walking around and this request didn''t change that. After a few seconds he saw a single Phantom pause and he wanted for its head to emerge to decapitate it. He felt it was possible that he could destroy the phantoms before their whole head was out but he didn''t see a reason too just yet since the phantoms were stilling at a slow pace.
If there came a timeter that multiple came every second he would just start shaving the tops of their heads off as he ran around clearing the streets of phantoms. He didn''t think it would get that bad though since this town would have been abandoned already if the problem was more than just a great annoyance.
With how boring this job was he couldn''t help himself and started to think back to all the exciting tales he had heard of this town when he was younger. There was a good chance whenever you heard a rumor that it had been exaggerated as it passed from person to person but for it to be so drastic it made him think the early days of this problem before they figured out things like don''t use Earth Magic must have been much more hectic.
This was the Earth Domain so it made sense that when these things first started to show themselves at night most people tried to defend themselves with Earth magic and these empowered phantoms that caused massive amounts of death must have been what the stories everyone heard had been about.
Now that they knew all the tricks to dealing with these things the only way for them to kill anyone was if the person wasn''t paying attention and the phantom emerged right next to them. Even then they still had a chance to fight it off so there was a good chance they wouldn''t die.
He found the reality of this situation a bit disappointing since he had felt so much excitement to finally see these ghostly things he had heard about so many times but he was happy the situation was under control because people did live here. There was also still the mystery aspect to this citation so it wasn''t like he hadpletely lost interest.
The most obvious question was what were the things they were fighting. It was long suspected that the Demon Lord had something to do with them because of their appearance and the fact they appeared around the time a Demigod went missing which was something he was known to cause but no one had ever seen these things anywhere else in all of the world.
If they were a type of creature the Demon Lord had made, why had he never used them in any other fight? This single question made most people start to think it hadn''t been the Demon Lord but one of his many underlings that hade to this town to take on the Demigod that lived here in the past.
If you then added the fact neither of the two Demigods had ever been seen again there was a good chance two divine coresid under this town somewhere. Sources of divinity were rare enough that he was sure every person in the world that had an interest in bing a Divinity at some point woulde to investigate if these rumors were true in the hopes of being the one who had solved the disappearance because by finding the bodies you would have everything you needed to ascend while still having a core left over.
This wasn''t the reason he was here this time though so it was best for him not to think about his future ns because he might convince himself to stay ore back as soon as the situation in the Metal Domain was over even though he knew he wasn''t ready to do something like this yet.
It was hard to ignore the fact something was going on in town that might lead to this mystery being solved soon making him have to find another lead in the future which could take years. "Help!" Hearing a screaming from nearby Donny didn''t wait even a second to rush off towards the scream because from the direction it came from he knew it wasn''t from one of his group leaving a guard or citizen as the ones who needed aid.
The mayor had said they couldn''t let anyone die so if he didn''t make it in time it could really affect the amount of food they were given. Before even arriving to where he had heard the scream earlier he could see the problem with a very obvious giant phantom a few streets over.
He had no idea how one could have gained so much size so quickly but with the fact he could see it he didn''t waste any time and sent his shield towards its head to start poking holes. He wasn''t sure how much damage one of these things could take once they reached this size but the first of his attacks didn''t make a noticeable difference to the things size so he hit another part of the head.
Three more of his attacksnded on the phantom''s head before he finally arrived at the scene and was able to see what the situation was like. He wasn''t the only one who hade to help from his group and he could see they were all looking at the same thing. Turning to see what it was he saw three peopleying on the ground in the wake of the giant phantom.
If these three turned out to be dead it meant they had already partially failed but it was best to not let the thing continue its slow rampage. "What are you doing, why aren''t you attacking it?" After his rushed question the closest person to him said. "There''s someone inside it."
Hearing this startling im Donny turned back and tried to peer through the massive creature''s smokey body. Eventually his eyesnded on a part that was slightly darker and wasted no time using his shield to try and carve the hopefully still living person out of the phantom''s stomach.
Chapter 351: Night Life Pt.3
Chapter 351: Night Life Pt.3
Using his shield almost like a scooper he was able to quickly carve out arge hole in the creature''s stomach before cing the t part of the formation onto the person''s back to push them out. After a second or so he decided to push harder when they still hadn''t budged even though he knew it was probably too much force to use if the person wasn''t someone who had trained their Endurance.
Hearing a few snaps he almost relented in fear of killing them but when they finally started to move from the center of the phantom he decided healing a few bones was better than letting the phantom continue to drain the person. Moving at the same second their body came flying from the phantom on his formation to catch them he could tell as soon as they entered his arms they were in bad shape.
"Anyone here a healer?" He sadly still didn''t have anything like health potion he could give them so their only hope of living was that one of the many onlookers could use Life magic or had medicine. "Over here." Hearing someone call out to him he used the formation as a tform to quickly bring himself and the injured person to the self proimed healer.
"Lay her on the ground." Doing as he was told he watched as the man took a potion from his bag and dumped most of it into the girl''s mouth. As it took effect the man slowly straightened the girl''s limbs and neck. He had broken almost everything with the force he had used to get her out but the fact the potion was taking effect meant she had survived it and he had made the right decision.
"This girl must have been an earth mage for the phantom not to kill her right away. It was probably draining here to make itself grow." The man was dressed in a manner that made it seem he lived here so Donny took his words as the truth. "How do you think it got a hold of her?"
"Who knows but it probably grabbed her leg startling her and instinctively she used her magic to defend herself." Seeing the young girl''s face Donny agreed with the older man because younger people tended to make mistakes out of fear. It was too bad that this had happened but there was still some hope in him that after they finished the phantom off the three people that had been on the ground behind it would still be alive.
It was a faint possibility but tough people survived things that should have killed them all the time. With the girl taken care of, Donny turned his attention to the fight that was still taking ce and used his shield to start ripping the phantom apart. With its power source and hostage gone no one was holding back like they had been earlier and before long the thing had lost most of its body as well as size and was sinking down back into the earth.
No one wasted any time in running towards the three on the ground now that the thing was gone but Donny was first to one of them and scooping them off the ground he rushed back towards where the man who had healed the girl was. Donny couldn''t feel any life signs form the man but he knew those skilled in healing could bring someone back from death as long as it was recent with minimal downsides.
Arriving at the man he saw the girl was now sat up with her face buried in her hands and Donny guessed it was from something like shame but he didn''t have time to worry about how she was feeling and got the older healer''s attention by asking. "Can you revive someone with a stopped heart?"
The healer''s head snapped towards him and seeing the corpse he had brought him he said. "I can try. Lay him down and help me remove the chest armor." After he set the man onto the ground, Donny used Metal magic to strip the armor te off within a second. The doctor seemed surprised by the speed this happened but didn''t waste the opportunity to get straight to work. A few seconds after the doctor had gotten to work pressing down on the city guard''s chest, people arrived with the other two victims of the phantom.
"Is there only one healer here?" He could see the faces of the people carrying the bodies were those of hispanions from the Metal Domain so he answered. "Yes,y them down." He had never tried this type of healing having always relied on potions but what the man was doing seemed simple enough.
The healer seemed to understand what he nned to do and started to give institutions. "You can break the ribs but don''t let your strength burst the heart. If that happens they''re dead." Hearing the institution Donny started with about a fourth of his strength for the firstpression.
Feeling the ribs bend slightly he looked up to see the healer wasn''t looking at him because they were feeding a small amount of a potion into the dead man''s mouth and he decided to turn it up slightly with the next pump. He had been told breaking the ribs was eptable and the amount of force he had used hadn''t been even close to doing that.
A few seconds after he had started he felt a hand on his shoulder and when he looked up he saw it was the old healer. "Move a bit faster. You have to reignite their lifeforce if you want the potion to be effective." Donny had no idea what the old man was talking about but looking past the man he saw the first guard he had worked on was now breathing so he took the advice and started to move as quickly as possible.
The old man only watched him for a second before pouring a bit of potion into the mouth of the person he was working on before finally moving on to the third and final person. "If you feel the heart start beating, stop pressing and open the airway by clearing the potion in their mouth. It would be best if you get them to swallow it but if you are unable just turn their head to the side and pour it out."
Keeping up his efforts after hearing he could be close to reviving the person he didn''t let himself slow down even if his arms were starting to get tired from the constant motion and before long he felt the heart push against him when he tried to press down. Stopping thepression he tried to move towards the persons face to clear the throat like he had been told he was met with a spray of potion to the face when the man started to cough.
Donny wiped his face just in time to hear a voicee from the man on the ground. "I was dead wasn''t I?" Donny didn''t know exactly how long the man was dead but that didn''t change the answer so he said. "Yeah for a few minutes at the least." The man somehow found a way to pale even further after hearing this which made Donny want tough but he stopped himself because one of the people was still dead on the ground a few inches away.
Turning to watch the healer work on thest of the three Donny got his first real look at the person on the ground. He had originally thought all the dead were guards because they had armor on but now that he was really looking he could tell this person was just a resident. He then saw the color of the man''s hair and saw it matched the girl he had saved from inside the phantom.
This was the only thing he needed to see to make a story up for what had happened after the girl got swallowed. His guess was this guy was her brother and had tried to save her as they had probably been close to each other when she had been grabbed by the phantom. This meant he had probably been dead the longest out of the three and therefore should have been the first they tried to revive.
This wasn''t how it had happened though so he wouldn''t be surprised if they were unable to revive the man. A few minutester he really started to think the healer might need him to step in to continue the rhythm since their arms would be getting tired so he asked. "Do you want me to press for a while?"
"No, If I stop for even a moment we''ll lose him. Look at the scrape on his arm." Getting his face real close so he could understand what the man meant he saw when the older man pressed down on the chest of the man a brief healing effect took effect on the scape and it got a bit smaller.
Chapter 352: Night Life Pt.4
Chapter 352: Night Life Pt.4
Once he saw the small amount of healing that would happen with eachpression it made him realize they weren''t toote to save this guy''s life and the only thing that was still in question was whether the healer had enough strength to keep thepressions going for long enough.
Knowing this he was unable to take his eyes off of the man on the ground so he could watch the scrape slowly disappear. He didn''t know why he thought the guy would get up off the ground once the wound finished healing but almost right after it disappeared his suspicion was proven correct as the healer stopped pumping the man''s heart and backed off.
"That was close." Before the healer got anything else out he was interrupted by the girl they had saved earlier. "Is he really alive?" The man on the ground who Donny thought was probably rted to her in some way still hadn''t moved so it made sense that she might not be able to tell. "He is, him waking up is another matter altogether though."
They could both tell she was confused by this thinking the man would be fine now that he was breathing again. Donny knew not everyone was aware of brain damage not always being healed correctly by potions sometimes if the potion wasn''t high enough level but he didn''t want to say this so he left it to the doctor to exin.
"During the first few minutes of death you can be revived with the method we just used but I only had a basic healing potion not anything expensive. While he was dead there''s a good chance his brain was damaged from theck of breath which wouldn''t have healed correctly leaving almost scars in his head. This is just a possibility though so don''t worry about it too much."
Right after the healer stopped talking the man started to move with timing that made them both wish they had just kept the thing about his brain to themselves. "This is good. It probably means he has a high enough Endurance to avoid the side effects I just mentioned." This was good news for the girl but Donny felt like there was still something he needed to ask before he needed to get back to work hunting down the phantoms.
"How did you end up inside the phantom?" He was pretty sure he already knew the answer but he wanted to know for sure forter when the mayor would ask them what happened. "It grabbed me while me and my brother were exiting our home. My brother tried to get it off me but his magic isn''t very strong and eventually it got a hold of him as well so I tried to st my brother away from us to safety using an Earth spell. I thought it would be ok if I used my own mana to cast the spell and didn''t use it on the phantom directly but I was wrong. As soon as I used my mana It started to drain me and grow in size."
Hearing the girls story he guessed reality was a bit different to what they had expected. Originally they had assumed she had been startled into using her magic but reality was she had kept calm until her brother failed to free her from the phantom and had gotten caught as well.
Done hearing all he needed from the girl he stopped her talking by raising his hand and saying. "I must leave now." After he said this he turned towards the man who had helped him heal the four victims and said. "Thank you for your help."
He didn''t go into detail on how much the older man had helped him and the people back at the fort waiting for the food to return because it was private information but the man didn''t really seem to care about the thanks going right back to working on the two guards to see if they were ok so Donny didn''t think it mattered to the man.
He knew some people really didn''t care about receiving thanks for the things they did or it made them feel awkward so saying it again or adding more detail wouldn''t really do anything for the man. It didn''t take long for him to get back to where Fendis and him were assigned to defend and it was pretty obvious he had been away for too long. "Where have you been?"
Guessing Fendis hadn''t heard the screams or had just assumed it had been nothing Donny said. "There was a phantom that got out of control. I helped take it down." He didn''t say anything about the three people who died or the girl that had caused all of it because that could be saved for after he and Fendis dealt with the phantom swarm that was slowly drifting towards them from all sides.
As he was killing them all off he looked towards Fendis who had gone back to tinkering with his formation and smiled. He had been a bit worried it was still too early for Fendis to be messing around with custom spells let alone formations so it was good that he had been wrong.
Donny had been someone who always struggled with moving too fast in his training and while he had pulled off his reckless methods of making quick progress he had a lot of help from both his father and the Metal shield he had in the past. Now he was without both so even his progress had slowed down to normal.
It was a bit disheartening to realize he was more normal than he had thought for all these years but it didn''t take away the fact he was ahead of his peers because of his past advantages. He was also still nning on reiming the shield so hopefully he could quickly forget about the slump he was currently in.
"Alright, I''m going to go look at the other areas to make sure everything is under control. I wasn''t the only one who left to go help with the giant phantom and I''m a bit worried about the others." After he said this he ran around the rest of the area their group was in charge of and saw everything was fine.
This didn''t surprise him since the only reason their area had been overrun was Fendis took around forty seconds to deal with each phantom and they wereing faster than that now. Returning to Fendis he saw the man once again surrounded by phantoms and started to chuckle because he wasn''t even trying to do anything about them.
It seemed whatever problem he was trying to deal with in his formation had his full attention and he wasn''t going to stop working on it to fight until he absolutely had to. That or Fendis had been hoping he would return in time to do it for him which was what happened. After he took out the phantoms that had gathered he decided to stay here next to Fendis until he was done working on the formation and was able to fight for himself.
After about ten minutes Fendis lifted the formation into the air again. Even though he wanted to stay and see if the changes had resulted in any big improvements he quickly left to patrol the other parts of their area. The phantoms were nowing every ten seconds or so which meant in the time he hadn''t moved to watch Fendis they had probably built up a bit.
This wasn''t really a problem because they seemed to go for whoever was the closest meaning even if he didn''t move all of them would eventually get over to him and Fendis but that was only if there weren''t any people around that might identally draw them towards a less guarded ce.
This could result in a disaster since he was now sure the ce they were guarding was much worse than where the guards from the city were stationed because their guards probably weren''t up to the task of dealing with this volume when it came down to it.
...
"This is worse than it''s ever been." As he was watching the situation down in the city he couldn''t help but say this out loud as he tried to think of possible exnations. When Hampton had decided to leave for a single night both of them had just assumed the amount of phantoms would be the same it had always been before Hampton had invented the Light formation that kept them from emerging.
It seemed they had been extremely wrong about this though and it made him think maybe the phantoms increased in number over time and not letting them out to be culled at least semi regrly had been a massive mistake.
"Mayor, sir, we''re getting overrun it seems." Turning to see his head guard had just walked in he didn''t try to pretend everything was fine because he knew the man would know just as well as he did that they needed to call for help right away.
"Get themunication formation in Hamptonsb ready. I''m going to send out an emergency request." Hampton hadn''t taken all the gold with him which left enough money to hire someone who could get here within a few minutes to deal with the problem. It was a real shame that they had messed up like this though because they really needed that money in case the people Hampton was off looking for asked for more than Hampton nned to tell them he had.
Chapter 353: Rushed Negotiations
Chapter 353: Rushed Negotiations
Lake wasn''t sure why it was that every now and then it felt like someone was watching him intently or what it was that was after him but he was starting to think he shouldn''t have robbed the store in the way he had. It hadn''t been thought out like he had wanted it to because he had let his greed get to him in a way that hadn''t happened in a long time.
His actions while in the store reminded him of how he had been before his parents had been forced to put him in therapy when he was younger. No impulse control whatsoever and he felt like he was about to pay the price again but unlike hisst life he didn''t think he would get to just talk about his problems before heading home.
"After a while he felt eyes on him constantly and he knew whoever was after him was at least as fast as him at the top speed he could go and was about to go faster knowing he would end up hitting into things when he heard a distant voice that sounded like it said the word gold.
This was a weird thing to yell at him because he hadn''t stolen anything that was gold directly and it made him want to let the person yelling get closer so he could hear what they were saying. After slowing down a bit he heard the voice again closer and was able to make out exactly what they had said. "We''ll pay you gold."
Lake was sure he was about to be offered a job and stopped so the person after him could catch up to him. He didn''t fully drop his guard though and started to use Detector to look for people trying to hurt him. After the older man got close enough to be inside Detector''s range and didn''t light up he finally dropped his guard and got ready for the negotiation.
He wasn''t surprised a turn of events like this happened since most people would think about how they could use his skills when they saw him do something like fly away while summoning three giant pieces of a building with him. He did have a question he wanted to know the answer to before he was ready to talk about what they wanted.
"How were you able to track me?" So far no one had been able to do this because of his skill Trespasser and while he had always wondered if it affected the items on his body over time he had started to think it did. "I can show you but I''ll have to use magic. Are you ok with that?"
The man didn''t light up when he asked this so Lake nodded to give the old man permission. A secondter there was a giant blue thing looking down at him that the old man had summoned with the use of a formation. "I made this a few years ago in the hopes to use it to look through solid things. It works well enough but the ce I hoped to use it had defenses that stopped it from seeing what was held inside."
Feeling the eye on him, Lake knew the older man was telling the truth because it was the same feeling he had been getting while trying to run away all of this time. With the older man being so honest with the method he had used to find him, Lake decided they were showing a real want to work together so he said. "Alright tell me what it is you want me to steal."
Lake needed to get this over with as quickly as possible because before this old man found him he had been nning on returning to the Holy Domain to sell his new goods and return the dagger to the Temple. "No stealing, we want you to use that skill that lets you go through solid items for us. You were the one in Shallow correct?"
Hearing the name from the town before thest he robbed Lake was slightly surprised to find out this old man had been following him for so long but it made him realize who he was. This was most likely the person who had cast the light over the town and who owned theb he had stolen from.
"Yeah I was there. You don''t n to make me give back anything I stole do you, because I already sold it all." Lake had no interest in this old man''s request if it involved getting back everything he had stolen because that would also mean he had to give back the stuff he had just taken which was what he would be using toplete his mission.
"No, keep it. What we want your help with is more important." Hearing this man had no interest in his other activities he switched the conversation to what he was going to be paid even though he really didn''t think he would need the money with all the stuff he had stashed in the woods. "What will you be paying me for this job?"
"I have just over fifty thousand gold right now." Lake thought that was pretty good but then remembered he had no idea how hard the job was so he was unable to know what a fair price would be. He didn''t really care about the gold though so he said. "Alright but I have one more thing I want from you."
"What is it?" The way the man said this made Lake think he could ask for almost anything and the man would say yes but he decided to just ask for something easy in the hopes they would keep their word. "Don''t tell anyone what I look like." This was much more important to him since he hadn''t bothered to change what he looked like before going into the store thinking he wouldn''t take anything with force.
This meant everyone was seeing the armor he had been wearing back at the Temple and any sketches of him would give his identity away. "I can do that but a lot more people than me have seen you." Lake didn''t think the people who had only vaguely seen him while he was flying away were much of a problem because he knew how faulty brains were at remembering small details.
"As long as you keep my current armor to yourself I don''t see anyone being able to find me using a description. So, Shallow is our destination correct, lead the way."
"Thankfully you already got us pretty close to the town during the chase so It won''t take long to get back. Make sure you stay close I don''t want to have to stop to find you again." As soon as the man turned, Lake changed his face and took most of what he was wearing and threw it into the forest.
With this they would know a fake face and the old man would be the only one who knew what his current armor looked like. After a while the older man turned around and saw Lake was following him in almost nothing and asked. "Would you like some clothes? It''s just a robe but it''s better than nothing."
"Yes please." The older man took his robe off and passed it to him and Lake happily put it on when he felt the quality of the fabric. The robes he had just stolen were probably better but he hadn''t had the time to break the barrier yet so it was still unassessable to him and even if it did juste off of an old man he had worn stuff off of corpses plenty of times.
Now that he was presentable again he felt it was time for him to start talking to the old man to gain information on what they would be doing once they made it back to Shallow. "So you didn''t really tell me any details earlier. Is there a reason you''re trying to keep it a secret till we get there or did I just agree too quickly."
"I don''t n to tell you anything you don''t already know. After you get us through the obstacle your job will be done." After he heard this Lake started to wonder if Ghost Touch was going to work as well as the old man thought it would and asked. "What if I''m unable to do what you want?"
Lake didn''t want a fight to happen the second he failed since all he would be at that point was the person who had stolen from them so he felt asking now would be for the best. "I won''t pay you and I''ll have the guards arrest you." Lake didn''t think the guards would be able to get him even if he was surrounded but he knew the old man would tell on him if he failed then ran away.
...
"Bring word that help will be here in ten or so minutes to all the guards and people. I don''t want anyone to panic thinking we''re going to be overrun." Seeing the guard run out of the room after receiving the order he quickly moved back to the window to see if the situation had gotten worse in the time he had been negotiating with the Adventurers guild.
It took him a while to scan all the streets below and was happy to find the normal problem area seemed to be fine with the people he had hired doing a good job but the areas that the guards were in charge of were getting kind of bad. Trying to gauge what it could be like by the time help arrived he decided to run to where the few guards he had left in the keep as guards and have them go out as well.
Chapter 354: Good Timing
Chapter 354: Good Timing
"It''s starting to get bad." Donny had been thinking the same but hadn''t said it because he was focused on clearing their area. "Would you mind going up into the air and telling me what''s going on in the rest of the city?" Fendis could fly so using him to gather information made sense since he was the one who was killing all the phantoms and couldn''t leave.
"No problem." As Fendis started to rise into the air Donny went back to clearing out the phantoms that wereing every few seconds now. A few secondster Fendis lowered back to his side and started to tell him about the rest of the town. "It looks like it''s bad but still under control."
"So you didn''t see any giants?" Fendis shook his head no before turning and opening fire with his charged formation. As long as no phantoms got out of control no one would have to leave their assigned areas and the situation would stay under control but with how vtile this situation was he would be surprised if they made it through the night with perfect results.
"How do you think they nned on surviving this with just their guards?" Fendis'' question made him realize that the situation was probably not what the mayor expected either. "I think something is probably wrong. There''s probably more than they were expecting." He didn''t know what caused it though.
"What should we do?" Donny had to think about this for a while before he said. "Use fly and go find the guard we came with. He''ll tell us what to do." Donny was sure they would be told to hold their position but Fendis wasn''t really doing anything so it didn''t matter if he wasted his time. "Alright I''ll be right back."
Right after Fendis flew away a person came running towards him from up the street while yelling something. Watching the way the man dodged around the phantoms without stopping Donny assumed the message was important and probably about the situation they were facing. After the man got closer Donny finally heard what it was they were saying and signed in relief.
"Help is on the way. In a few minutes someone will arrive to protect the city." Donny would have loved to hear more but the man was gone as quickly as he came so Donny just had to guess who it could be that the mayor had called to protect them. The Earth Domain was pretty big so if they were able to get here before the sun came up they had to be decently strong.
...
Seeing the town up ahead Lake was able to tell at just a nce the weird light that had been over the whole tone thest time he had seen it was no longer there. He wasn''t surprised by this because the old man he was sure had cast the weird Light spell the other night had been chasing him around the Earth Domain for around a day.
"When we get inside the city follow me up to the castle so I can light the streets. After that is done I''ll lead you and a few other people down to where the door we want you to get us through is." Lake started to nod but stopped when he was able to see what was going on in the city. "What are those things?"
Lake knew it was kind of weird that he could see inside the city from here but to him it looked like ghosts were swarming the city and he would rather know the answer to his question than hide how high his Perception was. "We call them phantoms. We don''t know what they actually are though so that''s just a name based on how they look."
Lake wanted to ask if there were other things like ghosts that these things had been named for looking like but decided he would rather not talk anymore. They were about to pass into the city and he didn''t want to pay attention to anything other than dodging around these things. "If you''re able to use Earth magic please refrain."
Lake hadn''t even thought of trying to fight these things but hearing he shouldn''t use a certain type of magic made him wonder why. He would find a chance to ask more about thister after he wasn''t having to dodge around ghostly hands with every step they took. Once they reached the castle Lake saw the older man start to slow down and walk up to the gate.
He didn''t understand this because he felt both of them were more than capable of just jumping directly to the top to the spire where the older man would light the city from here but it seemed the older man wanted to move through the gate for some reason. Lake decided to not ask because he was still keeping an eye on the closest of the phantoms to make sure none of them got too close.
"It seems there''s no one at the gate. I''ll just open it myself then." The old man didn''t say this to Lake but with him right next to him he heard it and turned to see how the old man would open the gate from this side. All it took was a small wave of the man''s hand which madeke guess the gate had been made so this old man could open it himself if he ever needed.
This or the old guy could move things that were made of wood using a skill or some spell he knew. Once they walked through to the courtyard Lake was able to see there weren''t nearly as many phantoms here and after a second of looking he saw why. From a random ce on the wall a beam of bluish light shot out and hit the phantom ripping it to pieces.
Lake guessed this was a defensive formation made by the old mage he was with to deal with any phantoms that came to the castle but he could tell by the speed that it was activating it had never been made to deal with this many. "Are there more than normal?"
Lake hadn''t meant to ask this but it hade out on its own. The older man didn''t seem to mind answering even if they were still in the middle of making their way towards the spire stairs. "Yes this is more than what came out thest night we had to deal with them."
Seeing as the man was now open to sharing a bit of information Lake tried his luck at another question he didn''t think the old man would mind him knowing the answer to. "Why do people still live here if this happens at night?" He would have moved out the first day but he had seen a lot of people on the way here running around the phantoms like they were used to it.
"We originally nned to abandon the town but it was quickly discovered that if the phantoms weren''t dealt with soon after emerging they grew in strength and spread to cover arger area every night. It would have only taken about a year for them to make it to other towns and start causing problems there so I proposed we start to make it really cheap to live here for older adventurers who had retired. We also have a lot more guards than a town this size would need and most of them are mages, or at least can use a few spells."
With the older man still talking Lake decided to push his luck a bit with his next question. "Why are we moving so slow?" The old man was very fast earlier when they were running towards town so them now moving at a snail''s pace up the stairs when the town was slowly being overrun made no sense to Lake.
"Mana." This was all the older man said leaving figuring out what he meant up to Lake. His first guess would be the movement earlier was from a skill or spell that cost mana to use and the old man was using the slow climb up the stairs at his real speed to let his mana recharge. If he was right he guessed the light spell used at the top of the spire must need a lot of power for it tost the whole night.
Six or so minutester they were finally at the top and Lake was excited to see what this spell looked like. "Would you please turn away? I don''t want someone like you to see my secret spell." Lake was a little disappointed after such a long wait but decided he didn''t actually care since he wouldn''t really be able to use the spell anyway by just seeing it cast once.
...
Seeing a blue light take over the whole city at once Donny was confused because this was Hamptons spell and he wasn''t supposed to be here. It didn''t really matter to him the reason or how he had returned early since it was already bringing the emergency to an end with all the remaining phantoms being pushed back underground at once.
"Let''s go find the guard. He''s probably going to see if we''re still going to be paid or not now that it''s over." They hadn''t really done what they had been hired to do which was protect the city till morning with no one dying but at the same time they had done more than what they had been hired for since it had gone out of control and there had been a lot more phantoms than expected.
This made whether they had done enough to be paid now so they could leave indiscernible which would probably lead to a negotiation. He didn''t want to miss this by standing here even though the phantoms were gone. "I''m still getting paid for this right!"
Looking up at the sudden yell from the sky Donny saw a man standing in the sky looking down at the city. "Who do you think that is?" Fendis'' question made Donny snap out of his stupor and think. "It''s probably the help that was on its way." Donny had kind of assumed the help turned out to be Hampton but now that someone standing in the sky was talking about still being paid that probably wasn''t the case.
Chapter 355: A Fellowship? Pt.1
Chapter 355: A Fellowship? Pt.1
"Who''s that?" Seeing the guy flying around above the city yelling about gold Lake felt like someone who was a lot like him had just arrived. "I don''t know. Now follow me." Seeing the old man take off at the same speed they had climbed the stairs Lake had to ask. "Could we move a bit faster this time?"
He was impatient when it came to how fast people were moving apparently. He hadn''t known this but it made sense when you took into ount how fast he normally moved on his own. "Once we''re down the stairs I''ll pick up the pace. I don''t want to fall again."
Lake found this statement ridiculous but quickly remembered this man was a mage and there was a possibility he didn''t have very high stats in anything that would make his body faster. This paired with the fact he was very old, him being afraid of falling down some stairs made sense.
Ten or so minutes passed as they were making their way through the castle and eventually they made it to the ce he had robbed just the other day. "Which room are we going to?" Lake was sure it would either be the tea room or the office but he wanted to know where they would meet with him.
"I don''t know. There are a lot of people that will be involved so the tea room makes more sense but that''s just a guess." Lake just nodded to this and started to look around to see if he could spot these people the old man was talking about. A giant group wasn''t on the same floor as them so he started to look to other parts of the castle to see arge grouping through the gate.
With the battle that had been taking ce when they arrived now over this made perfect sense and he assumed these people would be the guards the old man mentioned earlier. He didn''t think all of them would be able to fit into the tea room though so the old man must be alluding to others when he said a lot of people would be participating.
"Alright wait here for a few minutes." Being left in the hall outside the office of the mayor, Lake started to look around again still trying to see someone other than the mayor who was in his office. Eventually he saw a grouping up the stairs and ended his search guessing the other people that would be with them when they got around to talking about the n.
...
"Likest time all of you stay silent unless you''re asked something while the discussion is happening." Donny was sure the guard gave him a look when he said for them to be quiet but that was fine since head been the only one to break this rule the first time. "Is that Hampton?"
Hearing someone ask about the famed wizard who had been around for almost as long as the Metal Domain itself like he was in front of them Donny looked forward to seeing someone who kind of looked like a mage. The man was too young to be Hampton though so Donny quickly ignored them, whoever they were. "That''s not Hampton. Probably another mage that''s here just in case."
After he said this he shut his mouth and looked back to the guard to see they were now looking at the young looking mage as well. Turning his head to see if the young man was looking their way Donny saw the guard and the mage were locked eyes as if studying one another.
...
Lake wasn''t sure how the guard he had saved the other day was here when they were supposed to be in the Metal Domain but after a few seconds of the two of them staring at one another Lake remembered he had his face changed so the man wouldn''t recognize him and was staring at him for another reason.
Lake didn''t mind them studying him so he broke eye contact and looked at the other faces because he could tell by the armor that they weren''t Oracle guards like this man was. The next face he also knew but wasn''t able to remember from where right away. Lake had met a lot of people over thest few weeks so when he finally put his finger on the fact that this was the guy he had taken the shield from, Lake looked to the next face wondering if he was going to know all of them somehow.
Thankfully the next person was aplete stranger but he didn''t think that would be the case for long because they had already closed the distance that had been between them when they first arrived in the hallway he was standing in and looked like they were about to talk to him. "Is the mayor inside?"
The guard was the one to ask this but Lake couldn''t help but look directly into the eyes of the man he had taken the shield from as he answered since he was trying to remember what their name was. "Yes he''s inside." It was a short answer and didn''t seem to tell the guard everything he wanted to know because the man quickly followed it up with another. "Can we enter?"
Lake could tell they were all assuming he worked here which was why they were even talking to him but he didn''t care to clear this misunderstanding up. "Sure, go right in." He was tired of being left outside of the room and he felt all these people charging in would solve this.
Taking his words as truth they all moved past him and opened the door to the office. Only the guard himself was able to enter before the two inside asked for the door to be closed. They didn''t say for the guard to leave though and the man took advantage of this by closing the door behind him instead of getting out of the office which was what they had probably meant.
...
Seeing who had just walked in, the mayor briefly thought of telling them to leave and that they would be paid in a little while but soon realized they could still use the people from the Metal Domain as the sun was still yet toe up. "If you are here to ask to be paid the situation isn''t over please take your men and wait in the tea room. We''ll be holding a discussion for everyone who will be involved in the rest of the battle in a few minutes."
He could tell the guard wanted to ask if this had been an original part of their job but the man seemed to know if he refused and just took the food now it would be considered thievery and therefore had no leg to stand on in this negotiation. As he exited the mayor got another brief look at the man out in the hallway who was wearing Hamptons robe but the door was closed again before a second even passed.
He would have liked to get up and get another look at the face of the man who had robbed them peacefully standing in wait outside but they had already been interrupted once. "Like I was saying the man who''s screaming about gold outside is an adventurer I hired thinking you wouldn''t be back any time soon."
"How much did you spend?" He could tell Hampton was probably asking because he had to promise a lot to the thief outside to get them toe here but he had seen this which was why negotiations with the adventures guild took so long. "Only one thousand gold for the man outside. It''s a good price and use of the gold if we find a way to use him in the operation we are about to undertake."
Hampton nodded to this and said. "In that case you should get him in here so we can include him. Also don''t mention the thief is here or what they did once we leave this room because there''s probably a decent bounty on someone like that and we don''t want it to get in the way of what we''re doing."
After Hampton said this he walked out of the room and the mayor moved towards the window to yell for the man causing a ruckus outside. "Come over here!" The man seemed to hear him and was soon flying towards the window. Not letting the man ask or say anything the mayor made sure to talk as soon as the man arrived. "We''re about to start, follow me to the tea room."
...
"You follow me." Lake wasn''t sure why the old man was leading him away but he knew where they were headed because the only room down that side of the hallway was theb. Guessing the old man wanted a few words in private, Lake followed him into the secluded room and waited to hear what it was that the other people here couldn''t hear.
"We''re going to keep the fact you''re a thief a secret so the others here won''t try to arrest you or anything. Just say you''re a mage that I''m friends with while we''re discussing the n." Lake was instantly on board with this idea and quickly nodded. "Alright let''s go then."
Chapter 356: A Fellowship? Pt.2
Chapter 356: A Fellowship? Pt.2
Walking into the tea room Lake saw they had the part of the floor he had slipped through sectioned off so no one would fall through it on ident and started to giggle because this probably meant someone had soon after he left. A fall of ten feet or so wasn''t going to hurt anyone in this world unless they were a child or the old man he was following now and it was a funny image to think about.
Most likely it had been someone like a guard so the sound their armor had made when they hit the floor below was probably pretty loud and maybe had caused a brief panic. There was no way for him to ask about it now though so he just kept these things to himself. "Go stand over there and don''t say anything."
Hearing the old man''s words, Lake moved into the corner of the room and waited for this meeting to start. He really had no interest in this discussion and wanted to go and see if his skill would work for what they wanted it for or not but he guessed there was a chance something he could useter could be said so he made up his mind to listen even if he didn''t want to.
The meeting didn''t start right away though so they all had to wait till the mayor and the man from the sky entered. "Alright I''ll start by talking to you eleven from the Metal Domain. We''ll pay you once the sunes up and you can leave even if what we''re doing isn''t over."
...
Donny assumed the mayor said this to calm the obviously annoyed Oracle guard who had been sitting next to him fuming the entire time they were waiting here. The words seemed to have an effect on the man which showed just how much a promise of being able to leave in a few hours meant to them.
"Alright with that out of the way we have to wait for the others to arrive before we can n the raid on the other side of the door but we can go ahead and go down there to see if how we n to get inside will actually work. I''m sure most of you have heard about the door under the city that we''ve been trying to open for as long as the Demigod has been missing and how many times we''ve failed."
...
Lake watched everyone start to nod after these words and guessed he was the only one who didn''t know what had been going on here. This wasn''t a surprise with the amount of time he had lived here being so short but he wished he had known before the old man caught him. "Our friend here is going to try and open a small passage through the door using a skill of theirs and if it works we''ll call everyone we know who wishes to help to form a team to investigate what causes the phantoms."
...
Donny couldn''t believe his ears when the mayor said they might be here when they went inside the Demigods old home. The way he saw it there was about a 100% chance the body of the Demigod was down there and if they were lucky even the one who hade to kill the Demigod had perished while doing so leaving two divine cores behind the door.
"A job like this is worth more than the one I was hired for. I want the first pick of whatever we find." This came from the man who had been outside in the sky yelling about gold until just a moment ago and Donny wasn''t surprised the man would try to get paid like this because there wasn''t anyone in all of the Earth Domain that didn''t know the rumors surrounding Shallow.
...
Lake hadn''t thought about it until now but he guessed there was a pretty good chance of there being treasure behind a door no one could open and if he didn''t already have everything he needed to make the gold he needed he would probably try something to be the one to get it. He had no ns to do anything to make the old man upset though so he would behave and just do what he was told.
"No, we''ll give you some more gold after the fact using the guild''s mission assessment. They''ll find a reasonable amount for us to pay you." Lake was able to tell a fair amount wasn''t enough for this man by the way their face looked after the mayor said this and wondered if there was a reason other than them being a greedy adventurer.
Since they all seemed to know this ce maybe they all had an idea on what was going to be inside. For all he knew these phantom things signified there was a special type of rare treasure behind the door that everyone wanted to get their hands on. "Alright Hampton, is there anything you want to add?"
...
Donny wanted to know what the old mage had to say about all of this so when the old man shook his head slightly when asked if he had anything it was a bit of a disappointment. "No it would be for the best if we head down now." Donny had been about to stand when the guard next to him stopped him while saying. "I actually have something I would like to ask before we go."
"Well go ahead then." Itr seemed Hampton was ready to get started but wasn''t going to refuse one of their questions. "These people you''re going to call, who are they?" Donny didn''t understand why the guard cared about this so much and felt it kind of came out of nowhere but he was sure there would be a reason if he held them all up for it.
"Are you asking for names or what organization they''re part of?" Donny didn''t see why Hampton couldn''t just tell them both things or why he rified this but the guard didn''t let this weird question stop him and said. "Just the organization is fine."
"Alright, a few people from the Earth Temple will being and then a couple of older mages like myself to help investigate anything that is found on the inside."
"How long will it take for them to get here after you''ve called for them?" After the guard said this Donny finally understood where this was going and started to get a bit disappointed because if he was right they wouldn''t be here for much longer. "A few days for the furthest people."
"If that''s the case, would it be alright if we leave right after we test your friends skill. If we aren''t going to go in right away there isn''t a reason for us to hang around till morning with nothing else going to happen. A couple hundred people are waiting for us to return with no idea if we are justte or dead."
Donny knew the guard was right but he wished there was a reason they had to stay because even if he knew there was no way he would be one of the people who would get to use the divine cores they were all hoping they would find. "That''s fine but if there''s a fight you must stay alright."
The guard nodded to this and finally stood up and everyone joined him in this being more than ready to start. "Alright Hampton you and your friend should lead the way." After the mayor said this Hampton waved for the younger man who had been standing off to the side this whole time and started to walk towards the stairs down.
...
Lake was happy to see Hampton didn''t move at the slow pace he had been using earlier as they made their way out of the castle. Once they got to a set of stairs down he did slow down again though but there was good reason. The light that got rid of the phantoms didn''t seem to be effective down here so while they were descending they had to deal with phantoms emerging from the walls.
"Don''t worry about this happening once we get down there I''ll set a formation to keep the phantoms away." Lake hadn''t been thinking about this but he was happy to know Hampton had a n for once they were down to wherever this door was going to be.
Five hundred or so stepster they entered an area that looked like a temple and Lake saw a door and thought they were there but then was led to another path that led even further down. "The door is at the end of this hallway." Lake nodded to this information before asking. "How deep does it go?"
"Not too much further from here." That didn''t really give him an exact answer to his question but Lake guessed he would see if what the old man said was true. After around four more minutes and a few turns they finally arrived in front of a giant light stone door. Lake was about to ask if this was it but didn''t have to when Hampton said. "Go ahead and get to it."
Chapter 357: Skill Stacking Pt.1
Chapter 357: Skill Stacking Pt.1
Lake didn''t waste any time in getting close to the door to see if he could see through it with Mana Vision. He had figured out this door was probably what Hampton had made the eye thing he had shown him earlier for and he wanted to see if his skill was better. Sadly after activating Mana Vision Lake was unable to see anything and he knew better than to think it was because there wasn''t anything behind this door that was giving off mana.
Scared what this could mean for his other skills he quickly tried to use Detector by setting it to look for a door. Up to this point Detector had never failed him and was even able to find things he didn''t think it should so when the door right in front of him didn''t light up he had a feeling they were all about to waste their time bying down here.
This was when the first phantom decided to emerge from the door in front of them so Lake used the opportunity to back off and try to think of something. He didn''t really have any ideas while Hampton set a formation that would keep him safe so he had to approach the door with trying to use Ghost Touch as his only option.
He knew it was going to fail but he felt this failure would force Hampton to share more information with him which would give him ideas on what to do next. Well he hoped that was what happened there was a small chance the mage would turn on him the second he failed and Lake would have to fight everyone here to the death to keep Hampton from blowing his cover.
cing his hand on the door, Lake instantly retreated a few steps after feeling some kind of jolt. After he realized nothing had happened to him he reminded himself of the past when he had touched enchanted objects because it was the same feeling he got from the door, just much stronger.
Knowing that this probably meant it was safe toe into contact with he ced his hand on the door again and tried to use Ghost Touch. He wasn''t surprised when nothing happened but he pretended he was still trying as he pulled up the description of Ghost Touch as a refresher.
Ghost Touch (L) Lv.1
You can turn things you touch ethereal for a short amount of time.
While they''re ethereal you can still interact with them.
Doesn''t work on living things as well.
(Amount of time scales off of Intelligence)
The living things part was what he was interested in since he had already seen a phantom move through the door while they were standing here. If he made someone like maybe himself ethereal he should be able to slip through with no problems. He wasn''t sure how walking would work though if your whole body could slip through things.
It would have been nice if he would have taken the time to familiarize himself with the skill before now but since that hadn''t happened he would just have to go for it without knowing what was going to happen to the person he tried it on.
Walking over to Hampton Lake said. "My skill doesn''t work on the door but there''s still another option." Lake wanted Hampton to ask what this option was but all he got was a slight rise of the old man''s eyebrows so he just said it. "My skill works on people as well. Since the phantoms can move through the door we should be able to send someone through."
"How will we walk in such a state?" Lake wasn''t surprised the older man caught on to this problem so quickly but since he didn''t know all he did was shrug and say. "I''ve never used it on myself for that exact reason. We''ll need a volunteer to see if it will work."
Lake couldn''t be the one who went through first since if he died inside or used the chance to escape the only way for them to get inside would be gone so he just told the old man what he needed and waited to see if he would get it. "Anyone want to volunteer to try and pass through the door using my friend''s skill?"
Lake was surprised when six people put their hands up since he felt this was going to be extremely dangerous but this just fed into the fact he felt they all knew what was going to be inside. "Pick someone."
Having the option Lake picked the tallest person who was the person from the sky since Ghost Touch let him control how much of something he turned ethereal which would let him turn just the man''s upper body and since he was tall he would have a good chance of getting his head to the other side to see what was in there.
If that worked he would try and find a way for him to send someone through and have them be able to walk, which he had no idea how he was going to do. "Alright I''ve never done this to someone before but the skill works on animals so you''ll be fine." Lake just decided to lie to the guy when exining what he was going to do to them.
"Alright I''m ready." Lake decided to put his hand on the top of the man''s head so thest thing that would turn ethereal would be his feet so he wouldn''t lose them by ident. "Wow, that feels weird." Lake was sure it did and almost started to think how it was even possible that he could turn only half of someone ethereal and they didn''t die but decided the fact it was working was all he needed to know.
"Alright go try and look through the door." Lake wanted to make sure the guy moved fast because he didn''t want the effect to wear off while the guy was still inside the wall. The skill clearly said it didn''t work as well on living things and the guy being killed because of this would be a real annoyance since he didn''t think anyone else would trust him after that.
Seeing the guy''s head start to approach the door, Lake couldn''t help but hold his breath a bit which quickly ended when the guy was unable to pass through. Lake was worried for a second until he realized there was a chance the effect had already worn off of the man. "Come here."
Lake could probably assume that the person who he used it on stats would matter when you were trying to find out how long the effect wouldst so if this guy was even decently strong, which he seemed to be, it onlysting a few seconds was very possible.
Touching the guy''s shoulder he could feel his assumption that it had worn off was right so he said. "Alright we''re going to try again but this time I''ll be keeping my hand on you so the effect doesn''t wear off so fast."
Lake kind of expected for the man to ask what would happen if it had worn off while his head was in a wall but when the man didn''t seem to notice this very obvious problem with theirst try Lake didn''t bring it up and motioned for the man to try again. This time with him applying a constant effect on the man the top of his head was able to pass into the door but the look on the man''s face as he did this showed it wasn''t easy.
No one else was able to see this look through so when his head started to pass through the door around half of them let out excited voices. That quickly changed though when the man pulled his head out as fast as he could while letting out a scream. "Oh fuck something has me!"
Everyone was able to see the man''s head was being held onto by one of the phantoms and this wasn''t a real problem with Hampton''s formation dealing with it almost right away. After the phantom was gone Lake looked towards the older mage and waved him over to ask some questions. "What is it?"
"I figured you''d want to hear what he has to say about the other side." Hampton gave him a look before saying. "There''s no way he saw anything. His head barely made it into the door before he had to pull it out."
"You''re right that I wasn''t able to get to the other side to see anything that time but I''m ready to try again." They both turned to the adventurer after he said this before turning back to one another to continue speaking. "Would you like to try?" Lake didn''t think the older man would take him up on this offer because it would put his life into the hands of an untrustworthy thief so when the older man nodded it was a real surprise.
Chapter 358: Skill Stacking Pt.2
Chapter 358: Skill Stacking Pt.2
Lake Tried to approach Hampton to activate ghost Touch on the man but was stopped by Hampton saying. "No, not on me. Let''s try to use it on my eye summon." Remembering the eye thing he had been shown earlier Lake couldn''t help but wonder if his skill would work on a magic body part.
The best thing he couldpare it to would probably be the extra hands he could summon using his Summon Hands skill which seemed to be affected by everything his real hands were. If the eye Hampton was working on summoning now was anything like that he couldn''t see why it wouldn''t work.
After Hampton was done and the eye flew out of the formation he had just made, Lake got closer to it and reached out his hand while asking. "Which part should I touch?" He was sure the eye part was what he should turn ethereal but since the formation was still next to Hampton he was hoping he could turn the eye ethereal by keeping his hand on the formation.
"Just do both to see if it works." Lake nodded and after touching both things using his two hands he nodded at Hampton to say he could send the eye through. "Alright here we go." Watching the eye hover away from them and through the door, Lake got excited to hear what was on the other side but just likest time they sent something through, their hopes were quickly dashed.
"I''ve lost connection to the eye." Hearing Hamptons words, Lake instantly had a question. "Does it work without you and can it return with what it saw?" If either of these two functions were art of the eye this n could still work but sadly Hampton shook his head no before saying. "No it''s just a regr eye that can float and see through things slightly. I don''t think I as a mortal could implement the two things you just asked me about."
Lake was a bit disappointed in this because it meant they were back to trying to send a person through. He had an idea while they had been standing here though so this hadn''t been aplete waste of time. "Does anyone have a rope?" His skill said he could still interact with things affected by Ghost Touch so tying a rope around someone and then swinging them through the area behind the door would give them a way to get a person inside without them falling through the ground until the effect wore off. "I do."
"Alright I need it." Once he had the ropeke pointed at the adventure again and said. "Your turn again. Come here so I can tie this around you." The man didn''t waste any time in doing what was asked of him and Lake tied the rope around his waist like he had said he would before saying. "I''m going to swing you into the room behind the door. Is that alright with you?"
"Yeah but don''t leave me in there for long because the phantoms will probably swarm me." Lake nodded to this before starting to use Ghost Touch on the end of the rope. Like he expected this effect was able to move to the man once it ran out of rope and before long the man lost the ability to stand on the solid ground and started to dangle from the rope in the ground below. "Wahh."
Starting to swing, the man around Lake sent the guy forward through the door. "Ahhh." Lake started tough at the man''s inability to keep himself from yelling during this process but it wasn''t because he didn''t think it was unnecessary. All that would have to happen for the man to go falling through the ground and eventually dying from this was for the rope to be damaged in some type of way.
With the fact the phantoms were immaterial as well this was a real possibility since he was sure they would be able to grab the rope if they wanted to. With the trip through the door over Lake pulled the man back out. Like Lake expected the man was in a struggle with one of the phantoms which was quickly dealt with like thest one.
Catching the man after this was done, Lake used Ghost Touch to get rid of its effects and set the man down on the ground. He didn''t take the rope off though because he expected they would be doing this again after that had a short talk. "What did you see?" Lake could tell he wasn''t the only person who had been about to ask this by how Hampton looked at the man since he hade back through.
"Well first there''s hundreds of phantoms inside. I know this was expected but they made it kind of hard to see anything so I''ll I got was there''s a glowing brown formation close to the door and something that''s giving off purplish light in the back of the room I was in." Lake actually felt this was a good result for the few seconds the man had been on the other side and turned to Hampton to see what the man''s face looked like.
Hampton was clearly lost in thought so Lake didn''t say anything right away because he was sure the older man would be having the same idea he was. Earlier when Lake used Ghost Touch on the formation that summoned the eye it had worked meaning they should be able to use it to send the formation that damaged the phantoms through to clear out the room. "Alright send me through next."
"What?" Lake couldn''t believe what Hampton had just said because he really hadn''t expected the old man to be ok with being swung around on a rope like how they had just done to the adventurer. "Give me the rope young man." After he was handed Hampton tied the rope around him like a belt and said. "Go ahead but don''t try to swing me."
Lake quickly turned the older mage ethereal like he had been asked to do. It didn''t go how he expected though because even after the older man''s feet should have slipped through the ground he was still standing where he had been. "Good it works. Alright Deklein if I get trapped just call for the others and have this young man send one of the through to retrieve me."
Lake wasn''t sure who Deklein was but after looking back he realized it was the mayor from the way the man was nodding to these instructions. After Hampton said this the man started moving forward without moving his feet which gave away how the man hadn''t fallen through the ground, he was hovering.
After the older man passed through the door Lake briefly thought about using Ghost Touch through the rope to trap the man inside but decided it was a bad idea even if no one here would know he had done it with there being a real chance the old man was about to open the door using something on the other side.
...
Seeing the older man go into the phantom infested room on the other side of the door Donny felt like he should have taken at least one other person but since the older man hadn''t it probably meant he had some confidence in whatever he nned to do on the other side.
It didn''t seem their leader cared about anything that was happening here though because a few seconds after Hampton went through the Oracle guard walked up to the mayor and asked. "Can we go? This seems to be under control."
The mayor seemed to know there was nothing he could say to keep them here that kept to their original deal since there wasn''t a fight or any real threat to the city. "Alright I''ll go up and tell the..." The man''s statement never ended because while he was saying what he was going to do the ground suddenly shook enough that everyone was knocked off of their feet.
Since he was on his back Donny was able to see the cracks that started to form above them and watched in horror as stones started to fall towards them. He was snapped out of this waiting to be squashed mindset when all of the stone around them paused where it was. Turning to look at the oracle guard Donny saw the man''s hands up and knew it had been him who had just saved them.
"Everyone move! The phantoms are still around us inside the stone and I''m using Earth magic to do this." Scrambling to his feet Donny started working on the shield formation as he helped the others around him to their feet. He knew the man wanted them to start running towards the surface but they were going to need to move faster than their feet could go if they wanted to get out of a copsing tunnel without using Earth magic.
"Fendis get working on the wind tform." After he said this he ran towards the guy near the door who was still holding onto the rope. Making sure this guy survived was more important than the others really since he was capable of getting them through solids with his ability so letting him die because he was too scared to run was a huge mistake.
Chapter 359: Skill Stacking Pt.3
Chapter 359: Skill Stacking Pt.3
Feeling someone grab his shoulders Lake turned to see it was Donny who was trying to pull him towards the other people. "What are you doing?" Donny seemed genuinely surprised at his question but was still able to answer it almost right away. "We have to go, the tunnel is copsing."
Lake knew this was true but he could tell by the fact the rope hadn''t fallen that the old man on the other side was still alive and doing something so he felt he could just wait here for the old man toe back out and be safer than trying to run. "I think it would be safer if we stay here next to the formation that''s keeping the phantoms away. The ceiling next to the door isn''t cracked either so it probably won''t copse."
...
Looking to where the guy holding the rope was pointing Donny saw he was correct. Everyone would be safe if they stood next to the door but that was only from the falling rocks. There was a good chance whatever had caused this was inside so getting near it was too dangerous for anyone who wanted to survive this.
"Donny didn''t get to say this though because he had already spent too much time talking to this guy and another massive rumble had just happened and by the sound that came from behind him the tunnel had already copsed meaning trying to fly out wouldn''t work anymore.
...
Hearing the copse, Lake couldn''t help but say. "See, if we had tried to run we would have been crushed just now." Lake knew this meant they were stuck here now this had happened but he knew they could find a way to dig themselves out if the old man never came back out.
Looking back after he said this, Lake saw everyone was still alive because of someone using magic to keep the stones from falling on them and said. "Get your friends over here and then all we need to do now is wait for Hampton to finish what he''s doing." After he said this Lake turned back towards the door and went back to thinking about what could be going on inside.
...
Seeing he no longer had a chance of getting them out of here without relying on nothing but the guards Earth magic which was very dangerous with phantoms around Donny just decided to do what the young mage was saying. "Everyone get over here close to the door. Fendis you can also stop trying to make the formation since we''re not going anywhere for now."
Even if he hadn''t said this he was sure the people who were still taking cover around the guard would have eventually made their way over here but he wanted them to move now so the guard could stop using his magic before something bad happened. He didn''t really want to know what would happen if a phantom got out of control now and they were forced to fight the giant off in such a small area.
If he used his shield for example he was sure he would end up causing another small copse while trying to damage the phantom enough for it to stop being a threat and since the guard would have to use Earth magic again to save them from these rocks the phantom would just grow in size all over again.
"What do you think shook the ground like that?" Donny could have told you who had asked him this even if he couldn''t hear what they sounded like since he had been with Fendis long enough that he knew the man loved to ask questions. "Nothing good."
There was really no way for them to know but he couldn''t see the Demigod that used to live here having a function that would destroy the city they lived under built into their base. After he thought of the town above Donny turned to the guard and asked. "Do you think the city''s being affected or are we too deep?"
If the ground was shaking as much as he thought there was a good chance the town would be mostly rubble when they got to the surface again. He just hoped they were evacuating like they should because emerging to find the whole town dead on the ground would probably make them leaving with arge amount of food unlikely and even asking or talking about it would be hard.
He didn''t think this was in any way their fault but getting paid after everyone died would be ridiculous. "Does anyone want to go inside to check on the old man?" Hearing the mages question Donny almost raised his hand out of habit but quickly caught himself since he needed to stay with the group in case there was another copse.
...
"I''ll go again, but do we have another rope?" Lake wasn''t surprised the same adventure was the one to volunteer again and asked. "Do we have another rope?" When no one said anything Lake said. "You can just hold on to the one that''s tied around the old man."
"How''s that?" Seeing the man didn''t get it, Lake decided to just show the man before he exined it since it would be a lot faster. "Give me your hand I''ll show you." Turning the man''s hand, ethereal Lake set it onto the rope and said. "See you can touch other things that are affected by the skill." After he said this he went ahead and turned the rest of the man ethereal and sent him on his way.
The man was more than strong enough to pull himself across the rope using nothing but his hands so it didn''t take long for him to go through the door. Lake didn''t expect for the man to stay on the other side for long so when the man didn''te back for a whole minute he got kind of worried.
He knew the man hadn''t gotten stuck from the effect wearing off because he was able to control it since the man was in contact with the rope like Hampton was so it made Lake think he was probably being toldplicated things to repeat to them by the old man. After a while of waiting Lake finally felt the vibrations that meant the man wasing backing through the rope and got ready to turn him back material.
"The old man needs you to turn him back to normal while he''s still inside. Can you do that?" Lake wasted no time in answering the man. "Yes but he might get stuck in there for a while if I do." Lake had no idea what would happen to the rope if he was to turn it and the man at its end back to normal while it was partially through the door.
If it was destroyed he would lose contact with the man making it so he wasn''t able to use Ghost Touch on him any more. He also wouldn''t have a very long rope to send anyone back through so his only option of getting the older man back would be to try and use Ghost Touch on himself to go and retrieve Hampton which he didn''t want to do.
"Don''t worry, the old man said he could open the door if he was able to use his hands." Hearing this, Lake got rid of his only real objection to doing as the old man wanted and used his ability through the rope to turn the old man solid. After he did this he naked the man "So what caused the two rumbles?"
He should have probably asked this before he agreed to the old man opening the door but since the man hadn''t said anything when he had first emerged it didn''t seem as important as it probably was. "I asked him and he said all he knew was it happened after he used a spell on the other side to dispel the phantoms that were in the room with him."
Lake wasn''t sure what to make of this and wondered how scaring off a bunch of ethereal monsters could make the ground shake but with that being all the information the man had he guessed they would just have to wait and see. "Alright everyone get ready for the door to open."
...
Looking at the guard who had just given them the order to get ready Donny pulled his shield to the front of their group and waited for the door to open. The fact they had been buried like they had actually meant their only option of moving forward without Earth magic was to go inside the door once it opened and this gave him a chance to go in which was something he wanted.
You couldn''t say the circumstances that led to him getting to do this counted as luck though since he felt their chances of dying here was pretty good. Feeling a slight rumble he thought another massive copse was about to happen but soon realized it was just the stone door in front of them starting to move.
Chapter 360: Stashed Away Pt.1
Chapter 360: Stashed Away Pt.1
No one spoke as the door opened even as they saw Hamptone hovering out of the room. "Why didn''t you mention the tunnel had copsed?" Lake knew who Hampton was talking to and gave the adventurer who had gone inside to talk to Hampton a few minutes ago a look. "You cut me off and told me to deliver the message as soon as you got done talking."
Seeing the man me the mage, Lake looked back at the older man''s face expecting some type of scowl to appear but instead it seemed Hampton knew what the man had said was true because he quickly changed the subject. "Well being stuck down here means I have to change the n, give me a few minutes to think."
After Hampton said this Lake realized now that the door was down there was a good chance he would be able to get a good look of what had been behind the door and used Mana Vision to look behind Hampton. This actually resulted in another failure but not for a reason he had known of, the amount of mana in the room behind Hampton was so high Lake was unable to see anything.
This wasn''t the first time he had seen an area that had increased mana since the top of the sprite at the Alchemist guild had been this way but he was pretty sure the room behind the door was even more extreme than the area at the top of the spire had been because he had never seen this much interference before. Turning Mana Vision off he used just his normal eyes to try and see what was in the room.
The door wasrge so there were plenty of things he could see but figuring out what they were without getting closer would be kind of hard because they were nothing like he had seen before. It wasn''t surprising to him that a Demigod would need or have weird things but not being able to even guess a vague use made him realize just how much he didn''t know.
...
Donny couldn''t help himself and gasped slightly once his eyes were finally able to make out what the thing on the closest table to them was. To someone who had never read a book it would probably just look like a small loop made of stone but you would regret passing it by for the rest of your life if you made this mistake.
"Do you know what that stuff is?" Donny wasn''t surprised when he was asked this question since his gasp would give away the fact he had identified something but he really didn''t want to say what he had seen because the others would want it if he told them what it was. "Maybe, we''ll have to get closer for me to make sure."
Moving his eyes to the next table Donny saw something he didn''t recognize which was some type of metal tanks with pipes going between them. It looked like it was probably something rted to alchemy but he didn''t know enough about potions to know if he was right or not.
The next things he could see were too far back and partially blocked by stuff in the room so he couldn''t make anything else out and turned his attention to the formation that was on the ground near the door. Like the guy had said earlier it was glowing a brown color but Donny didn''t think it was normal Earth magic from the color being slightly brighter.
This probably meant that this formation was using the element of the Demigod to power itself. Getting to know how this offshoot element was different was probably going to be interesting but he didn''t expect it to be anything too crazy since he had never heard anyone talk about this Demigods magic prowess or really any stories about them at all from before they disappeared.
He couldn''t help but think this would mean they were hoping to champion something in that wouldn''t cause much of a stir up. He knew this could be wrong though so he still nned to keep his eyes out for evidence of what the element would have been if they went inside theb.
He felt there was also a good chance Hampton would know if he got a chance to ask the older man. "Hey if you used your skill could we walk out of here?" Donny was aware the older man was asking the younger mage this and looked to hear what the answer was since they wouldn''t be going inside if the young man said yes to this.
...
"Maybe but if we try there''s a good chance all the loose dirt above us will fall and crush us." Lake had no idea how well Ghost Touch would work on what was pretty much gravel above them and he felt some stones would get through and some of them wouldn''t make it. If they were willing to use Earth Magic this wouldn''t be the case anymore but a new threat which was the phantoms would take the ce of falling earth.
"It would still be a better option than trying to go through the door. There''s no way we''ll find a way out in there." This came from the mayor and Lake agreed with it until Hampton opened his mouth again. "We could find the source of the phantoms inside though and that would allow us to use Earth magic to get out of here and it would be worth going inside to look around a bit before we leave so we know what we shoulde back with in the future."
Lake thought this argument made it sound like Hampton just wanted to go in no matter what but he still thought it was a good idea as long as they didn''t go in too deep or get too close to anything dangerous. It seemed everyone else here thought it was a good idea as well as Lake looked around to look at the faces of everyone.
...
Donny couldn''t help but to look at the guard as Hampton said this because they really should leave if they had the best interests of the people back at the fortress in their hearts but he knew the items just a few feet inside thisb were too much for a normal person to resist. He had already caught himself thinking things like ''I could use that looking stone to help the people in the Metal Domain'' so he was sure the others were doing this as well and he wouldn''t be surprised if the guard thought this and was right.
Getting a single item that was inside theb that could be used inbat could be more than worth the extra time they had spent here. "If we''re going in we should send just a few people. I''ll leave who you''ll be taking in with you up to you Hampton."
...
As soon as the mayor said this Lake knew he would be going and when Hampton started pointing at people he was proven correct when he was the first one. Lake then watched as Hampton pointed at Donny then the guard he had saved back in the Metal Domain and then finally the adventurer they had sent through the door earlier.
"I''ll take the four most useful people with me and leave the rest to guard you while I''m gone." After Hampton said this Lake started to look at the others with a smile at thepliment they had just received. After a few seconds of sharing these looks Hampton put an end to it by saying. "Get moving you four."
Lake didn''t move right away because he could tell the others were more than willing to go first and he wanted to best for safety reasons but eventually he passed into theb and felt like his head was going to pop from the massive increase in mana. This was him over exaggerating a bit but that was what it felt like for a brief second.
His body quickly got used to the feeling and he instantly started to walk towards the first table in the room to inspect the items. "Don''t get close to anything just yet. We''ll do that on the way out." Lake was a bit disappointed by this but he guessed it didn''t really matter when he figured out what the items were as long as he was able to touch a few before they left.
He knew Hampton would probably be watching him like a hawk to keep that from happening though so he was going to have to be really sneaky if he was going to get anything. "Are we going to go towards the light in the back of the room?"
...
Donny couldn''t help himself and went ahead and asked what he was sure everyone was wondering. "Yeah, a deep purple light is pretty suspicious when everything else is glowing brown. There''s a good chance it''s what causes the phantoms so we have to head that way."
Chapter 361: Stashed Away Pt.2
Chapter 361: Stashed Away Pt.2
As they were moving through theb Lake went ahead and started marking things so he would be able to find themter if he was unable to touch anything before he had to run. This would be a good recement for the money he was going to make from the things he had stashed in the woods if by the time he got around to getting them they had been found and taken back.
He had never touched the items inside the parts of the building he had stolen so if they had been emptied out there would be nothing he could do about it. "Alright everyone stop. I need to make sure there aren''t any traps set by the Demigod to protect themselves before we move to the next part of the room." Lake understood why Hampton would think moving into the next part of the room could be dangerous since there was an obvious style change to the floors and walls but he had already set Detector to look for traps so he knew they were alright.
He just let Hampton do this while he looked around and marked everything that was around them. "Ok, we''re alright to keep moving." Moving into the new part of this base, Lake had to assume it was more residential because there was an increase of things like furniture and one of the far corners looked like it was set up as a kitchen.
There was also a decrease in interesting items that belonged in ab so it was obvious this ce was set up to be a home as well as where the Demigod did their work. "The room that the purple light ising from is most likely going to be a bedroom." He thought there was a good chance it meant the Demigod had been attacked while they were sleeping but this didn''t seem to interest them because no one said anything and just continued to walk forward silently.
Once they made it to the doorway that the light wasing from All of them came to a stop and started looking at one another. Lake didn''t understand why they stopped so he just asked them. "Why are we stopping?"
"We''re deciding if we''re all actually going to go in. There''s a good chance we''re going to find something that should be kept secret but will also need more than one of us to handle." Hamptons words kind of confirmed they all had known what they were going to find inside this entire time.
"So it''s a real dilemma." Lake had faith he would be going in because there was no way Hampton would leave him out here where he could go and take something while he wasn''t being watched but he could see one or two of the people here being left out here while they went in.
If anyone was going to be left behind it would probably be the adventurer and it seemed the man knew this because he was the first to try and make a case for why he should get to go which to Lake made him look too eager. "I''ll behave. I know you''re all thinking you can''t trust adventures around treasure but I know I can''t win this one with all of you here."
It seemed someone else thought this made no sense because why would he want to go in if he wasn''t going to gain anything from risking his life. "Why do you want to go?" The adventure didn''t seem to have an answer for this question though and just went silent. "All of us will go but if any of you try anything I''ll kill you without a single thought."
Hamptons words settled it but Lake could tell there were two people who were mad at the threat. None of them said anything about it though Lake did see everyone start to share looks behind Hamptons back. This was treacherous behavior and Lake was sure they were all thinking that they would kill Hampton if there was something they wanted enough.
...
Donny didn''t like the look he had just gotten from the guard but he understood the thinking behind it. With a point of divinity they could make a deal that would have a god help them and the people of the Metal Domain but that would only happen if they were actually able to beat Hampton and his fiend that was right behind them.
The younger mage was most likely not as strong as Hampton but two of them evened out the ying field since neither group could really trust the adventurer who would most likely be the first to die if a fight broke out. Not being able to help himself Donny looked over his shoulder to see the mage standing behind him already looking right at his face.
...
Getting a look from Donny, Lake couldn''t help but be surprised. So far no one else had looked at him and he had taken this to mean they thought they couldn''t trust him and Lake had realized it was because of the robe he was wearing. It made him look like Hampton who had on multiple asions called him a friend.
None of them knew this was sarcastic so they all probably thought he would help Hampton in a fight if one broke out but now that one of them was looking at him Lake tried to use his eyes to make it clear he wouldn''t get in their way if they had to kill the old man. He actually wanted this to happen since the old guy was the only one who knew anything about his real identity.
...
The deep re from the man behind them made it clear he was already on to them and if they really did try anything that Hampton didn''t like they would only have a few seconds before they had to defend themselves. This made their victory even less likely so Donny wanted to alert the guard.
Getting the man''s attention he motioned behind them with his eyes so the guard would be aware of the threat from behind. The message was received loud and clear and the guard made it seem he would be responsible for Hampton while he would be fighting the man behind them.
Donny was fine with this because he actually looked up to Hampton too much to be able to kill him in a fight. He would probably try to just keep him busy just long enough for them to grab the core and run. They had everything they needed to make a get away with the guard''s Earth magic so there wouldn''t be much they had to worry about if they ignored the phantoms that would go out of control in their wake while they ran.
"Well that''s going to be a problem." Looking away from the guard and forward Donny saw they had made it into another room and like the man behind them had said earlier it was a bedroom but not a normal one because everything was about ten times the size that it would be in a normal ce.
None of them had expected this since the rest of the building up to this point had been normal but everyone knew Demigods were able to take the size of a divinity if they chose to. It was odd for one to choose to sleep like that though since he had always heard they only did it duringbat but whatever.
...
Seeing the giant bed Lake couldn''t help but want to fly up to see if someone was on it. The light wasing from there so he felt there was a good chance there would be a body. There was also a good chance it was going to be the body of a Demigod so Lake was interested to see what it would look like.
Up to this point he had seen two others and they had both been big which would exin the size of the bed. "Alright everyone gather up. I''m going to go up to get a look and I want you all to keep an eye on one another while I''m gone."
...
As they all gathered up like Hampton had said for them to, it was pretty clear who was the odd one out with them all staring down the younger mage. This didn''t seem to bother the younger man though who just continued to give them all a small smile. Donny wasn''t sure what could make the young man so confident but he would be lying if he said it didn''t get to him.
Donny still didn''t really want a fight to happen so he hoped the smile on the face of the young mage would dissuade the guard from starting anything. "What do you guys think is up there?" Donny hadn''t expected this question from the young man but he was sure there was some kind of trick so he stayed silent.
Chapter 362: Stashed Away Pt.3
Chapter 362: Stashed Away Pt.3
After Lake''s attempt to start a conversation failed, he and the others had just stood next to the bed''s massive leg while they waited for Hampton toe back or say something down from up top. Enough time passed this way for him to get curious enough to use Detector to look for Hampton to see if he was still fine on the top of the bed.
Seeing a small man start to glow above them he watched for a few seconds to make sure the man was moving before looking away. "He''s still fine." Lake felt like the others would want to know this so he went ahead and shared the information with them even though he was sure none of them would say anything back.
After another ten minutes passed they finally saw Hampton lowering himself back down to the group. "Alright we can go now." Lake was decently happy to hear this since Hampton didn''t seem like he was going to let him do anything while here in this ce but the others didn''t seem ready to go and quickly asked a question each.
"Did you figure out where the Phantoms areing from?"
"What''s up there, is there actually a body?"
"Will we have the chance to go through the stuff we passed on the way here?"
...
Donny understood why the other two asked what they asked but he really thought they were shooting for the stars here while the stuff they passed was much more likely to fall into their hands. There was really no way Hampton would ever confirm if there was anything up there or not so it was best if they just moved on.
"I won''t be letting anything, knowledge or material goods leave this ce with any of you. Now get moving please, we have a long journey out to the surface." This was a heavy blow and Donny was sure the guard would attack after this but remembered what their original goal was to get food and go back not steal treasure that belonged to the Earth Domain.
As long as the guard was able to remember this as well there was no way a fight would actually break out. All that stuff earlier had just been greed getting the better of them for a moment. Looking to the guard to see if they had also snapped out of it Donny was happy to see him looking less intense than he had been earlier.
This couldn''t be said about the adventurer though who was looking at Hampton like he was about to try and kill him. "Let us at least try and find the source of the phantoms before we try to go out there and leave the copsed tunnel. It could be our death if we try to leave with them still out there."
Donny didn''t think anyone was buying these were the actual reasons the man wanted to have a look around so when Hampton started talking in a harsh voice no one was surprised. "There''s nothing we can do about it with the people here. Now let us get going." The finality in Hamptons words almost made Donny start walking towards the door subconsciously but he was able to keep himself from moving.
The adventurer was able to say something else surprisingly enough like he hadn''t been affected at all by Hamptons show of power. "Are you saying that you know for sure there''s no one here that you should at least let have a look at whatever it is on top of the bed. For all you know maybe someone here could do more than you think."
Donny still didn''t buy that the man cared about the phantoms but his words made sense. Donny would really like to get a look at whatever was up there to see if there was something they could do to make their escape safer. A small glimpse surely couldn''t be that big of a deal since they all already knew what was probably up there that Hampton was trying to hide.
"Sir Hampton we all already suspect there''s a body up there so the man''s words ring true. If you give us a chance there''s a real possibility that we might find a solution." Donny really didn''t feel it had been his ce to say this but he felt he had to and by the look on the guards face after he was done it had been the right move.
...
Lake was surprised when the fight he was sure would happen the second Hampton told them to leave instead became a conversation but this wasn''t the first time he had seen people lose heart before a battle took ce and it wasn''t like it was still impossible that there would be some type of altercation since it was very obvious Hampton was getting pissed with each word that came from the other men.
"No none of you are getting anywhere near what''s up there now start walking. It''s thest time I''ll say this." Hearing such an ultimatum Lake was sure something was about to happen and switched Detector to look for people who were attacking him as he watched the people around him.
...
Donny couldn''t help but look at the young mage who seemed to have gone into a fighting stance as soon as Hampton said this because he would be the one who would fight the mage if a battle did happen. Over the next few seconds each person shifted to a stance that said they were ready for the apparent fight but before another rumble shook the entire room.
This made all of them lose interest in the others they had been just about to attack because unlike what they expected the source of the rumble wasn''t apparent while inside the room which was where they had all expected it toe from. "If the source isn''t here then what''s causing these quakes?"
...
Lake wasn''t sure why Hampton had whispered this question but it didn''t really matter since it gave him an idea of something he should enter into Detector. After he had set Detector he watched as the very air around them started to glow and while it took him a few seconds to figure it out he eventually said. "It''s the mana level."
He hadn''t been the only one to notice the extreme level of mana here in this ce so after he said this it only took a few seconds for Hampton to put the rest together and say. "It''s the formation I set at the door to get rid of the phantoms. It''s probably causing some disruption in the bnce of mana that''s present. Hurry, I must dispel it now before any more quakes happen."
After he said this Hampton tried to move towards the door but stopped because no one else moved. It was obvious they all nned to take advantage of the fact Hampton had to go all the way back to the door to get rid of his formation and have a look at what was on top of the bed.
...
At this point Donny just wanted the tension to go away but he wouldn''t abandon the guard if he really thought this was a good idea by walking out of the room with Hampton. That left him stuck here in this terrible silence as they all tried to read each other''s faces. After a few seconds of this stand off the guard finally spoke up. "Just let us get a brief look."
This was obviously thest thing that would be said if Hampton said no and it seemed the older man knew this because it took him a long time to react.
Sadly the response they got was what seemed to be the beginning of an attack as Hamptons hands started to glow a light blue. With the fight started Donny instantly threw his shield in front of him and rushed towards the younger mage.
...
Lake wasn''t particrly surprised when Donny ran at him even after he had tried to make it clear he would be on their side if a fight broke out but he saw a real problem with letting this continue now that they knew how unstable the mana in the air was. Dodging the shield charge from Donny Lake said. "Hampton, you really shouldn''t use your magic here."
It was obvious Hampton was about to use the same type of magic that he had used to disperse the phantoms which was most likely going to cause another quake. He didn''t know why this was happening but he would put his money on some of the mana in the air was what was causing the phantoms in the first ce since there was such a violent reaction to the magic Hampton used on the phantoms.
"You''re right. I''ll just use Water." After he said this, Lake watched as the blueing from Hamptons hands turned darker until it looked like the same color as the ocean. He had been hoping to stop the fight with his words but truly he was fine with the fight as long as he survived it.
Chapter 363: Stashed Away Pt.4
Chapter 363: Stashed Away Pt.4
With Hampton now using normal water magic, Lake turned his full attention to the fight he was currently in. He had fought Donny before so he knew the man could be dangerous and even if that had been a long time ago there was still a real chance he could get hit by the weird glowing shield that the man was using.
Lake still remembered the feeling of having his shoulder almost severed by the original shield this formation was probably based around and while the feeling of fighting the same guy again after all this time was a bit nostalgic he didn''t want to die because he was overly careless. He also was holding back quite a bit so at the speed he was moving the shield was more than fast enough to hit him.
...
Donny couldn''t help but wonder why the guy he was fighting hadn''t tried to attack a single time yet and had instead spent the whole time dodging. It was like he wasn''t taking it seriously enough to actually try and kill anyone. This was vastly different whenpared to the battle that was taking ce between Hampton and the other two.
The adventurer who had teamed up with the guard had already closed in on Hampton and was shing at the older man constantly while the guard was holding back dealing with the spells Hampton was sending towards the two of them. "Who do you think is going to win?"
...
Lake couldn''t help but ask this to Donny to get the man to pay attention to their fight again. He knew the fact he hadn''t attacked yet had probably made the other man think it was safe to look away but it really wasn''t a good idea even if what was going on on the other side of the room was definitely more interesting.
Seeing his question wasn''t going to be answered even now that he had Donny''s attention, Lake figured it was time to try to tell the other man he wasn''t with Hampton and their fight was pointless even if there was no chance Donny would believe him. "I hope the old man will lose. I''m tired of how selfish he''s being here."
Lake knew his words were too obvious to be really convincing but he hoped the fact he wasn''t attacking would add some believability to them. "Are you not with him? I thought you were a friend of his." Hearing Donny ask this question Lake did his best not to smile as he answered.
...
"No, I was ckmailed into this. I''ll be happy to see the old man dead." Donny knew it would be foolish to just believe the young mage but their words felt sincere. Of course this could just be the effect of his low Charisma on his ability to detect lies from those with a higher stat.
"I''ll believe you if you attack Hampton." Donny didn''t like saying these words because Hampton didn''t deserve to die here but there was a good chance they wouldn''t be able to kill the older man even if they all worked together so he didn''t worry about it too much.
Of course the older man escaping after they had turned on him was a disaster for their reputation but if they were able to take the things that were here it would be worth being seen as a bandit by the people of the Earth Domain because they would be heroic in the eyes of their own people back in the Metal Domain.
"Alright but don''t try to kill me as I turn away because I''ll get serious in our fight after I dodge." After the young mage said this he turned away and dashed towards Hampton with his hand out like a spear. It was an odd attack method but he knew there was a small number of people that used unarmed attacks opposed to weapons while in closebat.
...
Lake knew he could probably kill the older man now that he had seen him fight but it really wasn''t time for that just yet so taking a limb off would probably calm everyone down long enough for him to take control of the situation. "Swish." Since he hadn''t activated Mute like he normally would when fighting there was a loud whistling noise when he swiped towards Hamptons outstretched arm.
The noise didn''t matter though because Hampton didn''t seem to be capable of reacting to an attack as fast as this one and his arm was sent flying away beforending onto the ground. "Ah." The small scream Hampton gave out after he lost his arm was enough to bring everyone here to a sudden stop.
This was what he had hoped for so he started to talk not wanting to give anyone the time to do anything. "Alright. Let''s go up there to see what it is he was trying to hide from us." Lake knew there was a chance Hampton would try something to get away after he said this so he kept his eye on the older man while the others epted he was not only in charge but about to let them go see what they had been fighting for.
Of course after they got a look they really did have to go and let Hampton deal with the formation that was causing the quakes before anymore happened but once that was done he was free to kill Hampton and anyone else that got in his way before taking everything that was here.
...
Donny was really surprised when the man he had been trying to fight had been able to end everything with just one move. It wasn''t just him either, everyone was just silently looking at where Hamptons arm had been just a few moments ago. Hampton was the first to snap out of it and asked. "Why''d you agree toe here if you were able to do this to me all along?"
Hearing Hamptons words Donny guessed the story that the man had been ckmailed intoing here was true. "You didn''t seem aggressive and I was a bit scared you could beat me in a fight. Oh, and the money made it seem this was a better choice than fighting you to the death in the forest. Come on, let''s get moving."
It was funny to hear the younger guy use the same phrase Hampton had been using on them just a few minutes ago but it really struck home the fact a new person was now in charge of their group. "Would you be fine with me reattaching my arm first?"
...
Lake hadn''t expected this question because he had just assumed most people would regrow an arm using magic or a special potion but hearing Hampton could just put it back on he wanted to see how it was done for the future. "Are you going to do anything that will help you run or kill me while I let you?"
Even if he wanted to see it he still had to be safe so he wanted Hampton to answer this to see if he was lying or trying to trick him in some way. "No I''m not going to risk my life anymore than I already have just to keep what''s up there secret." Lake didn''t detect a lie in this statement so he nodded and said. "Go ahead and put your arm back on."
...
Donny couldn''t believe the man let Hampton pull out a potion under the pretenses of healing his arm when there was a good chance he would just use it as a weapon against them but he had to assume the man had a reason to just let this happen so he stayed silent and watched while slowly taking steps back away from the pair.
He was able to get twenty or so feet away before Hampton pulled the top off of the potion and Donny readied himself to dodge whatever foul poison or gas came spilling from within the bottle but had to blink a few times when Hampton just started to pour it onto the stump. After a few seconds of waiting he then bent down and grabbed the arm off the floor and put it back on.
After holding it there for a while Hampton let go of it and tested it out by moving it around. "Was that just a normal potion or was there something special about it?" Hearing the question for the younger man Donny was also interested since regaining lost limbs was usually time consuming and expensive.
"Normal, just extremely high quality. The only way to get one that''s able to be used like that is to make a deal with the Alchemist guild or be a high ranking member." Hearing Hamptons answer Donny guessed he was just going to have to deal with not having ess to such a good potion.
...
Lake guessed that meant he was already using the potions that he could use to reattach an arm if he needed to. This was interesting but they had already spent too much time on this so he said. "Let''s go up onto the bed now. I want to get this over with before another quake happens."
Chapter 364: Stashed Away Pt.5
Chapter 364: Stashed Away Pt.5
Lake let the others go up first because he was still a bit worried about being struck in the back by them even with the advantage his skill The Sight gave him in reacting to such attacks. Once they were about half way up using their various means of moving upwards Lake himself jumped up andnded on the edge of the bed.
Right after this he vaguely felt the others reach the top of the bed as well but he didn''t even give them a nce too absorbed in trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was obviously a massive formation and at its center a normal sized body glowing a bright purple but the size of the formation was like nothing he had ever seen. It was so big that it covered most of the giant bed making it about five times wider than the next biggest formation he had seen.
Actually that wasn''t true if you took into ount the flesh formation from the Metal Domain but this was definitely the biggest that was made from just weaved mana. "What is this?" Lake didn''t know who asked this because they were done talking before he identified the voice but it didn''t matter so he just looked towards Hampton to see if the older man had an answer that he was going to share.
When the older man saw him looking it seemed he took it as a threat and instantly started to talk. "There''s no way to know but if we take into ount the time at which the Demigod went missing and the door was sealed I can make a pretty good guess that were looking at a revival formation the Demon Lord nned to use to revive himself if he had been killed during thest battle he fought against the Holy Goddess and God of Light."
Hearing Hamptons words, Lake used the knowledge he had about this battle to make sure Hampton was talking about the fight in which Akal had assassinated the Holy Goddess. "Do you mean the battle that the Goddess perished during?" Getting a nod, Lake went ahead and asked the next question he had. "Do you think the body at the center is that of the Demigod that used to live here or a different one ced here for safe keeping?"
He could probably use Detector to find this out himself but he wanted to hear what Hampton had to say since the older man would give him more information he could use even if his answer was wrong. "Most likely it is Maran but there''s no way for us to get close enough to make sure."
Getting a name he assumed was the name of the missing Demigod Lake quickly entered it into Detector to see if Hampton was right. When he saw the body in the center didn''t start to glow he was about to ept this as fact but the Insider made a small rumble in his chest before showing him a brief vision.
Once it was over Lake knew he as a mortal wouldn''t be able to use his skills on a divinity and ept the results with confidence and this was true even if the divine being in question was dead. This didn''t mean his skill hadn''t worked correctly though just that there was a good chance it hadn''t.
...
Seeing the young man that was now leading them go back to just staring at the formation in front of them Donny took the opportunity to ask a question of his own. "Why were you trying to hide this? Every god even vaguely involved with the Demon Lord would have rewarded you with something even more valuable than a single Divine core if you had brought them the information on this."
Donny had understood why Hampton had wanted them to have to guess on what had been up here when he thought it was only enough for one person but now that he saw the formation that surrounded the body he knew there was no way Hampton would be able to get at the core that was in the body of the dead Demigod.
This meant the fact Hampton had been trying to hide was very suspicious to him and it seemed the man didn''t want to answer this so it looked like he had pointed out something the older man didn''t want revealed. He didn''t have to worry about being the one to force the man to answer though with their new leader turning with a menacing look at the silent older man.
...
Lake hadn''t really thought much of Donny''s question at first because he felt the answer was very obvious; greed had driven Hampton to do everything he had done up until now but with the older man not saying anything it made him want to hear it from the man himself to make sure he was right.
"I didn''t think I would get a chance to study the formation before it was destroyed if I let news of it out of here. Even if it was against the wishes of the God of Earth there''s no way the God of Light wouldn''t send someone to wipe this revival formation off the face of the within a few hours after it was revealed."
...
Hearing Hampton had wanted to keep it a secret so he would have the chance to study it, Donny felt a bit bad because a find like this was probably a lifetime achievement for the older man which he would have put to good use for the people of the Earth Domain.
Now that they all knew about it none of this would happen as word would spread which would keep revival magic a secret only the gods knew anything about. Right as he was thinking that he wished Hampton had just tried to convince them in a more peaceful manner that didn''t make them think he was hiding something they could use, the ground shook again.
...
Feeling the size of the quake that had just shook the ground for around a full ten seconds, Lake knew it was time for them to go and turned towards the others and said. "Well if this is all that''s up here we should get back to the others." After he said this he jumped down from the giant bed and waited for the others to join him.
"So do any of you know why the bed''s so big if he was sleeping in it at a normal size?" This was the first time the guard had spoken since the battle but his question was something Lake was sure they had all been thinking since seeing what the size of the guy inside the formation had been but there was no way they could answer it so no one spoke up for almost a full minute after they had been walking back to the entrance.
"Maybe he didn''t always sleep the same but needed the giant bed just in case he wanted to sleep while in his divine form." Lake nodded to this answer because it was probably just as good as the real one in all reality even if it wasn''t right.
...
Once they made it back to the main room Donny couldn''t help but look over to the table that had the looking stone on it. It was right next to the door and he felt even if they weren''t going to be allowed to take anything he could grab it while the others watched Hampton dispel his formation that was causing the quakes.
It was a risk though he didn''t think the guy that was currently telling them what to do would kill him if he was caught since the man didn''t seem to kill people having already spared him and Hampton. It would make him look even worse in the eyes of Hampton though but he was already ready for the repercussions of what they had done here.
...
As they passed all the easy to take items on the way back to the formation Lake wondered if they were really as safe as they seemed. If the Demon Worshipers had been here years ago it would make sense that they would take whatever they could on the way out. He guessed there was a chance they had been in too much of a hurry and hadn''t bothered but he felt it was much more likely that they hadn''t wanted to risk touching anything just in case.
Turning to Hampton Lake said. "We won''t be touching anything just in case there''s some type of trap or something guarding the stuff." Hampton seemed happy with this so Lake said thest thing he wanted to settle before they walked out of here and tried to escape the copsed tunnel. "Also let''s keep the fight to ourselves. No reason to try and settle anything until we escape since we might need everyone to get out."
Seeing everyone start to nod their heads, Lake pointed towards the formation and said. "Get rid of it and let''s get out of here." This hadn''t taken too much time but by the time they got out of underground he wouldn''t be surprised if a few more hours passed and every moment increased the odds his treasure wouldn''t still be there once he got around to summoning it.
Chapter 365: The Deal Pt.1
Chapter 365: The Deal Pt.1
As soon as Hampton got rid of the formation the five of them walked out of the door and Lake saw the ones they had left behind still there waiting. Lake had thought there was a good chance they had died in one of the quakes that had taken ce while they were inside but this hadn''t happened.
"So what did you find?" It seemed the mayor had already waited too long and wanted answers right away. "Nothing that''s useful to us." Hampton had gone back to acting the way he had been before he had his arm cut off so no one was able to tell the five of them had been trying to kill one another around ten minutes ago.
"Well did you at least find the source of the phantoms while inside?" This was a good question for Hampton to answer because they had all guessed they were being formed from one of the types of mana that had been trapped inside theb but there was no way to know for sure unless you were like him and had a skill like detector that could answer most of your questions.
Lake had no ns on sharing any information he had on this matter even if he had bothered to check because it wasn''t what he had been hired for. Maybe if he was offered more money he would be willing to use his abilities a bit more before he left but right now he just wanted to get out of here so he could go back to what he was doing before Hampton had caught him.
"There''s a good chance they''re just a byproduct of the environment inside. Like how normal undead can be born in an environment filled with Unholy mana." Lake hadn''t thought about this but Hampton waspletely correct about it being simr to how undead were made. This was just more evidence that the Demon Lord was in some way connected to this even though that wasn''t really in question.
...
Feeling the slight weight from the stone in his pocket Donny couldn''t believe no one had noticed what he had done or the fact that he had taken the risk to begin with. When the young man who had taken charge of the group had said it was too dangerous to try and take anything he had been more than right but for some reason he had still grabbed the looking stone as soon as no one had been paying attention to him.
"So it''s a problem that can be solved easily as long as we negate the principles within the problem element. It''s not a real element that will be replenished so the only reason it''s in there is that it was trapped right?"
"That is true but we''ll need to do it slowly because it seems the amount of mana inside the Demigods residence is enough that anything that will start changing the bnce could lead to another disaster like the quakes that were just caused by my magic."
"It doesn''t matter. The Earth Domain will be happy to solve the problem of the phantoms even if it means we have to abandon what''s left of the city afterwards because the only reason people still live here is so they can kill the phantoms before they move into other areas of the Earth Domain."
...
Lake could tell Hampton and the mayor would sit here and talk for a long time if he just left them too it so he got close to Hampton and whispered. "I''m in a hurry." Like he had hoped this caused Hampton to hold up a hand to the mayor to stop him from saying anything else. "We should do thister while we''re alone. Let''s make getting ourselves to the surface our top priority for now."
The mayor didn''t seem to notice Hampton was only saying this to appease him but even if the man had Lake wouldn''t have really cared. He had no ns to let Hampton live much longer after they reached the surface since the old man wouldn''t be the ones taking care of the situation inside theb.
He already had everything marked so in a few months after whoever reced Hampton had dealt with this problem he would use the marks he had ced on the items to track them down. That was about the amount of time he was sure he would be feeling like he needed to get away again and he would use needing to find these items as an excuse to take another vacation.
"Alright the three of us are the only ones who will be doing anything while we escape so the rest of you just be on the lookout. The phantoms are still in the earth around us so we need to be careful." After Hampton said this he exined his n that used the guards Earth magic and his Ghost Touch skill to get them out of here.
It was a very simple n that took advantage of the fact there might be arge amount of loose earth that would fall on them the second he used Ghost Touch on the ceiling above them so that the guard could use Earth magic in a ce that they knew no phantoms would be. Of course if nothing actually fell they would have to try something else but Lake had a good feeling he could make sure this n that would get them out super fast would work.
Because of the fact he could control what was affected by Ghost Touch he could just keep increasing the area until stuff started to fall towards them. "Alright I''m going to start now." After he said this Lake cast Fly and ascended towards the ceiling. cing his hand above him he turned it ethereal.
...
Seeing the amount of earth that came towards them after the ceiling was affected by the guy''s skill finally snapped him out of thinking about the thing in his pocket. "Oh, is that too much?" The question that was asked was quickly answered by the guard when he used magic to start forming the loose earth into small bricks that he started to ce near their feet. "I guess not."
"At this speed we''ll be out of here in less than an hour." Donny didn''t feel this estimate was right but decided it wasn''t worth correcting anyone about how long this would take because he could tell everyone was ready to get out of here.
He also needed to start working on spreading the word of what had happened while they were inside to the rest of his group so they would be ready for whatever happened once they reached the surface and this meant that he didn''t have time to try and urately formte how long it would take for them to reach the surface.
Getting close to Fendis since he was the furthest from the mayor Donny whispered. "There was a falling out while we were inside the Demigods home so while it isn''t curtain expect a fight when we get to the surface." Donny wanted to go into more detail about who would be on whose side but he didn''t know this and he had eight more people to tell before they reached the surface.
Like this he passed the next twenty minutes slowly telling each person in their group to be ready while avoiding the mayor, adventurer, and Hampton. Sadly they still had another hour after he was done before they heard the guy that was making the ceiling intangible say. "I think we''re to the surface."
...
Lake could tell that they had made their way up to the surface by the feeling he got when he had tried to use Ghost Touch and felt open air just a few feet above him. "Do you want to send someone through to check?" After thinking about this question Lake nodded and said. "Hampton you should go just in case I''m wrong and we''ve hit a subterranean structure that''s filled with phantoms."
Since Hampton was still the most effective against the phantoms his proposal made perfect sense but he could tell Hampton thought something was up by the way the old man was looking at him. Hampton didn''t have a choice though so he quickly flew up and went through the part of the ceiling that was affected by Ghost Touch.
Lake didn''t think it would take long for Hampton toe back with an answer since it was only a few feet from the surface so when a minute passed without any sign of him he had to start wondering if something had happened to either Hampton or to the town and it was bad enough Hampton hadn''t had time toe back and tell them what was up.
Activating Mana Vision Lake looked through the few feet of dirt in front of him and saw someone who looked like Hampton just sitting still a few feet away from the area he passed through. This was obviously weird and Lake looked around a bit more to see if he could see anyone or anything else around to see if it was safe toe out.
He eventually saw a few other people close by that were moving and called down to the others. "Alright it''s safe to go through. Even if he was wrong he nned to be thest one to go up so he would have plenty of warning as long as he watched them.
Chapter 366: The Deal Pt.2
Chapter 366: The Deal Pt.2
As he watched each person pass through to the surface he saw each and every one of them stop and look towards the horizon like Hampton had. They were moving through so he didn''t think anything bad was happening to them, just that something must be happening that they were all watching.
Not wanting to miss out on what was going on, Lake quickly passed through and found the sky lit up with around one hundred different colors. It was happening very far away but it was obvious something big was happening. He had his own things going on so he didn''t have time to just stop and stare.
"Hampton, can you pay me so I can leave?" He didn''t want to kill Hampton before he got paid or in front of the others so leading him away was necessary and this was the best way to do it. "Ok, how much did I offer you again?" Lake decided to answer honestly even though he could have maybe lied and gotten a bit more.
"You said fifty thousand." Hampton seemed a bit surprised by this answer and it made Lake wonder if it was because the man didn''t actually have that much but before he could ask he was cut off by the adventurer. "Are you serious? That''s so much more than I''m getting paid." Lake ignored the man''s cry and waved his hand to get Hampton to follow behind him towards the keep.
...
Donny eventually snapped out of looking at the sky and nudged the guard who was still staring. "We should get the food and go before Hampton has a chance to talk to the mayor about what happened inside." Donny was afraid they wouldn''t get paid if their betrayal was revealed so with Hampton busy this was a good time to get what they needed and leave.
"Yes. We''ll be taking the food and leaving." The guard didn''t ask the mayor for help and just waved for their group toe with him. They had been promised half of the food in the town''s stores and they were more than capable of taking that amount with just the eleven of them.
"The damage isn''t as bad as I expected." Hearing Fendis say this Donny wasn''t sure what the man meant at first so he looked to see he was staring at the buildings around them. "I guess the quake wasn''t as strong up here." Stone buildings were quite tough so the fact most of them had survived with minimal damage wasn''t that big of a surprise.
"Alright grab half from each stack and set it out here on the ground." Donny was sure the guard would have used Earth Magic to do all of this if the phantoms weren''t in the ground right below them but since that was the case they had no choice but to do this the slow way.
Right after he and the others got to work moving boxes of food out onto the street, Fendis found him and brought up what they had seen earlier. "What do you think is happening?" Donny had already been thinking about it because you saw the sky every time you exited with a box so he had a guess ready. "Maybe the gods are finally doing something about what the Demon Lord did in the Metal Domain."
The gods had a lot of rules they had to follow so them taking this long didn''t really surprise him but at the same time he wished they had moved faster because the amount of people that had been killed in the Metal Domain was probably over half already. "You think they dered war or are just doing this as a show of force and no Demigods have actuallye down to fight yet."
This was an interesting question because the fact the lights were still in the sky could mean the gods were just ready toe down at any second which pointed towards some type of stand off or negotiations were currently happening between the two sides. "You''re probably right about them not starting the fight just yet."
...
"Here''s your money." Receiving therge bags from Hampton Lake looked again at the tiny wall vault they had been pulled from and asked. "Is the vault enchanted to be bigger on the inside?" He knew this wasn''t important but he thought it was interesting that he hadn''t noticed this quality the first time he was here so he just wanted to know if it was true or not.
"That''s right. Is it the reason you weren''t able to take what was in it when you were here before?" The true reason was he hadn''t wanted to spend too much time and had forgotten about Ghost Touch but he didn''t want to say that so he just nodded and said. "It might have worked if I tried but I could tell there was a good chance an rm would go off if I used my skill so I just left it."
After he said this both of them went silent for a while and Lake could tell Hampton was on guard, probably expecting the attack Lake nned to use before leaving with his gold. He didn''t think Hampton had the strength to block one of his attacks at full strength so it doesn''t really matter if he was ready for it but it did make this kind of awkward.
"Alright stop please." It seemed Hampton had had enough of waiting for his death and held both of his hands up in front of him as if to protect himself. "Let''s make a deal or something. I know a lot of people who could use you and I''ll get you in touch with them."
Lake liked the sound of this and guessed Hampton didn''t really need to die since all he had seen of him was his armor and never his face since he had changed it before taking off his helmet toe here. Because of this reason Lake had been about to ept the offer when he remembered the giant eye Hampton had shown him when they had first met.
The man himself had said it could see through most things which might have given the man the ability to get a glimpse of his face before he had changed it. Lake didn''t know how he could ask about this without giving away the fact this was a false face so he decided to try and use Detector to see if Hampton had ever seen who he really was.
After he had it set and Hampton didn''t start to glow, Lake made up his mind and said. "That sounds good but I''ll be gone for a while. Just have the jobs ready for when Ie back." After he said this Lake turned to leave the room when Hampton stopped him again. "How much should I ask for them to hire you?"
"Don''t, just tell them I''ll discuss it with them based on the job when we meet." After he said this Lake jumped out of the window and was about to cast Fly when Hampton yelled. "Don''t try to go over the wall there''s a formation to kill off the phantoms and it sometimes goes off on people using magic to fly even though it''s not supposed to."
Hearing this, Lake just let himself fall to the ground before slowly walking to the gate. Passing through it he thought back to when they had first arrived and he had wondered why Hampton had chosen to go through the gate when he had seen the older man go very fast and jumprge distances.
There being a small chance of getting hit by a formation not only made that make more sense but Hampton telling him increased the odds their little deal would bear fruit. If the older man had instead just let him fly over and take the chance it meant he really didn''t care if he was killed.
...
"Alright Everyone get ready. I''m about to lift us up and away from the city." He and Fendis had been asked to lift the food out of town where the guard would take over and get them back to the Metal Domain because the earth tform the man used to get around was much faster than his formation.
After he lifted off they were quickly able to get out of town and were about tond when they heard someone talk to them from above. "Where are you guys headed?" Hearing a voice from the sky they all looked up to see the guy from earlier. Donny couldn''t help himself and just assumed they were about to be wiped out because he couldn''t think of any other reason this guy woulde back to find them.
This didn''t end up being the case though because soon after none of them said anything to his question he just started talking again. "Your name is Donny right?" Donny tried to think back to see if there was a way this guy knew his name but didn''t have to think for long because he was told the answer. "I''m one of the people your brother tried to hire to steal the shield."
...
Lake didn''t know why but he felt talking to this guy again would be worth it in the long run money wise because this guy was definitely strong enough to have money so when he saw them while flying out of town he had toe over to make another deal. "Oh, well yes it''s me." Seeing the guy''s face turn sad after he said this, Lake decided to just say what he wanted and leave.
"I didn''t take the job back then because I don''t consider myself a criminal but if you''re looking to get the shield back I can look into it for you. You''ll need to pay me for the work and it could be a lot. Does that sound alright?"
...
Donny couldn''t help but think this was a strange turn of events but there was no way he would ever say no. "Ok." Donny was about to ask some questions about how the man would find him once he had the shield but the guy nodded and flew away before he got the chance.
This left Donny questioning where he would get the money because he had been broke for a long time but that all ended when he remembered the thing he had taken on the way out of theb. With a Looking stone to work with he would have to be aplete idiot to not make any money.
Chapter 367: The Deal Pt.3
Chapter 367: The Deal Pt.3
Lake didn''t get very far from town before he summoned the treasure he had hidden in the forest. After the first appeared the worry he had been feeling while he had been here quickly disappeared when he saw the barrier and items inside still intact which meant no one had been able to find it in the hours it had been hidden.
He guessed they had all assumed because of the speed he had been moving that there was no way the chunks of building would have been hidden so close to town and missed it but there was also the possibility he had just done a good job in picking the spot. Either way now that he knew they were still fine he could worry about finding a good ce to sell everything.
He knew it would probably be for the best if he did it before going back to the Holy Domain because thest he had heard the Thieves guild there had vacated the Domain because of the war but he didn''t know if any towns between here and there would have a big enough guild office or enough gold to be able to handle the amount of stuff he had to sell.
Figuring using the magicpass was his best option, Lake set it to look for an arrow that was pointing at the closest Thieves Guild branch that could afford to buy his loot. Once he had his answer he was about to start running when he realized it was probably pointing at the city he had stolen it all from to begin with and redid the setting to exclude Keldon.
After he did that the arrow changed where it was pointing so he knew he had been right to fix this problem before he ran to a town he didn''t want to go back to just yet. Setting out in the new direction Lake started to wonder where he would end up while hoping it didn''t add too much time to how long it would take him to get back to the Temple.
...
Donny had already known the lights they had been seeing in the sky were above the Metal Domain but now that they were spending in the direction of them he started to wonder what it was they were going to find when they arrived. There was a real chance that by the time they finally got back the people they were trying to feed would either be gone or had already found another food source.
There was really nothing they could do about this he guessed but the thought the fortress could be gone or the entire situation could have changed when they arrived was a bit nerve racking. It was entirely possible it could be for the better though so he really didn''t think he should use the time they had until they got back worrying.
"Would it be possible for you to make a small area for us to try and sleep in? Like a small walled area?" After he asked the guard this the side of the tform changed to look a bit like a house. "Go ahead and try. I don''t see how someone could sleep while we''re moving like this though."
The guard was talking about the ups and downs that were constantly taking ce as they moved over mountains and hills but Donny felt some of them were probably tired enough to sleep, especially since it had been a long active night for most of them. It was up to them to decide if they wanted to try though because he wasn''t going to tell anyone what to do.
Climbing into one of the bunk-like stones that were inside the small building Donny closed his eyes after he made sure he wouldn''t fall if they turned or something. Like he expected it didn''t take long for him to drift off to sleep but sadly he didn''t get to stay like that for long because soon someone was shaking him awake.
"Come on get up, I''m missing it to get you out of bed." Donny recognized Fendis'' voice and could tell by his level of excitement he really had to get up to see what it was he was making them miss. Rolling over onto his feet He quickly followed Fendis out of the small room while looking around to see what everyone was watching.
If he had taken even a second before walking out here to think about what it was he could have probably guessed what the situation was beforehand but that still wouldn''t have readied him for what he was seeing. "How long has it been like that?"
A huge arm was sticking out of the sky in front of them and the hand was quickly making its way towards the ground. "Just a few seconds." After he heard this answer Donny started to look for clues to try and guess which god this arm belonged to. The clout the hole had formed in was the biggest clue being a dark gray making it look like a normal storm cloud.
"It has to be the God of Metal." Right when he reached this conclusion someone said what he had been about to out loud and it seemed everyone agreed because no one said anything else for a few minutes until Fendis finally broke the silence. "What''s he doinging to the mortal realm like that? Wouldn''t it make more sense for him to descend fully at a normal size."
Donny understood why Fendis would be confused because most people hadn''t read every ounce of information that they could find about gods when they were younger. "The gods have rules and one of them is that they aren''t allowed to descend unless it''s entirely necessary to save the world. They''re allowed to retrieve things that don''t belong down here with us like that though so he''s probably trying to grab something that doesn''t belong in the mortal world."
What that something was he couldn''t tell them but just knowing this much was already pretty impressive. "So is this a good thing?" There was no way to know the answer to that question because if there was something in the Metal Domain that the God of Metal felt he needed to get himself there was a good chance it was dangerous.
The only real way this could be good news was if the Demon Worshipers were about to lose something. Before Donny was able to say any of what he was thinking the guard spoke up. "It shows the God of Metal hasn''t been forced into a corner."
This was a good way to look at it if you wanted to see it as good news so Donny was happy that the guard shared his perspective about this with the rest of them. All of them had been wondering why there hadn''t been any help from above this entire time and now that it was finally here their chances of winning had just gone up by a lot.
...
As Lake was running he felt something from the Insider and stopped to see if it had something to say. Getting the sense it was telling him to turn around, Lake remembered the sky from earlier and realized he hadn''t looked once since beginning his journey to find a ce to sell his loot.
He was currently in the middle of some trees so he had to move up into the sky a bit to get a good look. After he got into the sky he didn''t even understand what he was looking at. It looked like there was something like a piring from the sky. It didn''t take long for him to guess it had to be something one of the gods was doing but he would have to get a lot closer to know for sure.
He didn''t really have time for that but he did n to take a look every hour or so from now on to see what happened. He was about to get back to running when the Insider made him stop again. Guessing it wanted him to keep watching, Lake stayed in ce and kept his eye on the pir until he saw it move.
Seeing how it had bent Lake was able to figure out he was actually looking at an arm and couldn''t believe the size. He had known the gods were much bigger than them but to be able to see an arm from this far away meant they were absolutely massive.
...
After a while they all watched the arm slowly start to rise back into the sky and disappear back into the cloud which quickly closed. The cloud didn''t disappear though and just kept swirling in the sky next to all the others. "Do you think it''s over?"
Donny did for about a second and had been about to answer Fendis'' question but never got the chance because a new and obviously ominous cloud started to swirl right next to the gray one that belonged to the God of Metal. "That''s the Demon Lord, right?" The rust colored cloud was well known to a lot of people so Donny wasn''t surprised when someone who had probably never seen it was able to identify it right away.
Chapter 368: The Deal Pt.4
Chapter 368: The Deal Pt.4
After the arm disappeared back into the sky, Lake was about to get back to trying to find a ce to sell his loot but before he could he saw a cloud in a color he recognized. It was very obvious it belonged to the Demon Lord and this made him grateful that he wasn''t anywhere near the Metal or Holy Domain at the moment.
He did want to know what was going on though but that would have to wait till he got back. Finally getting the Insider to level one would help him in whatever situation he would be going back to so it made a lot of sense to continue with what he was doing currently.
He did need to at least watch what was happening right now because it would be a good clue to use to try and guess what was going on before he returned. After a while Lake saw the cloud disappear with nothing having happened and guessed whatever hade through had been too small for him to see.
That made him think it was probably just a normal sized person or Demigod. Soon after the Demon Lords cloud hadpletely disappeared the other lights started to go too before none were left. "That means it''s over right?"
He didn''t expect an answer toe from the Insider when he asked this because it never said anything unless it was important so he just went ahead and turned around to leave knowing it would stop him if it wanted him to continue watching the skyline.
...
"It looks like it''s over so I''m going to go back to sleep." While Donny said this he didn''t think there was actually a good chance he would be able to sleep after seeing something like that; not when there was so much to think about. He just wanted to be somewhere that Fendis couldn''t ask him questions constantly.
He considered Fendis a friend because of how long they had been together at this point but the man could be kind of disruptive if you were really trying to think about something. Getting back onto the rock he had been sleeping on Donny could hear the others outside discussing what had just happened but tuned it out to focus on his own thoughts.
The first thing he did was rey the only part none of them had really understood which was the part at the end where the Demon Lord opened his cloud for a few seconds before disappearing with seemingly nothing happening. It wasn''t hard for them to guess that something had happened but they had just been too far to see if but the amount of time it stayed open did give another hint.
He could be wrong but it only being open for a few seconds could mean something had onlye through or entered the cloud not both. If that was true he could probably make up a story based on that that was pretty close to what actually happened.
...
Lake had kind of already stopped thinking about what had happened because trying to figure out how the Insider had known for him to turn around. He guessed it made sense that the Insider could be doing things like using his skills at all times to gather information about what was going on around him but he didn''t have a skill that could have told him about the arm he didn''t think.
The only skill he could think of that could have been used to do something like that was Detector but that was only in its magicpass form since the arm had been so far away and the Insider would have had to set it to the right thing just by chance. This kind of made him think there was something else going on with the insider like it had the ability to look all around him or it had received information from something.
Obviously he would much prefer if the Insider wasn''t in contact with someone without him knowing but if that was true nothing bad had happened because of it so far so it was probably fine. There was also just a chance it had thought he hadn''t looked back in a long time and the arm had just happened toe out of the cloud in the time it had made him look but he didn''t like thinking it was just a coincidence.
The timing had been almost perfect because he didn''t think the arm had been out for very long before it had made him stop and turn around. It was even possible that the only reason he had missed the beginning of the arms'' emergence was because it had taken him a few seconds to get somewhere that he was able to see the sky.
...
Donny had been able to put together a loose idea at what might have happened in thest few minutes. It was very loose though and he still hadn''t been able to figure out why it had seemed so peaceful. When they all saw the God of Metal''s arm they had all assumed it was him fighting back against the Demon Lord but now he was pretty sure they had been wrong.
It was much more likely that they had just seen the beginnings of a truce or deal between the two sides. Donny didn''t like the thought of being forced into a peace before they got a chance at revenge but he could understand the God of Metals choice if he was right because it would save whatever was left of the people that lived in his Domain.
...
After Lake had been thinking about the Insider and what it might be doing behind his back for almost a half hour He had toe to a stop again because it showed him an image of a pile of gold. He guessed this was the Insider trying to change his train of thought but it did give him a hint at what it wanted him to do with the gold once he finally had it.
He had wondered for a while now if owning one million gold would be enough for the mission toplete or if he needed to have it all in one ce for it to work but now it seemed the Insider thought it was time to tell him. This was a good time since it seemed he was extremely close to getting the gold all at once from a single transaction.
This fact really made light of everything he had done till now and made him feel like he could have made the gold weeks ago if he just made himself focus on nothing else. He had let himself get caught up in too many things but hopefully he would remember this from now on whenever he was asked to do something.
...
After he hit a dead end on trying to guess what had just happened Donny had switched over to ideas to make money. The man from earlier had said he would go looking for his shield which probably meant he would be heading to the Metal Domain like they were since the shield should be with his brother.
This made Donny think he didn''t have that much time before the man woulde looking for him afterpleting the job and he didn''t think the gold he would be getting from helping the Metal Domain during the crisis would be enough to cover whatever amount the man asked for.
It was too bad he couldn''t try and use this time he had while they were on their way back to try to figure out how to use the looking stone since it was probably going to be his best bet at getting the money he needed. "Hey are you actually sleeping?" Donny wasn''t surprised to hear Fendis'' voice because quite a bit of time had passed since he hade in here to think. "No."
"Good. I wanted to get your opinion on what the consensus is on what we just watched." Donny had vaguely heard everything they had said but he hadn''t been actually listening so he just let Fendis start to tell him what they all thought had just happened. "We think the God of Metal might have handed something over to the Demon Lord like a trade."
Donny had considered a simr thing but had decided it wasn''t what had happened because the God of Metal wasn''t allowed to do that by thews of the world unless he was trying to protect people from something that could cause real harm to the entire world. He guessed there was a chance he had been given permission to do it by the other gods though which had been the reason the other gods and Demigods had been there to watch during the whole thing to make sure nothing that hadn''t been agreed to happened.
Chapter 369: The Deal Pt.5
Chapter 369: The Deal Pt.5
Seeing a town on the horizon, Lake had to say he wasn''t sure if it was the one his arrow was pointing at because it looked much too small to have a thieves guild with more than a million gold inside. He guessed there was a chance it was though so he went ahead and entered it through the gate in the tiny earthen wall that surrounded the town while switching Detector to look for the Thieves guild he hade all this way for.
With the small size of the town Lake was able to find the building that held the entrance to the Thieves Guild quickly and was inside showing the person behind the desk his badge within a few minutes of arriving. Once he had gone through the secret entrance Lake found a surprisingly big guild office with tons people doing business. Not wanting to spend more time here then he would have to he got into line to talk to someone about a ce he could use to open the barriers that held the items he would be selling to them.
After a short wait where he watched a few people trade in items for small amounts of gold Lake got to the desk and asked. "Do you have a room I could use to break into a vault I stole? I''ve been on the run so I haven''t had the time to get the items out yet." He could tell his request was odd but nothing they weren''t prepared for by the annoyed look on the clerks face but he was quickly shown to a room that was just big enough for him to work on one chunk at a time.
"Do you have anything bigger or could you possibly let me use a few rooms at once?" The clerk gave him an odd look probably thinking there was no reason they would need that much room to open something they couldn''t see him carrying but he still got permission and was given ess to more rooms that were in the same hall as his first one.
After the clerk walked away Lake wasted no time in summoning the first of three chunks to start the process of opening the barrier. Of course it didn''t take him long to find the problem with opening it with force while inside and started to use Detector to try and find a way that wouldn''t involve copsing the building he was currently in.
...
"Donny we''re just a few mountains away now." Feeling his eyes open Donny guessed he had actually ended up falling asleep after a while pretending to. Looking around he saw some of the others hade in and joined him as well. Fendis seemed to have never even tried though. "Has anything happened while I was asleep?"
"No, it''s beenpletely normal the entire time." Donny had assumed this would be the answer since there was no way they would have been allowed to sleep through anything that happened but he still felt a bit relieved when he was told this. "Alright, help me wake the others up. We need to be ready to respond to whatever the situation in the Metal Domain currently is."
After they got everyone awake Donny walked outside to see what the guard was doing. The man hadn''t slept in who knew how long and Donny was a bit worried but after seeing that his face still looked fine he stopped thinking about it and looked forward to see if he could get a glimpse of the fortress as they crested the mountain.
While this didn''t work out how he had hoped because the mountain the fortress was on was in the way of them seeing it he did unexpectedly get a brief look at a small part of the city and it looked like it was doing better than thest time he had seen it. This was based on a very tiny part of the city though so he would have to wait till they got to the top of the next mountain to know if this was correct or not.
It only took them about a second to go over each mountain so they didn''t have to wait long before he was able to confirm his thoughts. "They''re rebuilding the city! How can this be, we were only gone for around a day?"
Donny understood why this was the first thing any of them said but he had probably been the first one to look away from the city and notice that where the fortress had been when they left was now empty and he decided to bring it to everyone''s attention. "The fortress isn''t there any longer."
These two things made it very easy to realize the war they had left a day ago was settled in the time they were gone. "The Temple looks like it''s being rebuilt. We''ll be heading there now." The guard had paused their progress at the top of the mountain but after he said this he sped them towards the city only stopping once they reached the wall.
"I''ll be leaving the food here. Any of you that wish to stay here with it can but if anyonees asking for free food make sure it''s going to people that need it." Donny had no ns of stopping here but about half of their group did step off of the tform and stand with the boxes of food they had brought from Shallow.
Once they had split the people that had stayed with the guard continued into the city on a much smaller tform. Finally on the streets of the Metal Domain Donny was able to see the people who were working on the buildings were mostly people who lived here but was able to tell some of them were foreigners who had probably been sent by the other gods to help.
Arge portion of whom were from the Life Domain that were known for their foreign aid efforts. "There''s a lot less people than I was hoping for." Donny had been thinking the same thing because even if you added all the foreigners there was less than 25% of the people that had been on the streets when he had first arrived in the city at the beginning of this mess.
"A lot of people might be underground gathering resources to use in the rebuilding process." The guards'' words made everyone a bit more hopeful but it would be hard on them if this ended up not being trueter. "When we get to the temple there''s a chance you''ll be turned away so be ready for that."
...
After gathering information using Detector Lake now knew for sure that he couldn''t open this by force without damaging the building around him but he had another n that just needed time to open the barriers and he nned to go with that one.
Using Detector he had found that the barriers only had a few hours left till they ran out of the mana they used to operate. He didn''t really want to wait around for this to happen though so he summoned the other two chunks into their own rooms before calling the clerk back to show them what he had brought with him.
After the clerk got over the amount of stuff he had somehow moved into the rooms without them noticing that surprised him a bit by asking. "So you''re the one that robbed Keldon yesterday?" He just nodded after thinking about whether he should lie or not and say that there was a team that he was a part of that was responsible for the robbery because them thinking it was all him actually made it more likely that they would agree to his request.
"It will be a few hours before these barriers run out of mana, would you mind getting some of my gold ready while we''re waiting. around a million would be fine. It''s going to take a long time to transfer so much to me and this is a more efficient use of all our time." He could tell even though his request sounded rational the clerk seemed unsure.
"It''s ok if you need to ask someone. I have to wait anyway." The clerk seemed happy he didn''t get annoyed at them for not instantly epting his request and quickly went to ask whoever was in charge around here. Being left alone, Lake used Man Vision to watch the clerk who had just left to see where they would go and who they would ask.
...
"Alright you five just wait here I''lle talk to you or send someone to help you find where you need to go as quickly as possible." After the guard said this he left and walked into the Temple leaving the five of them alone. It didn''t take long for Fendis to say what they were all probably thinking. "We should have just stayed with the food."
Chapter 370: The Deal Pt.6
Chapter 370: The Deal Pt.6
As they were waiting on the steps for someone toe and tell them what to do Donny had been unable to keep his eyes from wandering at the surrounding city. If his brother had survived the attack there was a good chance they were only about an hour away from one another and it would be a lot less expensive to go and retrieve the shield himself.
He wasn''t keen on the idea of fighting his brother himself but it was probably better then whatever he would do to make enough money to pay the man who would bring it to him. Donny had heard the discussion between the man and Hampton; he would need to gather at least fifty thousand gold in order to feel that he had enough for at least a down payment on the amount the man would want.
Donny had never made even close to that amount in a single year so he knew he would be tempted to do something he normally wouldn''t. Donny had been through a lot back when he had still been living in the Holy Domain so he knew for a fact he couldn''t always control himself when there was something he really wanted.
Of course back then he had just wanted the voice in his head to go away before it talked him into something much worse than he had done to drown it out but it still showed he couldn''t call himself 100% trustworthy. He knew he wouldn''t kill his brother though so it was much better for him to go looking for him himself than let some hired thug do it.
Turning to Fendis Donny whispered. "I cant wait any longer. I''m going to go look for my family." This made it seem that he was going looking for his family just because he was worried which was kind of a lie but he did n to make sure they were alright while he was taking the shield back so he didn''t feel bad for misleading Fendis in any way.
"Alright, is there a way I can get in touch with you from now on?" Hearing Fendis wanted a way to find him on the off chance they weren''t able to find each other after they split up he quickly wrote a few ways for him to get in touch with him down on a piece of paper before turning to leave.
He didn''t get very far though before he stopped and tried to make it look like he hadn''t been about to walk away because it seemed the guard had found someone toe tell them what they should do from now on. "Which one of you is Donny?" Donny raised his hand to the question and was swiftly handed a piece of paper with orders written on it.
Reading through it he found that the Fighters guild was being rebuilt and the Metal domain was asking no one to leave before they were paid because it might take a while to get everything calcted. At the very end it also briefly mentioned an award for certain people and was signed by Rigbis so Donny knew this could be considered an actual order that he needed to follow.
"Alright all of you areing with me to help with rebuilding the guilds." After he said this Donny quickly led them towards where he had watched the old guilds evaporate just a few days prior to help in the reconstruction. "Does it say what happened to end the war?" The note had glossed over this fact so he just shook his head no while they walked.
...
Lake had eventually stopped watching the clerk who was having a conversation with someone all the way on the other side of the building and just stared ahead while thinking about what he might get once he had the money. He had found that it seemed skills could do about anything so it was hard to guess something like this so he instead tried to think about the problems he had that could be solved with a new skill.
The first and most obvious problem was one he had been dealing with for a while; not being able to use his full speed because his perception wasn''t high enough. This was already slowly being dealt with everything he earned points from a job but a skill like The Sight that he could control better would be nice.
The next problem he could think of was the fact his gear was always getting destroyed because it wasn''t even close to what he would need for his level of strength but he didn''t think the Insider would be giving him a skill he could wear so he didn''t see this one being solved anytime soon.
Thest obvious problem he had was how he was constantly having to go from one ce to the next to get anything done. It wasn''t too big of a deal because of the speed he could move but he would still like something that would let him just teleport or something but up till this point the only people he had seen even mention teleportation were those inside the Alchemist guild and even they couldn''t afford to do it all the time but it told him it was possible so he could hope for something like this as his reward.
None of these things really felt like something that would help him fill the role that the Insider was supposed to fulfill though so he guessed it would probably be something that helped him steal while blending in. He just hoped it was something he actually needed because he already felt like he was more than capable in these areas already.
"Sir, our master would like to talk to you in person." Hearing this Lake had been about to walk out without even thinking about it but then remembered all his treasure was sitting here. "Do you guys steal from members or is it against the rules of the guild?" Lake knew thieves would steal from one another but he wanted to know if he could trust the guild while he was a customer selling loot.
"No, your stuff will be here for you when you get back." Lake could tell the man wasn''t lying so he followed him even though he knew there was a chance the guy only thought this was the truth. After a while he had been led down a few back hallways before being brought before a fancy looking door. "Go right in. She''s waiting for you."
After he was told this by the clerk Lake didn''t knock like he normally would have and just walked straight into the room in front of him. Like he expected because of his spying there was a single person in the room silently sitting behind a desk.
She was probably only a few years older than he was and didn''t look like someone who would work for the Thieves guild but she was here and clearly in control so he greeted her. "Hello." Lake had no reason to start the conversation like he normally would just because the person he was talking to couldn''t be trusted.
With his skill that let him detect lies he would know if they were going to try anything as soon as they started answering his questions. "Hello to you." After thedy returned his greeting but didn''t say anything else Lake felt like they were stalling for some reason and used Mana Vision to make sure no one was poking around his treasure.
"Can you see through walls?" Before he saw anything he had to look back at thedy behind the desk because of the question she asked. "That''s not a good way to describe my skill." He couldn''t help but think the only reason she hadn''t said anything right away was because she had wanted to see what he would do.
If he was right and that had been her goal she had gotten him good. "Well whatever it is you''re doing, go ahead. I have no ns to mess with your belongings." Lake knew looking now would just make her think he had been lying about looking through walls but he still went ahead and did it anyway.
After seeing no one he turned back to thedy and asked. "What did you want to talk about?" He could tell she was fine with him just standing here forever so he felt he had to ask to get things moving. "Just this report." After she said this thedy took out a pretty big stack of papers and started to read. "I don''t know how it was done. It was like the part of the building that held the valuables was just teleported away."
This one sentence was enough for him to know this was a report on the robbery he performed back in Keldon. He didn''t get where she was going though so he stopped her from reading more by asking. "Can you just tell me the point of this?"
"Fine, it kind of ruins the fun but I guess you''re in a hurry to go back and wait for the barriers to run out of mana. I just want to know how I can buy something from you that you could just teleport away right afterwards." Lake couldn''t help but smack himself after he heard this question because it was so obvious that anyone could put this together as long as they weren''t an idiot.
Chapter 371: The Deal Pt.7
Chapter 371: The Deal Pt.7
Almost out of panic that he wouldn''t be able to convince her to buy his goods from him, Lake started a negotiation right away. "What could I do to convince you I won''t rip you off?" Lake would be lying if he said he had never thought about selling the same thing multiple times but he had no intentions of doing it this time.
He really just wanted the money so he could get this over with and head back to the Holy Domain. "Would you be willing to let us have a look at your skills? We have someone capable of reading skills that we can call here."
Even with how much Lake wanted the gold he didn''t even consider this as an option for even a second. It would be a lot easier for him if he just took the gold from them by force but instead of doing that he could just tell them this. "No, If I really wanted to steal from you it would be a lot easier if I just took the gold that you have stashed away here."
Someone like him who could pretty much take anything he wanted would never take things inside and pretend to want to sell them. They would have just snuck in and got into wherever they kept the gold. "Are you really that confident in your abilities?"
Lake could tell by the smug way this question was asked that he had been yed into giving away more information on his level of ability. "Alright I''m done ying. Just tell me if you''re willing to buy my stuff or not." If the answer was no he needed to get moving to the next ce that had enough gold to pay him.
"Sure, just know if you try to screw us on this we''ll have to retaliate by getting in touch with the Assassins guild." Lake was fine with that because he had already decided to just happily take the money and use it toplete his mission before he left. "That''s fair. There''s still some time before the barriers fall so would you mind it if we started paying me now?"
...
"I''ll see you guys in a little while. I''m going to look for the people from the fortress." They had been given work to do as soon as they arrived but Donny wanted to go find someone who had been at the fortress during the time that the God of Metal had partially descended to see if they knew what had happened or why it had happened at all.
Once he had an answer he would go back and help the people who were shaping metal until he could find an hour or so to head home to see what was going on there. If he did this right no one would even notice he was gone in all the chaos that was this buildsight.
After about a minute he spotted someone whose face he recognized and stopped them. "Hey, do you remember me from the fortress?" The man only took a second before he nodded and said. "Of course, your vice captain Donny right?" Donny nodded even though the rank he had in the fortress probably didn''t matter any more.
"That''s right. I wasn''t here during the God of Metals descent, could you exin it to me in detail?" Donny knew the man was probably busy but he wanted to know everything as soon as possible. "Not right now I''m working. There''s people at the Temple who would do a better job anyway."
Donny wasn''t surprised he hadn''t gotten the man to stop long enough to exin the situation but he found it a bit interesting the man wasn''t willing to just say a few words. He had no ns to give up after one failure so he went to the next person he saw that looked familiar and asked them the same thing he had thest time.
Once they reached the part of the conversation where he asked for them to exin what had happened he once again got a reply that said he should look for answers at the Temple. Having received the same reply from two people Donny couldn''t help but think the people around him either didn''t want to talk about what happened or had been told to not talk about it because it was still an active situation.
The second thing was only possible in his opinion because the response had been so rehearsed but that still wasn''t enough evidence that there was some reason everyone was supposed to get their information from the Temple. He did decide he should just give up on finding answers for now though since there was a lot of work that needed to be done before the Fighters Guild would be back in working order.
...
"Just put the money in that room please." It had been about ten minutes since he had been told he could start being paid before the items he was selling were essible and the first bags of money had just shown up. "Alright, we''ll be bringing bags of twenty thousand at a time."
Lake just nodded to the clerk''s words and let them keep going in and out of the room with the bags. With each one having twenty thousand gold he would only need fifty of them to reach his goal of one million andplete his mission. As he watched he quickly reached forty bags but that was when it slowed down and finally stopped at forty nine.
Instead of hisst bag he needed to get to fifty the woman who was in charge of this guild office came into the room and asked. "How are you going to get all of this out of here?" Lake had learned his lesson about talking to this woman earlier so he didn''t say anything about what she had just asked him and asked. "So is this what the value is expected to be? I thought it would be around one million as well."
He had to say this because he knew she was using the fact he had asked for them to bring him one million in advance to get him to snap at the fact they were one bag away. Now him saying he had just guessed the amount would make her much less sure. "It''s hard to say. We won''t be giving you the price on the tags of the items but you should receive more than one million once we confirm everything is real. This is around half of what we expect to pay you at that time."
It seemed she was nning to act like she hadn''t brought him an amount just short of what he had asked for as a coincidence and he was fine with letting it stay this way even though she was waiting his time to keep her from getting any more information on him. Even if everything she got from his actions was spection it was still more than he wanted them to have.
As the minutes passed in silence the woman eventually left, leaving him alone with the gold they had brought him and using this opportunity he took the bag he had just been given by Hampton a few hours ago and threw it on top. [Missionplete] Up until this point he was sure the reward for the mission had alwayse up right after the missionplete in the pop up but he guessed that wasn''t the case this time.
He was confused by this while trying to think back to how it had been in the past whenever he unlocked a new skill frompleting a mission but only until he noticed that the gold in front of him was moving. He didn''t like there was something he wasn''t controlling happening here because he didn''t feel like this was a safe location for it but he didn''t dare to try and stop it and just kept his eye on the door.
After about a full minute all the gold was out of its bags and was swirling in a giant vortex. Before too long he could see a small hole form in the center and the gold all started to fall in one at a time. Even though there were a million gold coins it didn''t take long for this process to end because it picked up speed as it went. [Reward: Inner Vault]
Lake would have loved to look at what this skill did for him right as he received it but he wanted to leave first because he was done with what he hade here for. Getting to know his newest skill was a great way he could pass the time it would take for him to get back to the Holy Domain.
Opening the door and walking out into the hallway, Lake didn''t stop to talk to the clerk who tried to get in his way and just said. "I''ll only be selling two of the chunks today and will be taking one with me." There was still the core that granted the skill that made you immune to fire in one so he was going to take it with him since he hadn''t been paid enough for all three.
"Where are you running off to?" Lake didn''t even have to turn around to know the woman that ran this guild had appeared behind him for some reason but like the clerk he didn''t slow down and made his way out the front door into the town. The woman didn''t follow him out so he was able to start his journey back home peacefully though he did wonder if that was going to be thest time he heard from her.
Chapter 372: The Deal Pt.8
Chapter 372: The Deal Pt.8
After he had run from the thieves guild he didn''t summon the treasure that he wanted to keep right away and instead waited till he couldn''t feel anyone''s attention just in case he was being followed. He would be leaving this here for a while so anyone who knew where it was could just wait here until the barrier fell and take the items that were inside before he was able to summon it again and take what he wanted.
Once that was done Lake set the magicpass to look for Tiff and started to return to where she was to hand over the dagger. Once that was done he pulled up his new stat to see what it did.
Inner Vault (U) Lv.1
Items can be stashed within and retrieved at any time.
While inside they grant bonuses based on what kind of item they are and any abilities they possess.
Stolen items give twice the bonus.
(Gold can be spent to increase the amount of items that can be held)
(Current max: 10)
Lake could tell this skill was going to be very useful but he needed to really put it to the test to see just what it meant by bonuses. On activation Lake saw the hole from earlier appear in front of him and after some thinking he decided to just throw a potion from his bag into it.
As soon as he did this he saw a new window that had never appeared before show up on his status screen and opening it he saw.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade)
Bonuses
+19 Health
+18% Natural Healing Rate
Seeing this Lake instantly realized just what this skill was capable of and how much new potential it gave him. From now on all he needed to do when he had a problem was find items that would grant him the right Bonuses and the problem would be solved.
It was almost like he had just gained a second Status screen that he couldpletely customize whenever he needed to. For now all he needed to do is fill it up and worry about running towards the Holy Domain. He didn''t really have a lot of things that were too interesting to put in there though so he started to think about the Dagger he was currently returning to the Temple.
Summoning the bag that held the dagger Lake reached into the space created by Booster Bag and took it out. The feeling of the area around him instantly changed to one that was predominantly Holy mana but it didn''tst long because he threw it into the hole in the air in front of him.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade)
Lv.54 Holy Dagger (Sealed)
Bonuses
+19 Health
+18% Natural Healing Rate
+58% Holy affinity
+1 Ability (Purified Soul)
+23 Agility
Lake had never gained a skill like this so it took him a second to open the skills effect.
Purified Soul (L) Lv.1
Hides one''s killing intent and makes your attacks undetectable.
Lake couldn''t help but instantly change his n to give the dagger back as soon as he saw this skill because it was almost perfect for him and his activities. It would be a huge loss for him if he ever let ess to this skill slip out of his hands. As soon as he started to n how to exin his failure to the Temple Head after being gone for so long Lake Settled on using the giant arm he had seen earlier as the reason he hade back.
It was very clear that something big had happened soing back thinking there was some emergency made perfect sense. Happy with his n, Lake was about to move on when the Insider let him know that it thought that it was probably best if he gave the dagger back and just looked for another item that was a better match for him.
At least that was what it thought it was telling him it was kind of hard to tell sometimes because the Insider didn''t use words to tell you stuff, just weird feelings or pictures when it decided to use visions. With the Insider telling him what it thought, Lake started to wonder if maybe the skill he got from the Dagger wasn''t as good as he thought.
He didn''t keep thinking that for very long though because every time he read it seemed better than thest time. This meant there was a big reason the Insider wanted him to just do what the Temple Head wanted. His guess was that befriending important people was one of its favorite things to do because of what it was but he was sure it wouldn''t just tell him to get rid of something he really needed for just that reason.
There must be a different reason the Insider seemed to care about the Temple of Light so much that it was always giving it preferential treatment. It also seemed to like Tiff for some odd reason but he guessed he would never know till it bothered to show him.
Going back to messing with his new skill Lake started thinking of other items he could throw in that could give interesting effects. It didn''t take long for him to remember the shield he had just offered to return to Donny a few hours ago.
He had never tried summoning it back to him because he knew it was a well known item and he was afraid someone would spread word that he had it but now that he wouldn''t be holding it in his hand and could get benefits from it being inside Inner Vault it made no sense not to try to summon it.
He didn''t know if it would work though because he had touched the shield before he had the skill that let him summon anything he had ever touched. Putting his hand out Lake thought of the shield and when nothing happened he got a bit disappointed. The thing was definitely at least on the level of the dagger that gave him such a good skill but he guessed he would have to go steal it when he had time.
That was fine because he was probably going toe back to the Earth Domain to make gold since it seemed prosperous whenpared to the Holy Domain and he could just steal the shield on the way.
It felt kind of weird that he had a reason not to give the two items he was going to give back right after he promised but that was just how life was. It sometimes seemed that anytime you had a n or expectation something happened that made you wrong or at least have to rethink what you were doing by a little.
It was too bad because he would have liked if by now he was smart enough to know what everyone was thinking at all times because before he hade to this world that''s what he thought having a high intelligence stat would do for him.
The real effects seemed closer to his brain thinking a bit faster now than it had in the past but that didn''t mean what he came up with would be exactly right just that he had a higher chance ofing to the right conclusion from processing all the avable information as quickly as possible.
This was very useful when he only had a few moments to think but it also seemed to make his mind wander which was what it was doing now. Going back to thinking about things that might be good to keep in his Inner Vault Lake decided to head to the Alchemist Guild for a while once he made it back to the Holy Domain because even if there was nothing there that they would give him the information about the best items in the world would be there in books.
He needed to go to the Temple First though because if he was going to hand over the dagger he should do it right away. Thest thing he needed was someone from the Temple seeing him walk to the Alchemist guild beforeing back with the dagger because he was sure they would think that''s where it had been the whole time and he was working for the Alchemist guild to decisive them on this matter.
...
"Alright I''ll see you allter." His group had just been sent to go to sleep but Donny wasn''t tired because it had only been a few hours since he had woken up and while they had been working the whole time he had ess to mana potions which he had used to regain all the mana he had spent shaping metal for building so instead he was going to leave and use this time to go home.
After he had made his way out of the worksight He was quickly able to hitch a ride on a freight elevator with a group of other Metal Mages who were heading down to mine. He didn''t stay on though and jumped off as soon as they passed the floor his family''s home was on.
Chapter 373: The Deal Pt.9
Chapter 373: The Deal Pt.9
As he got closer to the house that his brother tended to spend his time at, Donny wasn''t sure if he had made a good decision ining here. The tier he was on was destroyed pretty thoroughly and he hadn''t seen a single person yet which made him think the Demon Worshipers that had been on this tier had killed everyone.
He wasn''t worried that they were still here and he would be ambushed but he really didn''t want to find his brother dead in the house they grew up in. He just hoped he had been able to put the shield that he had spent most of their fortune on to good use and was able to defend himself long enough that he was still alive.
Arriving at the gate to the home Donny just kicked it open with a bit of help from his Metal magic because he knew there was no way the password he had from when he was younger still worked. When no guards arrived within the next few seconds he knew it was a bad sign because there should have been at least three here at all times.
It was possible they weren''t here because his brother had let them go from ack of money to pay them but he was sure he would know soon enough if that was the case so he didn''t continue thinking about it and walked towards the side door he knew would be the best way into the home.
He didn''t have to go that far though because as he passed the front door he saw that while it was closed currently it had been broken down at some point and he knew it was damaged enough that he could probably just walk inside the house by moving the door out of the way.
Going up to the front door Donny briefly thought about calling out to his brother before trying to take the door down so he wouldn''t think he was an enemy trying toe in to take his life or possessions but then realized he kind of was and surprising his brother might make this easier for both of them.
Once the door was out of his way Donny walked in and listened to try and hear if anyone was moving or speaking in the house. He heard nothing but that didn''t matter since it could mean his brother was aware someone hade inside and was currently hiding somewhere inside in wait for whoever had decided to invade his home.
Taking a few seconds to weave his shield formation, Donny wondered what would happen if the imitation shed with the real thing. In most cases his imitation formation should shatter in the sh since his brother''s shield was a mana vessel that had been crafted by the God of Metal himself but there was a reason he had been given the shield by their father.
Donny was confident that he as a fourth circle mage could at least match his brother''s attacks with the shield. He also had a lot more experience in fighting because of the fact he had actually left home to train his abilities inbat while his brother had sat here plotting using the money his father had amassed during his life.
Taking his first step forward Donny couldn''t help but think now would be a good time to try and use the looking stone for the first time but he knew a huge advantage could be a hindrance if you didn''t know how to use it. For example, while his sight was blocked by whatever the stone showed him when he looked through it for the first time his brother could pop out from somewhere andnd a lethal blow.
Of course his brother wouldn''t kill him if he knew it was him but there was a good chance his brother would only notice once he had been sliced in half by the shield who he was. Because of this fear of being killed Donny had to resort to slowly walking around the home looking one room at a time for his brother.
After about half the home had been cleared by him he stumbled onto a mess that was probably the remains of a blood stain after it had been cleaned by an amateur who was unaware of the special things you needed to do to get such stains out of a surface.
It made him think it hadn''t been his brother though because if his brother had been here he would have just used earth magic to get rid of the topyer of the stone floor before recing it with an untarnished surface that was an exact replica of the one that had always been there.
The fact they had tried to clean it at all pointed to it having been someone who cared about the property so he had to think it had been maid or something but that shed with the fact they hadn''t done a good job. That was unless they had been someone cheap his brother had hired from ack of money.
He just wished he could tell how long ago this all had happened because there was no more he could get from this unless he knew if it was recent or not. He wouldn''t be that surprised if this stain had been here for years at this point because their home had always been a target of thieves for obvious reasons and this wasn''t the first time he had seen blood staining these floors.
Going back to clearing rooms Donny eventually found a young woman hiding in a closet in one of the unused bedrooms. "Please don''t kill me. I really have nothing to do with the family that owns it other than getting paid to clean."
"Why are you hiding here, there''s a safe room in the basement." His question was weird enough that it made the young maid look up and see his face. Like he expected, the level of fear she had been feeling faded to almost zero when she saw who he was. "You''re the master''s brother, correct?"
Donny nodded and quickly moved on. "Where''s my brother?" He had already figured out that his brother was most likely hiding in the safe room and the maid had known he wouldn''t open the door for her or had been t out rejected entry when they had been going towards it and had been told to go hide somewhere by his brother.
"He''s not here right now." Donny was pretty sure this was a lie she was telling out of fear that if she said any of what he suspected was the truth she would be fired but there was no way to know and he had no intentions of forcing an answer when he could just go look in the safe room.
"Alright feel free to go back to work. I won''t be here much longer." He didn''t want the maid to follow him around because she might get caught up in their fight if she was there so he made it seem he was going to leave after hearing his brother wasn''t here. Once he was sure she hadn''t tried toe after him he headed down to the basement and knowing there was no way to surprise his brother while he was inside the safe house he just yelled as loud as he could.
"It''s me Donny, open the door or I''ll smash it down." It would be a shame if the safe room was destroyed since the front door and gate had already been smashed so he felt this had a good chance of working and after a few seconds this was proven correct as the door started to move.
Expecting a fight Donny moved his formation in front of him so he could try to block the first attack that came at him but it never came because his brother walked out empty handed. Donny wasn''t sure if this was a trick so he kept his guard up as he asked the most obvious question. "Where''s the shield?"
"I traded it away to the Demon Worshipers for my life just a few days ago." The fact his brother''s face didn''t even seem pained as he said this really infuriated Donny but he kept his cool because he still couldn''t trust that his brother was telling the truth. "So you wouldn''t mind if I had a look around the safe room would you?"
If his brother had the shield he would have taken it into the safe room with him so it should be inside if he had tried to hide it so he could pretend he no longer had it once he realized it was his brother here to take it back. "Sure, go right ahead. I''ll be going back to work now and don''t bother saying bye when you leave. I''m busy."
Donny just ignored his brother''s attempt at making him mad and walked into the open door of the safe room. Before he could even try to have a look behind the first of many shelves that were inside the door slid closed behind him. Donny thought nothing of this because the controller to open the door was on this side but then he actually had a look at the controller and realized it had been destroyed.
It was obvious his brother had nned to use this as a trap to give him time to make a break for it with the shield but that wasn''t going to work on him. Taking his formation Donny sent it at the door nning to slice it in half but quickly realized he had miss calcted when the formation just bounced off.
This meant the barrier that was protecting the door was a lot stronger than he had expected but he still had another way to open the door, it would just take longer. Going to where the opening mechanism had been Donny got to work recing it with a small formation that would force the door open.
Chapter 374: The Deal Pt.10
Chapter 374: The Deal Pt.10
After about five minutes Donny had something he felt should open the door but when he activated it nothing happened. Getting back to work he quickly found the reason which was that the formation that was on this side was no longer attached to the door in any way.
He hadn''t expected this because he had seen his brother open the door toe out of the safe room but he guessed he was just going to have to ept that his brother had really prepared for this meeting.
With his first two methods having failed Donny decided to just slowly drain the energy in the barrier protecting the door because he had already taken too long and his brother would be gone even if he got out right now.
When he had weakened the barrier by about half Donny heard something he hadn''t expected, which was someone outside the dooring towards him. His guess was the maid had been told to let him out after a certain amount of time by his brother so he wouldn''t destroy the room while trying to get out.
Stopping his attacks expecting to be let out Donny saw the door start to open just a few secondster. He was sure the confusion on his face would have been evident to a blind person when he saw that it was his brother that opened the door. "Alright you three grab him."
Before he could get over his confusion three men that hade with his brother came into the safe room and surrounded him. Donny didn''t know who any of them were so he had no problems killing them and sent his formation out to slice through all of them in one attack.
This never happened though because before the formation could even make it halfway to where the first man had been he was already being pushed to the ground by the three of them and his formation had somehow been destroyed. This was thest thing he needed to know something weird was going on because his brother should no longer have the money to hire three people that were as fast as these three were.
Each one would be worth a small fortune and there were three of them. "What''s going on? Who are these people?" He didn''t expect a straight answer but anything would have made him feel a bit better about what was happening because it would have shown his brother was willing to talk things out but when his brotherpletely ignored his question and started to walk out of the doorway to let the three men carrying him out he knew this was probably going to be really bad for him.
After he had been dragged up the stairs he saw that there were more people inside the house and the color they were wearing gave away what group they belonged to. He had been under the assumption the Demon Worshipers had left but it seemed that wasn''t exactly the truth.
"Alright here he is like I said." As soon as his brother started talking Donny was able to put together that this was some type of trade and if what his brother said earlier about trading away the shield for his life his guess was that wasn''t the only thing they had asked for. For whatever reason the Demon Lord had always seemed to be after him and it seemed he had finally given up on talking him into anything and had just sent people to capture him.
It was slightly unexpected because Donny had felt like the Demon Lord had forgotten about him after he left the Holy Domain but it seemed he had still been nning to get him onto his side. "We left the gold in the next room over if you want to check it before we leave."
Donny was actually kind of surprised they had paid his brother for this because it felt like there was no reason for them to give him anything if they could force him to do their bidding but if you looked at it as not a one time payment you could see this as the beginning of a long term partnership.
His family held a pretty high position in the Metal Domain so having them in the pocket of the Demon Lord would be a good thing for the Demon Worshipers in the long run. This was only true if the Demon Worshipers nned to keep an active presence in the Metal Domain but he saw no reason why they wouldn''t be.
Watching his brother walk to the next room which would be an office their father used to use but Donny knew it was now more of a storage room to his brother. After about a minute his brother walked back out and nodded before saying. "Go ahead and take him. I''ll be waiting for your next orders."
Hearing this Donny knew he had guessed right about the rtionship his brother now had with the Demon Worshipers and that his brother was probably already under the effects of the loyalty curse or at least he was hoping that was why he was having such an easy time looking him in the eye while selling him to the Demon Lord.
There was a lot of evidence that said people had less guilt doing terrible things if they felt they had only done it because they absolutely had to. It was possible he was just giving his brother more credit than he actually deserved though because it had been a long time since they had seen each other so his estimation on what his brother would or wouldn''t do might be off now.
"Alright go ahead and knock him out. We can''t let him make a fuss on the way out of the city." Turning his attention away from his brother and on the man who seemed to be in charge because this was the man who would be the one who he would need to ovee if he was going to escape before he was brought in front of the Demon Lord.
He could already tell this wasn''t the normal Demon Worshiper because of the way they were acting and how strong the people with him were but he needed to try to tell just what he was dealing with in the few moments he had before he was knocked out by them. The calm look on the man''s face was all he got before he felt something hit him in the back of the head presumably to knock him out but it didn''t work so he got to hear onest thing from the leader.
"That didn''t do it, try a little harder this time." Donny hadn''t moved since he had been hit so the fact the guy could tell he was still conscious was going to make escaping very hard. If he for some reason was to wake up before they made it to their destination and he was right about their ability he would just be put to sleep again right away with no time to take advantage of. "Smack."
...
As he was getting closer to the Holy Domain, Lake was starting to get confused. He had his arrow set to point out Tiff because she was who he was bringing the dagger to but he was starting to think it wasn''t leading him to the Holy Domains capital. There was an easy way to look for this and just changed Detector to look for an arrow that was pointing at the Holy Domains capital.
When he saw the direction the arrow had been lighting up on change he was able to tell he had been right and there was about a ten degree difference in where it was leading him. With how far he was from the capital still this meant Tiff had to be at least a few hours away from the city but she could also be much further if she was past the city or closer to him than the city was.
Either way this had made him change his n to going to the Alchemist Guild first since he had no idea how far Tiff was at the moment and he might as well go to the ce he knew the amount of time he had to run to get there first. Once that was done he could spend all the time he needed to find her while also having a list of items he could start to look for to use with Inner Vault.
He had been thinking about it and he was pretty sure Inner Vault was the answer to his problem he had with his Perception being too low. A few items that gave ten or twenty points would probably double the speed at which he could run from ce to ce, which was one of the things he had hoped his new skill would help him with before he had unlocked it.
Chapter 375: The Deal Pt.11
Chapter 375: The Deal Pt.11
After another hour or so Lake stopped holding back so much and moved quicker than he should out of impatience and was able to arrive at the capitol much earlier than he would have. On the way into the city Lake stopped for a few minutes to inspect the fields around the city that had somehow in thest few days all been cleared and filled with new crops and golems while he changed what he was wearing.
He had only been gone for a few days so this made him think the Alchemist guild had been preparing for this rollout for a while and whatever they had been waiting for had happened. It was a good thing because it meant they were probably also going to be opening restaurants soon which would make it so he could get good food in more ces than just the guild.
Running into the city, Lake saw the Temple and wondered if maybe the Temple Head was there even if Tiff wasn''t and decided to use Detector to see. When the arrow didn''t light up when pointed at the Temple and instead pointed off into the distance he knew there was probably no one inside he should pass the dagger to and continued towards the Alchemist Guild.
Once his check was done and he was let inside he wasted no time and rode the elevator up to the spire and walked into Lucas'' office to see he hadpany. This happened pretty often so it wasn''t that surprising but the amount of different people that were here was kind of crazy. Not wanting to get involved, Lake headed towards the stars but stopped when he saw ck robes near Lucas'' desk.
He hadn''t seen them right away but them being here was a real surprise until he remembered Lucas saying on multiple asions that they did business with everyone including the Demon Worshipers. This was when Lake realized that he didn''t see anyone from the Temple of Light and he couldn''t help but wonder if maybe this was a really bad sign.
There was no way around the fact that he had already be a member of the Temple of Light and if something bad had been done to them there was a good chance that he would also be affected. While having this thought Lake noticed a lot of people had started to look at him having noticed him staring at them and this included Lucas.
He really didn''t want to get involved in case he was right about the Temple of Light so he just acted like he had been waiting for Lucas to look at him so he could wave hello. Once Lucas waved back he continued up the stairs even though he knew a lot of the people in Lucas'' office probably hadn''t lost interest in who he was.
Casting Fly Lake quickly made it to one of the libraries and used Detector to look for books that held information on famous items. He eventually found a part of one of the shelves that held around twenty books and not wanting to have to read more than one of them he just grabbed the biggest and started writing down items that he felt were possibly good matches for him.
After doing this for about an hour he had a list of over fifty items and thinking it was probably enough for now he was about to get up when he remembered Detector could be useful to him in this situation as well. Setting it to look for the page that held information on the closest item to him now Lake turned until the glowing page was in front of him.
It ended up being a page that held a sword called Destimond. Reading the page Lake stopped before getting too far into it because he decided even if it wasn''t a great match for him the fact it was really close made it worth going to get. With something to do on the way Lake got up and started the process of getting ready to leave.
He really only had two things he wanted to do so it shouldn''t take too long. After he had filled his bag with food he went back to the elevator to see if Joy was still under the effects of the loyalty curse that made it impossible for her to have a normal conversation.
Once he made it to the basement where the dungeon was, Lake set Detector to look for Joy because like usual he couldn''t tell which one she was. When none of them lit up he guessed she wasn''t here and decided he would just try again next time he was here.
If there was some kind of peace deal that had been struck and the war was over he would probably stop spending time at the Temple ande back to the guild and use it as his base again. It was a much better living environment and if the Insider didn''t say anything to stop him he would much rather be here.
Of course he wasn''t just going to abandon the Temple though because he was sure they would have plenty of things for him to do which would give him an excuse to go out and steal stuff. As he walked out of the gate of the Guild Lake set Detector to look for an arrow that was pointing at the sword Destimond.
A few momentster he had his direction and started running but it didn''t take him long to realize just how close this sword was because as he passed the cksmith guild the direction the sword was inpletely flipped. He had been wanting to go to the cksmiths guild to unlock the job for a while but right now wasn''t a good time to get wrapped up in another guild so he set retrieving Destimond for after he figured out what was going on with the Temple.
Once he had the arrow telling him where Tiff was again he quickly started running out of the city wishing he had taken the time to get a map while he was inside the guild because it could probably tell him where he might end up but even without it he kind of remembered thest map he had seen and knew the Light Domain was near the Holy Domain and with them being the Temple of Light there was a good chance that was where they would be.
He guessed he would only know once he got there though so went ahead and started the journey going much faster than he should to minimize how long it took him to get there. After Lake got a few hours out of the city he saw a group of carts moving down a road that he recognized as belonging to the Temple of Light.
As he got close enough he switched Detector''s setting to leave out the arrow and just set it to look for Tiff. Once he did that he saw a person in one of the carts start to glow and was about to head towards it to let them know he had returned with the dagger but realized it was still inside Inner Vault which was hiding its aura.
If he just took it out now all of them would notice how it just showed up all of a sudden out of nowhere which was something he didn''t want because Tiff had told him just how hard it was to hide Holy attributed people and items and he didn''t want them to think he was Jon again after all this time because that was something he could do.
Sadly this wasn''t something he had a choice in any longer because in the next moment the door of the cart came open and the Temple Head came flying towards him. "Lake I was starting to get worried you were caught up in what happened in the Metal Domain and had died."
"Are you talking about the arm?" Seeing the Temple Head start to nod, Lake told the truth on where he had been when that happened because for whatever reason when she had said she had been worried about him it had been a lie. "No, I was in the Earth Domain because the one with the dagger was there."
"Did you fail?" Lake was slightly tempted to lie here but just said. "No, I have it in a pocket space skill to keep anyone from noticing it. Do you want me to get it out now?"
"Might as well were already being chased and Tiff will be able to put it to good use if we''re attacked." Hearing that, Lake opened Inner Vault and pulled out the dagger. "What do you think of my new skill?"
"That depends, how many items can it hold?" Hearing this question Lake knew his way of talking down the skill had worked. "Only ten but that''s still pretty good because I can keep heavy things within instead of having to carry them around."
"Ten''s pretty low but you''re right about storage skills being useful no matter what. Alright let''s get this dagger to Tiff she''s been after it for weeks now. We can catch each other up on what''s happened after that." Having sessfully hidden the part of Inner Vault that was good, Lake was happy because it meant he would be able to use it in front of the Temple head without her asking about it.
Chapter 376: The Deal Pt.12
Chapter 376: The Deal Pt.12
Stepping into the cart Lake saw there were no empty seats but before he could say anything about it the problem was solved by the Temple Head. "Ras would you mind going to another cart?" The boy named Ras was another one of the Holy mages Lake had seen a few times and he didn''t seem too happy about being sent away but he didn''t turn the Temple Head down and quickly left the cart with a small wave to Tiff.
That left Dawn, Tiff, and the Temple Head as the only people left in the cart except for him so Taking the seat next to the Temple Head he watched as Tiff was presented the dagger.
...
It felt kind of sudden because when they had been told they would be leaving the Holy Domain for the Light Domain Tiff had just epted that her getting the Dagger any time soon was unlikely but she had been wrong. "Was it Jon who had it?"
"I don''t know the person I was after seemed to figure out how I was tracking them eventually and just left it on a rock inside a small bag." Tiff found it too bad that Lake had been unable to figure out if Jon still had it or not but she was still grateful for him because he had really chased after whoever it had been for a really long time.
"Thanks for getting it back." She really meant this and it seemed Lake was happy that she acknowledged his hard work because he gave her a big smile in return. Tiff then looked to the Temple Head and said. "We were already going to go to the God of Light as soon as we got there so there''s no need to change our ns but would you mind if we stopped and unsealed the dagger."
...
"That would be for the best." Lake had seen that the dagger was sealed while it was in Inner Vault so this question didn''te as a surprise but he didn''t think the Temple Head would say yes as quickly as she did but he quickly realized why it was the only option with the next thing she said. "If we don''t do it before leaving the Holy Domain who could say when the next opportunity will be. I''ll have the caravan stop."
It seemed the unsealing had to be done while inside the Holy domain for whatever reason. When the Temple Head had left the cart to get all the others to stop Lake looked at Tiff and asked. "So why are you all leaving the Holy Domain?" He would much rather ask someone like Tiff because she was less likely to say something that hadn''t been tailored to make him want to stay with them and he really needed to know if going with them was a good idea for him.
...
Hearing Lake''s question Tiff realized he must not even know about the deal that had been struck between the Demon Lord and the God of Metal because he had been on the road for days. This kind of made the fact he didn''t know such a huge thing her fault so she wasted no time in exining what had happened.
"The God of Metal signed an alliance agreement with the Demon Lord to put an end to the genocide that was taking ce within the Metal Domain. There are also a few other parts of the deal they made that we''re still trying to get the Oracle to Tell us but she won''t until we agree to let her go so there''s a stalemate."
...
What Tiff just said made it sound like they had kidnapped the oracle or something but before he got the opportunity to ask he felt the carte to a stop. Not wanting the Temple Head toe in while he asked if they kidnapped an Oracle Lake just went to get out.
Stepping out he was quickly pushed out of the way by arge group of people around his age that he recognized as the 23 group that Tiff and Dawn were part of. "Did he really find it?" Lake found it odd he had been pushed out of the way because they wanted to ask a question that was about him and he could have answered but he knew it was just because they were excited for their friend.
...
Instead of answering the question Tiff held the dagger out so everyone could see it before moving them out of the way so she and Dawn could get out of the cart. "Are you about to unseal it?" Tiff nodded before saying. "Yeah, we''ve got to hurry though so stop getting in the way."
She didn''t want to be rude but they were for sure being chased by Demon Worshipers so they had to get moving again as soon as possible. "You''re right, sorry." This was probably the first time she had said anything remotely rude to one of them since they had made up but the way it was taken made her feel they were definitely all over the weirdness that they had been feeling right after she became the God of Lights choice for the next Demigod.
Going towards the front of the caravan where she was sure she would find the Temple Head she saw most of the people were already gathered there and had already formed a circle around the Temple Head. Pushing her way through the crowd Tiff went and stood beside the Temple Head.
If someone who didn''t understand what was about to happen saw this scene they would probably think the Temple Head was about to do some ritual or something but in all reality the Temple Head had no part in what was about to happen because she couldn''t use Holy Magic which was a requirement for unsealing a Holy Weapon like the dagger.
Holding the weapon up into the air so everyone would be able to have a good look at it while the unsealing process took ce Tiff started to channel not only the Holy mana she had gathered over the past few weeks but hers as well into the dagger until she saw a golden light start to leak from the weapon into her hands.
After a few seconds of this it stopped and Tiff saw a window open that held the name of the new skill she had acquired from the dagger. [New Temporary Skill: Purified Soul] It had actually been quite a while since she had gotten a new skill so she quickly opened it to read its effects even though the Temple had already told her what it was a long time ago so she would be ready once she got her hands on the dagger.
Purified Soul (L) Lv.1
Hides one''s killing intent and makes your attacks undetectable.
This was a funny skill because it was quite rare to see something like killing intent which most people wouldn''t even consider real described in a skills effects but as someone who knew a bit about the types of effects perception had once it got over 100 this skill was perfect to be used on something like the Unholy Giants they had been trained to fight against.
It was well known that most of the giants had a few stats in the 300''s while it was rumored the oldest and double that. She wasn''t exactly sure if she believed that but either way stats like that dwarfed her own and being undetectable would help in assassinating those monsters.
...
Lake was standing near Dawn so instead of waiting to ask about what happened till he got the chance to talk to the Temple Head he turned to and asked. "What was that?"
"You mean the light that came out of the weapon?" Lake had really been asking about all of it but the light was probably the most important part so he just nodded. "Do you know anything about Elemental Metals or Mana Vessels?"
Lake knew vaguely about both of those things so he nodded again even though he would have liked to let Dawn tell him in detail about both of those things in case he got new information because he didn''t think that they had a lot of time to talk about this before getting back into the carts. "So Mana is part of your body akin to blood and Elemental Metals are solid mana and therefore kind of like a piece of the gods body which gives it interesting properties that are more like something a living being could have. What you just saw was like Tiff bonding herself to the weapon and gaining the skill it had, it''s a simr thing to filling a mana vessel but moreplicated and rare."
Lake felt like this was a bad exnation that leapt over a lot of details he needed but instead of asking he just made a note that he needed to find a book about this and read it. Almost everyone had already started to walk towards the carts and he didn''t n on wasting time while they were being chased.
Chapter 377: The Deal Pt.13
Chapter 377: The Deal Pt.13
They had already been back on the road for around thirty minutes and for whatever reason no one had actually said anything yet. They had instead all been just silently watching Tiff y with her new dagger but Lake was about to end this because he had realized them stopping hadn''t made much sense because the unsealing had only taken a few seconds at most.
"Why did we stop? Could Tiff not have unsealed it in the cart?" As he started to talk Lake could tell he had snapped everyone out of thinking but he wanted an answer bad enough that he didn''t care if he had interrupted their deep thoughts. "The unsealing process is normally very easy and you''re right that it could have taken ce anywhere normally but with the goddess being so weak and the fact this cart was designed to block Holy Mana it was best if we did it outside where there was the least resistance."
Like always with questions about magic matters there was an extremely simple answer that you would have needed years of reading to understand or just a few words from someone who knew the answer exining it to you. It really just showed how useful having people that were far superior to you around that you could talk to.
Turning to Dawn, Lake pointed at the bow and asked. "Does your bow give you a skill as well?" Getting a nod Lake was about to ask what the skill did but stopped himself because he saw the look the Temple Head was giving him. Turning his head to look at her he was asked. "So what happened while you were chasing down the dagger?"
Lake had already kind of gone into it but she was clearly asking for details so he quickly made up a story and started telling it. "So I was around a day behind the whole time but it was clear the person I was chasing was some type of thief. Two major robberies happened in the Earth Domain while I was after them."
Lake knew it was kind of ying with fire saying he was around the area of the robberies but he knew they would eventually hear about what happened in Shallow and Keldon while he was in the Earth Domain so he might as well get in front of the story now. "That makes it more likely that it was Jon since he was able to steal the dagger. Was anyone killed at either location?"
Hearing Tiff''s question, Lake knew this was a good chance for him to add some credibility to his story by ying into the idea of Jon she had created. "No, I spent a bit of time asking about what had happened at both ces and no one said anything about any deaths."
"That aligns with the fact he saved me for no obvious reason right after I tried to kill him for the dagger. It''s really too bad you weren''t able to meet him and offer him a job." Lake had almost said that they didn''t need that guy with him here but stopped himself because that sounded like something he would say if they were the same.
"He seems busy doing something already so I don''t think he would have agreed even if I was able to chase him down. A peaceful handoff is already a good result." This sounded much more like something someone who was chasing a possibly dangerous person would say.
...
Tiff knew Lake was right but she couldn''t help but think having a master Thief around would be great for her because that was the role the God of Light nned to train her up into and having someone like that around that she could get tips from would have been nice.
It wasn''t like there were any other trustworthy thieves around that she could help train her so Jon getting away was a real waste in her opinion. She was going to keep that to herself for now though and ask the God of Light what he thoughtter before she brought looking for Jon up to Lake and the Temple Head.
...
Lake felt like he was kind of done exining hisst few days and was ready to change the subject to what the Temple Head had done for thest few days so he asked a simr question to the one she had asked him a few minutes ago. "So what happened while I was gone?"
He really wanted confirmation on whether they had actually kidnapped the Metal Oracle or not but he only nned to ask that directly if the Temple Head didn''t say anything about it. "Well I''ll just start at where we separated from one another. The Oracle let us know almost right away that there was a good chance the God of Metal would make peace with the Demon Lord instead of fighting so we instantly started getting ready for that once we made it back to the Temple and I left with the metal Oracle to go and speak to the God of Light. Almost as soon as we got there it was very clear the Oracle was holding information from us but no matter what she wouldn''t tell us what it was so when she asked if she could head home we decided to hold her until we know for sure the God of Metal hadn''t agreed to attack us with the demon Lord."
Lake actually didn''t think what they had done sounded that bad because if they asked if the God of Metal had agreed in attacking them and the question hadn''t been answered it made sense to hold onto your leverage until you knew why they wouldn''t just say no to such an easy to answer question.
He still didn''t want to be a part of it though so there was a good chance he would say he had to go back to the Alchemist Guild as soon as he got the rest of the exnation. "And why are you leaving the Holy Domain?"
"It was the best time to go even if it seems a bit premature because if we waited till it made sense for us to run the Demon Worshipers would have had time to gather their forces. I''m actually supposed to be meeting with all the other groups in the Holy Domain right now."
Remembering the weird meeting he had seen when he had been inside Lucas'' office, Lake asked. "Are you talking about the meeting at the Alchemist Guild?" Getting a nod, Lake realized this was the reason they hadn''t been talking just yet; all of them had been waiting for the Temple Head who was runningte.
"It''s likely that this n of yours bought you all an hour or so because while I was inside the Alchemist guild I saw them and they were still waiting for you all to arrive." He didn''t know if this meant they weren''t being chased at the moment though because the demon Worshipers had probably already realized what the Temple Head had done.
"Why were you at the Alchemist Guild?" Lake had expected this question as soon as he said he had been inside the guild building so recently so he had an answer ready. "I was getting food. When I realized you and Tiff weren''t at the Temple in the capital I didn''t know where you were so I had to get ready for another trip and the food at the Alchemist Guild is much better than anywhere else."
To make this more believable Lake took out a simple piece of bread and took a bite. He would have offered them some but he wasn''t sure if they would take any and he was still sure the food was supposed to be a secret that Lucas didn''t want him to spread.
"The Food in the Light Domain isn''t bad. Lots of vegetables and fruit you can''t find anywhere else. It''s honestly one of the better ces to eat in my opinion." Dawn''s words made him excited till he remembered the reason the food from the Alchemist Guild was so good had nothing to do with what the actual ingredients were and for the resort of his life he would find most things nd.
"I''ll make sure to have a look around to see if there''s anything I like in that case." He just decided to y along because saying he wasn''t interested in actual food and would prefer to eat bread out of his bag would make it obvious there was something special about the food from the Alchemist guild.
"Alright I''ll be heading back to the Alchemist Guild now. Lucas is getting annoyed with me for not doing anything so I have to go do a few tasks. Feel free to call me if you need something." Lake didn''t waste any time after he said this and tried to get out but was stopped by the Temple Head grabbing him. "You should at leaste to the Temple with us first. The God of Light will want to reward the man who found the dagger."
Lake actually wanted to avoid a meeting with the god who had killed thest Insider so he shook his head and said. "I can''t." Lake knew it was weird to turn down an award but that was why he didn''t really give a reason and just said he couldn''t. Waving bye again he jumped out of the cart before casting Fly and rising into the sky.
Chapter 378: The Deal Pt.14
Chapter 378: The Deal Pt.14
As Lake climbed out of the cart Tiff saw him fly away and couldn''t help but think his departure had been weird. Most people wouldn''t have been able to turn down meeting a god who nned to reward them but she guessed they really didn''t know enough about Lake to know why he had said no.
If she had to guess it would be somebination of him having promised Lucas toe back and being nervous to meet a god for the first time. There was always a chance there was a more sinister reason Lake was trying to distance himself from them but she didn''t think that was the case because he had said that if they called him he woulde to help.
There was no reason for them to think he was trying to abandon them until he failed to show himself after they called for him. "Will it be useful for us to have someone inside the Alchemist Guild? I mean now that we''re leaving the Holy Domain we''ll need a source of information."
Dawn''s question was actually pretty important so Tiff stopped thinking about Lake''s weird behavior and listened up to hear what the Temple Head had to say about using him as a source of information. "I don''t think it would be a good idea to try and turn him into a spy. Lucas wouldn''t tolerate such a thing for very long but he''ll be free to tell us anything that has nothing to do with the Alchemist Guild. That doesn''t cross any lines or rules."
...
As he was flying higher into the sky, Lake was trying to think of what he should do. With there being a weird stalemate currently he felt now would be a good time for him to do a few things for Lucas like he said he was about to but he also felt like he should make filling Inner Vault his top priority.
He still hadn''t received his next mission from the Insider and in the past using the newest skill had helped this problem on a few asions so he nned to try filling it with strong items to see if that would make the Insider give him his next task.
He could steal while on tasks from his various guilds, so heading back to the guild for now to make a n made sense to him. After he had started to fly back to the city, Lake couldn''t help but think about how the meeting with the God of Light would have gone if he hadn''t said no.
It wasn''t like the Insider had made it obvious to him that it was a bad idea to go so maybe it would have been fine and he had turned down a reward for no reason. He would feel really stupidter if he ended up meeting a god that had known Laka and they couldn''t tell that he was the same thing just in a new body.
Thinking this Lake couldn''t help but wonder about something weird he had never noticed before. Why had Laka been able to give him a new body and put him here in this world but hadn''t been able to do the same for himself. He was sure there was an obvious reason like it had something to do with the wound he was dying from but if you had the ability to make someone a new body surely the wound on the old body that was killing you wouldn''t matter.
After a few more minutes of thinking about this, Lake epted there was no way for him to find the answer to this question unless the Insider decided to tell him and went back to thinking about what was currently happening. He only had so much time before he made it back and he wanted to have his mind at least partially settled before he spoke to Lucas.
...
After they finished discussing Lake and how useful he would actually be when he wasn''t with them Tiff had gone back to thinking about what she wanted to discuss with the God of Light after it having been so long since they had spoken. She felt like this was actually going to be the first time she was going to get to talk to him for a long period of time so this was kind of important.
Sadly she was drawing a bit of a nk because she knew she was going to get the first level of her Legendary job and she couldn''t help but keep getting distracted by wondering what she was going to get. Legendary jobs didn''t give you skills or stats like normal jobs did because they didn''t have to follow any rules that had been set by the gods to bnce their jobs with one another so it really could be anything.
This meant if she was lucky she could be receiving a huge boost to her strength after a single level up and after a long struggle to unlock more jobs to level up this was a big change for her. If it wasn''t for the fact she had just gotten something from unsealing the dagger she didn''t think she would be able to stay so calm while on the way to see the God of Light.
She really wasn''t the type to talk someone''s ear off but no matter what your normal behavior was you could actpletely differently depending on the situation you were in. For example Dawn was the exact opposite and usually talked a lot but for whatever reason she had only said a few small things in thest hour.
...
Because of how high he was traveling in the air, Lake was able to see the city way before he was anywhere close to arriving and while he was still nning to go to the guild he had to slow down because of the fact there was a y colored cloud in the sky with him.
He hadn''t seen thising when he had flown up into the sky but now that it was happening he thought maybe from now on he should stay away from the sky even if it made traveling less boring since he could see miles in every direction.
Starting to lower himself to the ground, Lake tried to guess what could be happening in the city for the Demon Lord to make an appearance in person. There was one obvious thing he could think of almost right away, which was the Demon Worshipers were getting ready to go after the people from the Temple of Light that had just run away.
He was pretty sure there was a good chance the Demon Lord would show himself for a chance at killing the Temple Head and all the Holy Mages that were the most exposed they had ever been. After a few seconds passed and the Insider hadn''t told him to go help the people from the Temple he started to walk towards the city hoping whatever was going on would be over by the time he got there.
...
Feeling himself wake up Donny didn''t waste even a moment trying to remember exactly what had happened because he knew the fact his head hurt and he was groggy meant he had been knocked out after his brother trapped him inside the safe room.
Feeling the urgency of having been kidnapped Donny tried to stand and run but found his hands and feet had been shackled. "You might as well just stay still. We knew you weren''t going to stay asleep the whole way from just a bump on the head and were prepared for you to wake up."
Wherever he was at the moment was much too dark for him to see who had just spoken to him but he felt the voice was familiar even if he didn''t remember exactly what had happened before he had lost consciousness. This probably meant whoever the voice belonged to had spoken quite a bit before he was knocked out and that could mean they were in charge of the group holding him.
"I don''t remember what happened, could you catch me up?" Donny knew this was an odd request but trying to guess would take much longer and it was clear this guy nned to speak with him or he would have already been put back to sleep.
"You''re being brought to the Dark Domain to see the Demon Lord, or you''ll be speaking with him there. You probably wont be seeing him." Donny would have been more surprised if this was his first dealings with the Demon Lord or any of his followers but he had always expected to be kidnapped by them eventually if he wasn''t careful.
Honestly he never thought his brother would be working with them because in his mind it was too low for even him. "How long is it going to take to get there?"
Donny felt he should try to get some information now before the man started saying things but it seemed even asking this right away was too slow because all he got was a question from the man that had nothing to do with what he had just asked. "So I heard you turned down hundreds of offers from the Demon Lord, is that actually true or is it just an exaggeration?"
Chapter 379: The Deal Pt.15
Chapter 379: The Deal Pt.15
As he slowly made his way to the city he got to watch as the cloud in the sky eventually opened and let a few things out. They looked like people to him but because of the distance he was able to see them he was pretty sure they were giants not just regr sized people.
This finally gave him the real reason the Demon Lord had shown himself again, which was that he was dropping off the forces necessary to hold the Holy Domain now that the Temple of Light left. This didn''t mean he had been wrong about his guess that the Demon Lord was organizing a force to go after the people from the Temple though.
Either way it made him feel that as long as he just acted normal he would have no problem entering the city or the Alchemist Guild because he didn''t really look like a member of the Temple of Light other than his shoes which hade from there.
He could just get rid of them now and fly his way to the guild barefooted which would solve this problem. Thinking about what he would want for his next pair of boots, Lake remembered one of the items on the list he had made earlier that were theorized to be a level 60 pair of metal boots and wished he knew if they were close by so he could stop having to get a new pair every few days when the ones he was wearing started to fall apart.
It was something he really wanted to fix but for now he was just going to have to deal with whatever the guild hadying around when he got there. It would probably help if he was to ask someone like Lucas what he did to get shoes because he had seen how fast Lucas could move so he was sure the man had dealt with this same problem at some point.
After passing through another set of trees that had blocked his view, Lake saw the cloud had closed again and had started to shrink in the sky. At first he found this weird because he didn''t understand why the Demon Lord wouldn''t just stick around to keep an eye on his new territory but he quickly remembered the Demon Lord was currently in hiding from the God of Light.
This meant that the Demon Lord probably didn''t want to keep himself in the open for too long at a time which was why both times he had seen the Demon Lord''s cloud recently it had onlysted a few minutes.
Now that it was gone, Lake went back to his top speed and was at the edge of the city in just a couple of minutes. He didn''t go in right away though because he wanted to make sure the giants weren''t doing anything like attacking the city or the Alchemist Guild. Once he was sure the city wasn''t dangerous he quickly walked towards the guild.
On the way he was tempted to use Detector to look for the Demon Worshipers but he decided against it because the giants were Demigods and therefore even looking for them using his skill might make them notice him. He didn''t know if that was actually true or not but it was better for him to just mind his own business for now.
As he made his way through the city Lake saw lots of different groups walking the streets and while he wasn''t sure he was pretty sure they were the same ones he had seen inside Lucas'' office earlier, probably returning to their buildings after the meeting had ended. The fact none of them seemed overly hostile made him think peace was going to be the norm for a while which he found a good thing.
The war probably wasn''tpletely over but if the Holy Domain was now no longer a battlefield it would make his life a lot easier. He did find it odd that the Demon Lord didn''t seem to be interested in killing anyone though since he had been brought to believe that was the entire goal of the war.
Making it all the way to the guild without being stopped or even looked at a single time, Lake started the process to be let inside and ten or so minutester was on his way to Lucas'' office. Stepping inside Lake saw the man looking through the books on one of the walls and cleared his throat to get the man''s attention.
"Hello Lake, how have you been?" Lucas'' attitude made it clear the man was in a much better mood than he had been recently and this was a good sign he was right about the peace that was about to take over the Holy Domain. "Good, how about you?"
"I''m fine as well. Are you going to be here for a while or will you be speeding off again?" Lake nned on staying long enough to do a few things for Lucas so he told the truth because the man should like that. "I''ll be staying here for a while. Is there something you want me to do for you?"
Lake didn''t think Lucas had an idea of his current abilities but the man knew about some of the skills he had gotten early on so Lucas having a task for him wouldn''t be surprising. "No, I just want to know if you''ve been sent by the Temple of Light to gather information about what''s going on."
Lake couldn''t help but smile a bit at this question because if you knew him this was a ridiculous thing to think he would do but it wasn''t Lucas'' fault for having a bad read on his personality. Lake was a huge liar and included in this was him pretending to be much more friendly than he actually was so Lucas thinking he cared enough about the Temple of Light to spy was normal.
"No, I came back to avoid getting caught up in what they''re doing currently. If you would like, I''ll keep to myself till you stop suspecting me of spying." Lake knew this wasn''t the best defense but rejecting the possibility of being a spy too much could just make Lucas think that he definitely was one.
"No it''s fine I just wanted to see what you would say. I honestly don''t care if you feed them information or not. As far as I can tell they''re going to be forced into epting a simr peace deal by the demon Lord as everyone else soon enough." Lake liked what he heard until the Insider reacted in a negative manner to what Lucas had just said.
He had no idea why it wouldn''t want this war to end earlier than anyone could have ever seening but he guessed there was a reason it was bad so he asked Lucas a question to get more information. "What do you mean? I know the God of Metal had to make peace with the Demon Lord because of the attack but have other gods already done so as well?"
"The God of Fire just did a few hours ago but to be honest that''s been a long timeing than there seems to be a good chance the God of Wind will be also making peace with the Demon Lord because an attack like the one in the Metal Domain will be unstoppable for her followers with the weak fighting power they posses and that''s two out of the five origin gods that are currently alive so I''m sure you can see where this is going."
Lake could indeed see how this could continue to spread from god to god until all the gods except for the God of Light had made peace with the Demon Lord. "Does that mean he''ll be ascending soon?" Lake knew the other gods had somehow been stopping the Demon Lord from ascending for a very long time so if they were signing some type of deal he couldn''t see a world where this deal wouldn''t include him being allowed to finally be a god.
"It looks very likely but I haven''t actually gotten to see the details of the deals he''s making with all the gods so it''s still to be seen when or if it will happen." Lake had never been here for a god''s ascension and normally he wouldn''t ask but Lucas was already aware of himing from another world so Lake wanted to know what was going to happen and asked. "What happens when a god ascends?"
"It''s always a bit different depending on the Element but to be honest because of the fact Unholy mana is already everywhere and people are born/gain the affinity I think we can disregard the period of adjustment thates with that and just focus on the economic changes that will happen as new trading opportunities arise. These will probably still be less drastic than normal though so I think there''s nothing to worry about this time around."
"What do you mean by this time around?" This clearly signified there had been problems with some of the gods in the past and Lake wanted to know why. "The God of Antimagic is the best example of a god''s ascension causing problems. For the first few weeks magic all over the world stopped acting as it had for all of history and it took all the gods forcing him to restrict his influence for it to go back to normal. Nothing like that''s going to happen this time since Unholy is a more normal element like the others and at most the people who live in the Dark Domain will have to adjust a bit to the new bnce of elements there."
After hearing Lucas say nothing bad would happen, Lake started to wonder why the Demon Lord had ever even been blocked in the first ce. He could understand the fact that he was a demon being a problem since the gods didn''t like the race the God of Fire had taken from his old world but surely there was more to the story.
"Do you know why the Demon Lord was stopped from ascending?" Lucas probably knew more than even the Temple Head because he was older and owned the building that had once been the Mages guild so he felt like there was a good chance he was going to get his question answered but Lucas disappointed him when he shook his head and said. "You would have to ask the god of Light when you meet him. I''m going to get back to work now."
Hearing Lucas wanted him to leave, Lake started to walk up the stairs even though he had wanted to ask the man about new shoes. It honestly wasn''t that big of a deal and he would be fine with whatever until he got his hands on one of the items on his list.
Chapter 380: The Deal Pt.16
Chapter 380: The Deal Pt.16
"So you want to be a God but you''ve turned down every offer that you''ve received up until this point even though everyone knows the Demon Lord makes more Demigods than any other god." Donny felt like this guy would never understand this point no matter what he said but with nothing else to do he tried to exin his position for the hundredth time.
"Yeah I feel I can do it myself so selling myself to the demon Lord isn''t something I wanted to do." He didn''t think he could make this any more clear without just saying how much he hated the Demon Lord which he didn''t think was a good move in this situation. "Oh you''re trying to challenge yourself."
Once again the guy somehow missed the part where he heavily implied he wanted nothing to do with the Demon Lord but as long as it made the guy stop asking the same question in different ways he didn''t care. "So what do you think you''ll gain doing it all yourself?"
This was a nice change of conversation and it was actually something Donny liked to talk about so he started to exin what he had heard about the different ways of bing a Demigod. "Well I think there''s a problem with gaining divinity before you make it to the sixth circle of formations because that''s the minimum level to really understand skill crafting and if you''re unable to level your skills correctly you''re going to be taken advantage of by strong mortals."
They were rare but there were mortals that were stronger than newer demigods and that wasn''t a position he ever wanted to be in. He was also getting close to his goal of being in the six circle already so waiting a few more years wouldn''t kill him. "That wont happen if you belong to a faction like ours. No one other than the God of Light and his cronies ever bother us."
Donny was sure that was true but he had always had his eyes on joining the God of Metal if he had to choose which he thought was obvious considering it was the only affinity he used. Sadly the God of Metal wasn''t looking for any more subordinates at the moment so that left him with his only option being a loner.
It was really too bad about the Dark Goddess because she hadn''t been evil like the Demon Lord and if she was still around he could have used two of his affinities instead of just one and his Intelligence would be a bit higher which would help in his studies. "That''s true but joining a group that is constantly fighting doesn''t really seem safe as a young inexperienced Demigod."
"You''re a member of the Fighters Guild right, it''s like the same level of danger you''d be in as a member of our faction." Donny could tell the fact this guy didn''t seem to be able to understand him not wanting to have anything to do with the Demon Lord was starting to get in the way of their conversation again and decided it was time for him to take another nap.
"I''m going to sleep now to pass the time." The guy had been talking to him for hours at this point so Donny would rather just pretend to sleep so the guy would leave him alone for a while. His hopes were he would eventually be left alone so he could finally try out the looking stone that was still hidden in his pocket to see if he could gather any information about where he currently was.
...
Lake had kind of wasted his first few hours back in the guild putting an order in for new shoes but now that he was done he was heading for the library to read up on a few things he wanted to know more about. His time away had shown him that he needed to look into the other Domains and the Gods that ruled them more than he had up until this point.
He also wanted to look into the time period Laka had been here as the Insider to see if there were any clues to why the Insider seemed to like the Temple of Light more than the Demon Worshipers even thoughst time Laka seemed to have been on the Demon Worshipers side secretly.
He knew this was going to take a long time though so he was only going to read for a few hours before he headed off to start gathering items for Inner Vault. He was really tired of reading huge books filled with facts at this point so a few hours at a time was really going to be all he could handle in one sitting.
In all reality if he didn''t take breaks there was a good chance he would just forget most of what he forced himself to read so this was the most efficient way for him to study up on history. Walking into the library that was closest to his room, Lake saw a face he hadn''t seen in a while. "Hello Sam, how are you doing?"
This was Wace''s child and the first person he had ever met in this world all the way back in the corn town he had appeared in. "Lake, I''ll be right back." Lake didn''t think much of the kid''s greeting but he knew Sam had just run off to get his father who had probably been waiting for him toe back to the guild so he just went back to what he had been doing.
Setting Detector to look for books that held information on Laka or Akal Lake saw lots of books around the library light up and realized maybe that was too broad of a setting because all a book would need to be included was a single mention of the names. After a few minutes of thinking about how to make the search more selective, Lake figured he could just specify the amount of the book was dedicated to Akal.
Deciding five percent was a good ce to start, he set Detector to see about two thirds of the books that had been glowing stop. This was still a bit much to choose from so he was about to make it ten when he heard someone enter the room in a hurry.
Turning around he saw Wace who had probably just run all the way here waving at him. "Hello Wace, how are you?" Lake was sure this was about to be a uniquely unhinged conversation from the look on Wace''s face but decided to greet the man as if he didn''t look crazed because he remembered Wace acting like this in the past.
"I was starting to think you weren''t ever going toe back." Lake didn''t really understand why Wace cared what he was doing but he knew he had identally helped the man a lot in the past by giving him the idea to make golems that could farm. Wace was probably hoping that something like that would happen again in the future if they were near each other.
"Well I''m back and n to stay here most of the time for a while. So I saw the golems outside the city, were you able to find people skilled enough to help you build them faster?" Lake got a fast response as Wace started to nod vigorously while saying. "Yes I have nine people helping me now, only five of them are members of this guild though so I''m still looking for more permanent help."
Lake could guess that the four that weren''t members were probably received in some type of personnel swap with another group but he didn''t really care about that enough to ask and confirm his suspicions because he just wanted to get back to what he was doing. "Alright well I''ll see youter."
After he said this he tried to walk away but Wace grabbed his arm before saying. "Actually I was hoping to show you ourb so you know where I am if you ever need anything." Lake didn''t think he would ever need to know where Wace was but he was slightly interested to see theb so he just nodded even though it was probably going to be a waste of time for him.
"Ok just follow me, it''s only a few floors up from here." Lake nodded again but quickly swiped a book off of the shelf when Wace turned around so he could just head to his room after this and start reading.
...
"We''re at the gate and are about to pass through." Tiff was a bit surprised by this news because they hadn''t been attacked in any way yet but she guessed the Demon Worshipers that were after them realized they wouldn''t win in a fight with them if they tried anything.
"That''s weird, why didn''t they attack us? This was the best opportunity they''re ever going to get to kill us all at once." As Tiff listened to what Dawn was saying she started to get a weird feeling about the fact they had just been let escape. Maybe the Demon Worshipers had another reason to let them go with no fight.
Chapter 381: The Deal Pt.17
Chapter 381: The Deal Pt.17
For whatever reason it took a second for them to be let into theb after Wace''s badge failed to open the door right away. He didn''t think there was some sinister reason this had happened but he did find it weird that Wace''s badge didn''t work right when he was trying to get into his ownb so he made a note of it before quickly moving on to get a look at what was inside.
"Sorry about that. It''s happened a few times but no one''s been able to figure out why. Anyway this over here is the only golem we are currently working on so I''ll show you that first." Lake had already seen plenty of golems on the way into the city so instead of looking at the half built one he started looking at the people working here.
It seemed most of them were just making parts and had nothing to do with the magic part of the process. Lake''s guess for why this was the case was that if they were the ones to make the golem alive they would be the owner and the guild probably only wanted members to own the golems they had paid for.
This made Lake wonder just how many golems Wace was currently the owner of but he didn''t n to ask since he was just here to see the bare minimum before going to his room to start reading the book he had taken from the library.
"This here is the newest innovation to the design, it allows the golems to pick more fragile nts with less damage but it''s still not quite good enough for the guilds standards on root damage so we''re working on improvements." Catching the end of what Wace had been saying, Lake looked at the hands he was pointing at and thought back to some of the factories he had seen on tv in hisst life.
Without really thinking of the consequences of helping Wace, Lake described a way to get nt roots out of the ground without damaging them. "You should just dig up the nts and spray them off afterwards to keep the roots safe."
He was pretty sure he had seen them use this technique on things like potatoes in hisst life so it might not work on everything Wace was nning on farming but it should work on most things grown in dirt. "That''s a good idea, maybe I could add some type of weak water formation to the golems hands so they could do this out in the fields."
Seeing this new idea had drawn a lot of attention away from him because Wace had gone back to working on the golem, Lake turned and started heading out of the room. He was able to make it all the way to the door before anyone noticed him walking away but they still didn''t stop him and he was able to walk out of the room.
After he made the trip back to his room Lake sat at his table and started to flip through the book. It always took him a minute to remember Detector could be used in a situation like this but once he did he had it highlight the parts of the book that held information on Akal or Laka.
When the parts highlighted were grouped together Lake knew he had found information on the period of time he had been looking for and flipped to it and started reading.
...
The room was still too dark for him to know if the man who had been speaking to him earlier was still around but it had been a long time and if they hadn''t left they were never going to so he figured he might as well try using the looking stone.
He moved very slowly at first because he didn''t want to make what he was doing obvious but when the shackles started to get in his way it became obvious there was no way for him to make any subtle movements. After struggling to get his hand into his pocket for around five minutes he was able to get the looking stone up to his face and look through it for the first time.
Like he expected, what he saw made no sense but he knew he was supposed to find something in the garbled mess and focus on it until it was all that was left. Seeing a red thing fly into view Donny focused on it until everything else around it started to take up less and less space in the image he was seeing.
Once the whole image was red Donny saw shapes start to form but he still didn''t know what he was looking at. He knew it was probably some type of magic effect or something that was close to him but the shapes weren''t anything he recognized from Fire formations which was what the most likely element since the image was red.
Since he was unable to recognize what this was Donny decided to move on to something else and pulled the stone away from his eye. Before he tried again Donny took a brief second to try and think back to the only time he had ever heard someone talk about looking stones in the past.
It was all the way back when he was still in school and their teacher was talking about items that were important in the past and looking stones hade up near the beginning because they were from before the six original gods started letting people be demigods.
Back then everyone had had their stats maxed at 100 and therefore needed tools like looking stones to do research into magic and apparently they let mortals see things that you would need 1000 Perception to perceive which made them useful even now when most people could only hope to get Perception up to 200 if they bought the very best Elixir that existed.
They were extremely rare though and the amount of time to learn to use one was therefore very long and Donny didn''t think he would have much luck learning in a situation like this but it was really his only option even if he didn''t know what he was trying to achieve by using it.
...
Ever since they had passed through the gate into the Light Domain Tiff hadn''t been able to get worries about what the Demon Lord was up to out of her head. It was silly to worry so much about someone who had been trying to kill her forever all of a sudden when there was no evidence that they were in more danger than normal but she felt like there was at least some really bad newsing their way.
Hopefully that was all there was and nothing crazy had happened to the God of Light or anything because if that happened there wouldn''t be a single god left who was trying to stop the Demon Lord from ascending. "We''re about to arrive at the Temple. The Oracle said she would be ready for you as soon as we got there so go ahead and head in that direction right away. I''ll be going to talk to the Metal Oracle to see if she had decided to share anything while I was gone."
Tiff was grateful for the Temple Heads words at first because they distracted her from her thoughts but that changed at the end when the Temple Head said the Metal Oracles name because she identified this as the most likely route for bad news toe their way.
There was nothing she could do to stop it if she was right though and she probably wouldn''t even if she could because knowing was better than not knowing. "Ok, and after that what will we be doing here in the Light Domain? None of us will really be able to do much as Holy Mages outside of the Holy Domain."
This was the main reason them being told that they were heading to the Light Domain had been such a surprise but she was sure there were ns that involved them in the works already because not putting them to use would be a huge waste in the eyes of the strategists.
"It''s still being decided on. We need to better understand the situation with the Demon Lord before we can make real ns but don''t think of this as a vacation where all your responsibilities are gone because there''s a good chance we''ll have to find a way for you all to hide in the Holy Domain to continue your training while it''s being controlled by the Demon Lord."
This sounded like a rough time but she really didn''t think it would happen because the Temple Head was just guessing with no information on what the God of Light wanted them to do next and whatever did end up happening to them in the future was likely to be less extreme than living in enemy territory.
Chapter 382: The Deal Pt.18
Chapter 382: The Deal Pt.18
After they arrived at the Temple Tiff rushed off like the Temple Head had told her to and before long was sitting next to the Oracle reaching her hand out so she could go speak to the God of Light. After their hands made contact Tiff saw her view quickly change to pure white as she appeared in the nk room she hadst time she hade to speak to the God of Light.
Likest time she patiently waited for the God of Light at the small table that was in the room and after a few minutes the door opened and she saw the face of the God of Light look into the room. "From now on you don''t have to wait here for me and can walk around while you wait because it could take me a while toe see you. Alright follow me."
Standing up Tiff followed behind the God of Light until they reached the workshop that she had received the Legendary job in originally. Seeing it again Tiff wondered if the God of Light nned to give her an award that wasn''t already part of the job she gainedst time and when she saw a formation start to take form in front of her she knew her suspicions were correct.
"I was going to give you a different skill as your first level reward but because of the situation I''ve decided to give you an extra one to help with your next mission." She was excited about getting two new skills but it made her think that her next mission was about to be much harder than thest.
"I don''t know if you remember this or not but I can hear what you''re thinking so just ask your questions without worrying about how it sounds." Tiff actually had forgotten this small fact but now that the God of Light reminded her she just went ahead and asked what she wanted to know. "What''s my next mission?"
She felt like the God of Light could have just told her instead of making her ask if he knew what she wanted to know but she was sure he made her ask to make her remember to just speak her mind whenever they spoke. "It looks like we''ll be heavily outnumbered from now on which makes increasing the amount of Demigods on our side the top priority. I''m sure you already wanted to help your friends be divine like yourself and I''m sure you already know the best source for Divine cores."
Tiff could tell the God of Light wanted her to say something so she made the most obvious guess to see if she was right. "The Giants right?" Getting a small nod from the God of Light Tiff was a bit happy they were going on the offensive because going into hiding now would just allow the Demon Lord to grow his forces but actually going after the giants was something they had never done before so she wasn''t exactly sure how it would go.
Their training had been purely based on defending themselves and the town or city they were based in at the time so going on an attack was going to take some effort to get ready for and it didn''t sound like they were going to have much time to get ready. "It will be fine. You''ll be going on your own to try and find a giant that you can assassinate."
Tiff couldn''t help but give the God of Light a crazy look when he said this but she soon remembered she was about to have two new skills to use as well as the skill the dagger had given her so maybe it wasn''t going to be as bad as it sounded.
...
Standing up from reading the book that had ended up a real let down, Lake headed towards his bed to get a couple of minutes of sleep while he thought about what he had just read. The book had been from the perspectives of mortals that had seen fights between the two sides during the war the holy Goddess had been killed by Akal but with no information from the perspectives of any of the Divine figures the book had just been a lot of guesses on why certain things had happened and he wanted to know the real reasons because he could guess on his own.
The fact the insider most likely knew what he wanted to know made it worse because having to read when he could just get the answer in a few seconds made the booksck of information really grating on the mind.
After he fell asleep Lake woke up and was still annoyed but that didn''t stop him from getting his new shoes on and heading for the stairs. He was about to start looking for items to fill Inner Vault with but first he needed to make a new poison because he had been without any for a long time and it was a real waste because Poison Control was one of his best skills.
Entering a smallb Lake thought back to the time Lucas had personally taught him the basics of alchemy and wondered if the man had been able to make a single potion in the recent weeks. Ever since the war had started back up he had only really seen Lucas at his desk and this probably meant he was too busy to brew anything.
In all reality there was a chance Lucas wasn''t the best Alchemist to begin with if the guild was able to go this long without his help in making special items and this made Lake realize just because Lucas ran the guild business wise didn''t mean he had good skills in the job.
It was too bad that it woulde off as rude to ask this question because Lake would have loved to know if Lucas had a legendary skill in Alchemy but he guessed he would just have to wait till the man told him to know. There was a good chance that would never happen though so it was just best to move on and forget about it.
Grabbing one of the many books that was in the Lab Lake flipped to the poison part of the book and found something deadly that would kill almost anything that touched it and started looking at what types of ingredients it used before moving to a table that was already set up for a small brew.
Realizing he didn''t have the ingredients that he needed to make the poison, Lake went and found someone to bring his servants to him before giving them orders to bring him all the ingredients he needed. After about twenty minutes he had ten small piles of powder and a small vial of green liquid on the table in front of him and Lake got to work adding the powders in the right order.
The poison he was making didn''t use anything special to give it any weird properties and just relied on the level of the ingredients to make it strong so the brewing didn''t take very long and he was quickly able to pour it all into three small bottles. He was about to throw these into his belt when he realized putting them in Inner Vault first would be interesting.
They weren''t stolen so the bonus they would give him would probably be mild but having a thing that was normally negative provide boons would be interesting if it worked. It would also give him a safe ce to store these since having them break before he wanted would be annoying.
Once the hole for Inner Vault opened Lake set one inside before opening the Inner vault contents page.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade)
Lv.45 Small Juice Based Poison (Perfect Grade)
Bonuses
+19 Health
+18% Natural Healing Rate
+Poisoned Effect (25 damage a second)
Seeing what the poison was doing to him Lake was about to remove the poison before it killed him but quickly realized his health was still full and it had already been a few seconds. It didn''t take long to find out the reason for this was that he had another skill called Poison Taster that flipped the effects of poison on him.
Wanting to know what this meant for him, Lake took out his knife so that he could cut his finger a bit to see if it would heal on its own. After a few seconds of failing to get through his skin with his knife, Lake used Crunch and left a small mark on his hand that closed before even a single drop of blood could fall.
Wanting to see if this was actually from the poison, Lake took the Health Potion out of Inner Vault and made a bigger cut leaving the de in his hand. Before long he could actually feel his skin trying to heal around the de so he pulled it away from his hand and after getting over what he had just felt threw the Health Potion back in and walked towards the door happy that he had just found another way to make himself harder to kill.
Chapter 383: The Deal Pt.19
Chapter 383: The Deal Pt.19
As he walked down the stairs, Lake tried to put the other two bottles of poison into Inner Vault but found that while they went in they didn''t really change what bonuses he was receiving. There was a bit of an increase though so he guessed from now on keeping all of his health potions inside Inner Vault was a good idea.
Doing so Lake quickly looked at what the new bonuses were with every Health Potion and Poison inside the vault together.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade) X4
Lv.45 Small Juice Based Poison (Perfect Grade) X3
Bonuses
+36 Health
+29% Natural Healing Rate
+Poisoned Effect (65 damage a second)
After he got done looking at the new numbers he started to wonder if there was a chance this was using seven of the ten slots Inner Vault had and was about to throw some more stuff in when he realized he was walking into Lucas'' office. He had never really tried hiding his skills from Lucas but there was a chance Lucas wouldn''t be alone so he put Inner Vault away.
Walking into the office, Lake was a bit surprised to see it empty but he was happy Lucas wouldn''t see him leaving again so soon aftering back. Getting onto the elevator Lake headed for the lobby but took the minute or so of time he had on the elevator to throw some junk into Inner Vault and after three items the space stopped epting more.
Lake was a bit surprised by this because if the copies of the health potion and poison all took a slot why didn''t they give the same bonus as the first one? Was this some way to dissuade him from filling it with the same thing ten times or was there a real reason it was unable to give him the same bonus over and over?
When the insider didn''t give him an answer Lake moved on while taking the junk he had thrown in out of Inner Vault but left the potions inside since he didn''t have anything better to fill it up with at the moment. Walking out of the guild, Lake pulled out his list of things that he wanted to steal and set Detector to look for the name of the item that was the closest.
Five down ended up being the one that lit up and Lake took that name and set up magicpass to look for Credglin while trying to remember what the book he had gotten the name from said about it. If he remembered correctly this was some type of blunt weapon that had an interesting enchantment that apparently erased the memories of those that it hit.
The reason he would want this even if the book said the stories about this item could be exaggerated was obvious so it being the first thing he was going to gather was not bad. Following the arrow Lake quickly made it to the edge of town and was about to go over the wall when the arrow lit up again and said he had passed the item and it was now behind him.
Turning around, Lake looked at the buildings he had just passed over and used Mana Vision to look into them. He was in a poorer part of the city so he wasn''t surprised to see only a few things that weren''t people with Mana Vision and the thing he was after was obviously the long thing shaped like a mace.
Lake didn''t want to risk a fight with someone who had a weapon that could affect his memories so he pulled his bow and got a Magic Arrow ready. Firing the arrow into the building Lake hit the person who was the closest to the weapon in the leg because he didn''t want tomit a murder inside the city.
"Ahhh!" The building they were inside was a wooden shake so he was able to hear their scream from where he was. When he saw people rush towards the sound Lake dropped his bow and joined them. "Someone''s been attacked, go get the guards."
Lake didn''t run off to get help but instead rushed into the room yelling. "I have a potion." He didn''t care if they saw Inner Vault so he reached inside and pulled out one of his Health potions. When everyone saw this they moved out of his way and he was able to make it into the shake and all the way to the side of the guy who he had just shot.
As he was opening the potion Lake pointed towards the club that he was after that was now on the floor near the man and asked. "Were you fighting with someone?" Before the man could answer Lake poured the potion on the man''s leg then reached over and picked up the club to hand it back to the guy.
"No, I was just sitting on my bed and an arrow flew into my house and hit me in the leg." Putting a confused look onto his face Lake looked around and asked. "Where''s the arrow that hit you?" The guy was already healed and was standing up while they said. "It flew away after it hit you in the leg, how is that possible?"
As he asked this three guards pushed their way into the room while asking their own questions. "What''s going on, who was it that was attacked?" The man Lake had just healed pointed to himself and said. "It was me but there was no attack. An arrow flew through my wall and hit me in my leg. It''s already been healed so there''s nothing to worry about."
It was very obvious the man didn''t want the guards in his home so Lake asked the question he just had again. "You said you were hit by an arrow which then flew away, where did it go?" He knew where the arrow was since he was the one who had flown it away after it hit the man but he was sure the guards would find this interesting enough to look for the answer.
The man pointed towards the ceiling where a small hole was but Lake saw that the man used his other hand to hide his mace behind his back while the guards weren''t looking which made him think the guards might be looking for this man. "What''s that you''re hiding behind your back?"
Lake would have strangled someone if they had done this to him but getting this guy arrested after being the one to shoot him was very funny so he couldn''t help himself. "It''s a secret thing. I''m in my own house so you have no right to look!" The guards had started to move in to see what the guy was holding behind his back the second they had seen it was true so what the guy was saying changed drastically in the middle.
"Wait a second this is the symbol we keep finding on the helmets of the guards that can''t remember anything." Getting a good look at what the guard was talking about Lake saw there was indeed something carved on one of the four sides the mace''s head had. This made Lake wonder if maybe the memory erasing effect only activated if they were hit with that side while the others just worked like a normal attack.
"Get away from me!" As the man said this he started to swing Credglin around like crazy and his attack had the desired effect because everyone backed off afraid of what might happen if they were struck. Lake felt this was a good time to leave so he ran out of the door and jumped up on the neighboring shack to watch the rest of the show.
After about a minute he saw the guards alle spilling out of the shack and a few secondster the guy with Credglin came out obviously trying to get away instead of fighting the guards. All of the guards seemed happy to let this happen instead of getting hit with something that erased memories so Lake watched as the man got away.
He couldn''t help but smile once the man waspletely gone because with this the guards would think the man had escaped the city when people with the symbols on their heads stopped showing up but in reality it would be because he had used Retrieval to take the weapon he had touched earlier when he had handed it over to the guy who owned it.
Of course the guy who was currently carrying the weapon would notice if it was missing but he really didn''t care if the guy might be able to put together how his mace was taken because he was currently wearing a helmet and had been the entire time meaning the man didn''t know what he looked like.
It was also very unlikely the man would go to the guards with a problem like ''someone stole the weapon I''ve been using tomit crimes, can you find it for me'' since it would lead to his arrest.
Chapter 384: The Deal Pt.20
Chapter 384: The Deal Pt.20
As he was heading back to the Guild Lake started to wonder when the best time to summon Credglin would be. Surely the longer he waited the better but the longer he didn''t summon it the more the chance the guy had been caught and Credglin had been taken by the guards would increase and it disappearing from a guards hand was a much bigger deal that would probably cause some type of investigation.
After mulling it over for a while, Lake decided to just do it now instead of trying to wait for the perfect time which would be when the guy had run far from the city. Feeling the handle of a heavy weapon appear in his hand, Lake looked down whileing to a stop to get a good look at the thing.
Like he had seen earlier, the head of the weapon had four sides and one of them had the symbol he figured had something to do with the mace''s ability to make people forget things. He was careful not to let it too close to his head as he got his eye a bit closer to see if he could tell what material this was made of.
After a few seconds he got tired of trying to do it himself and just inspected Credglin to see what information came up. Like every time he did this it took him a while to go through all the useless information he wasn''t interested in and make a small list of the relevant facts.
Credglin Lv.39
Enchantments
Increased weight 20%
Shockwave
The specks of the item were actually kind of disappointing and once he realized the way this thing erased people''s memories was through a shockwave that caused massive brain damage he kind of lost interest in it but he didn''t see a reason not to put it into Inner Vault just to see what would happen.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade) X4
Lv.45 Small Juice Based Poison (Perfect Grade) X3
Lv.39 Credglin (Enchanted Mace)
Bonuses
+36 Health
+29% Natural Healing Rate
+Poisoned Effect (65 damage a second)
+40% Weight
+10 Strength
+10 Agility
Lake found the effects of Credglin a bit weird for a second but he soon realized he kind of already made shockwaves by himself through his strength and speed and he was guessing Credglin wasn''t good enough to give him a skill so it increasing his stats like this to help with shockwaves made sense.
Of course this made it seem that maybe the bonuses he received from the item wasn''t something that was actuallying from what items he put in the vault but instead something that was decided on by the Insider. This could exin a lot if this guess was right since so far he hadn''t been able to make sense of how this skill worked.
Especially the part where he had to spend gold to increase the amount of items he could hold inside it. How did it make sense that gold could increase space inside of a skill unless he was just paying the Insider to let him do it. It was almost like a bribe that wasn''t entirely necessary if the Insider didn''t like gold as much as it did.
Getting a weird feeling after he got done specting Lake could tell his guess was pretty close to the truth and it made him wonder where he had been wrong. The Insider didn''t seem to be about to tell him so he just moved on and thought of the other thing retrieving Credglin had made him notice.
The Holy Capitol was extremelyrge and there was a good chance more items on his list or in the book of interesting items could be right here in the city. So far there had been two and there was still a lot of area that he hadn''t checked. This would be a good thing for him to look into once he made it back and got done reading the next book about the history of this world.
...
Tiff almost forgot to acknowledge the Oracle as she let go of her hand and turned to run to find the others. She did remember before getting to the door though and gave a brief wave to the Oracle of Light on the way out. She was sure the Oracle was aware of the reason she was running so she wasn''t too worried abouting off as rude to the person who was the closest to the God of Light.
After a while she found where the people who had just arrived with her were moving into and this included the people she wanted to say bye to so she started with the Temple Head because she had other important things to say to her before she had to leave for the mission she had been given by the God of Light. "The God of Light told me toe and tell you directly what I''m being sent to do."
Once the Temple Head reacted to what she had said after opening the room to her new office Tiff continued while closing the door so no one could hear what she said. "I''ve been told to go get resources to make more Demigods to lessen how badly we''ll be outnumbered and this means I''ll be fighting the giants and bringing their cores back."
Tiff knew she was going too fast for what she was saying but didn''t slow down because the God of Light had given her only an hour to get ready before she would be leaving and she wanted most of this time to say goodbye to the other members of the 23. "I don''t know when I''ll be back and I have to go right away because we''re short on time so goodbye."
She had done a terrible job at exining everything but there were other people that could tell the Temple Head what was going on so she just headed to look for Dawn who she nned to spend the most time on.
...
Walking out of the elevator into Lucas'' office, Lake saw Lucas was back from whatever he had been doing when he passed through earlier and was now sitting at his desk working. Seeing this as a chance to quickly ask about the shoes that he wore, Lake stopped walking until the man looked up and asked. "Do you need something?"
"Yeah I''m starting to have problems finding equipment that''s strong enough for me, is there a ce I can go to fix this or can you not find equipment above level fifty easily?" Fifty seemed to be rare so Lake just decided that was a good level to ask about since he thought sixty would be pushing it with them being rare even in the book about special items.
"No one would sell an item with a level that high because currently the best smiths can only produce items in the fifties. All the best cksmiths became the God of Metal''s current subordinates and no mortals have filled the hole in production they left. At least that''s what''s believed, the cksmiths guild probably has at least a few people in the world that are able to make items of such a high level."
Hearing all the items that were above level fifty had been around for a while, Lake thought back to the book and could confirm the best stuff had all been talked about in the past tense like no one had seen it for a long time. This made it obvious that anyone who had these items had them hidden away so no one woulde looking for them but that didn''t mean he wouldn''t be able to find at least a few of them.
"That''s too bad, I''ll let you get back to work then." Turning around Lake wasn''t sure why he thought of the weird vault that Lucas had brought him to to drink the Elixir. He wasn''t nning on breaking into it or anything but the ces he would have to get into to find something that had a level in the sixties was probably going to be simr to that meaning he was going to spend a lot of time working on a single item.
This wasn''t the best time for a long mission like that so sticking to looking for things that were around level fifty to forty was a better goal. This meant he needed to work on his list a bit and since his trip to gather Credglin had been short, spending a few hours on the list was a fine use of time because he wasn''t ready to start studying again.
"Before you go I''ve been meaning to give you some jobs that fit you if you''re looking to earn money now that you''re here again." Hearing Lucas'' words Lake nodded because there was no harm in taking a look at the type of tasks they had for him.
He only got half way through the list of jobs before he saw something he thought sounded like a good use of his time. "Yeah I''ll do this." It was a job that would only take an hour a day in the mornings for about a week so this was a good way to pass some of his time while he lived here. "Alright I''ll Tell Master Doul and he''ll get in touch with you sometimeter."
Chapter 385: The Deal Pt.21
Chapter 385: The Deal Pt.21
After Tiff finished saying bye to everyone she headed off to where the strategist were to get up to date information on the giants so she would have an idea of where to start her investigation. The God of Light had already told her a bit but she had to go to this part of the Temple anyway to get the equipment she needed so she might as well talk to the people who knew the most about the war while she was here.
"We''ve been expecting you, here''s a map with all the recent sightings." Tiff was happy she didn''t have to exin what she hade for because she wasn''t sure what she could say to them but the God of Light had already taken care of it so she was able to move on to gathering the right equipment.
Now with her new skills she really didn''t have to worry about being tracked down by the Demon Worshipers but being alone on the road still meant that you needed to have lots of stuff with you like food and extra clothes.
She also needed more important things like armor that didn''t look like she had just walked out of a Temple of Light. She nned to be invisible most of the time but there''s going to be times where she would need to speak to people to gather information so them not knowing what group she was part of by a single nce would be useful.
...
Lake had finally finished his list of items and was now giving it onest look before h e got back to work reading history books. The new list had been organized by which Domain the items he wanted were in, then next to each name he had written down some notable things about the item in case he forgot what the book said by the time he got around to going to gather them.
The best part was since he had used Detector to highlight the names of the items that were in each Domain the information was up to date at the moment and he had lessened his requirements a bit for items in the Holy Domain so his list had around twenty items that were close by more than enough to fill Inner Vault twice over.
This meant he would have options once he had his hands on everything which would increase the flexibility in his capabilities. He could probably also do a lot of them in one outing if he just gave up on anything that proved to be hard to get his hands on and left it for another time. "Are you Lake?"
Hearing someone ask for his name, Lake instantly remembered the job he had epted a few hours ago and turned around to see a servant. "Yes, is the Master hoping to talk to me?" Getting a nod before an answer Lake cut off the servant before they were able to talk by saying. "I''m ready if he is."
Lake had been about to start reading history books again but he hadn''t really wanted to so he was happy the master wanted to speak before tomorrow when the job would start. "Alrighte with me then. Master Doul is about fifty floors from here at the moment so it''s going to take a while to get there."
Lake was sure he could get there more quickly if he carried the servant so he just told them it was an option. "I can fly if you''d like me to get us there faster." The Spire had been designed with teleportation in mind so now that they no longer used the teleporters unless necessary two people traveling together always left one of them the slower one who needed the other to either slow down or pick them up so the servant seemed used to things like being carried and said. "It''s up to you."
Getting permission to pick them up, Lake did so as soon as they made it to the stairs. After a few seconds of flying the servant told him this was the floor the Master was on and Lake stopped and waited for the servant to bring him through all the right doors to reach the room their first meeting would be held in.
As they walked in Lake instantly recognized the face of the Master that was inside waiting for them even though he had only really seen him once before which had been during the meeting about how to deal with the traitorous guild members that had stolen the Elixirs.
If he remembered correctly this had been one of the few people there that didn''t have much of an opinion they felt like sharing which was good because he felt there were probably still some masters that were mad about his suggestion that had been chosen during the meeting.
"Nice to meet you, feel free to call me Doul. I''m not much for the Master title the Guild forced on me." Lake wanted to ask if Doul was their first orst name but decided to just introduce himself and get the actual meeting started. "Nice to officially meet you Doul, I''m Lake. I''ve been looking forward to meeting you ever since Lucas showed me the list of jobs that needed someone like me who can work with poison proficiently."
"Well I hope you don''t mind if I have you show off a bit before I share the rest of the information on the job with you. I''ve been working on it for a while and I don''t want anything to go wrong tomorrow." Lake had expected this would be a test so he just shook his head and said. "I don''t mind at all. I wouldn''t want something I''d been working on to get ruined either."
The thing he had read said he would be helping to transfer poisonous things for around an hour a day which he should have no problems with but it was best to make sure in advance for everyone other than him who didn''t get massive benefits from poison. "Alright I''ve seen you working with master Na but I wanted to see just how much control you had with your skill using this device I made when I heard it was you who epted the request for help."
After Doul said this he pulled out what looked like a chemistry set for children from his old world with ten ss cylinders with a small amount of liquid in each. "I want you to put these into order by color and don''t leave even a bit of the liquid in its original container because if they mix with residue left over they''ll change alchemically and turn into sludge."
Hearing the depth of the simple looking test Lake had to give it to the man for making something like this in just a few hours. It was possible this wasn''t a new test though and he was just particrly uninformed in the types of tests the guild used to test out people''s skills. "I should be able to do that. Please stand back."
Almost like Doul realized what he nned to do to pass the test within a few seconds Doul added. "I forgot the part about how the poisons all go bad if exposed to air for too long so make sure to keep them out in the open in short bursts." This added to the difficulty because it meant he couldn''t just have them all in the air as he sorted them and would instead have to swap two at a time until they were in order but he still had confidence that he could move all the poisons into the right order within a few seconds if he really tried.
After taking a few seconds to identify all the moves he would need to make in advance Lake started moving the liquids around and after nine swaps he had them all in order from lightest to darkest. After a few seconds of silence whichke assumed was Doul waiting to see if any of the poisons turned into sludge Lake got a passing grade. "That was perfect. With your speed and forethought we might be able to finish the experiments in just a few days."
Lake could feel the meeting was probably about to end after Doul let a few seconds pass in silence after praising his results so he asked. "Are there any other tests?" He really had to go read some even if he didn''t want to so when Doul started to shake his head no Lake excused himself by saying. "I''ll see you in the morning then."
Turning to walk out the door he heard Doul hurriedly ask him a question before he could get very far. "I have some time now, would you like to see what you''ll be doing tomorrow in advance?" Weaning this offer with reading a boring book that would most likely be useless Lake turned and said. "Sure."
Chapter 386: The Deal Pt.22
Chapter 386: The Deal Pt.22
Being let into the Master Lab by Doul Lake saw that there weren''t that many people here currently because it was still kind of early and most of the Masters were probably still resting. He wouldn''t be surprised if they arrived while Doul was showing them what they were going to be working onter though if it took a while for the experiment to be exined to him.
After walking around a few other work areas that belonged to some of the other masters Doul pointed at a station that had curtains surrounding it and said. "What I''ve been working on is in there." Lake had never been to this corner of theb though it wasn''t too far from where he had helped master Na. "Why is it blocked off like that?"
"Oh I''ve been struggling recently and didn''t want the others to think I''d lost my skills and tell Lucas my funding should be given to them instead." Lake had kind of known the Alchemist guild had a cut-throat culture going but it was kind of crazy that the Masters had to worry about something like that while they were working in the shared space called the Master Lab.
"If it wasn''t for the fact I needed the increased mana environment to help with stability in my work I would have moved to somewhere else months ago for more privacy." Lake was invested enough now that he didn''t really want to hear anything else until he was actually looking at whatever Doul was working on so he pointed at the curtain and asked. "Can I just go in or is there something blocking the way?"
If Doul was worried about the other masters he probably had something like a barrier up to block people from going in while he was gone. "Oh, Give me a second I''ll let us in so you can see what we''re talking about."
After a few seconds that consisted of Doul touching the curtain with his eyes closed, Lake was let inside and saw a station that had hundreds of pipes running in between four cylinders. This meant there were multiple pipes joining each cylinder which Lake didn''t understand at a nce but he was sure Doul would exin it to him.
"I''m sure you''re wondering what this mess of pipes could possibly aplish so I''ll exin it to you before you start thinking that I''m crazy like the others. Do you know how it seems that once you use an ingredient derived from nts in something, adding more of its powder doesn''t really do anything to improve the final product? My goal is to change that but I haven''t been able to produce enough control over the ingredients inside to have this happen."
Lake could already tell he probably wasn''t qualified for this conversation from how Doul started it so he just nodded whenever Doul looked at him during the exnation. "My best guess on how to do this is to stop the matching effects from forming a stable group by just making a long chain of the same three ingredients in a huge line."
After a while Lake had decided to use Mana Vision to look inside the cylinders and found the pipe he had thought joined the cylinders was actually just one giant pipe that continued in and out over and over again which matched up with what Doul had just said. Figuring he should ask a question to make Doul think he understood what they were talking about Lake asked. "So three of the cylinders hold ingredients and thest one will hold the final product, is that right?"
Getting a nod Lake felt he now knew enough that he would be helpful during the experiment but Doul seemed to think he needed to know more and said. "You''ll be moving the chain in the pipe as fast as possible while adding a bit of each ingredient to the end each time it passes through one of the cylinders that hold them. Would you like to see why the machine doesn''t work now? It will only take a few minutes."
Lake could understand why seeing a failure could help him when it was his turn so he nodded. "Alright I''ll set it up." It took Doul around two minutes to get each cylinder filled with the three ingredients and the catalyst which just seemed to be water. He then activated a heat source under all four of the cylinders and the machine came to life.
Lake had never seen a steam engine in hisst life as far as he knew but he was sure they had to look something like this. "As you can see the machine works at the beginning but before too long the amount of liquid in the pipe slows down the cycle to the point that the stuff in the pipe starts to fall apart and the potion or poison fails before it''s long enough that the two ends meet."
Lake was watching silently until he heard thest part about the two ends meeting because if that was the end of the process he didn''t understand how the the chain was supposed to get itself out of the loop without them taking apart the pipe in someway he guessed there was no need to ask though because he would get to seeter when they tried this for real.
"It''s about to happen." Hearing what Doul said Lake started paying attention to the machine again and using Mana Vision was able to tell the exact moment the poison chain started to crumble. It didn''t turn into sludge right away though as all the ingredients matched closely enough that it just became a more normal poison. It did turn to sludge soon after that though for some reason he didn''t understand.
His best guess was the original failure had made the poison that had formed afterwards have a very unstable nature but he didn''t know if that was the case because he hadn''t been using Poison Control to get a feeling of what had happened. "Well I have to go rest now. I''ll see you in a few hours when it''s time to get to work."
Lake hadn''t expected Doul to leave right after the failure but he guessed it was best if he got going now as well so he nodded and said. "I''ll see you then." They had around four hours before the job started which was just enough time for him to read through arge book so he needed to return to the library and use Detector to try and find a better source of information on Akal.
...
Donny didn''t know how much time had passed since he had started trying to figure out how to use the looking stone but in this time he had made pretty good progress. In the past three tries he had actually found two things he recognized as enchantments that were used to block off viewing from the other side.
It didn''t take a lot to figure out that these enchantments were most likely on whatever it was that he was inside so no one would know they were smuggling a kidnapped person out of the Metal Domain. It didn''t really help him get out though so he just kept trying to find something on the bindings that were keeping him from using magic or any of his skills.
Keeping prisoners like this was extremely difficult so he knew whatever it was that was keeping him in such a useless condition was going to be obvious once he found it. He also knew there was a good chance the effect wasing from the shackles themselves so he was keeping his eyes out for anything the looked like metal whenever he looked through the looking stone even though he wasn''t able to really see what the shackles were made from because of how dark it was in this room.
The reason he thought this was that if they were using something like a poison or curse to keep him weak the shackles wouldn''t be necessary at all because he would be unable to do anything even without being chained up. Of course they might be being overly cautious with him for some unknown reason and he had been cursed already while he was sleeping but there was no point in thinking like that with no way to know if it was true.
...
Lake had had enough of trying to find a book that met his requirements and finally found a way to use Detector to look for a book that he felt could answer his question and that was just to set Detector to look for a book that had the right answer to his question. It was a ridiculous way to find what he was looking for but Detector had passed every hurdle he had ever thrown at it so he didn''t think there would be a problem.
After he set Detector to Look for a book that could answer how Akal and the Demon Lord were involved to one another Lake looked around the library expecting a book to start glowing. When it didn''t happen, Lake realized what he wanted to know must only have been known to the Insider and the Demon Lord and he would never find all the information here no matter what books he read.
It was still probably a good idea for him to go and have a look around the other libraries in the spire on the off chance this ce was just a bad source of information when one wanted to learn history. There were at least three other rooms filled with books that he knew of so giving up before looking around would be stupid.
Chapter 387: The Deal Pt.23
Chapter 387: The Deal Pt.23
Having failed to find anything in the two other libraries, Lake headed for thest resort which was Lucas'' office. Lucas had loads of books so thinking he might have something about the Demon Lord there made plenty of sense and hopefully this book about the Demon Lord would mention how Akal hade to work for him.
Stepping into the room, Lake saw Lucas was still working even though everyone else had gone home for the day and had to wonder if maybe the man was like him and had something like high stats or a skill that affected the man''s ability to sleep. It didn''t really matter but if Lucas was this busy with never taking time to sleep the amount of work the Guild Leader must have to do in a single day must be soul crushing.
"Are you going out again?" Lake guessed Lucas thought he was looking at him because he hadn''t wanted Lucas to see him walking through to leave but that wasn''t the case so he just shook his head and said. "I''m just passing time until work starts by looking around for a book that could answer some of my questions about the Demon Lord. So far everything I''ve found has been from the perspective of onlooking mortals so you can''t take the information as the absolute truth."
Lake had already found that nothing inside the room was currently glowing so he wasn''t surprised when Lucas said. "Well good luck. The gods try to keep what goes on between them as much as possible unless there''s a reason to let the mortals know. Any book that held the information you''re looking for has probably been destroyed so the information wouldn''t spread too much."
When Lucas got done saying that his search wouldn''t be easy Lake decided to just give up for now because the Insider clearly didn''t want him to know either and he finally realized there was probably a good reason. If this ever changed he was sure it would let him know what he needed to when it came to its past dealings with the Demon Lord.
Lake was about to say bye to Lucas to go back to his room when he noticed the bookshelf that held the journals of Amanda which still held only a few books. He saw them every time he walked through the office but now that the war seemed to be pretty much over for the Alchemist Guild, going out to gather the other volumes was a good way to make Lucas happy with him.
Keeping someone who was aware of his secrets happy was obviously a good thing so even if it took some of his item gathering time from him it would be worth it. "I also wanted to ask if you would want to go after some more of the journals when you''re not so busy."
Having Lucase with him was a great way to force the man to answer some of his questions so even if it was only for a few of the journals that he would get for the guild it would be a useful use of a trip. "I''ll probably have some time off tomorrow but only a few hours, do you think that would be enough to get one?"
Thinking about it, Lake nodded and said. "If we don''t take a cart and just run there we''ll be fine. What time do you want me to be here to leave?" After a few seconds of looking through some papers on his desk Lucas said. "Juste and see me after you get done with working with Doul tomorrow and I''ll try to be ready to go."
Lake nodded and wondered if he would even need to go to work tomorrow with how easy the test Doul wanted his help with was. He kind of felt he would be able to get it done today soon after he arrived at the Master Lab. "Alright I''ll see youter then." Lake was sure he would see Lucas again today so he didn''t say tomorrow even though that was when they had just made ns for.
...
Seeing the gate back to the Holy Domain again so soon felt very weird to Tiff but she had known whening through it yesterday that the future was uncertain so it wasn''t that much of a surprise. The fact she was alone was though because in all the possibilities she had thought of yesterday she hadn''t pictured being sent out alone to hunt down a giant as even a vague possibility.
She wasn''t really feeling scared either so that was weirding her out as well. She had always known the kind of confidence you could get from receiving a Legendary skill because it had happened to her when she was still stealing to feed herself while on the run from the Demon Worshipers when she was little but she guessed getting multiple in a few hours had an even greater effect.
She felt even better than she had when she had first received the Legendary job which made sense because she hadn''t really gotten any real benefits right away with how the God of Light wanted her to get the dagger back before he gave her any new skills for whatever reason.
"Stop." Hearing the person at the gate call out to her it took Tiff a second to realize she was being stopped because she had her Temple ring off of her finger to hide who she was. Quickly shing the ring to the guard Tiff was let through with no more words exchanged.
As she walked through Tiff was unable to keep herself from taking a look at the sky because even though she knew no one would recognize her as a Demigod or a Holy mage now with her new skills she was just used to every time she walked through this gate so exposed the Demon Lord sent assassins from the sky to kill her.
After a few seconds of nothing happening she knew the new skills worked like the God of Light hoped they would and was able to continue on her way towards a small town that would take her around a day to get to. The information she received had said this town should be where one of the younger and weaker giants was currently living and if this information was right this giant would be her first victim.
...
Donny had been about to try again at using the looking stone to find what was stopping him from using magic when he heard something for the first time in hours. It sounded like someone moving towards him and it hade from just a few feet away so he instantly hit the looking stone by covering it with his hand.
"You want some food?" Donny was a bit hungry but he felt taking food right now was a bad idea because it might involve using the hand that held the stone. "Not right now."
"Oh are you afraid I''ll poison you?" Donny knew that was ridiculous because he was alreadypletely under their control but pretending to not trust the food was a good way to get out of eating it so he said. "I think it''s possible that you''re trying to knock me out again without having toe inside."
Donny was sure he was in some type of cage even though he couldn''t move very far from where he was chained up. "Well I was going toe in and feed you so there''s no benefit of trying to knock you out with your food." Hearing he wasn''t going to be using his hands to eat Donny stopped trying to get them to leave and said. "Alright then go ahead ande in."
Donnys hand was big enough topletely cover the looking stone but it was still pretty obvious that he was holding something so when he heard something that sounded like a door opening he made sure his shackles were blocking his hands from sight.
As the guy got close enough to him that he was able to make out a silhouette Donny tried to get a look at whatever it was he was about to be fed but before he was able to see anything he saw the man''s hand start to head towards his mouth with what was most likely a fork.
As the food made it into his mouth Donny was able to tell that it was meat which he was happy about until he remembered the rumor that undead liked to eat human meat no matter if they were mindless or not. It seemed this thought had made him start to struggle enough that the man thought there was something wrong. "Oh did I push the food too far into your mouth?"
Donny was unable to speak because of the meat that was in his mouth that he refused to chew until the fork was pulled back and he was able to spit it out. "What are you feeding me?" Donny continued to spit out the rest of the meat juice that was in his mouth as he waited for the answer.
"It''s meat. Why does it taste weird?" Donny hadn''t really let himself think about the taste because of what he thought it might be but that didn''t matter. "No, I want to know what type of meat."
"Oh I see. It''s just something we hunted while traveling." Hearing this answer Donny got over his fear of eating the food and opened his mouth for the next bite pretending he hadn''t just spit the first all over the ce.
Chapter 388: The Deal Pt.24
Chapter 388: The Deal Pt.24
Looking at the time Lake decided to go ahead and head to work with Doul now even though it was a bit early just to make sure he wasn''tte. Walking out of his room Lake saw the hallway was empty like it had been every time he used it since getting back and started to wonder when the other people that used to live here would get back.
He wouldn''t be too surprised if Nia had died because she had been in the Metal Domain and the guilds had been destroyed but Solomon the person who used to be his neighbor still wasn''t back. He guessed this would be a good question for Lucas when they went out tomorrow to hunt down a journal.
He also hadn''t seen Millie sinceing back and that was odd because he used to see her in the halls all the time. This was probably because she was busy but there was also a chance she had moved where she lived to be closer to the kitchen which meant he would never see her by chance and needed to go say hi if he wanted to see how the restaurant n wasing along.
He was still dreaming of the day that he could go to any town to fill up on good food instead of having toe all the way back to the guild each time because he was getting tired of running through the wilderness of the Holy Domain every few days. Thinking this reminded him he needed to look into teleportation at some point because if he put the right stuff into Inner Vault there was a chance he could instantly travel wherever he wanted.
He knew finding these things was probably going to be hard though so this was also a good thing to ask Lucas about tomorrow while they were running through the wilderness of the Holy Domain.
Getting to the stairs, Lake cast Fly and made it to the Master Lab within a few minutes. He had made sure to move slowly so he wouldn''t get there too early that he wouldn''t be able to get in but that didn''t seem to be a problem he would have because when he tried his badge at the door to the Masterb it opened.
The only obstacle he met was when he got to the curtain that blocked the machine he had Doul would be working on from sight as it was still closed with no one around it. Lake had kind of expected to see some servants or something around even if Doul wasn''t here quite yet but he guessed there was a chance Doul didn''t have any that he let work on the machine.
It was too bad if that was actually true because Lake had wanted to ask someone who might be a bit closer to his level of understanding about what they were trying to aplish to see if Doul was actually crazy like how everyone else around him thought. He guessed he would just have to find this out himself through the results of the experiment today.
Around ten minutes after he arrived Doul and one other person walked towards him and he could Tell Doul was happy he was already here by the way the man started to smile as he opened the curtain. "Detris clean out the machine while Lake and I get the ingredients ready."
Lake took the few seconds they had before either of these things started to give the servant Detris a small wave as a greeting since they had met earlier when he had been in the library. "Alright I''ll let you get all the powders into the water in each of the cylinders when they''re clean but for now let''s just weigh out the right amount of each one."
They finished with the piles of powder before Detris cleaned out the machine but the difference in time was only a few minutes so before long everything was set up and they were ready to run the first test. "Alright I wont be upset with you if we fail every attempt today so don''t worry about the first try."
Lake felt confident inpleting the potion loop in just a few tries but just in case he was wrong he pretended that Doul''s words made him calm down a bit before saying. "Alright I''m ready." After he said this Doul activated the heat under the cylinders and the liquid inside started to be pushed through the giant pipe loop gaining a bit of each ingredient at the end. Lake let this happen for a while just watching what the machine did until he felt it would be a good opportunity to help.
Instead of trying to control everything that was happening inside of the pipe, Lake just used Poison Control to keep the poison inside going the right speed long past when it had failed yesterday. "Oh it looks like we passed the furthest it''s made it up till now. Forty or so more cycles and it should be done."
Lake didn''t have anything to say to Doul at this time so he just kept going until the chain was about to bepleted. "You said the poison will be draining into the fourth cylinder at the end. Is there anything I need to do or does the machine just do that part itself?" Lake still didn''t understand how a chain of effects in the shape of a circle was supposed to drain itself out of a loop without breaking itself in some way so he felt asking now was better than just watching what happened.
"It will do it when the pipe''spletely filled, don''t worry and just keep the speed stable even as it''s happening." Doing as he had been told Lake saw with Mana Vision that as soon as the two ends met andbined that a hole for the liquid to drain out of opened. After a few seconds the fourth cylinder was mostly filled and the pipe was empty but the fact the two ends of the liquid had split as it was draining made him feel wherever they had just done was pointless.
"Lake you''re immune to poison, correct?" Lake just nodded his head without correcting Doul before pointing and asking. "Is it ok that the two ends split while it was draining or does that mess up the poison in some way?"
"What do you mean?" Lake didn''t know how he could put the question in a more understandable way so he just said. "The shape was important for this poison because you were trying to use the same ingredients multiple times but the shape fell apart when it drained."
"Oh I see what you are saying. Let me ask you this what happens when you pour the final product into two bottles? Does the effect fall apart because it''s been split up or do you get two potions that do the same thing?"
"You get two potions that do the same thing?" Lake could kind of see where this was going but he had thought they were trying to do something that didn''t count as regr brewing so he thought maybe the rules should be different this time. "That right, do you know why?"
Lake actually didn''t understand why alchemy worked the way it did at all and just assumed it was because the gods wanted it to be easy for those that had the job so he just shook his head and said. "I don''t."
"Ok well it''s a pretty simple exnation, the shapes we see when brewing items are real but they kind of don''t exist does that make sense. Like they''re kind of like the lines of a formation, how it looks a certain way but its effect does not have any real contention to how it seems." This statement made it clear why the other people here thought Doul was crazy but Lake kind of got what he was saying and was nodding the entire time until Doul tried to finish his exnation by saying. "The shape only tells you if the effect is stable or not the actual effect exists in the catalyst which can be split into many parts without any damage being done to the potion."
That part made perfect sense and Lake understood Doul was saying that as soon as they were done with brewing the chain and it became stable the entire potion had gained the effect they had been trying to make so it splitting as it drained no longer mattered. "Alright it''s good that you get it, would you like to take a sip of the final product to see if it actually worked or should we just have an appraisere."
Lake was fine with either of these options but instead of picking one he just said. "I''m an Appraiser, just let me do it." Hearing his answer Doul looked a bit sad and Lake felt it was because the man wanted him to drink some of the poison but Lake had learned that it was not a good idea to drink poison just because he could.
"Ok do you need me to bottle it or can you just appraise all of it inside the cylinder?" Thinking this over, Lake said. "Get a bottle out please, it will be easier if it''s smaller." His ability to appraise items was a bit over the top so if he looked at the details of the potion now he was going to get a lot of stuff on the machine it was inside of as well and it would take him a while topile all the useful information.
Chapter 389: The Deal Pt.25
Chapter 389: The Deal Pt.25
After watching Doul carefully fill a bottle with some of the poison for a few minutes Lake wondered if maybe the poison they made was capable of killing Doul if he identally touched it but before he decided if it would be alright to ask the man finished and started talking. "This should be about 2% of the poison so multiply the number by fifty before you tell me the results."
Lake nodded before taking the poison and inspecting it using Observer.
Observer (U) Lv.1
Nothing can stop you from essing somethings information.
(allows you to see hidden details)
This was his best skill to inspect items but since it gave him Hidden details that mostly consisted of useless things no one would ever need to know it always took him a while to find what he wanted to know. Eventually he found the amount of damage this potion would do per second and doing as Doul had asked Lake multiplied by fifty and said. "The poison does 750 damage a second."
Of course you would have to drink the entire cylinder for that to actually happen to you but it was still a really high number so he expected Doul to look happy at this news. "That means it didn''t work. All I''ve aplished is making a normal potion through annoyingly difficult means."
Lake wasn''t sure how much time Doul had spent on this or what level of pity he should give the man but it ended up not mattering because before even two seconds passed Doul looked like he had before he had known his idea had failed. "That''s alright I''ve been keeping myself from working on anything else until I was done with this so I already know what''s next."
Lake was happy Doul got over the failure quickly and asked. "Is your next project something I can help with as well?" He liked the distraction from boredom Doul provided while he was here in the guild so working with the man again was better than helping a new Master he wasn''t sure about.
"Now that you mention it it would probably make more sense for me to try out my ideas you''re able to help with while I have ess. It will still take me a few days though so feel free to work on other things until I get in touch." Hearing Doul say a few days, Lake nodded and asked. "Does that mean we''re done for the day?"
If he was done helping Doul now it would be a great time to go out to gather items that were close to the guild for Inner Vault. "Yeah, go ahead and head home for the day. Sorry if you don''t get paid much for your time today because of our failure." Lake wasn''t sure about the ''our'' part of the failure but he didn''t correct Doul because he didn''t think anyone would me him for Doul''s idea not working how he had wanted.
After saying goodbye to the two of them Lake headed downstairs to head into his room and get ready to leave. He hadn''t worn all of his newest armor today and had instead gone for a robe like what all the other people in the guild wore but that wasn''t the type of clothing he wanted to go outside with.
It didn''t take him long to get into his armor and head down to Lucas'' office. "When I said tomorrow I didn''t mean today I actually meant tomorrow. I should have been more clear since it had only been today for a few hours when we made the ns." Seeing Lucas thought he was only here because of some misunderstanding, Lake had been about to tell him that he hadn''t made a mistake when he decided to just go with it.
"Oh yeah I thought that was probably what you meant. I just wanted to make sure I didn''t miss our appointment." Lake felt that ying along would give him a reason to go out since he was already ready to do so. "Well there are still some things I wanted to do outside today so I''ll just take care of it today so we don''t have to worry about it tomorrow."
Lucas didn''t seem to care about what he said at all so Lake went ahead and headed towards the elevator. Before the door closed Lucas finally looked up from his desk long enough to say. "Try to be back before night time. You''ll probably be fine as a member of the Alchemist Guild but the Demon Worshipers have something nned for tonight."
The doors were already closed by the time Lucas finished saying this and Lake briefly thought about opening it back up and just going back to his room but he decided he could get back before the sun went down with how early it was in the day. He had over twelve hours and could leave the Domain ande back within that amount of time if he wanted to.
His goal was much closer so he felt that even with this restriction he might be able to get more than one thing today if he was lucky and didn''t run into any problems. As he left the Guild building Lake saw the streets were actually starting to fill with people again which he had expected but it was still nice to know if he wanted he could start pickpocketing again without moving very far from the guild.
He probably wouldn''t get much gold doing this but it was a good way to pass time if he got really tired of sitting inside and wanted to pass a few hours. Now that he was outside Lake set Detector to look for an arrow that was pointing at the closest thing that was on his list in the Holy Domain section and before long had his direction and started running out of the city.
As he passed over the wall Lake remembered the items he had stashed in the woods on his way back from his vacation and made a quick stop to see if he could summon it now. The barrier could have been gone for around a half day or more so the chances of it all still being there waiting for him to summon it all was a bit iffy but giving up on it without checking would be a waste.
Once he found a ce Lake summoned the chunk that should have held all the items but when it appeared with none of the items he realized that as soon as the barrier fell this no longer counted as a container that held all the items so he couldn''t summon them to him having never touched anything on the inside of it.
Adding finding the core that gave the immune to fire skill to the list of items Lake went back to doing what he had been before remembering the treasure he had left hidden in the forest of the Earth Domain.
As he ran, Lake once again thought of getting his hand on a map because now that he knew Detector could point out something on the page of a book he could use a map to tell him where he was heading to instead of just running until he got to it. This would be the end of him having to use magicpass as well so he didn''t have to worry about people seeing what he was doing and bothering him because looking at a map while traveling made perfect sense.
After a while Lake entered a forest with particrlyrge trees and felt he had to be where Detector was taking him and when he saw a giant hole in the side of a cliff in front of him he stopped and said. "Of course there''s a giant cave here."
It wasn''t that big of a deal but he was in a hurry so climbing through a cave wasn''t what he wanted to find when he had started running. He had been hoping for something like the small shack from when he had taken Credglin from the guy in town. Not all of the items were going to be that easy though but he didn''t think this one was as bad as it could be just yet because the arrow was saying the item was in front of him not down deep in the ground which made him think he wouldn''t be doing any climbing through any cramped spaces which meant he should still be able to run towards the.
Realizing he didn''t even know what he was after at the moment Lake looked at the list and set Detector to look for the name of the item he was the closest to. The name four items down from the top started to glow and Lake was happy because it being this one first was good luck for him.
Mizzly''s bow
Estimated Lv.50
Mizzly was an archer that was known for hitting targets that were hidden in various ways.
Lake had written the description himself so all it did was remind him of the facts he had read in the book that said there was a good chance the bow had something to do with Mizzly''s ability which made Lake feel like he would get a bonus to his Perception if he put the bow into Inner Vault.
It also said Mizzly hadn''t been seen for a long time so Lake felt there was a good chance he was about to find whatever had killed them here in this cave. Even if he was wrong about this it was probably a good idea to be careful on the way in.
Chapter 390: The Deal Pt.26
Chapter 390: The Deal Pt.26
Before he stepped into the cave Lake made sure to use Mana Vision to see if anything bow shaped stood out to him because if he was able to see it from here it would have made this much easier. Sadly his range seemed a bit short because he saw absolutely nothing and he was about to start walking inside when he realized he wasn''t actually sure this cave held the bow.
There was a small chance he had just assumed this was his destination because it was such arge cave and the arrow was pointing right at it but he hadn''t actually made sure quite yet. Setting Detector to look for a cave that held Mizzly''s Bow Lake saw the stone around him start to glow and guessed he had assumed correctly that this was the right ce.
This confirmed that the cave must be extremely long if the bow wasn''t visible to him from here but he still didn''t think there was going to be a problem because he couldn''t see any enemies either.
As he took his first step inside, Lake was able to get a good look at what he would be walking through for the next few minutes and once again had to appreciate the night vision he had from one of his skills because he felt most people wouldn''t be able to see what was around them like he could.
Even with torches they would have to slowly close the distance before they finallyid their eyes on the area in the very back of the first chamber that seemed to go off to the right. As he moved his way to the first turn, Lake took a few looks on the ground to see if there were any obvious tracks, human or animal, because he found it hard to believe that such arge cave would bepletely unused.
He didn''t see any though and this made him decide to use Detector again, setting it to look for signs of recent tracks or evidence of life. Like he had expected small scratches he assumed were from ws lit up on the stone that made up the cave floor.
He was unable to tell what type of animal they were from but just knowing that something had been inside recently told him that he should be using Mana Vision every minute or so to make sure he wouldn''t walk into a den of man eaters.
Taking the first corner, Lake took a brief pause to use Mana Vision even though he had only made it a hundred feet into the cave so far and knew he probably wouldn''t see anything new. After he had proven himself correct again Lake kept going and only stopped for a few seconds whenever he made it to a turn.
While he never saw anything even after he had gone around the tenth turn he did notice that the path always seemed to straighten out. This made him feel there was a slight chance this cave hadn''t formed naturally and only looked that way because it was very old.
He had seen the types of things Earth mages could do within just a few seconds so making a tunnel like this wouldn''t even take a skilled mage. If he was right about this it meant there was a good chance he would find something at the end of the cave that wasn''t just a dead end.
This could give him an exnation as to why he was still unable to see anything with Mana Vision since if there was some type of building it was possible there would be a vault or barrier that was blocking the mana from reaching his eyes.
With this new expectation in mind Lake took another break from moving forward and started inputting things into Detector to see if he was right. The first thing he tried was barrier and getting a positive result when a gold wall appeared close to him he knew he had found some type of secret base or something.
This increased the difficulty of retrieving the bow to a level that he thought it might be best if he saved this for some other time but he didn''t turn and run like he felt he should because he felt there was a good chance whatever it was that was in front of him was empty.
He thought this because he still didn''t feel anyone''s attention on him and if there were people here they would probably be watching the secret cave entrance to their base for intruders. Walking forward again Lake soon reached the barrier Detector had sensed and found it was overpping with a stone wall that looked like it was part of the cave.
It was obvious this was to make people think this was the end of the cave so they would leave but Lake already knew this was no normal cave so he started using Detector to see if breaking the barrier was something he could do without hurting himself.
While he ran through all the settings he had found that would tell him what he wanted to know, Lake thought about something else he had just noticed. Detector seemed to be much stronger than some of his other skills even if they were Unique while Detector wasn''t.
The example of this was how right now Mana Vision was useless while Detector had been able to sense Mizzlys bow when he had still been in the capital even with it seemingly inside of a barrier that was blocking all mana from leaking out.
This of course made sense to him since Detector was from a criminal job so there was a good chance the Insider was somehow affecting its strength while Mana Vision wasn''t but it was too bad because having your skills fail sometimes led you to making incorrect assumptions which were dangerous.
When he had firste into the cave he had assumed it was going to be very long because nothing was in Mana Visions range but in reality it was short with a strong barrier blocking him from seeing anything.
There was also a possibility that Mana Vision was as strong as Detector but the barrier just perfectly countered it in this case but he really thought there was a chance that just because one of his skills said Unique didn''t mean it was anywhere near asplicated as a Legendary skill he received from a job.
For all he knew Mana Vision was just a slightly improvedmon skill but because it had been affected by the Insider it was now Unique. This was a pretty obvious thing to realize but he guessed from now on he really needed to try and find a way to test the actual strength of his skills when it came to how they stacked up to one another.
Realizing he was now ready to try and break the barrier, finding that it would be safe for him and his gear to do so, Lake refocused on what he was actually doing and sent out a weak smack to see if that would be enough to break this barrier. Feeling the barrier shake a bit after his attack, Lake was happy that he wouldn''t have to try and use anything stronger while underground and increased his power by a bit and hit it again.
Punching a small hole in the barrier this time Lake watched as it quickly started to copse and activated Mana Vision again in the hopes that with the barrier gone he would finally be able to get a good look at what he was walking into. As he had hoped, Lake started to see mana sources light up in front of him.
He took a few minutes to try and see something that looked like a bow but was unable. He got a good glimpse of things that looked like they were alive through so he knew this ce he had just uncovered wasn''t as abandoned as he would have liked it to be.
The things he was seeing didn''t look like people though so that exined why they didn''t seem to react when he broke the barrier that was hiding this ce from the outside. This meant he wasn''t going to need to worry about making the people here mad when he took Mizzly''s bow but the fact it probably didn''t currently have an owner was too bad because it would only be half as effective if it had been stolen.
"I wonder if selling it to steal again could fix this little problem?" If it turned out Mizzly''s bow was a really good match for him he would probably take the time to try this out to see if such an obvious loophole would work.
Taking his first few steps into the space he had just uncovered, Lake felt something start to pay attention to him finally even if it felt like it was only vaguely and wondered what it was and where they were. He still didn''t see anyone around that seemed to be looking in his direction.
Chapter 391: The Deal Pt.27
Chapter 391: The Deal Pt.27
As he moved further into the underground area Lake got to an open area that reminded him a bit of the parts of the city that were underground in the Metal Domain just without the nice buildings or the extreme size.
The buildings here were more like holes in the cave walls with one exception in the very back of the cave that looked kind of like a small fortress and the amount made it seem like thousands of people had lived here at some point.
He wanted to know what was up with this but with the amount of attention that was on him growing as he moved in the direction of the bow he decided to just focus on what he was doing and think about what this ce might be at some other time.
At first he had assumed that something like a small rodent or something had noticed him walking near their hovel but now he was starting to think someone rted to this ce was somehow alerted to him entering and was on their way here now while he slowly made his way through the streets.
Usually he wouldn''t be too worried about this but he had skill that should make it impossible to detect him with magic and if the personing here had ovee Trespasser there was a good chance they were slightly more than mortal.
He knew it might be a bit paranoid for him to think this with no real evidence but with the types of things he had been involved with recently it honestly wouldn''t even be a surprise if his guess was right. "Hopefully they''ll be nice." He didn''t want to run because he would have to take the cave and that would make it impossible to hide with how open the way in had been.
He was much better off trying to hide once they got here if there was in fact anyone on the way even if them being able to sense him was almost a guarantee. It was also probably a good idea to increase the speed at which he was walking if he wanted to finish what he hade to do before he had to try and run.
Starting to run in the direction the bow was in, Lake used man Vision to veer around anything that looked like it might be alive until he finally made it to the biggest building at the very end of the cave. He had never expected the bow to be anywhere else so he was already prepared for having to go into the fort-like building having set Detector to look for barriers before he had even made it here.
Unexpectedly his attempt at speeding this process up failed when Detector didn''t find another barrier around the fortified building. "If there''s not a barrier blocking Mana Vision, where''s the bow?" Up to this point every enchanted item he had seen had glowed at least a bit when he used Mana Vision so something weird must be going on if he still couldn''t see it.
"I guess I''ll have to go in to see." Lake had really wanted to see the bow before going in so he could use Ghost Touch to avoid the front door and spend as little time as possible inside but he guessed going in blind was the only option he had left.
Walking up to the door Lake was able to just push it open using his strength even though he could tell had he not been so strong this would have been much harder to do. This inside of the building ended up being as barren as Mana Vision led him to believe but that didn''t matter because there was another door inside that seemed to lead deeper.
"I can''t go any further." It was very disappointing but he had no choice because even now the amount of attention on him was increasing and going any further almost guaranteed that he wouldn''t be able to avoid whoever it was that wasing his way. "I need to find somewhere to hide."
Turning around to head back outside, Lake realized he had started talking to himself again and wondered if there was something about being underground that made him want to say his thoughts out loud more than normal since thest time he had done it this much was when he had been in the Metal Domain.
"Maybe it''s the echo." This was thest thing he said because soon after this left his mouth he found the best ce he could hide inside one of the human sized wall cubbies. This room had what had probably been a bed at some point in thest one thousand years and after he scooped some of the rubble onto himself he didn''t think anyone would be able to see him with just their regr eyes anymore.
Of course the thing he was hiding from still seemed to vaguely know he was here but the strength of the attention seemed to have stopped increasing so he had hope hiding here was having some effect.
After about ten minutes with no increase, Lake started to try and think of a way to figure out what was after him using his skills and remembered something he hadn''t used in a long time.
Burr rm (U) Lv.1
Lets you know who owns the property you''re on and where they are.
This skill was meant to be used in cases like this one so maybe it would work even if the person who owned this cave wasn''t a mortal. After activating the skill with nothing happening Lake waited a few seconds in hope that it would eventually give him something but when those seconds passed and nothing showed up he turned back to the skill that always worked the best.
He knew Detector probably wouldn''t work if he used it to look for a demigod in any way but if he targeted the cave instead and set it to look for a cave that was owned by a demigod he would probably get an answer on whether or not his guess was right.
After using this workaround and still getting nothing Lake went back to thinking about his other skills that might be useful in this situation but after reading through around half the list realized something he would have never noticed had he not stopped for a while like this. The amount of attention on him had gone up the entire time he had been moving forward which had stopped when he decided to take a pause to hide.
This could mean that whatever it was that was watching him was actually further in the cave beyond the door he had decided he shouldn''t go through. Taking out an arrow, Lake set up magicpass while trying to think of a way to test this new theory.
Eventually he settled on an arrow pointing at the thing watching me and set the arrow spinning. Before long the arrow lit up and Lake decided to do it again with a slightly different setting to decide if what was watching him was stronger than him. When the arrow lit up again Lake knew whatever it was that had been watching him since he arrived was not a threat to him and he stood up brushing all of the old bits of furniture off of his body.
"It seems I hid in a pile of garbage for no reason." It wasn''t that big of a deal since this was the least nasty type of garbage but he still felt like a bit of a fool for getting down and dirty for no reason when he had Detector and could have probably found out that he was in no danger if he had thought of using the skill the right way earlier.
Getting back to the door he had run at the sight of Lake went to open it and found this one was locked and seemed sturdy but not guarded by a barrier so he quickly used Crunch and had it out of his way so he could go through in a matter of moments. Seeing another hallway, Lake activated Mana Vision again and went inside.
As he was walking through the hallway Lake switched what Detector was looking for multiple times in hopes of seeing trapped or barriers before he actually ran into them but he made it to another door before he saw either of those things. This door was locked like thest but didn''t hold up any better to Crunch so it didn''t matter.
Stepping through the now ruined door Lake felt whatever was watching him had finally turned its full extension to him but it wasn''t the only thing that had finally seen something. In front of him was another good sized space but this one was decorated like a house would be and in one of the rooms off to the side was a bow shaped item.
Chapter 392: The Deal Pt.28
Chapter 392: The Deal Pt.28
This was a lot closer to an item than Lake normally had to get for it to show up in Mana Vision but he thought that could be a good thing because it pointed to the item having some type of enchantment that made it harder to notice which could make it even better for him when it was inside Inner Vault.
Using Detector onest time to look for traps before heading towards the bow, Lake found that this area was also devoid of anything he needed to be wary of and started walking towards the room the bow was in. The door to this room was unlocked and he was able to easily open it to get a look inside.
The first thing he saw when he looked into the room ended up not being the bow and instead he took a good look at what he would call a skeleton though it still had a bit of what was once flesh on its bonesying on top of the bed. This body really didn''t hold his interest for long though he did use Detector to see if it was Mizzly, it was, before he moved on to the bow that was propped up next to the bed.
"I wasn''t expecting it to be wood." The page in the book that had been about this bow hadn''t said anything about the bows appearance and had really only focused on stories about what Mizzly had done while in possession of the bow and why they thought the bow was the thing that made it possible so getting a look at the carved wooden bow really changed the mental image he had formed for what it was going to look like.
Walking into the room so he could get a better look at the weapon, Lake saw that there were shapes carved on the front of the bow that looked like a cat eye and understood why people assumed the bow was the reason Mizzly had been able to see things others couldn''t. "That''s a good sign for it giving me Perception."
After a few seconds of looking at the bow Lake saw no reason to try and pick it up and reached out to take it into his hand. As soon as he held it Lake felt the presence that had been watching him disappear and quickly realized it had been the bow that had been keeping an eye on him from the very beginning.
"I could have probably put that together before now if I had tried harder." All the signs the bow had been what was watching him had been there and the eye carving should have really made him realize but the reason he hadn''t was valid in his opinion.
A Thief''s Sense (U) Lv.1
Gives a 6th sense for how much attention is on you, Also gives lie detection, night vision and increased hearing.
He had always assumed items wouldn''t be included in what his skill could sense but he guessed just because it had never happened up to this point didn''t mean it couldn''t. Opening Inner vault Lake set the bow inside ignoring the weird feeling he now had that he assumed was some effect the bow had just given him and got to work looking around for anything else he might want to take from the now dead Mizzly.
Mana Vision had pointed out plenty of enchanted objects other than the bow on his way in so he knew there were other goodies around that he needed to gather before hitting the road again. "It''s too bad I don''t need a secret base at the moment."
He guessed it would be here waiting for him if he ever needed a ce to hide but with the damage he had caused to the cave wall that had been covering the first chamber where all the cubbies were anyone could walk into the cave and find this ce now.
He didn''t think it was very likely to happen though even if it could because he felt it would have been noticed already even with the false wall if people actually ever came here anymore.
"Oh wow look at that." As Lake looked around for other things he eventually noticed that under theyer of dirt on the only table in the room there was a book and it seemed to be in ok enough condition that it would still have information in it if he wanted to try and read it. Adding it to his bag, Lake then moved towards Mizzly''s body to see if the thing that was glowing in his chest was what he thought it was.
It turned out that Mizzly''s core was still intact so Lake put it into his bag and moved on to the next room that had anything that showed up when he used Mana Vision. "What are these called again?" The thing he found was a headband made of stylish metal and arge center gem that would be on the forehead but he couldn''t remember what the name for this type of jewelry was so he used inspect even though he had wanted to save looking at everything for when he was running to the next item.
Diadem Of Dripping Lv.46
Lake was a bit grossed out by the name of this item but seeing its level he continued to look through the rest of its information because it was good enough to be on his list even if this item hadn''t been in the book. After a bit of searching he was able to find the list of enchantments and while they were good this item didn''t really seem to suit him.
Enchantments
Increases affinity for water to high
Gives ess to the spell Raindrops after the Diadem is filled with water mana.
Lake had never seen an item that gave you a spell and wondered if this wasn''t a spell everyone could use. He knew spells made by people were a thing but if he was right and this thing somehow gave ess to one the abilities of high level items were much better than he thought.
Opening Inner Vault Lake set the item inside and went back to looking for anything else that was worth taking. To make this easier he set Detector to look for items over level thirty when nothing else started to glow he reset it for books which got a result.
It was pretty obvious this ce had been undisturbed for a while so any books that were around probably held information on the past that he would like to read even if it all probably outdated the time that Laka had been here in this world. "I guess Mizzly wasn''t much for reading." Being led to a sparse bookshelf, Lake took all of them and decided it was time to go.
He still had plenty of time to go after the next closest thing on his list but he was hoping to get at least two more so standing around looking for items that were much lower level than him was a waste of time.
On the way out Lake started looking through the new effects the two new items inside Inner Vault were having on him.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade) X4
Lv.45 Small Juice Based Poison (Perfect Grade) X3
Lv.39 Credglin (Enchanted Mace)
Lv.54 Mizzly''s Bow (Filled Soul Vessel)
Lv.46 Diadem Of Dripping (Uncharged)
Bonuses
+36 Health
+29% Natural Healing Rate
+Poisoned Effect (65 damage a second)
+40% Weight
+10 Strength
+10 Agility
+48 Perception
+32% Skill Range
+17% Water Affinity
+15 Intelligence
+Spell Raindrops
Seeing how high the bonuses from the two new items were, Lake was happy before even remembering neither of them were stolen. This meant this was actually only half of what the effects would be. "I guess I''ll be selling them after all."
That wouldeter though since he was already setting Detector to look for the next closest item on his list. Once the arrow was spinning, Lake took out the core he had retrieved from Mizzly''s body to see if it held anything he would actually want. After a few seconds of holding it in his hand Lake felt like maybe there was something more than just some experience or a few stat points and happily put it back into his bag to deal withter.
He was sure Lucas could help him with what he would need to do to get the skill or whatever out of the core and into his body because it was probably something Alchemists did. "This went a lot better than expected." He knew a lot of people would think it was bad luck to say something like this out loud but he was only a little over two hours in and already had two new items for Inner Vault.
"I can''t believe I didn''t guess that there could be more than one thing in each location." If this trend continued he would probably end up with dozens of things that didn''t really match him well that he could sell or give to the guild or temple to make his bosses happy.
Chapter 393: The Deal Pt.29
Chapter 393: The Deal Pt.29
The amount of speed Lake was able to use on his way to the next item made the trip much shorter than it would have been if the first item he had found hadn''t given him Perception. It had though and by a lot so he had been able to increase the speed he could run by about 40%. The location of the next item seemed to be a town but he would have to go in closer to know for sure.
Entering the town Lake saw the direction the arrow glowed in change when he was near the middle of the town and looked back at the buildings he just passed. "Guild buildings." Getting closer to make sure this was actually where the item was, Lake also took the opportunity to see which guilds were in this town.
Reading through all of them Lake ignored both the Alchemist and Farmers guilds and settled his attention on the cksmith and Fighters figuring they had a much better chance of being where a piece of armor or weapon would be. "Now all I need is a name."
Taking his list out, Lake set Detector to highlight the name of the closest item and read the name of the 15th item down from the top.
Wilmur Estimated Lv.50
Unlike how its name sounded Wilmur was a piece of armor, a chestpiece that had only been added to the list because it had been in the Holy Domain and Lake had loosened the restrictions to be added to the list for things that were closest.
Putting Wilmur into Detector Lake saw something start to glow beneath the cksmiths guild and used Mana Vision to see if it was currently on a person. When Mana Vision was unable to see the item at all Lake assumed there was a good chance Wilmur was currently sitting in a vault or just happened to be in an area that was encased by something that blocked mana but either way he decided to try to get to it.
If it had been earlier he would have probably moved on but with it being so close to him he couldn''t help but think he could pull off this heist extremely quickly and without even needing to go inside if he did the right thing.
He needed to wait till no one was looking at him as well so gathering a bit more information while he waited to be unnoticed by the people around him. The first thing he looked for was a barrier because if Mana Vision wasn''t working right there was a good chance the ce Wilmur was in was surrounded by a barrier of some kind.
He needed this to not be the case for his n to work so when nothing started to glow Lake smiled and set Detector to look for an enchanted vault. This ended up being the right one and something cube shaped that was in the same direction as Wilmur started to glow. "It looks big, there will probably be more than one thing here as well."
Lake wasn''t sure why he had said this out loud because as soon as he did the amount of people looking at him increased by a lot. It didn''tst for too long though because people weren''t going to stare at someone all day just because they said something odd out of nowhere.
As soon as thest person had moved on Lake didn''t waste a second of time and used Ghost Touch to slip into the ground. Once he was inside he turned the ground above him back solid so no one would fall into the hole he had just made leaving himself incased.
Not wasting any time since he was pretty sure he would run out of the small amount of air that was in here with him he started to head towards the vault that held Wilmur. He slowed down a bit as he got closer and used Detector to see if anyone was inside the vault because it was definitely big enough to hold a guard or something but when there were none he just made his move using Ghost Touch on the wall of the vault.
He had expected Ghost Touch to have a bit of trouble with the vault but he guessed whatever enchantments they had put on it weren''t made to stop a skill like his because the wall was no harder to get through than the dirt around him. Slipping inside Lake instantly went towards Wilmur since it was his goal even though he could tell there were other items around that he might want to take.
Once he had his eyes on Wilmur Lake realized the reason such a great item was here unused, it had been damaged by a spell or maybe acid. This was a bit disappointing but he didn''t leave it because there was probably a good chance Inner Vault could still make it useful for him. Switching it with one of the health potions in Inner Vault Lake turned and started to look at the other items around him.
There were actually a lot of other damaged things in this section and Lake was about to move closer to where he had entered the vault because the stuff there was in better condition but decided to look at a few things first because maybe there was a reason this stuff hadn''t just been thrown away even though they were trashed.
Brutish Helmet Lv.43
Seeing the level Lake understood why these items had been saved, the forties were the current level max since the best cksmiths had be the God of Metals Demigods and even if these items were damaged they had value as examples of good work. Grabbing a few damaged things without even checking what level they were, Lake set Detector to look for items over level forty while he put the newly stolen stuff in his bags Booster Bag space.
Lake was a bit sad when nothing that wasn''t damaged started to glow and it made him think maybe he had been more right than expected when he said these things were being used to teach cksmiths what you needed to do to make good items. He felt it was very possible that this guild branch was being used as some specialized school by the cksmiths guild.
Deciding to grab a few more small broken things Lake was leaving through the wall before he really needed happy with what he had taken. It was true that it was all broken but maybe someday when he finally got around to seeing whether cksmith was another Unique job he could fix it all.
Popping out of the ground a few moments after exiting the vault, Lake made sure to close the hole with Ghost Touch before heading out of town. Once he was out of town he pulled out an arrow and set Magicpass up to lead him to the next thing before opening Inner Vault to see what bonuses Wilmur was giving him.
Inner Vault
Contents
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade) X3
Lv.45 Small Juice Based Poison (Perfect Grade) X3
Lv.39 Credglin (Enchanted Mace)
Lv.54 Mizzly''s Bow (Filled Soul Vessel)
Lv.46 Diadem Of Dripping (Uncharged)
Lv.48 Wilmur (Damaged)
Bonuses
+30 Health
+23% Natural Healing Rate
+Poisoned Effect (65 damage a second)
+40% Weight
+10 Strength
+10 Agility
+48 Perception
+32% Skill Range
+17% Water Affinity
+15 Intelligence
+Spell Raindrops
+34 Endurance
+20% Size Adjustment
It seemed the estimate on Wilmur''s level had been a little high but it was still pretty close. It was just too bad the item was so damaged because even with a 2X multiplier to its bonuses it wasn''t that great. He also didn''t know what size adjustment was so until he figured out that particr bonus all Wilmur was doing was giving him a bonus to his lowest stat that he didn''t even need.
"It''s not like I spent a lot of time on it." He had probably only been in the town for twenty minutes and he had grabbed four other things so it had definitely been worth it. Taking Wilmur out of Inner Vault Lake put the other four items in one at a time to see if any of them would give him a more useful bonus.
Lv.43 Brutish Helmet (Crushed)
+21 Strength
+17 Endurance
+5% Damage Reduction
Lv.44 ss Scepter (Cracked)
+12% Light Affinity
+32 Intelligence
Lv.40 Runic Dagger (Unknown)
Lake stopped for a while on the third one because it didn''t give any bonus which he found weird because even random garbage gave a point or two in random stats. This made him think maybe this old rusty dagger was more special than it seemed so he made sure to put it away safely in his bag so nothing would happen to it before he had the time to really look at it.
Lv.42 ck Armor Shard (What''s Left)
+6% Metal Affinity
+6% Dark Affinity
+5 Endurance
Lake wasn''t surprised by how bad thest thing was because he had grabbed the two smallest things they had and this armor scrap was very small. It had probably been a piece of something amazing based off of its effects though so it was too bad it had been destroyed to such a degree. "ss Scepter it is."
Lv.35 Health Potion (High Grade) X3
Lv.45 Small Juice Based Poison (Perfect Grade) X3
Lv.39 Credglin (Enchanted Mace)
Lv.54 Mizzly''s Bow (Filled Soul Vessel)
Lv.46 Diadem Of Dripping (Uncharged)
Lv.44 ss Scepter (Cracked)
Bonuses
+30 Health
+23% Natural Healing Rate
+Poisoned Effect (65 damage a second)
+40% Weight
+10 Strength
+10 Agility
+48 Perception
+32% Skill Range
+17% Water Affinity
+15 Intelligence
+Spell Raindrops
+12% Light Affinity
+32 Intelligence
The list of items would probably look very different by the end of the day but for around three hours of time he was already pretty happy with what he had. There was still no sign of his next mission from the Insider though so maybe he wasn''t doing what it wanted after all.
Chapter 394: The Deal Pt.30
Chapter 394: The Deal Pt.30
The trip to the next item was much longer and Lake eventually realized it was because he was leaving the Holy Domain. Since he hadn''t specified the closest item on his list needing to be in the section of items in the Holy Domain it had brought him to the next closest item which seemed to be in the Light Domain.
He had found this out by having Detector highlight the name of the item that was closest to him which was a knife called Green Twit. If it hadn''t been something he was interested in he would have probably turned around but a knife with neat abilities was something he really wanted.
Green Twit Estimated Lv.50
He just hoped the item''s name didn''t mean it had an effect that was going to lower his Intelligence when he used it. "What are the odds the arrow would point me right to the gate into the Light Domain?" As far as he could tell every Domain had a wall even if it wasn''t on its border so him being led to a wall made sense but for it to be exactly where the gate was was very unlikely.
This made him think there was a real chance that there was a town of decent size on the other side of the gate and the person who owned the knife currently was there, possibly living in a house. He wouldn''t know till he made it through this line to enter the Domain though.
When he was close to the front of the line Lake got his ring into his hand by using Retrieval. Showing it to the guard, Lake was waved through as a member of the Temple of Light. As he walked through the gate Lake saw that he had been wrong about there being a big town but there were a few buildings so he Set Detector to look for Green Twit and saw something start to glow in a building that looked like an inn.
He knew this probably meant he would be dealing with a person this time instead of just getting to steal the item off of a shelf but like with Credglin all he needed was to touch it once and it was his. Walking in Lake saw the knife was at a table with two men who were silently sitting near the back of the bar area of the inn.
Finding a seat near the two men he did his best not to stare till he felt no one was paying attention to him but as soon as he stole a look at the man he could tell he hadn''t gotten away with it. Guessing it would be weird for him to just look away quickly with the man being able to tell someone was looking at him. It wasn''t like looking at someone was weird, he just needed to y into it by making it seem he was just looking around and had noticed the guy had a cool knife on his belt.
After a few seconds he looked on to the other guy that was at the table with the man who had the knife and when he didn''t feel this guy being able to detect people looking at them Lake decided to use them as the target of Detector to get more information on the pair of men because he feared the guy with the knife might have senses strong enough to tell a skill was being used on him.
The first thing he set it to was ''ding man who can kill me'' since the guy next to the guy with the knife was losing his hair while the guy with Green Twit wasn''t. When no one started to glow, Lake assumed he would be fine if a fight broke out but he still wanted to get his hand on the knife without causing a problem so he just went on like he was a normal customer.
"Hello I don''t have any money at the moment but I''m a member of the Temple of Light. Would it be ok if I got a drink? I''ll pay you next time I pass by." It would have been fine with him if the guy running the inn had said no but he received a drink within a few seconds of asking so it gave him something to do while he passed the time waiting for an opportunity.
If after an hour or so he didn''t get a chance to touch the knife it would probably make more sense for him to move on and try to get something else. "Did you say you were from the Temple?" Hearing someone ask something Lake realized that before he could have reacted the guy who had Green Twit hade up to him and sat down in the seat next to him.
"Yeah why?" The man didn''t answer and held up his hand to show he was also wearing a ring that marked him a member of the Temple of Light. "You said you didn''t have any money, do you need some help? I know you have juste from the Holy Domain so just say if you do."
Lake wasn''t the type to turn down free gold but he didn''t think it was what he should ept from the guy when he had been offered help in general. Instead he should say there was someone chasing him and ask for the man to guide him safely to a Temple but instead attack him while they were on the road.
He wouldn''t be doing that though because now that he was a member stealing from the Temple again would justplicate his already busy life since he had been after this weapon to use not just stick inside Inner Vault and he wouldn''t be able to sue it around anyone from the Temple because they might know what it was and who it had belonged to.
"No I''m alright I just forgot to take money out before I left the city. I was in a hurry to escape, you know." If this guy was a strong member of the Temple there was a good chance he knew they had just handed over the Holy Domain to the Demon Lord out of necessity. "Oh, well, have a nice day then."
As the man headed back to his table there was a brief moment where Lake could have made a fast motion to touch the knife but he controlled himself and turned to finish his drink so he could leave. On the way out Lake took out the list and set Detector to find the name of the closest item that wasn''t Green Twit.
Seeing the next thing was also in the Light Domain, Lake decided to go after it before heading home for the day so Lucas wouldn''t be worried about him noting home.
Ring Of Silence Estimated Lv.50
Lake had only put things he wanted onto the list if they were in other domains but jewelry was still rare on the list so he was excited he was going after one on the first day even if he already had a skill that made everything he did silent.
The book had said something about most cksmiths not making jewelry because the same amount of time and effort could be used to make a full set of armor and Lake had no idea why that was but it seemed to be true because there had to be a reason a small ring could be so much more expensive than things like swords or armor.
An hour or soter Lake made it to the first big town he had seen all day. It was around the size of the guild district in the Holy Domain''s capital which was still twice the size of the town he had taken Wilmur from. With the arrow pointing there Lake was sure this was where he was going so he entered the town and waited for the arrow to change direction when he passed the ring.
Eventually he saw the arrow start to angle down a bit which meant he must be right next to wherever the ring was. Setting Detector to Look for the Ring Of Silence Lake saw a very small thing start to glow just a few feet from him. It was probably also in a basement since it was like two feet under ground level.
Activating Mana Vision Lake saw the ring was on the finger of a person and it kind of looked like they were doing some kind of work. After watching for a while he decided they were digging and he wondered if maybe they had something like coal in their basement for heating purposes. He knew back in his world people had used to keep piles of coal around and he was sure you had to use a shovel to move it in an efficient way.
Chapter 395: The Deal Pt.31
Chapter 395: The Deal Pt.31
Hearing Someone start toe into his cage again Donny quickly hid his looking stone and pretended to sleep since he had already beenying down. A few secondster someone smacked something near him and said quite loudly. "We''re getting close so we''re going to need to get you out of there before too much longer. Don''t try anything or we''ll have to knock you out again."
Donny guessed they were hoping by telling him in advance he wouldn''t try to fight them when they entered the cage but they were wrong. If they were almost there there was a good chance fighting was hisst hope of escaping. "Did you hear me?"
"Yes." After Donny said that he had heard them he heard a sound that sounded like they had left again and he quickly went back to using the looking stone. Usually he would have waited till he was sure they had left but he was out of time and them catching him with the looking stone and taking it really wouldn''t matter anymore since there was no doubt in his mind someone would notice it when they got to wherever he would be meeting the Demon Lord.
There was probably going to be some intense search or something before all his belongings would be taken from him so there was nothing he could use to try and harm anyone important because that was how you treated prisoners.
He also really didn''t care too much about the looking stone anymore because it was useless to someone like him with so little time. He was really only still using it because it was the only way he could see anything at the moment and it was helping to pass the time while he could pretend he was trying to find a way out of this.
...
After a while Lake had put together the fact this person had a ring for thieves with them digging and hade to the conclusion this must be some n to rob the home they were digging under. This was then confirmed when he had used Detector to look for thieves and the person with the ring had lit up.
Lake had then gone off to get a few guards using his Light ring to show that he was someone that could be trusted. "I was passing through town and noticed that there seems to be someone trying to tunnel into a house. I believe that having a few guards with me will improve my chances of stopping this. Would you be willing toe with me?"
Lake had used the guards to his advantage when he had taken the Credglin and while the guy had gotten away he was sure the people in the house that was being targeted would let him in if he had guards with him so this was worth his time. It was also a good deed so there was no need for him to do anything suspicious to get the ring from the person in the tunnel.
"Of course, lead the way." Being followed through town by three guards, Lake quickly brought them to where the thief was and said. "This is the ce." Knocking on the door, Lake gave the person who answered it a simr speech to the one he had given the guards and was quickly let in before being brought to the basement.
After getting permission he brought down the wall that separated him from the thief and grabbed them when they had tried to run. He and the guards didn''t let any time pass and all ganged up on the man until he had been rendered unconscious. Lake didn''t think beating the man up had been entirely necessary but there were people around so it was the responsible thing to do because none of them knew what the guy was capable of and being asleep made him less dangerous.
Lake had also made sure to touch the ring while he had picked the man up off the ground and handed him over to the guards. "Thank you for helping us. I''m sure he was after the inheritance."
Lake could tell if he let the homeowner continue he would have to stay for a while and listen to a long story about his family or something but he was still in a hurry so he said. "I''m sorry I''m on business for the Temple. I have already spent too much time on this and must leave."
"Oh yes of course, let me show you to the door then." Once he was back out onto the street Lake summoned the ring and once he was out of town took out the Credglin and put it inside Inner Vault to see what would happen.
Lv.53 Ring of Silence
+35 Agility
+26 Dexterity
+1 Mute Chain Effect
Lake had already noticed how Inner Vault seemed to cater the bonuses he gained to some of his other skills when he had put the poison inside and it had made the effect work with Poison Taster. This meant getting things that he normally wouldn''t need still had a purpose since they could improve the skill that made them redundant.
"Lets see, what time is it?" Looking up into the sky he saw the sun was now almost right above him. Thai meant about half the day was now gone and that he should start heading back but he wanted to see if maybe he could make another stop on the way so he took out his list and had it highlight the name of the closest thing in the Holy Domain.
Seeing the name that started to glow was near the top of the list, Lake knew he was going to take the time to go and get it because the first things he had added to the list were from before he had lowered his standards to pad the number and were all good items that were around level 50.
Dark Lord''s Chain Estimated Lv.50
Lake also liked the fact the name was a bit edgy or at least sounded that way because it would always be funny to him whenever he thought about the item or saw it on the list of things in Inner Vault. In reality the Dark Lord''s Chain was just a set of fancy chainmail that was crafted for a noble of some kind long before Dark magic had been corrupted by the Demon Lord. Getting an arrow spinning, Lake set up magicpass and started running back to the Holy Domain.
...
Tiff had made much better time than expected. She guessed getting her first real stat increase in years had made her miscalcte how much faster she would be now. It was a good thing though cause she had also used way more mana than she had meant to so she had to stop to take a rest before she could finish thest bit.
After finding a ce to sit she took out some water and her map and started double checking where she was. She had studied theyout of the Holy Domain years ago when she was still in training so she always knewndmarks she passed but this trip had mostly taken her through random forests and past small viges so keeping her location straight in her head had been harder than it would have been otherwise.
She was still going the right way though so all she was worried about was how close she was. After going over everything she had passed so far on the way she settled on her being only two hours away which meant the whole trip in total had been around half a day. She guessed this meant she was actually twice as fast as she thought she was.
It also meant enough time had passed that normally she would have to start worrying about Demon Worshipers having noticed signs that she was around and finding a ce to hide for a few days would have be her top priority but those days were over for her now.
"I wonder if I''ll get another skill for this mission." It was possible the God of Light had said something about this already but she had a hard time listening for most of the meeting because of her mission being kind of nerve racking and the two new skills he had been given a few minutes after hearing her mission.
Both of those things had distracted her enough that she felt the God of Light could kind of tell she wasn''t listening and had ended the meeting in more of a hurry than he had nned, tired of trying to tell her things she wasn''t hearing. It was possible she was just over thinking things though since he had already been in a hurry.
After a while Tiff realized a lot of time had passed since she had sat down and looked to see her mana was already almost filled to the max. Putting her map back into her bag she stood up and started running again.
Chapter 396: The Deal Pt.32
Chapter 396: The Deal Pt.32
After he had been left alone to wonder what the Demon Lord would be like in person Donny quickly started to sweat from every part of his body. Resisting the Demon Lord over the years had only been possible because they were speaking through some weak mental connection the Demon Lord used to talk people into things they probably didn''t want.
He had been able to resist this major annoyance because of the distance but that wasn''t what was about to happen to him this time in all reality. From what he had heard from people about the Demon Lord there was a good chance he was going to end their conversation thinking everything the Demon Lord had said to him was true and everything he would do in his new false reality would be his own idea.
"I''d honestly be better off killing myself now." It was a sad end for him but he had the potential to be a scourge if the Demon Lord got into his head and convinced him that using his other two affinities was a good idea. He just needed to find something to stop his heart now in the hopes they wouldn''t notice to quickly and revive him.
Of course they would probably then just use his body to make an undead that would fill his role but he didn''t know how that worked and maybe the undead version of him wouldn''t be able to use Metal Magic and would therefore just be the same as every other undead.
Not letting himself think about the consequences of what he was about to do Donny started turning the shackles but gave up when he wasn''t able to get the chain anywhere near his neck. It was too bad because choking himself to death would have probably been silent enough that he would have gotten away with it and the only other silent way he could think of was unreliable because your unconscious body usually cleared the blood out of your lungs well enough that you didn''t actually die.
Getting his teeth around his tongue Donny tried to just bite into it to start the process but something in the back of his mind stopped him. Knowing it was just his selfish desire to live, Donny fought it off and plunged his teeth into his tongue while repeating that it wouldn''t be him anymore after the Demon Lord got into his head.
Getting onto his back Donny put his elbows under his sides so he wouldn''t be able to turn over after he lost and started to breathe the blood into his lungs. After a while his lungs started to fill heavy and Donny knew all he needed to do was keep himself from coughing until he passed out from ack of air which was truly as difficult as fighting a god and winning.
He ended up coughing multiple times but that was fine because this was probably only going to work if he was too weak from blood loss by the time he lost consciousness so he just tried to keep the coughing down so no one would notice. "Ahhahaahahh."
The suddenugh out of nowhere almost made him spew all the blood that was in his mouth all over the ce but in a vague hope that they weren''tughing at what he was doing he kept himself still but all that ended when the voice came back. "You know it took you a lot longer than everyone else to try something like this. Does that mean you''re strong or weak?"
"Puahahhhhh. Bluaggg" Letting his mouth open and vomiting everything from his throat and lungs all over the floor Donny was about to ask what they meant by everyone else or if they had been here the entire journey just silently watching him when he remembered he had bitten his own tongue off just a few minutes ago and would be unable to make anything the other person would be able to understand.
"Don''t worry the healers will have you back to normal as soon as we get inside." Once again Donny had things he wanted to ask but he didn''t want to hear the manugh at his attempt to speak so he just kept silent right up until the point that he heard the cage open.
Of course what came out was nothing more than a scream he let out subconsciously as he got ready to try and fight off whoever it was that wasing in to get him but it was still a noise. He never got a chance to use an attack though because they were on him before he could react just likest time.
Feeling another blow to his head Donny fought off the blur that took over his mind and tried to swing the shackle at whoever was holding him down but all that happened was he was struck again. "I thought after the first time you''d knock him out with one hit."
"I was trying to ount for his core being sealed. I thought he''d be less tough this time." Donny couldn''t really keep his thoughts straight but still hearing them made him think they didn''t know he hadn''t been knocked out by the second hit either. That ended when the voice said. "Well you actually failed with the second one as well so do it again."
...
Tiff had arrived at her location about an hour ago but had still to get close because she still didn''t haveplete trust in her new skill to keep her undetected. When the God of Light had given her the job he had said she was the first to have it and that meant there could be problems that he hadn''t expected in any of the skills she got from this job.
The fact she hadn''t been detected so far made it seem everything was fine but there was always a chance she had just gotten lucky. It had happened to her many times when she was on the streets as a little girl trying to stay unnoticed since most kids would have died a few days after going on the run while she had stayed alive long enough to get her invisibility skill.
After letting another ten minutes or so pass watching the normal seeming town Tiff decided she couldn''t just wait all day and started to slowly walk to join the rest of the people walking around the streets while keeping her eyes open for anything that might help her find the giant without having to stop someone and get information out of them.
There was a good chance getting information from these people would be extremely difficult because there was a good chance they were all either under the effects of a curse or were secretly undead even if they weren''t aware of it. This was how the Demon worshipers kept their secrets so well even in seemingly hostile territory.
After looking around and not finding anyrge doors that led underground Tiff gave up on the foolish idea that she could just stumble upon the giant and started to look for a target to feed to her other new skill. She could honestly pick anyone because of the reasons she said earlier but she wanted someone who looked like they might actually be a Demon Worshiper trying to blend in with everyone else because that would be the face that could get her info on their secret base.
Of course she wouldn''t have their passwords or anything like that but she could turn invisible so getting in and assassinating their giant should be no problem as long as she was able to find their base. After having a look around Tiff eventually found a few people that seemed much more blissful than they should have and picking the one who was the palest she started to trail them.
After a while they passed through an empty part of town and Tiff had been ready to make her move when she decided an empty part of town might be the worst ce for her to attack someone if she was looking for a group of Demon Worshipers.
They tended to make the area around them devoid of life with their habit of killing people for experiments or more soldiers and they had control over this town for a long time so maybe the signs had started to show after months of them making people disappear without them being reced like they should have.
It was a shame not trying the new skill out but finding the base without the possibility of killing an uninvolved person for looking a certain way was worth a few hours of her time and with the hours of extra time she had from how fast she had made it here she could decide to find a good ce to watch and see if she saw any suspicious people or things happen without making the God of Light wait.
Chapter 397: The Deal Pt.33
Chapter 397: The Deal Pt.33
Donny wasn''t sure how he could tell that not much time had passed when he opened his eyes but it wasn''t really important anymore. Feeling his tongue had been reattached or regrown he knew there was no longer any chance that he would be able to stop the Demon Lord from turning him into something he didn''t want because if he tried anything like killing himself again a healer would juste into the room or cage or whatever they had him in this time and heal or revive him.
"He''s moving. I think he''s awake." Donny could tell before he even looked at where the voice hade from that whoever it was wasn''t a Demon Worshiper because they were whispering and opening his eyes he was able to confirm that he was indeed now in a cell with other people.
"Tell him your name. That will make him want to talk to us." Donny wasn''t sure about that but it seemed the man closest to him thought it was a good idea because right after he had opened his eyes they introduced themself. "Hey I''m Tod. What''s your name?"
Donny could tell that these people were probably going to be hispanions until it happened so instead of just staying silent he gave them an answer. "I''m Donny."
"I know him! I know him! He''s the Metal one." Like thest the ce he was in was too dark to see very well so other than Tod who was right next to him he wasn''t able to see the others but the amount of murmurs he was hearing told him there must be a lot of them. "Ooo Metal. That''s exciting."
"What''s exciting?" Donny didn''t say this as aggressively as he wanted because he knew some of the people here had probably been here long enough to go mad and being mean to them was wrong but he honestly didn''t understand how someone could be excited about what the Demon Lord had nned for him or anyone that was here.
"You''re the first Metal so you''ll be going for sure." Donny was about to ask the other voice to rify what they meant a bit more but Tod got in the way blocking his sight from seeing the others even though he couldn''t actually see them anyway. "Ignore them please. I need you to tell me if you''ve seen my wife before you get taken away."
"Who''s your wife?" Donny had met a lot of people over the years so there was a chance that he might have if this guy''s wife was someone well known. "She''d be ady from the Water Domain asking about her husband. She might have had a drawing of me so get a good look and see if I look familiar."
Even though he knew there was no way Tod''s wife had been looking for him so long that she had made it all the way to the Metal or Holy Domain, Donny pretended that he was really taking in his face until shaking his head and saying. "I guess she hasn''t made it to where I live yet."
"It''s too bad they captured you, now you won''t be there to tell her I''m alive." Donny was going to let the fact he wouldn''t have known Tod was fine had he not been captured stay unsaid but it seemed someone else here was less crazy and rude enough to get the others worked up over such a little thing. "Tod how would he have known you were fine if he hadn''t been brought here?"
Watching Tod''s face after this was said Donny could tell the man didn''t even understand the problem before he opened his mouth and confirmed it. "What do you mean?" This made Donny decide his best options were either to just stop talking or try and speak to the voice that had called out how ridiculous Tod was being even if they seemed kind of bitter and might not be helpful to him just to annoy him.
"Hello, the one who just said that to Tod, would you mind telling me what''s going on and who all of you are?" Donny thought he wasn''t going to get a response when around ten seconds passed and no one said anything to him but eventually the voice from earlier said. "We''re people the Demon Lord wanted for one of his ns but as you can see not all of us actually got used and are just backups in case the ones he picked don''t work out correctly."
"And how many people are here?" He had heard only a few people say real words but there were a lot of other voices that were just spewing gibberish or mumbling so he knew it had to be over ten. "We don''t know since most of the people here are incapable of giving a straight answer and no one can see everyone to count. My guess is around twenty but who knows if this is the only cell they have people in."
Donny was grateful that the owner of this voice wasn''t as spiteful as he had expected and was actually answering his questions and while he had more he figured he should go ahead and ask their name before they went any further into their conversation. "Do you mind telling me your name?"
This question could be considered rude in a normal situation but he couldn''t see a reason to keep your name a secret when the Demon Lord had already captured you so he had no problems asking. "Dina and before you ask I''m a woman. I know my voice makes it hard to tell."
She was right when she said it was hard to tell and the only thing he could think of that could make a woman sound like this was that they were dying from dehydration. "When was thest time you had any water?" Now that this thought had passed his mind he hadn''t been given any water the entire time they had been bringing him here either so maybe this pattern would continue.
"I don''t know. They don''t give us any and I''ve forgotten how long I''ve been here." There was an obvious question he had about this but he decided to keep his mouth shut because if they just let their prisoners die from no food or water and bring them back to life over and over again he would rather not know. It wasn''t like he would be here for very long so just not thinking about these people and what they were going through was for the best.
...
After jumping the wall back into the Holy Domain, Lake had felt something watching him for a while but when he had held up his ring it had gone away. He guessed that was how the God of Light or all the gods kept their enemies from just flying over the wall that surrounded their Domain but it made him wonder what it was that had been watching him.
Was it the God of Light or was it just something that was supposed to keep track of intruders like the marks he ced on people using Marks Of Interest. He felt the fact it had gone away when he held his ring up pointed to it being a Demigod that was in charge of security but he had no way of knowing since Detector hadn''t told him anything when he tried to use it to get an answer.
He had eventually moved on from thinking about it and focused on the fact that he was closing in on another town and since it was in the Holy Domain it made him think it might be where he was heading. Thus had been confirmed when the arrow had started to pint down towards the ground again as he passed over the item.
...
Nothing had really happened for the first few hours Tiff had been here but eventually someone had run past her and when she saw an arrow spinning over their hand Tiff instantly knew who it was and almost called out but decided to keep her presence unknown and just watch what Lake was doing here.
...
Right after Lake passed into the center of the town he could tell someone was watching him intently but going after powerful items sometimes meant dealing with powerful people so he didn''t worry about it and started to look for where they were. After setting Detector to look for Dark Lord''s Chain he saw that it was below him like thest few things had been and used Detector again to see if there were any people around that could kill him.
When the owner of the armor didn''t start to glow, Lake made sure they weren''t in a group he was a part of using Detector onest time before he used Ghost Touch to slip into the ground. Usually he would have tried sneaking around for a while so they would lose track of him but he was in a hurry this time and was fine if there was a fight.
Chapter 398: The Deal Pt.34
Chapter 398: The Deal Pt.34
It was crazy but the conditions in the prison cell they were in were so bad that when people came to drag him away Donny was almost grateful because now he wouldn''t have to go through what they had. It would have been crazy if hisst meal ever was the meat he had been given on the way here since he still wasn''t 100% convinced it hadn''t been human.
He had just been thinking about this because he thought there was a chance he might never get to eat again and he was pretty sure the Demon worshiper had said the meat hade from something they had hunted. That didn''t actually mean it hadn''t been human since the Demon Worshipers could consider hunting humans for food just hunting.
Of course he would have probably noticed this at the time if food hadn''t been so scarce for the past few days and he hadn''t been so hungry but now it was toote and he would always wonder what they had fed him. It probably wouldn''t bother him anymore though if he ended uppletely brainwashed after talking to the Demon Lord like he thought he would.
For all he knew evil Donny would start to prefer to eat humans that he had hunted down like the other crazy people that served the Demon Lord might. "Hey why aren''t you knocking me out this time?" Donny knew this was a change of subject for him but he was currently being dragged down a hallway so it was more relevant to what was happening to him now opposed to wondering what he might be like in the future.
When he didn''t get an answer after some time Donny started to struggle to see if they would hit him but when they didn''t he had his answer. "So what''s he like? Have either of you ever met him personally?" Donny could guess that most Demon worshipers heard the voice at some point but that wasn''t the same as meeting the Demon Lord in person so he wanted to hear what they had to say since it was about to happen to him.
"Can either of you talk about him or are you under a curse of some kind?" When this also didn''t get an answer he guessed what he was doing currently was effectively the same as what the craziest people back in the prison cell had been doing when they were mumbling too softly for anyone to hear them or yelling gibberish no one could understand.
Keeping his mouth shut for the rest of the trip Donny closed his eyes as well and tried to pretend he wasn''t being dragged through gore on his way to be brainwashed into bing a Demon Worshiper. The journey ended before he was able to actually be unaware of the reality of his situation when he was thrown onto the floor hard and was forced to open his eyes.
Seeing this new room was also too dark for him to see anything Donny had to start feeling around to see if he could safely stand. He never got to his feet though because he heard a voice he hadn''t really heard since leaving the Holy Domain. "Hello Donny." Like always he just did his best to pretend nothing had just been said to him.
"Please behave today. This is important so do everything I say alright and don''t worry I''m sure you''ll like what''s going to happen as well." Without even meaning to Donny started to nod in agreement but was able to stop himself from answering. "Ok good I''ll see you again in a few hours. Just rx till then and let them get you ready for the handover."
Feeling his body instantly lose all tension and his muscles rx Donny realized just how little control he was going to have over himself from now on. Feeling something start to touch his body it took him a few seconds to realize someone was taking his armor off and when he felt something wet after his clothes were gone he knew they were bathing him.
Knowing it would be useless to ask questions to whoever it was that was getting him ready for this handover he just started to try and think about what it might be. If they were cleaning him there was a good chance he was the thing getting handed-over to someone but who would want him other than the Demon Lord.
...
After about ten feet Lake had excited the ground and entered an underground building. It only took him a few seconds to notice the smell of blood and put together that there was a real chance he was about to fight a Demon Worshiper for the Dark Lord''s Chain.
He could have probably put this together before he even left the Alchemist Guild since the only real reason a Dark affinity item would be in the Holy Domain was because a Demon Worshiper owned it. At least he knew now because there were other items on the list that would probably have simr owners.
He had wanted ck armor for a long time so when he had gone through the book he had written the names of all the items that had the chance to fit this description even if they didn''t have a picture of them that confirmed this.
Moving through to the next room through the wall, Lake quickly realized that the amount of attention on him had actually gone down since he had moved inside. Whoever it had been that had been looking at him was still thinking about him but it seemed they could no longer see him.
This probably meant he had been wrong that the Demon Worshiper already knew he was here so instead of just going right at them he decided to try and sneak up on them and touch the chainmail before the fight started. Of course there was a chance the person who had seen him outside was also a Demon Worshiper and was currently running to alert the others that someone was here so he couldn''t go too slow.
Passing through a few more empty rooms Lake quickly got close to his target and used Ghost Touch again to go down into the ground. Moving under the person with the armor was the only way he could think of to get close to them without others seeing him since he could tell they were surrounded by other people with Mana Vision.
Once he was under them Lake used Ghost Touch to turn the ce they were standing ethereal and when they slipped into the ground with him he touched every piece of their armor as fast as he could before he turned around and started to run away.
He didn''t see a reason to stay and kill the Demon Worshipers since he felt ughtering them would lead to problems for him while just taking some armor wouldn''t be a big enough deal for them to actually chase him down and after some time passed he would be able to use the armor with no one knowing how he had gotten it so even if they dide after him he could just say he had bought it.
Running through the same opening he had made on the way in Lake was able to make it back out onto the street within a second. He usually wouldn''t move this fast when people were around but he really wanted to get away before the Demon Worshipers could see what he looked like.
...
Around two minutes after Lake disappeared into the ground in front of her Tiff saw him reemerge but wasn''t able to watch him for long because he quickly ran away. Seeing him run like that she knew he had probably done something to the Demon Worshipers that were hiding here but she wasn''t sure about this until about twenty of them came out of one of the buildings.
Seeing them run off as well, Tiff guessed she now had a way inside and went towards the building to slip inside before its door closed. If this ended up leading her straight to the giant she was really going to have to find a way to say thanks to Lake the next time she saw him.
She would also have to ask what he had been doing but it was probably something that had nothing to do with the reason she was here because he hadn''t been here long enough to kill a giant without using Holy magic in any way and she would have felt it if he had.
Inside Tiff found that the building was just a normal house but she knew that meant there would be a secret door somewhere but instead of trying to find it she just found a ce to wait. The people who had just chased after Lake shoulde back and she would be able to follow them through the door.
Chapter 399: The Deal Pt.35
Chapter 399: The Deal Pt.35
Before long Tiff''s prediction that the people who had gone after Lake woulde back came true and she was able to squeeze in between two of them to get through the next door. The base ended up being exactly what she had always been told it would be during her training with a thick smell of blood and rotting meat.
She ignored it and just started walking behind the biggest of the Demon Worshipers that had chased after Lake because they were the easiest to squeeze in next to without it being obvious that someone was inside their base again.
She wasn''t sure if what just happened with Lake would make it easier or harder for her to sneak around unnoticed but with her skill purposely being designed to hide someone like her she didn''t think it mattered as long as she didn''t do something stupid like run into something and that was why following around someonerge was a good move until she found out where the giant was.
The small spaces of this underground base made her think that there was a good chance the giant was close by instead of actually being here in town with the other Demon Worshipers but she couldn''t know for sure until she heard someone talk about where it was or had personally gone through every part of this ce while following this Demon Worshiper.
"Did you see what they looked like?" Hearing a voicee from behind her she turned to see a man who was almost wearing nothing trying to talk to the group she was following. Getting out of the way so no one would bump into her as they turned around Tiff got into a corner of the room to listen to what had happened with Lake.
"No, we didn''t, he was gone before we made it outside. Did they steal your armor?" It seemed the man''s near-nakedness wasn''t the norm and he was supposed to have armor. "Yes, it was gone when I finally climbed out of the ground. I''m not sure how they took it off me though. Probably the same skill that made the ground like that."
"Do you n to tell Dom what happened?" Dom was the name of a giant for sure so Tiff was disappointed when the naked man said. "There''s no need to go now. We can just tell them when we gather for our summoning."
This told her that at some point they would go to wherever the giant was but not when so she had no idea how long she would have to wait and it could be a problem. She had mana potions for emergency situations where she was going to run out of mana but only a few so at most she would only be able to stay invisible for about a day.
This meant stealing a face would be a cheaper way for her to pass the time but it wouldn''t be as safe since she would be forced to interact with the Demon Worshipers so maybe letting a few more hours pass first in the hopes they were about to go to the giant would be for the best.
That being said she definitely needed to be one of them for the summoning since she would probably be noticed by whoever it was that would be moving their group but hopefully, she would be able to kill the giant in the time between being led to the giant and when they would all be called away.
"I can''t wait." Tiff could tell that the man she had been hiding behind just a few moments actually shivered a bit as they said this and couldn''t tell if that meant something really good was about to happen to them or they were just crazy but either way it made her worry a bit about was going to happen to the Holy Domain.
Good things for the Demon Worshipers usually meant lots of death and the fact they could be summoning all of their army to a single ce could mean they nned toy waste to the capital. There were other groups in the city that would try to stop this but without the support of the Temple or any Demigods, there was no way they would be able to stop the giants from doing whatever they wanted.
That was unless she went, the odds of her beating an entire army that had multiple Demigods in it were zero but taking out a few before she died would increase the odds the city could be saved. "Yes, it should be a real treat to witness after all of this."
Realizing her thoughts made no sense Tiff snapped out of her hero delusions and got back behind the person she had been following earlier because it looked like the conversation was about to be over with the one who started it turning and walking away presumably to put on some new clothes.
Getting through another door after the big guy opened it wide for themself Tiff saw beds and guessed at least a few of the people here weren''t undead. She didn''t know if it was actually true but she had always heard undead never slept and she hoped it was true because it would mean this would be a great ce to be alone with her target while she swapped her face.
She could probably also hide the body of a person under one of the beds if it became necessary for her to make the swap since not many people woulde in here and no one would notice the smell of blood even if they came in to sleep. It didn''t look like the guy she was following was stopping here though so she kept moving with them to get a look at more of the rooms.
This was a mistake because it seemed the only door other than the one that led out of the room was a door to a toilet which she had followed the man through before she realized. The door had already sealed behind them so Tiff had no choice but to watch as the man pulled his robe off over his head and sat down.
...
After he was sure that the people chasing him had given up, Lake found a ce to organize Inner Vault. It probably wasn''t necessary because all he did was take another health potion out and put the Dark Lord''s Chain inside but it was nice to be able to read its effect while he was sitting down rxing.
Lv.55 Dark Lord''s Chain
+42% Dark Affinity
+31 Intelligence
+23 Endurance
+12 Strength
This armor was probably the best item he had acquired today if you were only talking about the total bonus but he had no ns of leaving this in here forever only until he was sure no one was after him for having it so it''s boring bonuses didn''t really matter to him.
Getting back up onto his feet Lake started to run back to the guild even though he had five or so hours until it could be considered night time and could probably go after one more thing on the way back. It was a waste because he would have loved a bit more Perception before going home but he needed to be careful.
Drawing the line now before he overdid it and was a littlete getting back because there was clearly something big going on with the Demon Lord even if he didn''t know exactly what it was and thest thing he needed was to meet him face to face on the way back to the guild.
...
Slipping out of the bathroom with the man she hade in with Tiff couldn''t believe she had never even considered having to watch something like that while trying to sneak around. Most people who had ever talked to her about her ability to turn invisible had asked her if she did foul things with it, which she never did, but you would think it would make her realize having to sit through someone using the bathroom to keep her cover was a possible situation.
She never had thought and to be honest she would have still done it even if she had seen iting if it was necessary but in this citation if she had known the next door led to a bathroom she could have just waited in the bedroom area till the Demon Worshiper was done.
She had made it through it so now all she needed was to follow this guy away from here until she identified a better target that she could turn into if it got too dangerous to continue sneaking around. The god of Light had said the face was really the only part of her that would change which made her think she was going to need someone closer to her size to blend in.
Chapter 400: The Deal Pt.36
Chapter 400: The Deal Pt.36
A little over an hour after he''d taken the armor, Lake arrived back at the Alchemist Guild leaving him with just over three hours until the sun was down. Even as he was walking into Lucas'' office, Lake couldn''t help but think he had wasted this time since he hadn''t used it, but he quickly remembered he and Lucas would be going out again tomorrow to look for journals so he wouldn''t have to wait long to get more stuff.
"Hello, Lucas." Lake nned to have a serious conversation with the guild leader, so he patiently waited till the man was able to look up from his work to continue. "Good job getting back in time."
"Thank you. I''ve found a way to track down high-level items using a few of my skillsbined. Would the guild be willing to buy anything I get that doesn''t really suit me?" Lake nned toy the groundwork for Lucas to y along tomorrow now so that he wouldn''t have a problem with them making a few stops that had nothing to do with the journals tomorrow.
"Yes, if you bring them to me or our cksmiths the guild will give you a good price, and don''t worry about their origins. We have people that can cover up whether something was stolen or not." Lake wasn''t too surprised to hear this because he knew Lucas dealt with the Thieves Guild pretty often, but he wished he had known this sooner because being tracked through the items he took was always one of his biggest fears.
"In that case, is there anything you want me to go after for you? I''ll need a name. Oh, could you get me a really detailed map?" Lake could probably use any map, but a good one would make it a lot easier for him to know where he was whenever he was using it while running using the things he passed.
"I could, but they sell nice ones at the Adventurers guild for just a couple of gold, so I would suggest going there to get one the next time you go out. Also, I''ll get a list of things I''ve heard stories of over the years ready for tomorrow when we go out."
After Lucas said this he went back to work, which Lake took to mean the man wanted to get as much work done as possible so they would have more time tomorrow, so he left him to it and headed for the library. Lake had a few hours before he would be going out onto his balcony to watch whatever was going to happen tonight, so spending some time adding stuff to his list would help pass the time.
Entering a different library than he had used when making the list, Lake used Detector to find books that cataloged items over level forty and was excited when he found a few books the other library didn''t have.
Using Detector to look for pages that held information on items that weren''t on his list, Lake saw most of the book started to glow and took it to a table to get to work adding more stuff to his list even though he knew a lot of the stuff in this book was probably stuff he already passed on.
Now that he knew that the guild took stolen things, putting everything he could that was at least level forty made sense gold-wise. Now that he had gone around putting lots of new things into Inner Vault and still hadn''t received another mission he was starting to think gathering gold again could be what he needed to do, and like this, he could do both things at once.
...
Donny had been washed and forced into new clothes, but that was all over now, and he had just been lying on the floor in silence for over an hour trying to stay awake. Whatever had happened to his body when the Demon Lord had told him to rx still hadn''t worn off, and if he was being honest this was the best he had ever felt physically in his whole life.
This was making it extremely hard for him to stay awake, and if it wasn''t for the thoughts that were running through his head, he didn''t think he would have made it through the bath, even with how creepy it had been to feel hands you couldn''t see scrubbing you clean.
Honestly, it was probably for the best that he couldn''t see it because there was no doubt in his mind that whatever it had been had five hands, and he didn''t see two and a half people being the ones who had cleaned him. It was much more likely that it had been one of the flesh creatures he had heard about from stories of what the Dark Domain was like.
"Sorry to leave you waiting for so long." Hearing the voice return, Donny stopped letting his mind wander the darkness around him and did his best to ignore the voice and what it said. "Please respond from now on. Talking to people without a voice is a waste of my time."
"Ok." Feeling words force themselves out of his mouth Donny wondered if there was a single thing the Demon Lord couldn''t force him to do with a single sentence. "Alright, now that I have time to actually speak to you I wanted to exin what''s going to happen to you in advance just to make it a bit easier on everyone involved."
"I''m listening." Once again, Donny was forced to say something when the Demon Lord finished talking which made him mad, and he decided to try as much as he could stay silent on the next one. "So in about two hours I''ll be meeting all the gods I''ve signed treaties with so far to fulfill the first part of our deal, and that''s the part you''ll be involved with."
Donny was a bit happy to hear that whatever he was going to be used for involved other gods because he had trust in their character, but he had no idea how much control they had over what they had signed, so it was still to be seen if this was a rational response. "So what is it exactly that you need to tell me?"
"So I''m sure everyone''s noticed over thest hundred years or so that fighting the gods takes a lot of time, and all I really want is to ascend as soon as possible, so to make that happen I''ve found a way to make that happen by having Demigods other than me use principles from Unholy magic and you''ll be the Demigod that does that for Metal. You''re free toe up with the name, but you have to make a deal with me that will guarantee your future element will include the corruption principle."
Donny tried to stop himself, but eventually, he felt his head start to nod, and knowing he had already failed in not answering he let the wordse out of his mouth. "Alright, how do we make the deal?" Right after he said this the first light he had seen in days lit up the room he was in, and Donny saw that there was a table with a piece of paper on it in front of him.
"I''m sure you already know about contracts. Write your name, and you''ll be off to the God of Metal for your training to be his next subordinate Demigod." Like every other time he had been told what to do by the Demon Lord Donny''s body instantly started to walk to the table to sign and while he knew there was no way for him to stop it from happening he used the time he had before the light went away to read as much of the contract as possible.
His speed reading wasn''t the best, but the gist was that he had to use principles from all three of his affinities in his future element and that he wasn''t allowed to ever tell anyone what he and the Demon Lord ever spoke about now or in the future. There was an entire section after these two parts that he didn''t get to read, but he had finished writing his full name in just a couple of seconds, and the paper rolled up into a sealed scroll so he would never get to know what it said unless the Demon Lord wanted to tell him.
"Go ahead and take that to the God of Metal. I''m sure you''ll have to show it to him so that he''ll stop questioning you for information that you don''t have." Donny hadn''t been expecting to get to keep the contract but did as he was told and picked it up because he didn''t have a choice. "Alright. Now all that''s left is for you to be handed to the God of Metal."
Chapter 401: The Deal Pt.37
Chapter 401: The Deal Pt.37
The Demon Lord he had just spoken to was much different than the one he had been dealing with in the past. More hurried, less secretive, overall nothing like how they had felt in the past, but it made sense because the Demon Lord had already won and had him in the palm of their hand.
In the past, he had been trying to trick him into doing something that the Demon Lord could use to get closer to him, but now all the Demon Lord had to do was tell him to do something, and he couldn''t resist.
It was nice that there was no longer a reason for the Demon Lord to lie to him since it seemed the quick exnation of what was going to happen to him after this was something he wouldn''t mind too much. He was going to be forced to use Unholy Magic it seemed, but as long as the God of Metal was the one he answered to he didn''t really care too much because one of the biggest reasons he had never used Unholy Magic was because he felt there were no gods that would let him be a Demigod if he did.
It seemed that would no longer be an issue with the Demon Lord making deals with gods to take Demigods that used his element into their camps. He understood this was probably a n that made it so the gods wouldn''t be able to worry about the Demon Lord ascending because there were loads of other Demigods they couldn''t stop that would be introducing simr elements to the world. But he still felt like there had to be more to it that he didn''t understand yet because he didn''t think this was enough to make everyone forget what the Demon Lord had done up to this point.
...
After a while, Lake had doubled the size of his list, and having gone through the whole book, he went ahead and pulled out the books from the same ce he had found Mizzly''s Bow. There were only four, and they were all pretty thin, so he could probably read them all in the time he had left before he was going to go out onto his balcony to watch what the Demon Lord was going to do tonight.
He decided to start with the one he found by itself because it had the best chance of being important with how close it had been to Mizzly''s body while the others were in apletely different room. Opening it to the first page Lake saw the book was a diary or some type of log as it had short passages with dates above them, but instead of reading right away, he flipped through the rest of the book to see if that was all there was.
About eighty pages in the writing stopped, so Lake flipped to the front and started to read from the first page, which was from over two hundred years ago. Like he expected, it didn''t take him long to get through the book since all the entries were pretty short, and not a lot happened with the book being the musings of an old and dying man.
All you needed to know was Mizzly had been severely injured at some point in a way that was hard to fully heal and found the abandoned prison to live out thest of his days. To Lake, the most interesting part was finding out that the ce he had found was most likely a prison because he had kind of assumed prisons didn''t really exist.
Like he knew they kept some prisoners, but with people having skills from criminal jobs, he didn''t see it being very easy to keep them in jail for long periods of time unless you had a way to cripple them, which he couldn''t see making sense money-wise.
He knew people who didn''t care about how expensive it was to keep the criminals alive since he had met them in hisst life a few times, but this world made it harder to think like that, in his opinion, so it had to be rare. "Maybe there''s a reason it was located in the Holy Domain."
He had read up on most of the gods at this point from the perspectives of mortals, and from all ounts, the Holy Goddess was a saint, so he could see her trying to find a way to keep troubled people alive until they were rehabilitated, but in his opinion, it was a waste of time because he knew from personal experience how hard it was to change if you liked breaking thew even when you didn''t need to.
It had also not seemed to work because the prison had been abandoned when Mizzly found it, and this was long before the Goddess was assassinated, so something had to have happened to make it that way.
Putting the diary down, Lake moved on to the next book, which didn''t have a cover with a name, so thinking it might be more interesting because of its secret topic, he started to read but didn''t get far because it seemed to just be fairytales or maybe real stories that had been dumbed down a bit for children but either way, he only had around an hour, so this wasn''t a good use of his time.
The next two books also ended up being nothing he really cared to read, so it was a bit disappointing. Not knowing what to do with the three books he didn''t want, Lake decided to bring them to his room since that was where he was going anyway. He had plenty of shelves that had space, and maybe one day, he would be bored enough to actually read them.
After he made it into his room, Lake sent one of his servants off to get him some food and stepped out onto his balcony so he wouldn''t miss anything on the off chance it started a bit early.
...
"Time to go. Is everyone ready?" The guy who had been missing clothes earlier seemed to be the one in charge because when he entered the room and said this everyone stood up and started to line up. Tiff knew this meant she had probably waited too long to switch her face, but maybe she wouldn''t need to since all she was here to do was kill the giant.
If she really wanted, she could have probably blended in and gone with this group to wherever they were going, but that wasn''t what she was here for, and getting distracted in a ce like this was a mistake she didn''t want to make.
Stepping outside, Tiff guessed she had been right about the giant not being here in town with the other Demon Worshipers. She was happy that this was the case because it meant the people living here didn''t need to worry about being caught up in the fight that would probably break out between her and the other Demon Worshipers after she killed the giant.
A few minutes after they left town, Tiff guessed her original n to just watch and see what happened would have worked as well as sneaking inside while being much safer since the Demon Worshipers would have eventuallye out. All she would have had to do was follow them from there, but she had no way of knowing where the giant was before this, so this wasn''t a mistake on her part.
There was no way to be prepared in a situation like this since you couldn''t get information out of Demon Worshipers, so it would have been stupid for her to not use such a great opening to go in even if she was going in practically blind with no real knowledge of what she would find inside.
"Who''s going to go in this time? I know I haven''t been the one recently, but Dom doesn''t seem to like me." Tiff didn''t like the sound of the question that finally broke the silence the group had been walking in since exiting their base because it implied a level of danger for even the Demon Worshipers when it came to dealing with this Dom.
"I''ll do it." One of the smaller Demon Worshipers eventually spoke up, and Tiff moved to walk behind them because wherever they were about to go would be where she needed to go as well.
Eventually, they finally arrived at a forest that was a bit out of the town and without saying anything all the Demon Worshipers except for the one who had volunteered to go talk to Dom stopped walking.
Taking her first few steps into the woods Tiff couldn''t help but feel that she was crossing some kind of threshold. Nothing actually happened to her physically, but up until this point the fight between her and the giant waspletely theatrical, but she could tell that it was here, which meant this was real now, and it was making her go into a mental crisis.
Chapter 402: The Deal Pt.38
Chapter 402: The Deal Pt.38
As she walked deeper into the forest, Tiff knew she probably didn''t have that much time to get herself under control, so she tried to find something she could focus on that would help calm her down. It wasn''t the best, but eventually, she remembered some of the things the God of Light had said, and the fact her new skills had been derived from the person who had killed the Holy Goddess made her feel she was capable of sneaking up on a giant.
She had less experiencepared to Akal, but her target was also younger than most other giants, so they were probably about even when it came to fighting ability. After going over ways she was going to be just fine, Tiff did start to calm down and set her sights on looking for the giant.
For their apparent size, most of them were pretty good at hiding because it seemed they were able to change their size a bit like any other divinity. No one had ever confirmed a sighting of one small enough to fit into a crowd of normal-sized people, so what she was looking for should still be at least a few times taller than her.
Eventually, she felt Unholy magic in the air around her and knew that they were really getting close to wherever the giant was living in the forest. But it made her think she might not be able to get as close as she needed since this feeling was probablying from something like a barrier the giant was using to keep themselves hidden and safe.
Trying to solve this problem before it actually stopped her from moving forward, Tiff could only think of one way, which would involve her killing the Demon Worshiper she was following. They were about the same size, so she didn''t think she would look weird in the disguise, but she didn''t know where they were going or what she needed to do when she got there, so looking the right way wouldn''t really help her since the giant would notice right away if she was acting weird.
Acting scared could work though, the Demon Worshipers had clearly not wanted to go to wherever Dom was as a group, which was why she was currently alone with only one of them, and if she acted scared maybe that would fit with what Dom expected from the one who had been sent to find it.
Tiff ended up not making a decision fast enough because before she decided whether to take the face of the Demon Worshiper, they stopped, and she knew they had made it to the very obstacle she had been trying to find a way to pass.
Tiff couldn''t actually see the barrier, but she knew that meant it was probably the kind that hid the actual state of the other side from those who looked from the outside, and that fit with what she knew about giants trying to keep their presence hidden, so she got ready to go into what would probably be as bad or worse than the base of the Demon Worshipers.
Seeing the Demon Worshiper reach their hand out and wave it around in front of them, Tiff knew they were trying to get the giant''s attention by messing with the barrier, which she didn''t think would take very long.
As she expected, before even five seconds passed, Tiff felt a fluctuation in the Unholy mana around them, and the Demon Worshiper started to move forward into the ck hole that had just opened in front of them. Knowing there was a good chance going in would give her presence away, Tiff gritted her teeth and ran in beside the Demon Worshiper before the hole in the barrier could close.
Nothing happened right away when she passed through other than her losing the ability to see what was in front of her, but that didn''t mean the giant didn''t know, it just meant it hadn''t instantly run this way to kill her. Keeping close to the Demon Worshiper so she wouldn''t get lost in the darkness, Tiff walked for another full minute before she saw the Demon Worshiper stop again.
"Is it time to leave already?" Hearing the giant voice, Tiff knew they were here, so she pulled her dagger and got ready to attack at the first chance she had. All she needed was a hand or silhouette to give its location away, and she would go for the kill.
"Yes Dom, would you like the others toe here, or will you be going to join them?"
"Bring them here please. I''ll be ready when you get back."
"Yes Dom." As the Demon Worshiper walked away, Tiff made sure to staypletely still in case the only reason she hadn''t been noticed yet was because of her close proximity to the body of another person. She didn''t n to stay like that for long because killing the giant before the Demon Worshipers arrived was probably the safest thing she could do.
This meant she would attack no matter what after ten minutes, even if she still couldn''t see the giant. Around two minutester, Tiff finally got a real sign of where the giant was when she heard a loud stomping noise that she assumed was it walking. Taking a step in the direction of the noise to see if the giant would notice her moving, Tiff was finally able to get over her fears that the skill that was keeping her presence hidden wouldn''t work in this environment when the giant continued whatever it was doing even after she had gotten four steps closer.
This space seemed pretty big, so she needed to continue forward but also needed to make sure that she didn''t get stepped on by getting too close to something that was much bigger than her. In this situation, she was truly like an ant that no one even saw but was squashed and killed all the same when someone walked over it.
...
Lake had been out on his balcony for about half an hour, and it seemed when Lucas had said to get home before night he had meant it because as soon as the sun was gone from the sky glowing clouds started to rece it as the predominate light source. None of them were the one he associated with the Demon Lord though, so he was guessing this was a simr situation to the one he had seen before the arm hade through above the Metal Domain, and most of them were just here to watch.
...
In the past minute, Tiff had gotten close enough to the giant that she felt it should be visible to her, but she still hadn''t seen where it was exactly. She was guessing this was the best she could do without lighting the area up, which would give away the fact she was here, so she just jumped to where she thought the giant was and stabbed forward with her dagger.
It really didn''t matter where she hit the giant with the effect Holy Metal would have on its undead flesh. Feeling her attack connect, then a deafening scream shake the space they were in, Tiff used Holy Magic to light the area and cause more damage to the undead''s skin.
Once she could see, Tiff saw that her attack hadnded on the giant''s upper torso and seemed to have done some serious damage with a huge part of the giant falling apart. She still jumped back because she didn''t feel like this would be enough to havepletely killed the giant, and going for an attack on its head could go very bad if she was right.
After the giant had fallen to the ground and didn''t move even after a second had passed she went in again and stabbed it again in its head. The burning feeling that she got in her chest after she knew the giant was dead almost made her think something was wrong with her core, but she soon realized that it was just a weird mix of adrenaline and euphoria, just more than she had felt in a long time.
She guessed over the years, being inside the temple had kept her from doing anything crazy, and she hadn''t felt a rush since she was homeless and outsmarted the Demon Worshipers that had been chasing her while she was in hiding. "I need to go."
Tiff finally remembered that she was still in danger and turned to run away but stopped before she got too far because she had forgotten the whole reason she was here in the first ce. Cutting into the giant''s chest, she fished out its core. Once it was in her hand, Tiff turned and started to run.
The darkness she had been afraid to get lost in earlier was already starting to lessen, and she was no longer worried about the barrier from earlier because the reason she had to hide was already dead, which would make it very easy for her to just cut through it if there was still a barrier around the forest.
Chapter 403: The Deal Pt.39
Chapter 403: The Deal Pt.39
The light show was pretty, but Lake started to get bored thirty minutes after the clouds appeared. He understood that most of the clouds had probably appeared early, so they wouldn''t miss anything since he had done the same, but surely it couldn''t be much longer.
Either way, he decided to talk to his servants to see why his food still hadn''t arrived. "How long would it take you to go to the cafeteria ande back?"
"It would depend on if I was eating or not."
"No, you''re bringing food back to me so I can eat it."
"Oh, I''d take around 20 minutes, but I''m faster than the other two." Hearing it would take 20 minutes for his fastest servant to go there and back, Lake decided that his servant was doing a good job and tried to find something else to think about. After a few seconds, he remembered two other things he had found while gathering the things on his list, the core from Mizzly and the knife that did nothing when it was in Inner Vault.
The core wasn''t something he could take care of now since he couldn''t leave the balcony, but the knife was something he could look at to try and figure out what was up with it. Taking the rusty knife out of his storage, Lake was about to inspect it when he heard the door to the balcony open.
Getting ready to eat his food, Lake put the knife away again, only to hear a voice he hadn''t heard in a while say his name. "Hello, Lake."
"Millie, what are you doing here? I was starting to think you had moved into the kitchen." He had wanted to see her to see how the n to open restaurants was going, but he hadn''t bothered to actually do it yet because he felt she would be too busy to talk to him.
"It''s not quite at that level yet." Lake could see stress appear on Millie''s face as she said this, but it quickly disappeared, and she said. "I saw your servant getting food when I was about to go home so I went up to them and asked if you were back so I coulde say hi."
"Well, since you''re here, do you want to watch the show together?" Lake needed more time to talk to Millie to get an idea of how things were going, and this would also help him pass the time until the Demon Lord showed up. "I was just about to ask if I could stay, like always, your room has a better view."
After having his servant bring another chair outside, Millie sat next to him and beat him to asking the first question. "So, what have you been doing at the Temple of Light?" Lake couldn''t help but think back to one of thest conversations they had before he had left, where he had realized Millie felt guilty for not going out to fight when most everyone else had, but he hadn''t gone to the Temple to rub her face in this fact so he just made it sound like he hadn''t done much. "One of their members had been kidnapped, so I helped them out since they had protected me when the Assassins guild was after me."
"That sounds exciting. Was the person you were trying to find ok?"
"Yeah, they hadn''t gotten far by the time we got to them. So how close are the restaurants to opening?" Lake didn''t want to keep talking about what he had been up to, so even though it wasn''t the smoothest transition, he made sure to ask Millie what was going on with her before she could ask him any more questions about what he had been up to.
"All the cooks for the first few restaurants are all trained. We''ll be opening the first few once all the deals are made." Lake hadn''t thought about the deal they had made with the king of the holy domain for a while, but he was sure that wasn''t the only person the guild was having to deal with to make this happen.
"Is anyone trying to stop it from happening?" If they were, Lake had no problem paying them a visit the next time he went out because he wanted to get Millie''s food anywhere, not just here in the guild. It was too bad that killing people would probably cause more problems for the guild. "Not really. The only people giving us a small problem are the Farmers Guild, but that''s just because we n to use Wace''s golems to grow the food. They seem to think this steps into their territory too much, but Lucas is already making them see that it''s no different to us growing most of our own ingredients for potions since the food we''ll be selling is alchemical in nature."
"So, is the first one still going to be here in the capital?" Lake couldn''t see a reason this wouldn''t be the case, but he still wanted to know if the original n had changed because of how the war had gone for the Holy Domain. "Yeah, it is. You can actually see the building from here. Look right there." After Millie said this, she pointed at a brown brick building located in a nice part of the city.
"It''s in a good spot. Lots of gold in that area." He remembered Millie nned to sell the food for cheap in some areas or something, but this first spot probably wouldn''t be like that. The guild needed to make money, or they wouldn''t bother doing all this work. "Where are the rest of them going to be?"
He never got an answer to this, or maybe he did, but he didn''t hear it because the Demon Lord''s cloud started to appear over the city, which drew all of his attention away from Millie. Soon after the rust-colored cloud appeared, three of the other clouds that had been here since the beginning started to spin faster, which he took to mean they were going to open soon.
Seeing this, Lake started wondering why the gods were doing all this in the open where people could see it. Surely, if they wanted, they could do this wherever they were before they left the clouds. There was no way the gods had no ces to meet that didn''t involveing here to the mortal world.
He guessed there was a chance they wanted the people to see what was going on, but it wasn''t like they would exin anything to the people watching, so he didn''t think the gods cared too much if people got to see them.
It made more sense that the Demon Lord was the one who had asked for them to do all of this out in the open so people would see him making the gods give him what he wanted, but maybe he was wrong, and they had to meet here in the mortal world for things like this.
...
Donny had never felt being teleported before, but the weird sensation he had before he found himself in a new ce had to be what that was. Donny started to blink his eyes to get used to the amount of light in the new ce. Once his pupils had dted to the appropriate level, Donny found he was now in the center of a room filled with at least eight giants.
He had expected to see some eventually because they were what made up most of the upper level of the Demon Lord''s army since they were all technically Demigods, but seeing so many was out of his expectations. It made him feel the Demon Lord was expecting a battle to happen, but he highly doubted this just based on what he knew about the gods'' reluctance to dere war.
The Demon Lord probably had a better idea of the situation, though, so his opinion didn''t make him feel better. Still, honestly, he would be okay with getting caught up in a giant battle as long as someone finally put an end to the Demon Lord, even if the bastard would eventuallye back like he always did.
His family had a long history of fighting against the Demon Lord before he was strong enough to keep all the gods from attacking him. And at the end of the day, a trade of his life to take down the Demon Lord was pretty good, even if he would only be dying because he happened to be too close.
Plenty of his rtives had made this same sacrifice. And while his brother probably wouldn''t do a great job remembering their history and passing it on to the next generation, someone like his uncle would probably know about his death and make sure to make him sound heroic. "Youe here."
Hearing a whisper, Donny returned to reality and looked to where it hade from. Seeing three other people dressed like him with chains huddled together in the corner away from where the giants were all standing, Donny moved towards them, relieved to have a chance to talk to someone in the same situation as him.
Chapter 404: The Deal Pt.40
Chapter 404: The Deal Pt.40
Getting to the other three people, Donny tried to ask them if they were in the same situation as him but soon realized that he couldn''t get the words out no matter how many times he tried. If these were the effects of the contract he had just signed with the Demon Lord, it would take him some time to get used to it.
"I haven''t seen you before. How long have you been around?" Donny guessed they couldn''t talk about anything actually important, so he answered their question havingpletely lost the excitement he had felt about talking to other people going through the same thing he was. "Not long. I think it''s only been around a day."
He wasn''t aware of how much time he had been knocked out, so it was hard for him to give an urate estimate without asking some questions first, and he didn''t think they would be able to answer the types of questions he would need to ask or if he would even be able to say any of them to begin with, so letting the ones who had probably been talking for a while lead until he got used to this made sense.
"Oh wow, are you sure you haven''t just been asleep or anything? I know a few of the better candidates have been kept away from the others." This was a scary prospect, but he was pretty sure the Demon Lord had just taken him a day or two ago, as this seemed to be a continuation of the situation that was happening when he was first taken. "I''m sure."
He had tried to add a bit more information on why he was sure, but he was unable to say anything about what the Demon Lord had been up to recently. "Well, in that case, you''re probably the luckiest of us all. Getting given back your freedom on your first day is probably the best anyone has ever been treated."
The guy who said this sounded weird halfway through what he was saying, and Donny guessed the man had had to change it in the middle because he had been trying to say something that alluded to what the Demon Lord did to his prisoners. What the guy said still got the point across, so Donny felt maybe he could talk in a way that people around him understood the things he couldn''t say.
"I wouldn''t exactly call what we''re getting freedom. It''s much better than sitting in the dark, though." The one who said this was the onlydy amongst them, and their voice sounded familiar if you ounted for them sounding less dry. "Were you the one I spoke to in the cell?"
"No, I was alone where I was." Donny guessed he had misidentified the voice, which made sense because he had been trying to approximate what the person from the cell would sound like if they hadn''t been on the verge of dying. "Oh, sorry. Someone in my cell seemed to have a simr voice to you."
"Was she kind of mean?" Donny nodded, even though the owner of the voice had been nice enough to exin some things to him. "That might have been my twin sister then. She got grabbed at the same time I did, and I''ve wondered if she was kept around as well."
"Does she have simr affinities to you?" Donny had put together that most of the people he had seen up till now were probably like him and had Unholy affinities they didn''t use, and the Demon Lord kidnapped them all to turn them into pawns for things like this. "Yes, we both have Unholy, but she only has two affinities while I have three."
Now that he had been talking for a while, he was happy to see that he was right about being able to speak around the Demon Lord, even though everything they were saying had something to do with the things he had done to them. This would make talking to people in the future much simpler for him since it wasn''t nearly as restrictive as it had seemed before he had learned this trick.
Donny was about to ask what affinities they all had when the man who had called him over grabbed his arm. Donny thought the man was trying to get his attention at first, but he quickly realized there was something wrong as they looked scared when he turned to ask what it was that he wanted to say.
Looking back towards the giants for the first time in a while, Donny saw that one of them had stopped ignoring them and was looking in their direction now. He didn''t know why the guy beside him was so afraid of this because it made sense that the giants would look at them every now and then to make sure they were still where they needed to be, but as the seconds passed and the giant kept looking at them, he also started to get worried.
It was very unsettling, and it made him feel the giant might be being told what to do with them by the Demon Lord at this very moment. He knew standing here wasn''t going tost forever, but it really hadn''t been that long, and he wasn''t ready even if technically he would be leaving thepany of undead giants for the God of Metal.
This was a clear improvement for him, but he didn''t think he would just get to walk over to the God of Metal, and he didn''t want to find out what the actual handover method of him would be like. The only thing he could picture was him being picked up by one of the giants before being brought into the sky. Unpleasant was the only way he could think to describe this.
...
Lake was staring up into the holes in the sky and wondering if anything would evere out of them. They had already been open for a few minutes, and he felt if the gods wanted, this was enough time for them to be done already.
"Look down there." Hearing Millie say something was happening somewhere other than the sky, Lake looked at the streets below to see some giantsing out of a partially rebuilt building. His perception was much higher than it had been thest time he had watched something from this balcony, so Lake had no problems seeing that all the giantsing out were holding people in their hands.
Figuring Millie couldn''t see this, he said it out loud for her benefit and to see if she would have anything to say about this. "They''re holding people in their hands."
"Do you think they''re about to exchange hostages?" Lake couldn''t think of a better exnation, so he agreed with Millie. "That could be the case. That would mean the gods have things to give to the Demon Lord as well, though."
After he said this, he cast a brief look at the sky again and saw the clouds, while still open, didn''t have anythinging through them yet. "Maybe." Lake felt like Millie had been about to say more after the only word she got out, but she stopped talking because the giants started to fly up toward the clouds.
"It looks like two are heading for the red cloud." The red cloud was probably the God of Fire, which Lake knew had ties to the Demon Lord, so the fact their dealings were more extensive made sense. But Lake didn''t understand why the Demon Lord would need to have hostages to keep the God of Fire at bay.
The Temple Head had made it sound like the God of Fire liked the Demon Lord, so it made more sense for the people he was giving to the gods here to be people they would like to have. He needed to look deeper into this situation first because he could probably make a better guess if he tried to understand what the Demon Lord might want from the three gods who had been the first to agree to peace with him.
If Lake were to be in the Demon Lord''s shoes, he would be trying to gain the approval of more gods so that he could make more truces and eventually ascend once no one was left to stop him, but he couldn''t see a way four what seemed to be mortals could make that happen for him.
After some more thinking, Lake couldn''t help but think maybe it would just be for the best to wait for the Temple Head to tell him the next time they spoke. Now that he was back at the Alchemist Guild, what the Demon Lord was doing wasn''t exactly his problem until the Insider forced him to go back, so focusing on his own problems for now was what was best for him.
His top priority should be getting the next mission from the Insider, which meant he needed to steal and gather gold until it happened. Getting involved with the Demon Lord would make it too dangerous for him to run around in the open like he wanted, and to be honest, with everything he had done in the Metal Domain, it would probably already be unsafe for him if he was easy to track.
Chapter 405: Not My Problem Pt.1
Chapter 405: Not My Problem Pt.1
The show had ended soon after the giants flew up to the clouds, but not before a few small things hade out of the Demon Lord''s cloud. Sadly, all were too small for him to see what the things were, but having decided to mind his own business, he didn''t worry about it.
"Did you stop my servant from getting food, or are they just slow?" Now that the clouds had left the sky, he remembered he was still hungry, and the absence of his food was starting to make him think he needed to look for his servant. "I didn''t stop them. They probably got stuck around the elevator with everyone moving around the guild. They could have also gone back to get food again if it cooled off before they got it here. I''ve heard people under the effects of the loyalty curse getting stuck in work loops like that when something gets in their way since it forces them to do a good job."
Lake hadn''t known that, but he could see the servant trying to get food to him through the crowded halls before it cooled down impossible for them, so he stood while saying. "I''m going to go looking for them. I''ll be back soon if you want to stick around so we can talk more."
They still had things to talk about, so asking her to stick around for a little while to wait for him wasn''t crazy. "Just send one of the others to get them out of it. If youe over, I''ll make you something to eat in my room. I was going to make myself something before bed anyway."
Liking her n better, Lake sent his fastest servant to look for the other one and followed Millie to her room. He knew from experience that the stuff she made was better than the stuff in the cafeteria, so this was a good chance for him to have the best of the best again after all this time.
"What do you want?" Knowing he wouldn''t be able to eat a lot without throwing up most of it, he decided to make it easy on her and said. "Just make a small bit more of what you''re having. I can''t eat much anymore because of a skill I have. It takes me days to eat a single loaf of bread."
Millie wasn''t the type to worry about, so he had no problem mentioning his problem, even if it hinted at how high his stats were, especially since he might have already told her in the past. "That''s miserable. What happens if you overeat?"
This was a good question since he didn''t think it would hurt him, but eating when you felt full usually ended with regret. "I feel sick. I don''t think I would mind too much if it was made by you, though." He had eaten more than he needed plenty of times back when he had beening here for lunch every day, and it had never bothered him.
"If you''d like, I could try to find a way to make the food bypass that sinking feeling for you." Lake thought that sounded like something dangerous, so even though it made him slightly annoyed to say no to an offer like this, he shook his head before exining his reason when Millie gave him a surprised look. "It sounds dangerous, and eating more than I need would probably make me gain weight."
Lake wouldn''t mind being big if it meant he could eat Millie''s food as much as other people, but the fact he had to dodge attacks sometimes meant beingrge was a bad idea. "It''s probably for the best. I don''t really have time to work on new stuff right now anyway."
After a while, Millie came out of the kitchen in her room with a te of what looked like mashed potatoes, and Lake got excited and stayed excited even after he realized what he was eating wasn''t potatoes just looked and tasted simr. "What is this?" He had already taken the first bite, and since he only got one more before he was full, decided to slow himself down by talking about the food.
"I''m still working on using milk and the fat that''s in it to make creamy textured things. This is just smushed vegetables with milk and a few spices." Lake saw now why he''d been unable to figure out what he was eating. It was because it was a mixture of multiple things mushed together. "Did you change the color to white, or is it like that naturally?"
"It''s like that. I don''t think I''ll go so deep as to change the color of my food to make it look better unless I find an ingredient that really needs it to be appetizing." Taking his spoon to get his second and final bite, Lake paused it in front of his mouth so that he could ask another question for Millie to answer while he savored hisst food for the day.
"Have you talked to Lucas about Nia yet?" Lake knew this was a heavy question, but he still wanted to know how Millie was doing and if she actually cared that there was a good chance Nia was dead. "I haven''t asked him yet. I don''t think I''ll like what he tells me if I do, so I''ve been putting it off, hoping shees back before I have to deal with it."
He could understand this, and right as he swallowed his food, he realized he could probably use Detector to figure out if Nia was still alive. So, taking out an arrow. "Would you like me to see for you?" He could tell she was confused by what he had just said, so he added, "I have a skill that can find people. Remember how I told you I helped the Temple find their kidnapped member? This was how I did it."
"And you''ll be able to tell if she''s alive?" Lake nodded and then waited for Millie to make up her mind in silence. "Can you find anyone if you have their name?" Lake had been about to nod again but decided to give a more nuanced answer so she didn''t ask for anything crazy from him in the future.
"It doesn''t work if they have skills that keep them from being tracked. I''ve had problems multiple times because of other people''s skills." He could tell whatever Millie was about to ask him about hadn''t been changed by what he had just said even before she asked. "Could you see if my cousin is alive? We were separated when I was little, and I''ve never seen her again."
"Are you sure?" Lake really didn''t want to sit here and tell Millie every person she wanted to see again was dead, so he wanted her to think this over before he would do it. "Yes, I''m sure. Not knowing if they''re alright has always bothered me." Deciding to do it if that''s what Millie wanted, Lake started the arrow spinning while asking. "What''s their name?"
"I only know their nickname. Will that be alright?" Lake nodded because he could probably find them without a name at all if he set it to look for Millie''s Cousin. "Alright, they were called Mi." As he set Detector to look for an arrow pointing at Millie''s cousin called Mi, Lake asked. "Why is her nickname so close to your name?"
"We looked simr enough to be twins. Someone made a joke." Lake guessed that was how most nicknames happened, so he stopped talking to Millie and looked at the arrow to see if it ever lit up. When it never started to glow, even after a few seconds, he knew it was a bad sign, but he made sure to let it go for a bit longer before he said anything.
When it had been around a full minute with nothing, Lake was about to tell her the bad news when he stopped himself again to ask. "Do you know if we''re inside a barrier or something like that while inside the spire?" Detector was a strong skill, but he felt the guild might have the capabilities to stop it if their barrier was good enough. However, it hadn''t in the past, so he was really just trying to get out of telling Millie her cousin was dead.
"Yeah I think so. Do you feel like you''re being blocked by something?" Lake had a feeling, so he nodded and said. "I''ll try again tomorrow when I leave the guild. Would you be ok with waiting?" Millie nodded to his question and finished the food she had snuck into her mouth as he was talking before saying. "That''s fine. What are you going out for tomorrow?"
He didn''t think Lucas would mind if he told her that they were going to look for more of Amanda''s journals, but he decided he would let it stay a secret for now. "I''ll be finding some new equipment. I don''t know if you''re aware of this, but it''s really hard to find stuff of an appropriate level when you get to a certain level of strength and it takes a lot of time and effort."
Chapter 406: Not My Problem Pt.2
Chapter 406: Not My Problem Pt.2
After Lake told Millie he would use his skill again to see if he could sense her cousin the next time he left the spire he hadn''t stayed for much longer. He didn''t need to sleep yet, but Lake could tell by how she looked that Millie needed to, so sticking around could have possibly annoyed her.
Staying on Millie''s good side was one of his top priorities until someone else could make better food than she could. "What should I do until it''s time to leave?" Lucas and he wouldn''t be going out for another ten hours, which was a lot of time if you were impatient.
After thinking about it for a while, Lake decided to get his map because he would probably forget to do it tomorrow until they left the city, and by then, Lucas probably wouldn''t want to turn around being short on time.
Lake also felt seeing the people in town would be interesting because of what happened in the sky above them. The faces and the things they were saying should be good for him to hear since it would tell him how safe they felt, and he could use that information to decide if going out was a good idea.
He didn''t think what he had just watched should affect them in any real way unless the giants had been told to go on a rampage now that the trade was over. He didn''t think that would be the case, though, since as far as he could tell that would give the other gods a worse impression of the Demon Lord.
Walking into Lucas'' office, Lake saw the man was working and didn''t stop to talk since it would eat into their timeter if he distracted Lucas for too long. On the elevator, Lake had his first real look at the conditions his servant was trying to bring him food through earlier. People were everywhere, and he was sure it was worse during the action as people tried to get to somewhere they could see outside.
Lake knew his servants were under the effect of the loyalty curse, so he was sure they didn''t mind what he had done, but Lake still made a note that he needed to apologize to himself. Walking outside, Lake made sure to have his badge prominently disyed on his chest so any Demon Worshipers who saw him would leave him alone before he started walking towards the Adventurer''s guild.
Once he had arrived, Lake was happy to find the guild was open because he had been slightly worried they would be closed, but the line that had formed made him think this wasn''t worth his time. "Oh, I still don''t have gold." Lake kept forgetting that he had used every piece of gold he had at the time to unlock Inner Vault including the extra thirty thousand that had been in one of the bags.
It hadn''t mattered to him until now because he always stole the things he wanted, but he didn''t want to steal something so cheap from one of the guilds out of necessity. Not being able to afford it was embarrassing, especially with so many sources of gold around him.
Setting Detector to look for gold, Lake got into line and started to look for a way to take a couple of coins from someone. Most people weren''t looking at him because they were talking to the people around them about why they were here in the middle of the night, but there were still a few people looking his way now and then, so he made sure to get extremely close to someone before he did anything.
With his body blocking his hand, even if someone who could see it when it was moving so quickly was around, they would also need to be able to see through his body for him to get caught. After he had a handful of gold, which was like a fourth of the total amount he could have taken, Lake backed off a little but stayed in line behind the person he''d robbed so he wouldn''t lose his spot.
Even if they noticed the missing gold, Lake didn''t think their first thought would be that the person standing right next to them was the one who had taken such a small amount from them. They were much more likely to think they had somehow misced a bit of their gold because what thief would only take a little when the rest was in the same bag?
After a while, Lake finally made it inside and was able to see what was holding everything up. Three people in ck robes were standing near the front desks, watching everyone while they talked to the clerks. At first, this had felt wrong to him, but he quickly remembered that now that the Demon Lord had control over the Holy Domain seeing things like this was probably going to bemon.
It was still disruptive because it was making the people talking to the clerks choose what they were saying more carefully, slowing down each conversation. Deciding there was a possibility he didn''t need to stand in line to buy a map, Lake tapped the person in front of him and asked. "Do you know if I need to wait to buy a map?"
"Actually," The man started digging around in his bag before saying, "I have an older one that I''ve been nning to get rid of. Would you like to buy it? It''s missing a few of the newer ces that have been discovered recently, but it''s still worth around eight gold, and you can get it updated by the guild if you pay a few gold."
"How much?" He only had what he had taken from the man, but it was more than eight gold, so he should have enough as long as the guy didn''t try to charge him for the time he would save not waiting. "I''ll give it to you for five. If you choose to have it updated, it will still be one gold cheaper than having bought a new one." Deciding that was a good deal, Lake handed the gold over quickly before leaving as fast as possible because the man had gone to put the gold into his bag, and Lake didn''t want to be there if he noticed he had lost money somehow.
On the way back to the guild, Lake started to look around with Mana Vision because he still had around nine hours left and didn''t want to pass them all inside the guild building. There were things he could do, like brew a few other poisons for use inbat, but he preferred being outside of the guild as long as it was safe.
Lake was pretty sure the Demon Lord had no ns of killing everyone in the capitol now that he had seen the Demon Worshipers in the guild building doing almost nothing to stop people from taking jobs and receiving their money for jobs they hadpleted.
The Demon Worshipers seemed to want to make sure no one was nning to give out missions that they didn''t like, which he felt was okay for them to do as the new leaders of the Domain. He was sure the Temple of Light had been doing something simr until now, and everything had been fine.
It would only be a few weeks until people got used to the new order, and things like that would stop happening as often, and before much time passed, it would be like how it had been when the Temple was the one in charge. The only sight difference was instead of having to worry about the Demon worshipers attacking the city and killing everyone, you would worry that they would kill everyone randomly.
Ten minutester, Lake finally saw something that looked valuable and started nning a way to get to it. It was a bit weird to be trying to steal something just because he had some time to pass, but as long as it was worth a bit of money it could start his progress to the next million.
Of course, going to pull another big job like the one he had pulled in the Earth Domain would be the best way for him to make money, but he could do that after he and Lucas finished what they would be doingter.
It was a little soon for him to leave again, but Lake wanted his next mission, and he didn''t think the Insider would give him one til he had enough gold to get its attention. Lucas probably wouldn''t mind him going out either since he had told him about his ability to gather high-level items and had said he would give some to the guild if he found anything he didn''t want.
Clearing his mind of extra thoughts and activating Mute, Lake jumped towards the wall of the building that held the item he wanted and used Ghost Touch to go through to the other side. Once inside, he quickly jumped again andnded right next to the thing he was here to take.
It had taken a while, but the new increase in Perception had finally started to show its effects. Yesterday, before he had gotten Mizzly''s Bow, he would have had to slowly walk through all the walls in fear that he wouldn''t mistime when to use Ghost Touch, but his increased reaction time let him move much faster without his eyesgging. He had just jumped twice and moved through five walls right to where he was trying to go all while avoiding the person that was inside the building.
Chapter 407: Not My Problem Pt.3
Chapter 407: Not My Problem Pt.3
After four hours of jumping around the city, taking the most expensive things he saw, Lake decided it was time to head home. He still had other things he wanted to do before leaving, and his bag was full, so if Lake took anything else, Lake would have to drop what he already had.
It was a wasteful use of time, though he did think leaving things slightly worse than what he took would be funny. It wasn''t funny enough to do, though, so he quickly returned to the guild and his room. Upon entering, he sent off one of his servants to get him a bag that he would transfer his newly acquired things into.
None of them were expensive, so running off to sell them now wouldn''t be worth the time, but once he had a few bags filled to the brim, he would make a trip to the thieves guild. That was, of course, if Lucas didn''t have anyone to do it for him.
Now that Lucas had been willing to put up with his thievery, having the guild behind him when negotiating prices would be lucrative. Once he had the new bag in hand, Lake opened it up and transferred all the items within his over to clear space. When his hand touched the runic knife, Lake stopped because the rest of the things inside were things he wanted to keep with him.
He did take the knife out and set it on the table, though, because it was one of the reasons he had returned to the guild hours before he needed to go. This item was mysterious, but it never had to be with him having a skill that could tell him more details than he could ever need.
Inspecting the Knife, Lake went to work sorting through the information that appeared in his vision, but about halfway through, he stopped and shoved the knife back into Booster Bag. One of the facts he had just read said this item was magically marked, and putting it back inside the space created by Booster Bag would keep that from being a problem.
He wasn''t entirely sure, but putting something inside a pocket space should be simr to being inside a barrier, which would interfere with the tracking. Standing up, Lake ran out of his room and down the stairs to Lucas'' office. "Where''s the person I should bring stolen things to?"
He wasn''t doing a great job hiding his panic, so it was clear to Lucas that he needed the information enough that it was okay for him to be bothering him. "He''s on floor two, a man named Felg. Tell him I sent you, and he''ll work on your problem first."
As he headed towards the elevator, Lake nodded to Lucas before saying. "Thank you for your time." It had only been a few seconds, but Lucas was busy making saying thank you a polite thing to do. Getting off on two, Lake used Detector to look for Felg, but it ended up being unnecessary because after a few seconds of walking down the hall, a man glowing gold ran towards him.
"Lucas told me toe meet you. Come with me this way." Lake had forgotten about the mirror thing Lucas had that let him talk to anyone at any time, but it was clear to Lake that it was responsible for making this happen. "Sorry about the scare." He meant this in two ways, but Felg didn''t seem to be listening, focused on not hitting anyone as they ran through the hall.
Taken into a small room that looked slightly like a storefront, Lake was about to ask Felg what they were about to do, but they didn''t stop there, quickly entering the door behind the counter. "Take out the item and put it on the table. I''ll be right back." Doing what Felg said, Lake took the knife out and set it down before looking over to see Felg changing his clothes.
Quickly turning away, afraid Felg might be taking everything off to change, Lake asked. "What''s about to happen?" He thought for a second that Felg might ignore him again, but before he turned his head to look the man''s way, he got an answer. "I''ll be trying to identify how your item could change to make it so it can''t be identified as stolen any longer."
Lake actually wanted all of his items stolen because it made Inner Vault double the bonuses he received from the item, but he didn''t want to say that because it might sound weird, so he asked. "Could you just remove however they''re tracking it?"
"It depends. Let me look at it before I tell you what I can or can''t do." Turning because it sounded like Felg was approaching him, Lake saw the man''s face twist with confusion when he saw what he had brought him. "Would you be okay with just throwing it out? This item couldn''t be worth much of anything."
"It''s more than it seems." Lake didn''t rify what he meant by this because his only evidence was that it was useless when he put it inside Inner Vault and that trash was better, but that sounded like good reasons to throw it away. "If you say so."
After Felg said this, he stopped talking or moving, and Lake took that to mean he was appraising the knife. A few minutester, he finally moved again and looked his way, saying. "You were right; there''s something weird about this knife. I''d rmend throwing it away again but for a different reason this time."
"You don''t have any other rmendations?" Getting a shake of Felg''s head as his only answer, Lake asked. "Why?" There was clearly a problem that would make Felg say he should get rid of the knife, and he wanted to know what it was. "I can''t get any details from the item, which leads me to believe it would be dangerous for you to keep it near you."
"Well, what about this? Can you see anything about this item?" Taking one of the other ruined items from his bag and setting it on the table, Lake gave Felg the time to appraise it. "Yeah, this one has a simple tracking mark on it. I could get rid of it if you would like me to."
"Could you do that on this item as well, even without being able to tell the mark is there." Felg seemed to think this was a good idea because he shrugged instead of saying no. "Do you have any more items for me to look at?" Nodding, Lake started to take everything he had acquired over thest few days out for Felg to look at, including the things inside Inner Vault.
"Alright, this might take a while." Lake was okay with that but didn''t feel he needed to be here for the entire process. "I''ll be back in a few hours. Is that alright?" Getting a nod from Felg, Lake went to his room to read his map. He had started to assume that Detector would work well with a map being able to highlight words on a page, but he wasn''t sure if this was right or not just yet because he hadn''t tried it out yet.
He could see something like the map not being a good version of how the world looked getting in the way if he didn''t word it right, but that was why Lake wanted to get the correct wordage down before he and Lucas left.
Unfolding the map, Lake stared at it for a while before taking out his list and setting Detector to look for the ce on a map that represented the location of the first item on his list. Hriously, this worked on the first try, but seeing that the map had a high degree of uracy, he wanted to find a better way to use it with Detector.
After thinking for a while, Lake set Detector to look for the part of the map that represented the distance between him and the first item on his list and was delighted when a line formed on the map. If he were to run in a straight line while following what the map said, the line should shrink as he moved, which would be a helpful way for him to gauge how long it would take him to arrive in the future.
Wanting to see if he could push it even further, Lake set Detector to look for the ce on the map that represents the location of each item on this list. When dozens of dots appeared on the map, Lake knew he had a good way of knowing which journal would be the closestter.
The new method of using Detector he had just found would save him and Lucas a lot of wondering as they no longer had to run in a direction unaware of how much further it was when they went after the closest journal.
Chapter 408: Not My Problem Pt.4
Chapter 408: Not My Problem Pt.4
A few hours had passed, and Lake thought it would be time to get all the items from Felg. By the time he had them and finished talking to Felg, there was a good chance it would be time for him to meet Lucas in his office. On the way out, he remembered he still hadn''t apologized to his servant, so Lake did as he walked out the door.
As he walked through the office to use the elevator, Lake decided to ask instead of just guessing. "Are you going to be ready soon?" Lucas didn''t look up, but Lake saw the man''s head nod right before the elevator started to take him to floor two. He couldn''t help but get excited over this because it meant he had a chance to find another item that would give him Perception, and just one or two more could let him go close to his top speed.
The number of things he could steal in one day with a mixture of his speed and Ghost Touch would make gaining his next million gold easy. Getting to the office where Felg was working on his items, Lake saw two were still on the table while the rest had moved to other ces in the room. "Are these two giving you problems?"
The first of the items still on the table was, unsurprisingly, the knife, but the second was the Credglin, which he hadn''t expected. "I just wanted you to look at them before I said they were clear. You could tell the knife was tracked, so I figured you''d be able to tell if I''ve cleared the tracking mark."
"What about the mace? Why is it up here as well?" Hearing his question, Felg turned the mace so the symbol on the front was visible before answering. "This symbol is a little weird. I just wanted to ask where you got it."
"I took it off of a thief, so I don''t know where it''s from. What''s so weird about it?" Lake had inspected Credglin when he had first obtained it, and he didn''t remember anything saying the symbol was special. "It focuses the shockwave enchantment, which I''d never seen before. Usually, the enchantment has a focusing element if the person who makes it wants it to go in a specific direction. While this mace has the most basic version of a shockwave enchantment and this symbol here."
"And you don''t know how this works?" Getting a shake of Felg''s head as his answer, Lake said. "Why don''t you keep it for a while in that case? Tell me when you''ve figured it out, and I''lle get it." He wasn''t currently using Credglin, so having Felg look into it didn''t cost him anything.
"Are you sure?" Lake nodded before pointing at the knife to signal Felg that he was inspecting it. After he had read through the facts, Lake saw one that said this knife had been cleared of a tracking mark and told Felg. "You did it."
Going to grab the knife off the table, Felg held out his and asked. "If you want, I could look into this knife''s background."
"That isn''t necessary. I''ve inspected it, so I already have what I''ll do to find information on where it came from." Lake had partially read through the knife''s information twice now, so he understood it was something from before the God of Metal had ascended. Items from before then were frequent as most high-level items existed for long periods after being created, and it seemed this knife had somehow been affected more by the God of Metal taking over the control of Metal from the God of Earth.
Lake remembered reading that before the God of Metal, metals were just a part of the Earth element, so this change having the ability to cause problems made sense, but he still hadn''t quite been able to tell what that problem was. "I''ll be taking it to the Metal Temple the next time I go to the Metal Domain, so I''lle and tell you what I find out."
Lake nned to head there eventually anyway because the Oracle Guard he had helped had given him a piece of armor and said he would receive a reward for helping them if he was to bring it to the Temple, and not iming his reward would be a waste.
"I''ll be looking forward to that. Have a nice day." After saying his goodbyes to Felg, Lake returned to Lucas'' office with everything back in the proper ce. "Just sit over there. Everything will be ready for me to leave in a few minutes."
Sitting down, Lake pulled out his map to get it ready to show Lucas because he wanted to see if the man knew of a good reason they should pick a different target. The map had locationsbeled, and Lake felt there was a good chance Lucas would know precisely where they were going and who controlled it after he pointed the location out to him.
"Alright, is that the map we''ll be using? Bring it over." After a while, Lucas stood up and cleared some space on his desk for Lake to put the map down. Laying it in front of Lucas, he pointed and said. "As you can see, I''ve marked the locations for you so you can make the call on where we go today."
"What are the different colors?"
"Purple is the journals, and everything else is the items on this list, red being the things over level fifty." It had only taken about an hour of work to mark everything on the map, so it was a good use of his time because now Lucas could see everything as well. "Oh, I made you that list like I promised. It only holds five names, but all legendary items I''ve heard are in the Holy Domain."
Taking the piece of paper from Lucas Lake instantly recognized the first name on the list and said. "This dot here is the first thing on this list, but these other four are unknown. I''ll add them right away." Using Detector, Lake quickly put four new dots on the map in seconds.
"Oh, only two were inside the Holy Domain, after all. It doesn''t matter, though, with a single thing on that list worth months of travel."ke probably had a warped sense of how much time he was willing to put into gaining these items, but if Lucas said months, that was probably how most people felt.
"Okay, we''re ready to go as soon as you pick a path for us today." The closest of the journals was a good target, but if they went a different way, they could hit more dots in the few hours Lucas had free. Lucas seemed to think hitting the most spots in a single day was the better n because he took a pen off his desk and started drawing lines.
"I''ll add more depending on how fast we hit these first few. It''s time to go." Lake nodded and followed Lucas onto the elevator before asking. "The ces you didn''t draw lines to that were along the way have reasons, right?" Lucas nodded before answering. "I avoided cities and ces owned by Demon Worshipers while drawing our path."
"I understand the second thing, but why cities?"
"Being seen in too many ces in one day could be a problem for me. People might think I''m up to something."
"Could hiding your face fix this?" Surprisingly, Lucas shook his head to this question. "No, there are people that watch my every move the second I step out of the guild and have been for years. I can shake them, but they tend to find me after a few hours whenever I do, so I just put up with it."
"Who are they?" Lake had never noticed someone watching them more than ordinary when they had gone out together, but if Lucas said there were people, he believed him. "People from other guilds. It''s nothing to worry about. They aren''t strong enough to stop us even if they wanted to."
"So, do you have people that watch other guild leaders as well?" Lucas nodded to this question before exining. "It''s important to know where the biggest threats are and what they''re doing at all times. It''s mainly just the other dangerous people in town that I keep up with, though."
"Would you mind if we lose them today? I don''t want anyone to see us gather so many things in one day because they might start following me around, thinking I''m important enough to warrant something like that."
"Don''t worry; It will probably happen if we''re moving fast. Like I said, nothing to worry about." Lake felt that Lucas was right about them losing the people following them without even trying. The two of them were extremely fast and short on time, so they would move as quickly as possible from when they exited the guild to when they returned.
Chapter 409: Not My Problem Pt.5
Chapter 409: Not My Problem Pt.5
The trip to the first ce on the map was briefly interrupted when Lucas tapped him on the shoulder and alerted him that they had most likely lost the people watching him. Lake had already assumed this because he couldn''t feel anyone looking his way anymore, but he just nodded, not letting Lucas know he had a skill that told him when people were looking his way or thinking about him.
Lake had no ns of hiding things from Lucas because it was toote already, but alerting him of every one of his skills was a bad idea, even if he didn''t think the two of them would ever fight. He preferred only to tell Lucas something he could do if it would help themplete some task.
By the end of the day, he was sure Lucas would know about one or two more of his skills, but that was fine as long as he used it when it needed to be and didn''t describe just how good the skill was as most of his skills looked like weaker skills people already knew about.
"We''re getting close." The first thing they were after today wasn''t a journal but an item suspected of being at least level fifty. Taking out his list, Lake used Detector to get the name and told it to Lucas. "Edge de is the item we''re about to get. It''s a sword."
Swords were the mostmon thing in all the books about items he had read, and while he didn''t put many on his list, there were still over four in the Holy Domain. "Okay, how do you want to do this?"
Lake usually didn''t kill anyone unless it was necessary because he felt murder was more likely to send some super guard after him, and he was sure Lucas would feel the same, so he said. "I''ll go. Just keep your ears peeled because I''ll call if I need backup."
With his ability to be quiet and too fast to see, Lake didn''t think this would take long, but he changed his tune a bit when he saw the ce Detector was saying Edge de was. Detector was telling him a random tree was the location of the de, but when he looked upwards, he didn''t see any building the owner could be living in.
Using Mana Vision, Lake looked around until he finally saw something glowing near the middle of the tree about halfway up. He also noticed that there didn''t seem to be anyone around who might be the owner, so Lake didn''t think for long before jumping up to see why the sword was in a tree.
Landing on a branch close to where the sword was, Lake deactivated Mana Vision to look at the sword''s condition. Not seeing rust on the exposed parts of the sword, Lake got closer so he could pull the sword out but stopped when he noticed a scroll on the sword''s handle.
Deciding to read this scroll first, Lake unrolled it and started to read out loud on the off chance Lucas could hear him. "I identally embedded my sword into this tree while training. If found, please return it to me in Grentel as I n to retrieve it when I grow stronger, and taking it would be stealing. 1000 gold reward."
Lake couldn''t help but giggle a little as he finished the note. There was no way 1000 gold would be even close to what this sword was actually worth, but he was sure whoever had lost it by swinging it at this tree had been unaware of what they had to begin with. Appraiser was an epic job, meaning people didn''t have ess to it or people with it unless they sought them out, so the person with this sword probably hadn''t had a way to apprise it and just thought the sword was sharper than most they had used in the past.
Putting the sword away in his bag, Lake returned to Lucas and handed it over along with the note. "This note makes this legally theft." Lake assumed that to be the case since you couldn''t just take something because no one was around, but there was no way he would ever return something like this for so little. "Well, if the yever find me, I''ll ask for the gold."
"I don''t think they''d buy you were looking for them. Let''s get going. I want to get as many journals as possible today, and worrying about the idiot who lost this sword is wasting our time." Nodding, Lake took out the map. A few secondster, he pointed, saying. "That way next."
By taking the time it had taken them to get here, Lake knew it should only be fifteen minutes before they arrived at the sight of the first journal they would retrieve today. His estimate ended up being wrong because a few minutes into their run, Lucas said. "We should divert around this area ahead. I can feel increased mana, and I think it''s the Unholy element."
Trying to feel what Lucas was talking about, Lake eventually felt something that felt a bit off and said. "You should lead the way because I can''t really feel it." Lake had been in the front for their whole trip since he was the one who knew where they were going and was setting their pace, but if Lucas thought they needed to move around an area, he should be the one to guide them around it.
"Alright, I think it''s probably best if we take a road, so let us go this way." After Lucas said this, he turned around ny degrees and led them onto a road they had just passed over. "Whatever''s going on is probably happening in that forest, so going around it on the road should be safe."
Lake had already understood this before Lucas said it, but he was sure Lucas needed to exin most things twice, so he just nodded without saying something like, ''I already knew that.'' It was petty, and reacting like that might make Lucas not say something he hadn''t figured out on his ownter.
"The Unholy zone is behind us now, so take over again." Lake nodded and took the lead position from Lucas before asking. "What do you think the Demon Worshipers were doing that was making the mana in that area more dense?"
"I don''t really care, but if you want to know, we''d have to turn around. I know you''re a member of the Temple of Light, so I could understand you thinking it''s important." At first, Lake was surprised by Lucas being okay with them turning around. Lake then realized Lucas was probably trying to be amodating in fear that he stop using his skills to help find the journals if he got mad that Lucas didn''t care about the Temple.
"No, I don''t care either. I just wanted to hear what you thought." Lake had decided to mind his own business until the Insider made him go back to the Temple, so the only reason he had asked was curiosity at what Lucas was thinking. "In that case, my first guess would be that a giant is getting the space ready for a new fort to go up. That location is between the capital and two other big cities, meaning it''s a good ce to hold if they think the Temple of Light ns to invade at some point."
"I don''t think they''ll be doing that anytime soon." Lake had almost started to talk about the things the Temple Head had told him before he left but decided Lucas didn''t need to know the inner workings of the Temple of Light.
"Hard to say. The gods don''t have much time if the Demon Lord continues to make deals like he is. There''s over a fifty percent chance they try an attack, but it won''t be on the Holy Domain if they decide to do something about the Demon Lord. They''ll go after the Dark Domain."
Seeing that it seemed Lucas already had a good grasp on what was going on between the two sides, he guessed it wouldn''t have been such a big deal if he had said what he was going to earlier. "Have you ever been to the dark Domain?"
Lake instantly regretted asking this because the answer was clear if you remembered the old Guild master had been Amanda, the one who became the Dark Goddess, but it was toote. "Yes, I''ve been many times before and after the Demon Lord took control over it."
Thankfully, Lucas took it as an innocent question and didn''t react the way Lake had feared to the mention of his friend''s Domain. "What''s it like?" He had asked this question to the Temple Head of the Metal Temple in the past, but the dwarf hadn''t said much other than it was a chaotic ce filled with undead monsters.
"It was much nicer before the Demon Lord took over. It''s still not that bad as long as you''re supposed to be there, but being invited is rare, so I wouldn''t rmend ever going." Lake had never thought of going to the Dark Domain and had only asked what Lucas thought of it in case he was one day forced to head there for some reason.
"We''re getting close to the next dot. Will you be going to get the journal, or do you want me to handle it again?" Lake knew this was an abrupt change of subject, but the journal was more important than what they were talking about a second ago. "I''ll be going as well. I''d like to see who had it to see if I know them for the guild''s old days or not."
Chapter 410: Not My Problem Pt.6
Chapter 410: Not My Problem Pt.6
"It''s a barrier. We''re inside of a barrier." Lucas'' words made Lake finally realize what was going on. They had just arrived a few minutes ago, and ever since, he and Lucas had been unable to keep themselves moving in the right direction, and it seemed this was the effect of some type of magic that was messing with them.
"Barrier? We didn''t move through anything resembling a barrier, though." He wasn''t entirely sure why Lucas had said it was a barrier, though, because barriers kept things out with a wall, not misdirection. "It''s the best way to describe it until we find out if it''s a spell or skill causing this spatial effect."
Lake guessed Lucas was right. It didn''t matter what they called it as long as they knew its effects on them. Taking out his arrow, Lake used magicpass because no matter what, Detector would tell them the right direction, even if the ground below them was moving or the space around them was twisting.
"Grab onto my shoulder. I''ll lead us through." Feeling Lucas'' hand hold onto his shoulder, Lake started the walk again, changing directions every second or so when the arrow told him they were somehow going in the wrong direction.
After a few minutes, the arrow stopped pointing in a new direction every few feet, and he told Lucas, "I think we''re through." There was always the chance that this reprieve could just be a trick, but he didn''t think there was any point in trying to trick someone if they got through the first part of your barrier unless you had a better trick. Someone with a better trick would have probably used it first, though.
Another minute after he informed Lucas that they were probably through the barrier, Lucas let go of his shoulder and said. "I hear someone talking up ahead. It seems they''re nning to try and run before we arrive." If they were saying their ns out loud, there was a good chance there would be more than one, and when he used Mana Vision to see if he was close enough to get a look at the people up ahead, he confirmed this.
"It looks like a family. Two adults, two children, or dwarves. Probably children, though." after he said this, he and Lucas picked up speed and were outside the building they found before the people inside left. Lake was about to ask if they should knock on the door when Lucas called out to the people inside. "Hello. Can we talk?"
Seconds passed as they waited for a response, but eventually, a scared voice called out to them. "What do you want, Lucas?" Lake could also tell there was a bit of anger in the man''s voice when he said Lucas'' name, but if the two of them knew each other, he was sure there was a good reason.
Lucas had told him briefly about the end of the Mages guild. It sounded like most people had left mad at the other members for what had happened leading up to its copse, and with Lucasing out of the copse in charge of the Alchemist guild, most of them were probably mad at Lucas directly.
"Just here for Amanda''s journal. Feel free to hand it to me through a window if you don''t want me to see your face." After Lucas said this, a hand eventually held a book out toward them, and Lucas quickly took it before turning to leave. "Most of the books taken were stolen on a whim by people who had been reading them when they decided to leave the guild, right?"
Lucas nodded before adding. "Some were stolen long before that happened, though." Lake nodded because he remembered when Lucas said some were missing when they first discovered them in Amanda''s old room. "This one was one of the ones lostter, though, right?"
Lucas looked at the cover of the journal before saying. "Yes, it''s number nine. If I remember correctly, we had this one."
"Alright, let us go on to the next thing." Taking out his map, Lake quickly pointed out the direction they needed to go next before saying. "Next is an item in the forties. We can skip it if you want."
"No. It will only add a few minutes to our travel time as long as it''s not heavily guarded, and we can leave soon after arriving."
Lake had still wanted to get this item before moving on, so after estimating the amount of time it would take for them to get there, he said. "We''ll be there in around five minutes." Lucas had chosen their path to head towards the part of the map that had the most dots close to one another, so now that they had made it here, they would be hitting four more spots that were all extremely close.
Five minutester, Lake switched Detector to look for the item from his list they were closest to and told Lucas. "Finally, boots. They''re the entire reason I started this list." High-level boots seemed to be rare, and he was guessing it was because most of them were originally part of high-level armor sets, which tended to get split up or partially destroyed over time, but that was just a single guess.
There was also the fact that if he was a cksmith, he probably wouldn''t spend much time making shoes either when there were things like swords and chest pieces to make, and most cksmiths probably felt this way as well.
Then, a lot of the ones made were destroyed while in use by people like him who ran too hard for them to take, so there were loads of reasons the things he wanted the most, boots, were hard to find.
"I''ll let you get this one on your own." Hearing Lucas say this, Lake nodded and rushed towards the item while using Mana Vision to see if anything was around. Eventually, he noticed what looked like people and a few items glowing strong enough to be enchanted and got ready for a fight.
Like always, his only goal was to touch the items he wanted, but with no guards around, Lake had no way to make this happen that didn''t involve the chance of being attacked. Slipping into the ground using Ghost Touch, Lake eventually arrived under the feet of the people and used Detector to look for Heelios.
Seeing the feet of one of the people start to glow golden, Lake used his skill Ghost Touch to turn the ground they were standing on ethereal, making them all fall into the ground around him. All five instantly started to thrash, clearly unable to understand what had just happened. Lake had expected this, so before they got a grip on the situation, he had touched both boots and retreated above ground to get a breath and to wait for them to climb out.
The others had items he wanted as well, and he needed to know the name or what the item looked like enough to be able to use Retrieval on themter. The first person to climb out of the ground wasn''t the one wearing Heelios, so after identifying the highest level item on their body, he touched it and kicked them back into the ground with the others.
With this method, he touched all the items he wanted, but one because it seemed thest person passed out before they figured out all they needed to do was jump to escape. Feeling bad, Lake grabbed them before stealing their item and leaving. Returning to Lucas, Lake summoned all the items to his hand but made it look like he was pulling them out of his bag before handing them to Lucas.
Lucas'' bag seemed to be enchanted, so Lake had no problem letting him carry the items until they returned. He would decide once they got back to the guild which items he wanted after they had been cleaned of any trackers by Felg. "That was a good haul." Lake nodded to this instead of exining that there was more than one person; Lucas most likely already knew, but even if he didn''t, it wasn''t important.
"Next is another journal. There''s a good chance the person from earlier is in contact with whoever owns the next one based on location, so be ready for a possible fight." Lake hadn''t thought about this, but Lucas was right; if they were both ex-members of the mage guild and were living so close to one another, they probably were in contact.
"Do you think they decided to live close on prepose or just noticed one another after some time passed?" It was a dumb question in all reality, but Lake wanted to hear what Lucas thought. "The fact three are so close probably means they did it on purpose. The fourth was probably an ident, though."
The fourth Lucas was talking about was actually pretty far away whenpared to the first three, but it was less than twenty minutes away for the two of them. "With how fast we''re going, we''ll be going for it as well, right?" Getting a nod, Lake took out his map and handed it over to Lucas so he could draw more lines.
Chapter 411: Not My Problem Pt.7
Chapter 411: Not My Problem Pt.7
As the hours passed and they made progress, Lake realized having both him and Lucas was overkill for every situation they ran into. It would have made much more sense for them to split up, but that was only true if they never ran into a problem that needed both him and Lucas.
"Lucas, how much more time do you have?" They were running toward the fourth journal of the day, but Lucas had drawn lines to three more dots after that, so Lucas probably had at least two hours left. "I want to get back before midday. I have a meeting with the guild leader of the Farmers Guild around that time."
That gave them closer to three hours, so Lake asked what he had been thinking. "Do you want to split up? With the map, you''ll get to one more journal today if I head off to gather the items." It was pretty far from their current position, but one more journal was on the map, close enough that Lucas could get there before heading home for his meeting if they stopped going after the items around.
"Will you be fine without the map because I''ll need it to find the journal''s location?" Lake nodded before exining. "The arrow will work just fine for me." Lake hadn''t ever needed the map and only started to use it because it made knowing where he was going easier. "Alright, hand it over."
After Lake gave the map to Lucas, he was about to run towards the next item when he heard Lucas ask. "Will you being back today?" Lake could understand why Lucas might think he would stay out here for multiple days because most people would if they had his skills.
"No, I''ll be back today." There was a tiny chance this wasn''t actually true, so he added, "Unless something stops me." right before he ran away from Lucas. A few minutes after their split, Lake arrived at the location of the next item and used his list and Detecter to get the name.
Limb Guards Estimated Lv.40
Seeing the item was just something that would protect his arms, he knew in all reality it probably wouldn''t give him Perception while inside Inner Vault, but he was already here and needed arm guards for the new armor set he was putting together, so he was definitely going to take the Limb Guards before he left.
Seeing a building next to the side of a road, Lake assumed he had arrived at the location of the Limb Guards and switched Detector to look for them instead of the arrow pointing at them. Seeing something start to glow, Lake switched to using Mana Vision and found the person wearing the Limb Guards at a table inside the building, surrounded by others.
Assuming this meant this building was an inn or something like it, he walked towards the door and entered. Once inside, Lake saw something he assumed was fate making a joke; the person wearing the Limb Guards was arm wrestling someone, and it looked like there was a line to go next.
He couldn''t think of an easier way to touch the Limb Guards, so he went and stood at the back of the line to wait for his turn. While in line, Lake decided he had enough time to use Detector on his list to find a better target than just whatever was next closest item.
Twenty minutester, Lake was walking out of the inn, having touched the Limb Guards after a round of arm weresing. The man with the Limb Guards was using them to hustle low-level adventurers out of their gold, probably relying on the stat bonus the item gave him to do it.
After seeing how many times each person lined back up after being beaten, he was sure the guy with the limb guards never needed to do much of anything else to make gold. He got it because the looks of the one wearing the Limb Guards made it seem that it would be easy to beat them, but Lake felt like losing a couple of times would make you realize something was up. The only exnation he could think of was everyone inside had a low intelligence stat, and it would exin this situation because he remembered what it had been like to have your intelligence in the single digits.
Once Lake was far enough away from the inn, he turned and used Mana Vision. As someone sat down to engage in a match, Lake summoned the Limb Guards to his hand, hoping the person he had just stolen them from would me the one touching their hand for the disappearance instead of him.
Taking out his arrow, Lake oriented himself before running off towards the target he picked well inside the inn.
Field Helmet Estimated Lv.50
Grants longsight or something simr.
While inside, Lake had realized that because of how his skills worked in tandem, he could probably set Detector to look for things that would give him the stats he wanted while inside Inner Vault, and it had worked as he''d hoped. However, this item''s description he''d written made it easy to guess that it would give Perception if he put it inside Inner Vault.
Meaning that he could finally just go after items that would increase his Perception as it was the stat holding him back. He could have probably found these items in other ways or assumed their effects as he had done with Mizzly''s bow, but this method was much easier for him.
Of course, this didn''t change that he was in for a long run to get to his next target, but it would be worth it as the next item he''d chosen was estimated to be level 50, like Mizzly''s bow. He just hoped that it would need to be stolen because Mizzly''s bow wasn''t, and therefore, only gave half of what it could if the situation had been different.
Mizzly''s bow was still much better than the other items he had found around its level, so he couldn''tin too much with how bad getting an item like it could have gone if it had an owner.
He still remembered how it could see him even without a person using it, and he was sure this skill transferred to its owner from the stories of Mizzly he had read. A person like that would have been impossible to sneak up on, and this knowledge made him a little bit worried about this next item''s owner.
His method of going under the ground would probably still work because even he had a hard time telling what was under him with skills like Detector and Mana Vision, but that was only because they needed to be activated. There was a good chance the person with the helmet would have a passive view of what was going on around them from wearing the item he was after giving them the advantage of not needing to know to activate their skill.
This might even include them seeing himing from much further than he had ever experienced before, and once they saw him, there wouldn''t be much he could do about it if they could tell he wasing right at them and there was no other reason for him to be there.
All of this was only applicable to the situation if ''Long Sight'' didn''t end up being an urate way of describing what the helmet did, though, because if it was, simple obstacles should allow him to get more than close enough to the owner to steal the helmet from them.
Around thirty minutester, Lake arrived at a town, and guessing this was the right ce, switched Detector to look for the helmet before entering the city so he would see it if he was right about it being here. He didn''t get far before he saw something start to glow on the left side of town.
Getting closer and using Mana Vision, Lake found the item seemed to be inside a building, and with no one around, Lake decided to just go right inside before anyone who might see him showed up and ruined this opportunity.
Once inside, Lake took a bit more time to look around and even used his skill Burr rm to try and find the owner because he was worried they were here and he just couldn''t see them with Mana Vsion for some reason.
When Burr rm didn''t show an owner, Lake started to get worried about who it might be, but remembering what happened when he was after Mizzly''s bow, he used Detector to look for ownerless homes. When the building he was standing in didn''t start to glow, Lake let himself get nervous and turned around to leave.
If this ce had an owner and Burr rm wasn''t able to figure out who they were, he needed to try and find more information on them before he decided to take the helmet. He had a good idea of where to start as well, so Lake didn''t think it would take too long to make his decision.
Chapter 412: Not My Problem Pt.8
Chapter 412: Not My Problem Pt.8
Finding a group of guards, Lake walked up to them and said. "I just saw someone break into a house over there." This trick worked thest time he''d used it to get something, so he had faith that with just a few adjustments, it would work this time as well.
"Where?" The guards didn''t even look at him before they were ready to go, which showed that they would probably believe almost anything he said as long as his acting was good. "I''ll bring you, follow me."
Not wanting the guards to realize this situation was weird, Lake made sure to run fast both to get there in less time and to make sure it seemed like there was actually an emergency where they were going.
"It''s this house here." After saying this, Lake turned around to see how the guards would react to him telling them this was the house and saw that they all looked perturbed. "What''s wrong?"
"Nothing." Seeing they looked like they had given up on stopping the crime, Lake knew he had been correct to run away instead of stealing the helmet. "Alright then, can you go in to stop a crime, or do we have to wait out here for them?"
"We have to wait out here." Lake nodded to this and pointed at the door. "Are you going to knock to tell the people inside?" Lake already had all the information he needed to know going back inside was a bad idea, but he wanted one of the guards to say something that would let him ask who owned the house without iting from nowhere.
"No one inside other than the thief."
"How do you know that? Is the house abandoned because it looks pretty nice if it is?" The guards all looked at one another for a while before one finally answered. "We''re not sure. This house has been off limits to everyone for years, and while we''ve all heard rumors on why, no one knows what''s true."
Lake knew this was a good line of questioning for him to go down because rumors tended to be at least somewhat urate if you could separate the facts out of what you heard, and he had confidence he could with what he already knew. "What kind of things do people say?"
After his question, the guards stayed quiet for a while, but they soon came to a silent consensus that repeating rumors had no consequences for them since anyone would probably tell him if he asked, and they all started to repeat what they''d heard.
"My father says the home used to belong to someone who was involved with the death of the Holy Goddess."
"It belongs to the king. Hees here to escape all the prying eyes in the capital."
"My sister lives nearby and says a ck figure moves around inside asionally. She says it''s taller than normal people and peers at passersby from the windows."
Taking all the rumors in, Lake decided there were enough details that made it sound like a Demigod was using this house for something to leave. He''d assumed this to be the case when his skills couldn''t figure out who owned this home, but now it was confirmed, so he wouldn''t risk going back inside. "Oh wow, maybe we should just leave then. Whatever''s happening inside is probably too much for us to handle."
Lake was about to leave even if the guards decided to stand here and wait for the person who went inside toe out, but he felt a reaction like this was the right one for him to have to what they just said. "No, we''ll stay and watch for a while. You can go if you don''t feel safe, though."
Lake didn''t stick around for long after the guard said this because he couldn''t ask for a better excuse to leave, but he still couldn''t help looking back a few times as he left the town. He really wanted the helmet, and the fact the Demigod wasn''t around or using the item currently made him feel he could take it without repercussions.
Stopping on the edge of town, Lake started to head back towards the house as he took his arrow out. Because Detector could locate the item, he could use it to find out if the helmet had a tracking mark ced on it from a distance before he actually tried to take it from the house.
And as long as all he did was touch it, he could wait till he was back at the guild and with Felg to summon it to him. Making the amount of time he had the helmet before giving it to Felg as short as possible would make the risk to him negligible, so he was more than okay taking it.
Done using the arrow to gather information on the helmet, Lake went underground so the guard he''d led there earlier wouldn''t see him, and before long, he was back in the house. Staying low so no one would see him through the windows, Lake passed through a few walls until he was in the same room as the helmet.
Taking the time to look around for traps before getting any closer, Lake saw other things in this room and used Mana Vision to see if he could see them because he didn''t think he had earlier. As he''d thought nothing other than the helmet was visible to him while he was using Mana Vision, so he turned to Detector to find out why that was.
Setting it to look for items over level 40, Lake was disappointed that nothing else started to glow, but Lake guessed the only item the Demigod decided to keep that was actually worth anything was the helmet, while the rest were just regr clothes.
Knowing this area was devoid of traps, Lake started walking towards the helmet and set a single finger on it before turning to leave. Once he was back outside, Lake closed the ground behind him so no one would fall through and ran out of the town while taking out his list to identify the next item he''d be going after.
A few secondster, Lake had the name of the next target, but without his map, he didn''t know how far he''d have to go to retrieve it. It was in the Holy Domain section of his list, though, so it wouldn''t be too far that he''d end up beingte to getting home.
Third Eye Estimated Lv.50
A mana vessel that acts like a third eye for the owner
Around an hourter, Lake found himself heading up a hill, and with the arrow pointing towards the top, he figured the item he was after would be in the wooden fortress he''d just gotten his first glimpse of. He hadn''t been able to see it from the bottom, but now that he knew people were living up there, he switched Detector to look for the Third Eye.
As he got closer to the fortress, he eventually saw a small thing near the top of the fortress start to glow. Having his target''s location identified, Lake was about to go into the ground so he wouldn''t get spotted by the person with the Third Eye but stopped when he felt a searing beam of attention lock onto him.
Stopping and looking back at the Third Eye, Lake wondered if his locking onto it with Detector had been the reason it had found him or if he''d just gotten too close, but either way, going underground probably wouldn''t have helped him because there were plenty of things between them that should have stopped it from being able to see him.
Starting to run again, Lake heard people yelling about an iing enemy. With it only being a few seconds since he was first spotted, Lake had to assume the people inside were decently strong, already getting ready for an attack in such a short amount of time.
He didn''t think they would be ready for him to go through the wall right into where the person with the Third Eye was, though, so he didn''t worry about it. Once he arrived at the wall of the fortress, Lake jumped upwards until he was level with the person using the Third Eye, where he then used Wind magic to make a tform to jump off of towards the wall.
Passing through the wooden wall of the fortress, Lake saw a woman around his age pressing an amulet to her forehead, wide-eyed and looking directly at him. Lake couldn''t help but smile a bit at how surprised she looked to see him, but his smile didn''tst long because a beam of light shot from the girl''s finger toward his face.
Lake, not having much time because of the speed of Light magic, clumsily dodged to the side just in time to hear the girl scream for backup. Knowing another dash straight at her probably wouldn''t work with her being fast enough to react to his attempts to touch the Third Eye, Lake used Ghost Touch to open a ce for him to slip into the room below.
Falling to the ground, Lake found himself in the middle of a crowd of people, all heading for a staircase up to where the girl with the Third Eye was. Feeling a little awkward about this, Lake was about to greet them all before jumping to use Ghost Touch on the ground the girl was standing on, but he was beaten to it when the people closest to him all shot spells of various types from their hands.
Chapter 413: Not My Problem Pt.9
Chapter 413: Not My Problem Pt.9
Summoning his arrears to block all the iing attacks, Lake thanked his luck that none of the people surrounding him were using Light magic because while their attacks probably wouldn''t kill or hurt him, he couldn''t be so sure for the items he was carrying in his bag and Light magic would have reached him before he could block it.
He''d spent a lot of time on his list, so it getting destroyed by a simple spell would have made him mad enough to possibly kill the people here instead of just running the second he touched the Third Eye.
After blocking all the spells, Lake found a chance to jump and used Ghost Touch on the floor, but when the girl didn''t fall through, he climbed through instead, assuming more spells from the people below were heading his way.
Once on the other side, Lake saw the girl he was fighting for the Third Eye near the stairs, clearly about to go down to chase after him. After they made eye contact, a beam of light left her hand and flew toward him. Lifting his barriers to cover his face and body, Lake started to close the distance as fast as he could, knowing there wasn''t a better way for him to win this fight.
mming into the girl, both of them fell down into the staircase, and knowing that he would soon get surrounded again, Lake used Fast Hands to touch the Third Eye before kicking one of his legs to send himself towards one of the walls where he used ghost touch to pass through.
Emerging outside, Lake was 20 ft in the air, so he cast Fly and headed away from the Fortress. It didn''t take very long for him to leave the range of the eye, but they were still thinking about him, so he continued to run until he felt their attention almost all the way gone.
Finding a ce to sit, Lake quickly summoned the Third Eye to him even though he knew it would be much safer for him to wait until he was back at the guild. He just couldn''t help himself; this item had let a young mage keep up with him while he''d been going close to his top speed, which meant its bonus to perception had to be much higher than even Mizzly''s bow.
Feeling it appear in his hand, the first thing Lake noticed was this item was, in fact, a Mana Vessel like the book had said it was. It was already full, though, so he wondered how to empty it so he could fill it with his mana. "I''ll just ask Felgter." Using inspect next, Lake did his best to sort through all the information until he had a list that told him everything he needed to know.
Third Eye Lv.61
Mana Vessel (459/500)
Increases perception by 50%
Capable of using all ocr skills for free
When cing the amulet on your forehead, you can transmit thoughts to those you make eye contact with.
Lake was sure there were other abilities this thing had, as it was level 61, but that wasn''t important because it would be inside Inner Vault, meaning the actual effects didn''t matter. "Wait, this thing''s stolen, so won''t the 50% increase be 100 instead?"
Taking a health potion out, Lake threw the Third Eye in as fast as possible, but instead of looking at the new bonuses, Lake looked at a popup that appeared the second the Third Eye went inside Inner Vault. [Mission: Gather nine more items of at least level 60 and fill Inner Vault. Reward: 1 Insider Exp (ept/deny)]
Seeing he had the option to deny this quest if he wanted, Lake guessed his rtionship with the Insider had changed now that he''d reached level one, but Lake didn''t see a reason to ever say no to a mission he would probablyplete anyway. Items around level 60 seemed rare, but he already had ns to get some once he found a book that cataloged them.
If Lake wanted, he could use Detector to have it bring him to as many level 60 items as he wanted, but with each one, the odds of running into someone who could kill him were pretty high, so Lake wanted to wait till he was stronger to make sure nothing like that happened.
Missions didn''t have a time limit, though, so he could still take it and continue at his own pace. Hitting ept, Lake switched his attention to see the effects of the Third Eye.
Lv.61 Third Eye (Unowned)
+100% Perception
-100% Cost For Skills That Scale Off Of Perception
+Thought Projection
+1000 Max mana
After Lake finished reading all of the bonuses, he finally thought back to the fortress he stole the eye from. The existence of such a ce and the situation inside were both weird because why would arge number of Mages be living in the forest led by someone who owned an item like the eye?
It was really too bad they had met in such a way because he''d love to be able to go back and ask what they were up to, but he guessed he would just have to settle for telling Lucas about itter. Lucas seemed to know almost everything that happened in the Holy Domain, so Lake didn''t see why this would be any different.
Standing up, Lake started to think of ways to tell how much faster he was now. Up until now, he just ran and guessed how much faster he was, but now that his Perception had doubled, he was pretty sure he would have no problems going his full speed; but going that fast was a problem all on its own.
For example, he already kicked up arge amount of dust and made a loud whistling noise if he ran without Mute activated but moving at his full speed as he''d done a few times in the past he destroyed everything his feet touched, and he was actually a bit faster now so his clothes probably wouldn''tst long.
"I can just hold off on the test until I get back to the guild." Lake really didn''t have anything else he needed to do today, and if he went home now, he and Lucas might have a chance to talk before Lucas had to go to his meeting, which would give Lake a chance to ask about the fortress he''d found.
Lake had lost his current location, so he used his arrow to find which direction he needed to go to get home before starting his run. He turned out to be pretty close to the city, and before even an hour passed, he was back in Lucas'' office using Detector to see if Lucas was back yet.
When Detector failed to find Lucas, Lake looked at the shelf that held the journals and saw none of the ones they''d gathered today were on it. "I guess I beat him back." There was always the chance Lucas had just gone straight to his meeting, but Lake didn''t think that was the case because Lucas probably wouldn''t want to walk around with the journals if he didn''t have to.
With nothing else nned for today and wanting to get the items Lucas had, Lake decided to take a seat and wait for him to return, knowing it probably wouldn''t take too long. After twenty minutes passed, Lake saw the elevator open, and Lucas stepped off and said. "Wee back." as the man noticed him.
"Is there a reason you''re already back, or were you just done for the day?" Lake could tell Lucas was afraid he''d caused some trouble, but he didn''t think that was the case, so he said. "I found something weird and wanted to ask if you knew about it before you had to go to you''re meeting."
Getting a nod from Lucas, Lake went ahead and described the fortress he found before finishing up by asking. "Do you know what they''re doing out there?"
"No, this is the first I''ve heard about them. Was there anything you saw that could make them Demon worshipers?" Thinking about this question for a while to rey the things he''d seen while inside, Lake eventually shook his head and said. "I don''t think so."
"Here, show me on the map where it was." After Lucas said this, he took the map out and set it on the table. Using Detector to find the location of the fortress on the map, Lake pointed it out and said. "It was on this hill here."
"Okay, I''ll have people go and figure out what they''re doing. Were you able to get the item that''s marked on the map there?" Nodding, Lake said. "Yeah, I was just about to bring it to Felg; do you want me to bring the other things to him while I''m at it?"
Chapter 414: Not My Problem Pt.10
Chapter 414: Not My Problem Pt.10
As he and Lucas were walking to Felg''s workshop, Lucas turned to him and said. "I''ll be going to the Metal Domain in two days. Do you want toe?" Lake decided to say yes to this offer right away but wanted to ask a few questions first, just in case there was a reason he shouldn''t go. "What will you be doing there?"
"Our Guild office in the Metal Domain was destroyed, and while it''s already rebuilt, the policy of the Metal Domain is changing, and I need to go there to renegotiate. I figured we could gather the journals and the other things on your map while I''m there." The Metal Domain had a high density of items but only a few journals, but they would have to get them eventually, so Lake was sure Lucas didn''t care this trip would be uneven.
"Okay, I''ll make sure to have them map ready so we don''t miss anything while we''re there." Getting a nod before Lucas looked away from him, Lake knew the conversation was over as they''d arrived at Felg''s workshop. "Hello, Sir." Lucas got a nice greeting from Felg, but it was never returned as Lucas ignored him and started to pull items from his bag before cing them on the table.
"Alright, I have to go. Just give Felg anything you don''t want, and the guild will pay you for them." Lake wasn''t sure if he deserved the money as Lucas had helped, but he had no reason to refuse, so he nodded and thanked Lucas as he left. "Man, he''s always so busy."
Lake knew Felg was only saying this because he was embarrassed that Lucas had ignored him, so patting his shoulder, Lake said. "Don''t worry about it; he ignores what I say sometimes too." He couldn''t tell if Felg appreciated this gesture, but the moment didn''tst long, and soon they were on to talking about the items.
"Another big load today. Should I start expecting this?" Lake wasn''t entirely sure how often it would happen, but he still nodded before saying. "For a while and every few days. Also, there are still a few more things, and I need you to do one of them first." The helmet wasn''t that important anymore now that he had the eye, but he had spent his time Touching it, and he was sure Felg could handle the tracking mark.
"Alright, I''m ready whenever you are." With Felg ready, Lake quickly reached his hand into his bag and summoned the field helmet before handing it off. "I''m guessing you got it from someone important if this needs to be the first I look at." Lake stayed silent because Felg was already at work while saying this.
A few minutester, Felg set the helmet to the side and said. "The tracking mark was nothing special. You don''t need to worry about whoever owned iting after you." Lake was happy to hear this and said so before taking out the eye and giving it to Felg. "This next, please."
"Oh wow, this is really something." Lake wasn''t surprised Felg could tell with a single nce that the eye was more impressive than the other things because he noticed it as well, and he wasn''t as experienced when it came to items. "I don''t think anyone is tracking it, but I just want to make sure before I carry it around with me."
"I''d feel the same way if I was you." Another few minutes passed before Felg spoke again. "It''s clean." Receiving the amulet, Lake had been about to put it away when he remembered he didn''t own the item as it was still filled with another''s mana, and he didn''t know how to fix this issue. "Do you know how to drain the Mana of another from a vessel?"
"Brute force works best. Now that it''s been separated from its owner, each time you try to input your Mana, it will chip away at what''s already inside." With an answer, Lake put the eye back into Inner Vault before saying. "I''ll be back for the restter." He nned to give most to the Guild, but he would decide which itemster. "In around 2 hours, I should be finished. I''ll see you then."
On the way back to his room, Lake started to think of ways to pass the rest of his day. He still needed to test his speed, but it wasn''t urgent, and he would rather do it tomorrow or whenever the next time he left the guild was because the training rooms here weren''t big enough to meet his needs.
The mountains in the Metal Domain would make a much more suitable location, and by then, Felg would have finished with his new shoes, so he would be able to test them at the same time. Making training in magic a better use of his time, but he would need more than 2 hours to make any real progress, so waiting till after he''d retrieved his things from Felg made sense.
This left Working on his map so everything worth taking would be marked for him and Lucas when they left for their trip. He didn''t really need to be in the library to do this since with Detector, he could just mark every location an item over level 40 existed, so he just returned to his room.
Once inside, heid his map on the table and got to work. After about an hour, he stopped adding new dots because the number of items he''d found was already more than enough for a short trip to the Metal Domain. But with so much time left, he decided to work on organizing what the dots represented and what group they belonged to.
It was very clear to him Lucas hoped to avoid running into Demon Worshipers, and spending the time to find out who owned the item now would save them a lot of time while they were in the Metal Domain. It didn''t take him an hour toplete his task, but he never actuallypleted it because a lot of the items belonged to groups he didn''t know the name of, meaning he couldn''t set Detector in a way to highlight them.
This was okay, though, because an unknown group was a good target for him and Lucas to go after. Using hisst remaining time, Lake highlighted the items that were above level 60, and even though there were only a few in the entire Domain, he spent all of his remaining time on this task because he wanted to get as much information on each one before he finished working on the map.
Hearing a knocking on his door, Lake waited for one of his servants to answer it. A few secondster, he was informed of who it was when they said. "Sir, Felg just sent a message saying your items are done. What should I tell them to tell him?"
"Nothing, I''m going now." After he had his map back in his bag, Lake returned to Felg''s workshop to sort through the items. He knew that he was going to be keeping the helmet and the shoes, but everything else would depend on whether they were actually useful to him.
Because of his skills, he didn''t really need good weapons, especially since he preferred to use his hands most of the time, so the Edge Sword would probably go to the guild even though it was better than his current weapon. He would change his mind if it had a skill he liked, though, and this was true for every item.
Walking into Felg''s office, Lake Could see all the items stacked neatly. Using Detector Lake sorted out the lowest level items and handed them off to Felg, immediately shrinking the stack by over half. "These are for the Guild. How much are they worth?
"I don''t know off the top of my head, but I''ll get them appraised correctly by someone who focuses on valuable items." Lake nodded, knowing the guild wouldn''t rip him off. Taking the boots and helmet off of the stack, Lake put them into his bag because they''d be worn by him along with the Dark Lords Chain from now on as his new armor.
Moving on to the edge sword, Lake inspected it, and when no impressive stats or abilities were shown, he handed it over to Felg, saying. "I''m selling this as well." And this trend continued with nothing he gathered today other than the items he''d already put away being better than what he already had in Inner Vault.
"This will probably be more gold than most the Masters have. You should be careful for people approaching you from now on." Lake would have probably been worried about Felg''s warning if he wasn''t able to tell when people were lying, but he was, so he said. "I''ll be alright. I see you in a few days, Felg. I have to go back to my training now."
Chapter 415: Not My Problem Pt.11
Chapter 415: Not My Problem Pt.11
Waking up, Lake decided to stay in bed for a while. He had nothing to do today, and Lake only slept for a few minutes each day, meaning he never got to rx like this in what was probably one of the best beds in the world. After 2 hours, Lake got bored and got out of bed.
Just because he had nothing to do for the day didn''t mean he wouldn''t find something after walking around for a while. He''d also like to continue his magic training because his wind magic was still way behind his speed on the ground, meaning he only moved a tenth of the speed when he chose to fly.
To fix this problem, he would probably need weeks of training in the speed principle, but there was no rush because he really didn''t need to fly for anything. "Sir, are you going out of the guild today?"
On the way out of the door, one of his servants asked him a question, which was pretty rare, but he had no reason not to tell them his ns for the day, so he said. "I''m not sure yet. Would you like me to have someone tell you if I leave?"
Lake knew his servants had more freedom if he gave them the day off, so he wasn''t surprised they wanted him to free them from the loyalty curse by giving them the day off if he left the guild because otherwise, they would have to stand around and wait for him to return all day. "We would appreciate it, but don''t go out of your way."
Lake felt that was fair, so he gave them all a small nod before walking out the door. Lake still hadn''t decided where he was going by the time he''d arrived at the stairs, so he paused for a while and weighed his options. Eventually, he saw a person going up walk past him and decided to follow them.
Even though he''d based this decision on almost nothing, there were still plenty of things in the Spire he had never seen, so he felt it was the right choice. It had been a while since he walked the stairs of the spire, but wanting to read the signs well enough to find something to do, this was the only option he had.
After reading about a hundred signs, Lake found an interesting-sounding description of a room he''d never been to before. Trying his badge at the door, Lake found it opened with no problems, which meant he had ess to this room. Entering, Lake stayed put for a while as he took in everything that surrounded him.
It was nothing special as this was just a storage room, but you never knew he might need to get his own ingredients one day. After a few minutes passed and no one had came up to him to talk, Lake assumed he was alone and started walking around reading the names of the various ingredients stored in this room.
It took him a while, but eventually, he found an ingredient he knew from past usage, which brought back memories of the first few days he was here in the Alchemist Guild, and these memories included memories of Joy. "I should try and find her today."
With a new goal in mind, Lake took an arrow out and said it to look for Joy. When it started to glow, Lake knew Joy was close by the direction the arrow was pointing and went to take the stairs down to the elevator. Passing through Lucas'' office, Lake saw the man at work and decided not to say anything to him even though he wanted to ask about the ns for their trip to Metal Domain.
Getting on the elevator, Lake used Detector to find out which floor Joy was on before switching it to just look for her. When he found her, Joy was sitting at a table filled with guards, silently eating lunch. Walking up to her, Lake had been about to say her name to get her attention but decided to try and use the thought projection ability he now had.
The original item made you make eye contact with the person you wanted to speak with to use this ability, but Inner Vault didn''t say anything about this requirement, so he was pretty sure he could do it from here while still behind Joy. "Joy Look Behind You." After his first try, Lake was pretty sure it hadn''t done anything because Joy never turned around to look for him.
Lake didn''t know what the problem was but decided to try it on someone he could make eye contact with from here. "Look Out, Behind You." After he said this in his mind, Lake saw the person start to turn frantically, clearly afraid of an iing attack that would nevere.
Seeing that the skill did need eye contact to work, Lake guessed he should just tap Joy on the shoulder because having to make eye contact with her first pretty much meant she would see himing. Lightly tapping on her armor, Joy''s head spun around, and she said. "It''s good to see you, Lake. I was starting to wonder if you''d left the guild for good."
"No, I have no ns of leaving the guild. Being a member is really just too convenient to ever do something like that." If he didn''t find this ce so boring, he''d probably never leave the premises unless the Insider made him. "So, did you need something; or did you just want to say hello?"
This was actually a great question; Lake hadn''t thought of a reason to find Joy; he just had nothing else to do and hadn''t seen her for a while. "Is there anything you''d like to do? It''s been a while since I''ve had time off, and I''m sure you''re in a simr situation."
Lake was technically Joy''s boss, so if he wanted, he could just drag her around the guild under the pretense of her working for him. "I''m actually busy today. One of my co-workers passed away, and we''re having a funeral."
Lake had always been bad at knowing what to say after someone said someone died because he wanted to ask what had happened, but apparently, that was considered rude, so instead, he looked at the table that was now watching their interaction and said. "Sorry for your loss."
It came out more like a question than he''d wanted, but it was still received much better than his regr response, so Lake made a note to himself to always use this in the future. Turning back to Joy, Lake said. "I''lle to find you the next time I have a day off. We can do something then."
As he walked away, Lake got a glimpse of the person he''d tested thought transmission on and decided to say sorry as he walked out of the cafeteria so they wouldn''t freak out about this for the rest of their life. "Sorry, I Was Testing A New Skill, And You Were The First Person I Saw."
After his second transmission to them, he saw their face shift from worry to anger, but he understood because, to them, it would have been like a mean-spirited prank someone they didn''t know had just pulled on them.
Once he was out of the cafeteria, Lake took a second to think of what he should do next. He really expected Joy to want to hang out because it would mean she wouldn''t be working, but a funeral was definitely more important than a day off to most people, so he understood why she had said no.
It didn''t change that he needed to find something else to pass the time with, though. "I guess I''ll just go and practice." Practicing was nd, but so was walking around for no reason.
...
Waking up, Lake got straight out of bed and headed for Lucas'' office. Today was the day they were heading to the Metal Domain, and Lake wanted to ask when they would be leaving since they had never spoken about it yesterday.
On the way out the door, he didn''t forget what his servant had asked of him yesterday and said. "You three can have the day off." Even if he would be here for a few more hours, he didn''t need them for anything that he could think of. "Thank you, sir."
Once he was in Lucas'' office, Lake noticed a distinctck of Lucas at the desk and used the mark he''d ced on his amulet a long time ago to look for him in fear he''d already left for some reason. Once the mark appeared, Lake found Lucas was only in the next room, most likely asleep for the first time in days.
Like yesterday, he had nothing to do, so Lake took a seat in the chair in front of Lucas'' desk to wait for him to wake up. He didn''t think it would be a very long wait if Lucas was anything like him, at most a few hours, which he could pass speed training.
Chapter 416: Not My Problem Pt.12
Chapter 416: Not My Problem Pt.12
Less than an hour after Lake arrived, Lucas exited his bedroom. "We''ll be leaving in a few hours. Was that the only thing you wanted to ask?" Lake wasn''t surprised Lucas knew why he was here, but he did have another question, so he said. "How long will we be gone?"
"A few days at the most, but you''ll be free to leave any time if you need to. You could give back to the guild in a few hours with your speed." Lake knew Lucas was correct, so he nodded and said. "I''ll see you in a few hours then." He wanted to stock up on things like food just in case Lucas was right, and they did end up staying away from the guild for days, and he still hadn''t tried on his armor yet to make sure it would fully fit without any adjustments.
The armor looked his size, but he wouldn''t really know until he put it on for the first time. Thankfully, even if he was wrong, most armor came with straps that he could adjust himself, and it would only take a few minutes if that needed doing.
...
A little under 2 hourster, Lake returned to Lucas'' office and took a seat to wait. He knew Lucas would tell him to leave if it wasn''t close to the time for them to go to the Metal Domain yet. Three minutester, Lucas looked up from his desk and said. "There are a few things I want to say before we leave. First, your money for the items the other day is ready, but it''s enough that I wouldn''t rmend you carry it on this trip with us."
Lake didn''t need the gold right now, so he nodded and let Lucas continue. "Second, there are still Demon Worshipers in the Metal Domain, and I wanted to make sure you thought about returning after what you''d done while there."
"You''re right; we should probably split up before we get into town. I was nning on getting my reward, and if the Demon Worshipers are still around, they might know who I am after I do." Lake didn''t want to go into all the things he had done because he would have to exin killing thousands of undead and Demon Worshipers and ruining arge part of the Demon Worshipers'' n when he killed all the gargoyles that were underground with him.
"What kind of rewards? I doubt it would be worth it if it''s just more gold." Lucas was probably right, but the thought of passing up what should be arge amount of money really bothered him when he didn''t think he would be in danger by retrieving it.
Even if the Demon Worshipers did catch him, he could just run away again or change his identity if it was really bad. "I think it will be fine; I''m getting my reward from the Metal Temple directly."
"Even if that''s the case, I would still like to split before we enter the city." Lake gave Lucas a nod and took out his map so they could n the trip for a few minutes before they left. "I appreciate you sorting out the ones that belong to Demon Worshipers. I know you did it to make it easier on me."
Lake was happy Lucas noticed, but it hadn''t really taken him that long, so he said. "It wasn''t hard to do; I only spent around an hour sorting which groups own each item."
"Well, it will still save us a lot of time. Felg told me you gave almost everything you brought back to himst time. Will you be doing that again because we''ll have to sell most of the things we bring back to outsiders to afford to pay you so much gold constantly?"
Lake had always assumed the guild had almost infinite money, so hearing Lucas say they couldn''t afford to pay him unless he was all right with selling to outsiders made him a bit worried. Word would get around that the guild was selling such high-level items, and people would notice they were all recently stolen, and when that happened, they mighte looking for who was making it possible in the first ce.
He also didn''t think the guild would want to have their name sullied by doing this, so he asked. "Would you like for me to give the guild the first pick and then bring the rest of the Thieves Guild from now on?" This would be the best method for them to get rid of the items if Lucas wanted to avoid getting called out for stealing.
"Don''t worry, the Guild will handle all the dealings with the Thieves Guild for you. We would never sell these items ourselves."
"Then what are you asking me? I thought you were trying to get my permission before drawing attention to me."
"No, I was trying to see if I should go ahead and set up the deal with the Thieves Guild now before leaving the city. It will let us get paid quicker when we get back, as they''ll be ready for us with the gold." If that was the case, then Lake had no problems with them handling a bit more business before leaving, so he nodded and said. "All right, I''d be fine with that."
"Okay, follow me to Feld''s office. He should know who the person in charge of the Thieves Guild is in the city." Lake wasn''t surprised that Lucas was making it sound like a new person had taken charge because all the thieves in the city had fled as soon as the war started.
"Is Felg a member of the Thieves Guild?" Lake knew this question had a high chance of not being answered Because it could be considered a secret, but Lucas didn''t seem to mind telling him something like this because he nodded before saying. "Technically, yes, but he isn''t active."
"By not active, you mean he used to be a thief, right?" Getting a nod, Lake followed his first question up with a second. "How did he be a member of The Guild? Did you recruit him on purpose?"
"No, I found him on a raid of Thieves who had stolen from the Guild. I was going to kill him, but he shouted something about having a legendary skill before I could and deciding it would be a waste if he was telling the truth, I made him take the loyalty curse then and there. He''s been working for the guild ever since."
"Is he a fence? I know they''re the criminal equivalent to shopkeepers, right."
"It''s definitely one of his jobs." Lucas stopped speaking as they''d arrived at Felg''s office already. Going in, Lake saw Felg dealing with what he assumed to be customers and was about to get in line to wait. Lucas seemed to think their business was too important to wait, though, because he waved Felg into the back room with them,pletely disregarding the people who had already been in line.
"Felg, get in touch with the people you know in town and have them set up a deal for at least 20 items like the ones you received the other day. We might not bring that many back, but if we do, I want them bought within an hour." Felg started to nod almost as soon as Lucas started to speak and didn''t stop even as he began to answer. "That''s no problem. Everyone would be happy to have such things."
"Good, we''ll be back in a few days. Come on, Lake, it''s time for us to go." Giving Felg a small wave as they left the room, Lake saw another way he could make money in the future. There were loads of criminals around that needed to be dealt with, but instead of just killing them, he could probably ask Lucas about hunting them down for the guild to hire.
They would need to take the loyalty curse, but he had faith that he could force someone to drink it, or whatever. "Lucas, how does the loyalty curse work, is it a potion you make someone drink?"
"That''s the mostmon way it''s used, but the ones who know how to make that potion can just curse you like they''re casting a spell."
"Would you pay me to gather people with legendary skills for the guild?" Lucas actually took a long time to answer this question, which made Lake think he''d say no, but this turned out to be incorrect. "I would, but now is not a great time for something like that. We would also need to find good targets for you in advance to avoid starting any wars."
Hearing his proposal get epted, Lake had a new line of questions for them to talk about on the way to the Metal Domain. "Lucas, would you tell me about curses on the way there? I''m not at all familiar, and I feel like knowing even a bit would help me if I''m ever face-to-face with someone trying to curse me."
Chapter 417: Not My Problem Pt.13
Chapter 417: Not My Problem Pt.13
Lake didn''t know what to expect when he''d asked Lucas to exin curses to him on their trip, but now he was starting to think this would have been something better learned in a ss as opposed to on the road with the wind making it hard to hear what Lucas was exining to him.
"Have you seen someone summon something before? It''s rare, so if you haven''t, just tell me, and I''ll show you what I''m talking about." Lake had summoning skills, and he''d seen Hampton summon an eye just days ago, so his answer was just that. "I''ve seen it."
"Okay, good oops. The best way to think of curses is a summon that''s been affected by the corruption principle. It isn''t an exact definition, but that''s how the first curses in this world came to be, from what I know of them. Of course, they''ve evolved over time to their own thing, but most curses you run into are still very simr to summoned creatures. The ones you want to know about are more like formations filled with things other than just in mana."
What Lucas was describing now sounded closer to the curses he''d seen with Mana Vision. "How do you power a formation with something that isn''t mana?" Lake had no ns of doing it, but he felt if it was possible, he should at least try it once or twice just to get his mind around the concept.
"We live in the Holy Domain, so I''m sure you''ve heard people speak of the things Holy Magic is capable of. Unholy Magic, and more specifically, the corruption principle, is capable of simrly great things. Of course, they''re all heinous, but if you''re willing, you can bend things out of order until you get what you want. Including yourself, mana, your magic, other people''s magic, other people."
Feeling like Lucas would go on forever if he didn''t stop him, Lake asked a question. "So you''re saying that as long as you''re willing to practice Unholy magic, you can use the corruption principle to change whatever you want in any way."
"No, no. There are limitations, but there seem to be a lot of possibilities to explore if you''re willing to take the risk. All right, let''s get back to curses." Lake could tell that if Lucas wanted, he could have spoken on this matter for days, but it wasn''t really answering his question. "You are more asking the best ways to fight off curses, so the very best way is Holy Magic. As I''m sure you know, it''s hard to find someone willing or able to use Holy Magic on a curse, so the second best is Unholy Magic. It''s pretty easy to find someone who can use Unholy magic, but the difficultyes from getting someone you can trust."
"Can you use the loyalty curse on people who can use Unholy Magic?" Lake could see there being a possibility that people with Unholy affinities being able to dispel curses that were affecting them. "Yes you can, but only because the curse keeps them from destroying it using their magic. It could still happen by ident, though, so you need to keep a close eye on anyone you''re trying to control who''s using Unholy Magic on a regr basis."
"What''s the next best way to dispel a curse?" Lake had interrupted Lucas with his earlier question, so he wanted to make sure they went back to this topic. " Killing it by attacking principles; this can be done with any type of magic, but Healing and Light magic have the most principles that are useful in this type ofbat, closely followed by Antimagic and Water Magic."
Lake had seen this when he helped save the Oracle guard back in the Metal Domain. At that time, it had looked like the Healer dealing with the curse was using strings of Mana to pull it apart bit by bit, and he had equated the order he''d done it to diffusing a bomb.
Lake doubted Lucas would know what a bomb was, so he chose a different description to use in his next question. "Is this method simr to picking open a lock? I think I''ve seen it before while in the Metal Domain."
"Yes, that''s a good way to put it. The only difference is the lock you''re trying to open would be actively trying to fight you while you did it. Also, if you''re one affected, it can be extremely hard to do anything to a curse inside your body. When we get back to the guild, I would like to teach you a technique that seals your core; it will buy you time if you''re ever cursed."
Lake thought this sounded like a good use of time, so he nodded and asked. "Are there curses that don''t have anything to do with Unholy Magic?" Lake remembered people saying things about dark Magic that made him think there were at least things simr to curses that used other elements.
"The answer to this question is veryplicated, but I would say yes if you just want a one-word answer."
"What makes it soplicated?"
"Since Unholy Magic was used to create curses at the very beginning, their origin will forever be Unholy Magic. So now that the field has progressed, there are curses thate from other elements; it doesn''t change where they came from, though."
"Are you saying these newer curses still use whatever was corrupted in the past as their base, or are you saying they can''t get away from their source, like in a spiritual way?" Lake wasn''t sure if Lucas would understand his question, but it seemed a man understood at least what he was getting at enough to say. "Both. It''s like a family tree with descendants that look nothing like the original parent because of how many generations have passed."
"So, where would you put the Loyalty curse on this family tree?" Lake felt this was a good question for him to ask to see just how close the curse every group used to control people was to the Demon Lord. "Near the beginning, controlling people was what the Demon Lord wanted when he made the first curse. The curse we all use today is different from the one he made, though. It''s been both refined and weakened to serve its purpose without being all-powerful."
"What element is it based on now?" Lucas was quiet after this question, and Lake thought the reason was because the answer was bad, but this wasn''t actually the case. "That''s anotherplicated question. There''s a job that lets one work with curses, and that means they are able to make them in a way that doesn''t use Unholy Magic, but the jobes from the Demon Lord, so choosing to use it is simr to using Unholy Magic."
"Does the guild use someone with this job to make our curses?" This time, the answer to the question was bad enough that Lake was surprised Lucvas even said it out loud. "Yes, we do, and because of the nature of their job, we''re unable to use the Loyalty curse on them, meaning they''re quite free to try and screw us over, and they do try almost constantly."
Lake wanted to ask some follow-up questions about the person Lucas was talking about but decided to go back to the original point of this conversation by asking. "Should I learn how to make basic curses?" Lucas'' opinion on this would probably impact his decision on whether this was a good use of his time in theing weeks. "Learning about them is one of the greatest ways to learn how to defend yourself from them. I''ll help you get started when we get back to the guild. Now let''s switch our topic of conversation to making our ns for the Metal Domain."
Hearing Lucas wanted to switch topics to something more relevant, Lake asked. "Do you want to stop so we can look at the map?"
"No, we can n our path after we''re done in the city. For now, I wanted to see if you had any ideas on how we should meet up after we''re done in the city. I can speak to you at any time using the mirror, but you won''t be able to talk back, so I won''t know if you''re on your way or not."
This was a good point, and Lake didn''t have a perfect n on how they should meet up in a timely manner, but he did have a simple idea of how to mitigate the problem. "Will you be in the Metal Temple? If so, we''ll know when the other is done. We''ll just have to act like we don''t know each other."
"Some of my time will be spent in the temple, but it''s a big ce. What if we don''t see each other?"
"As long as you check in with the mirror every now and then, that shouldn''t be a problem. Just try not to overdo it." With that and him keeping up with where Lucas was with the mark ced on his amulet, Lake didn''t see either of them having to wait for very long after they were done in the city.
Chapter 418: Not My Problem Pt.14
Chapter 418: Not My Problem Pt.14
After Lake separated from Lucas, he was able to make it to the city on his own with no problems. He did see a few things on the way that worried him though, and it continued after making it inside the wall. He guessed it made sense that with the deal the Demon Lord had struck with the God of Metal, that they would be allowed in the streets, but it was weird with what the Demon Worshipers had done to the people of the city that they were around as the rebuilding was happening.
It wasn''t his concern though, so he ignored them and all the other people around, running straight to the Temple. With the metal scrap and hand, Lake walked up the stairs and presented it to the guard outside. "I was given this and promised a reward by one of the oracles guards after I helped them. Would you find them for me and tell them I''m here?"
After the guard stared at him for a while, he reached out and took the scrap before talking to the guard on the other side of the door about what they should do. When their exchange was done, the scrap was handed back to him before the guard said. "Listen, this isn''t a good time. You shoulde back at ater date to receive your reward."
This was not what Lake wanted to hear. First, he was already here, soing backter would mean he wasted a lot of time. Secondly, the fact that the guard had said this was a bad time could mean that there was trouble waiting for anyone who went inside. These two things made both of his options bad choices.
"When do you think a good time would be?" Lake still nned to get inside, but pretending to y along for now would get him information. "If it was me, I woulde back in a few weeks, or if you heard that the Oracle returned to the temple, that would probably be a good time too."
Lake had honestly forgotten that the Temple of Light was holding the Metal Oracle hostage. Since the guard knew he was a member of the Temple of Light, Lake was sure that if he went inside now, he would somehow get caught up in the situation between the two temples.
Deciding the gold he would receive wouldn''t be worth the trouble, Lake began to think about what he should do until Lucas was done in the city as he walked away from the temple. There were a lot of items on his map that were here, but a lot of them belonged to Demon Worshipers, and he was sure they were also spread out underground, so it would take a lot of time for him to get back to the surface if Lucas called for him.
He could use Detector to separate the ones on the surface from the others, but going on a stealing spree in the city now would probably draw a lot of attention, even if they didn''t catch him in the act.
After thinking about an activity that wasn''t a crime he could spend his time on, Lake remembered Nia. He still didn''t know if she was dead, and with her being here during the crisis, this was also the best ce to look for her or her body. Taking out his arrow, Lake spun it before using Detector to look for Nia.
After a few seconds, it started to glow, and excited, Lake took out his map and used it to look for her location. Seeing a spot light up inside the city on the map, Lake once again used his arrow to try and gauge how many levels below the surface Nia would be.
Realizing there was a better way to get an answer, Lake headed for the elevator before using Detector to find the tier that Nia was on. Seeing the number 5 start to glow, Lake used the weight on the wall that would bring him to that tier.
A few minutester, he stepped off the elevator and used the arrow to point him in the right direction. When he was near the middle of the city, he switched Detector to look for Nia without the map or the arrow as a medium.
Because of how much Detector''s range increased recently, Lake spotted her right away. He couldn''t tell what her situation was though, so he quickly got closer to try and understand why she would be hiding underground even after all this time. The crisis had been over for days, and he had assumed everyone knew, but he guessed some people might still be hiding, unwilling to go up and check.
Once he was closer, Lake saw that it looked like Nia was sitting, and for whatever reason, he thought maybe she might be in trouble. There were still a lot of Demon Worshipers around, so her being imprisoned by them was possible.
Using Detector, Lake set it to look for people kidnapped by Demon Worshipers and saw not only Nia but what he estimated to be around twenty other people in the same area as Nia lit up as well. At first, he was surprised at the audacity of the Demon worshipers but quickly realized that just because they were supposed to be at peace didn''t mean they weren''t allowed to have prisoners.
The Demon Worshipers also had the advantage of people assuming the people they''d kidnapped were dead, so no one was even looking for them. Unluckily for them, he''d found them, and he wasn''t going to let Nia stay in prison. He just wished there was a way for him to talk to Lucas before he attacked the Demon Worshipers.
Slipping into the ground with Ghost Touch, Lake used Mana Vision to start scouting the area around Nia. he also went ahead and counted out the exact number of prisoners the Demon Worshipers had to see if it was feasible to take all of them away before the Demon Worshipers noticed what was happening.
There seemed to be guards near the prison cell, and he would have to make around twelve trips back and forth if he took two people each time to get everyone out, and he felt the guards would notice this. That meant his two options were to kill the Demon Worshipers or only take Nia now before asking Lucas what he thought they should do about the rest.
Choosing not to kill anyone until he had the opportunity to talk to Lucas, Lake reached through the wall and grabbed Nia. Putting her onto his shoulder, he could tell she was unconscious because she didn''t start fighting right away, even though she''d been pulled into a wall with no warning, and no normal person could help but struggle if that happened to them.
Reaching the street, Lake didn''t stick around for even a second before heading back to the elevator. Getting onto the elevator to head back to the surface, he ignored all the people giving him looks and used the mark he had on Lucas to locate him. He knew the Demon Worshipers probably wouldn''t chase him, but he couldn''t help but think it would be for the best to get as close as possible to Lucas on the off chance they did.
Getting off first when they reached the surface, Lake started running towards the temple, only briefly stopping when he almost ran past a group of Demon Worshipers standing outside of a house. After going around them, Lake made it to the steps of the Temple before running up to the same guard who turned him away earlier and said. "Could you tell Lucas of the Alchemist Guild that an important member of his guild is here for him?"
As he said this, Lake pointed at Nia on his shoulder with his thumb. "Uhhhm. You know what, just follow me inside. I don''t think people would be happy if I let a member of the Alchemist Guild die on the steps."
Lake hadn''t expected his words to overwhelm the guard as much as they had, but even with all the reasons he decided not to go in earlier, he still wanted to speak to Lucas bad enough that he followed the guard inside.
On the inside, Lake saw the interior of the Temple, or at least the lobby had been rebuilt to its previous state, but that wasn''t why he was here, so he stopped looking around and asked the guard. "Are you bringing me to Lucas or an infirmary?" Nia looked rough enough that he would have already healed her using his potions if he wasn''t in such a hurry, so he was okay with either answer. "I''m bringing you to the healers. Once that''s taken care of, I''ll find Guild Leader Lucas for you two."
"Okay, thank you." Having them heal her would save his potions for any emergencies he encountered before returning to the guild. That might not seem like such a big deal, but he was starting to realize the Metal Domain could still be considered hostile even if there was an illusion of peace.
Chapter 419: Hidden Hostility Pt.1
Chapter 419: Hidden Hostility Pt.1
After being brought to the healers, Lake passed on Nia to them before being asked to leave the room so they could work on her while protecting her modesty. If he had felt that the healers were untrustworthy, he would have probably denied their request for privacy, but he honestly didn''t see them trying to kill Nia.
After waiting in a smaller room for a few minutes, Lake decided to use Mana Vision to look around but didn''t really get to use his skill before the door opened, and the guard and Lucas walked in. "Master Lucas, I''m sorry to bother you, but I found one of your members and thought you might want to know."
The way Lake said this was weird, making them sound unfamiliar with one another, but he didn''t want to give away too much before the guard left on the off chance taking Nia from Demon Worshipers would be a problem.
Lucas seemed to pick up on him pretending they didn''t know each other because he responded simrly. "I thank you for the help. Were you able to get the name of the person you rescued?" Of course, Lake knew the name, but he had no way of saying this because Nia had been unconscious from the second he rescued her, so he said. "No, but the healers are working on her now, so I''m sure she''ll be able to tell you herself soon enough."
"Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to ask if you''d like to see the Oracle guard you were here to meet earlier. I figured since you were already inside, meeting them would save you from needing toe back at ater date." Lake had expected this to happen when he decided toe in, but that didn''t mean he had a response that didn''t sound weird already ready.
"No, that''s alright. I thought about it, and I''lle back the next time I''m in the city. I''m sure the guard''s too busy to see me for something that can wait." After he finished speaking, Lake decided his excuse had actually sounded pretty good for something he came up with while saying it.
"Oh, Okay, I''ll see you then." However, it didn''t seem the guard hadpletely bought into it as they were giving him a confused look as they left the room. Deciding there was nothing that could be done about it since chasing after them to exin himself further would just make it worse, he just let them leave before turning to Lucas to say. "It''s Nia."
He was probably going to leave soon to avoid whatever trouble coulde about from his actions so far, so Lucas needed to know what was happening before he was gone. "Nia''s alive? Are you sure it''s actually her?"
Lake was decently sure because of finding her using Detector, so he nodded before saying. " She was being held captive by Demon Worshipers, and they have about 20 other prisoners, but I decided on only saving Nia because I didn''t want to start a fight without making sure you were okay with it first."
Lake was sure there were at least a few other people there that Lucas would have liked saved, but at the time, he hadn''t thought of using Detector to look for other members of The Alchemist Guild. "No, it''s good that you didn''t do anything to make them mad at us. I''m currently negotiating with both the Metal Domain and the Demon Worshipers in the Domain about how our business will be allowed to continue."
Lake was about to say that''s what he figured was going on, but he felt a sudden spike in attention on him. he didn''t know the exact cause, but Lake could guess the guard from earlier had told the Oracle guard that he was here before going back outside to guard the door.
The oracle card was aware that he was a member of the Temple of Light, which was the group that was holding the Oracle he was supposed to protect. "I need to leave now. I think they''ve realized I''m a member of the Temple of Light."
Lucas didn''t say anything to stop him and just watched as he left the room. In the hall, Lake didn''t see anyone around paying extreme attention to him, so he knew the Oracle guard hadn''t yet sent out an order to capture him.
There was no guarantee this would ever happen, but Lake wanted to leave before it did, so he quickly headed towards the front door. About halfway there, he felt the attention spike again and assumed the guard had just asked for help in finding him, but it was already toote for them to catch him because, with just a small burst of speed, he made it to the front door before anyone tried to stop him.
A few seconds after he made it outside, Lake heard Lucas''s voice in his head. "They just entered the room asking about you. I told them you rushed off soon after I thanked you for helping save the girl." Lake was sure the more intelligent people inside the temple would realize how odd it was that he''d randomly saved a member of the Alchemist Guild and that he''d known Lucas was there, but nothingpletely condemning should be obvious.
It might also take them a while to notice these small things, but if they tried to use Lucas of working with the Temple of Light in some way, Lucas could just y along by pretending he found it weird as well, so there was very little chance his actions would reflect poorly on The Alchemist Guild.
They also had broken any rules that he was aware of, so even if Lucas just admitted he was a member of The Alchemist Guild as well, there was little they could do to make Lucas hand him over.
Leaving the city, Lake headed for a mountain nearby to pass the time until Lucas was ready. Finding a nice rock, he sat down and took out his map to see if he had been right about other members of the Alchemist Guild being kidnapped and held inside the city. After setting Detector, Lake saw three hot spots filled with multiple dots appear on the map.
"These are probably the prisons they have in the city." In total, it looked like there were around seven prisoners that belonged to the Alchemist Guild, and just out of curiosity, Lake set it to look for people from the Temple of Light. Surprisingly, only a single dot appeared on the map with this new setting.
He didn''t understand why this would be the case, but he was sure the prisoner had been a part of the group the Temple of Light sent to help the Metal Domain because there had been no other Temple members in the city at the time of the crisis that he knew of.
After some time passed, Lake realized The Insider wasn''t about to make him go and save them, and he switched his focus back to the Alchemist Guild. He''d just saved someone Millie cared about, and he couldn''t help but think this would reflect positively on the types of food she would be making for him.
"Speaking of food." Taking the bread out of his bag, Lake tore a small piece off and made a mini sandwich using some of the other ingredients he had. When he was done, he had two bites worth of food, which he madest for around 10 minutes by taking small bites.
When he finished his food, he went back to ying with his map to see if there were other things he could find out about what was going on in the city. He really didn''t want to get involved, but he knew The Insider would eventually have him go back to the Temple of Light, where he would benefit greatly from having the information.
In the next hours, Lake found a few interesting things; for example, Demon Worshiper spies throughout the city, more undead than he could count, and a small group of people from the Temple of Light on the outskirts of the city.
Thest one interested him the most because it meant that either some of the people they''d sent days ago survived or the Temple had sent another group hoping to have a small foothold here in the metal domain, in case it became important.
Either way, all these things showed the war was still on, just being fought more quietly for the time being. The next hour passed in silence as Lake got bored of ying with the map. "I should bring a book next time just on the off chance this happens again."
"Lake, I''m on my way out of the city now." Hearing Lucas'' voice once again, he used the mark ced on Lucas to see where the man was so they could meet soon after Lucas left the boundary of the city.
Chapter 420: Hidden Hostility Pt.2
Chapter 420: Hidden Hostility Pt.2
After about a minute of running, Lake met Lucas on the road out of the city and said. "We should find a ce to make our n." They still hadn''t picked a path through the Metal Domain that would get all the journals and high-level items in the most time-efficient way. "We also need to talk about what happened while I was in the Temple, so just find us a good ce to have a private conversation."
There were a lot of people on the road because of the rebuilding that was going on in the city, so they couldn''t really talk here and be confident someone wouldn''t overhear what they were saying.
A few minutes off of the road, they found a perfect ce to speak, and Lucas started their conversation with a question. "Why haven''t you asked where Nia is?" After thinking about it, Lake decided to tell the truth even though it was a bit corny. "I trust that you wouldn''t leave her in an unsafe ce."
Lucas had shown on multiple asions that he cared about what was good for the guild, and having someone like Nia, who had a Legendary skill, fit that description. "I was wondering if you knew where she was currently though. I had people looking for her for days, and you found her within a few hours of entering the city, so I can only assume you have a skill that tells you where people are."
"I do, it''s the same skill we''ve been using to find the journals. All I need is a name, and I can find almost anything, including people." Lake knew Lucas would slowly put together everything he could do on his own just by around him, so hiding things wasn''t feasible unless he was willing to stay away from Lucas at all times.
"You ever have any problems? Tracking people is usually a lot harder." Lake had problems when it came to Divine beings like demigods, so he told Lucas exactly that. "My skill doesn''t work as well when there''s a Divine being involved. I''ve also struggled to track a demon in the past."
The situation where he saved Tiff from a demon had been why he''de up with using an intermediary like an arrow when using Detector, to begin with. "I''m guessing that was something the Temple had you do?" Lake nodded without giving any further details on the matter because he still felt weird about giving Temple business away.
"All right, well, let''s talk about What happened inside the metal Temple, and then we can n our path." Nodding again, Lake said. "I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to interrupt you; I honestly didn''t even mean to save Nia. I just found her and realized she was in a bad ce and thought it was the best thing to do."
"No, I''m not mad. I just want to make it clear that you should be more low-key in the future. Our Guild building is already rebuilt; you could have brought her there instead." Lake didn''t have a good excuse for why he hadn''t thought of that, especially since he had run past the area the Guild building was in.
"Sorry, I was in a rush because I was afraid that demon worshipers might notice what I did and chase after me. Getting to the temple where you were was the safest ce I could think of."
"Like I said, I''m not criticizing you. I know when you''re in the moment you make mistakes, and it doesn''t really matter who you are because that will continue to happen until you''re killed." Lake was happy Lucas was being so understanding, but like always, he thought he might have missed the point Lucas was trying to make, so he asked. "Was there a point you were trying to make other than for me to be more low-key?"
"No, I just want you to realize how big of a target you could be if they realize you exist before it happens. I''m sure you remember when the Assassin''s Guild tried to enve you, that was only for a single Legendary skill." Lake couldn''t imagine having to stop leaving the guild because he was afraid of his identity as someone with abnormal skills being revealed.
It only took a few hours for him to get bored after doing nothing, and he remembered what it was like when Lucas made it seem like he wouldn''t be allowed out of the guild for years when he first got there. To him, it had almost been like a death sentence; of course, a lot of that had been because he was new to this world and still wanted to explore, but it was still true that he didn''t want to waste his time out of fear.
"Do you have any rmendations on how I could be more careful that don''t involve not leaving the Guild building?" Lake already had quite a few skills that helped to keep him hidden, but he was still interested in more things that could help protect him. "Well, first, I would rmend you get a ward of some kind. I''m not sure what you did with the one I gave you originally, but it''s irresponsible to not use one at all. Secondly, you should be wearing your new armor. It wouldn''t hide your identity, but a lot of people would see such high-quality armor and assume they shouldn''t mess with you."
Lake still wasn''t wearing it because he wanted to put it on after they left the city, but it seemed Lucas thought he should have had it on the entire time. "I thought it was bad because it would draw a lot of attention to me."
"It will, but it''s a good type of attention. You probably only thought that way because you targeted thest people who owned the items." Lucas was probably right, so Lake said. "Alright, let me change then."
Going behind a rock, Lake quickly changed his outfit into the Dark Lord Chain, Limb Guards, Field Helmet, and Heelios. He had already adjusted everything to fit him correctly, but it still didn''t make the four items look good together. Stepping out from behind the rock, Lake could tell by the way Lucas was looking at him that the older man also thought he looked bad in his new set of armor.
"Are you sure you just didn''t want people in the city to look at you for wearing such a messy set of armor?" Lake couldn''tpletely deny this, but it hadn''t swayed his decision because if he really wanted, he could have just got a robe to cover everything up. The helmet and the boots looked fine together, and a robe would have covered everything else.
"Each item is subject to change as I find better things. There''s really no point in trying to make it look nice when I n to keep anyone from seeing me in it anyway." Lake knew Lucas was currently looking at him, so this reasoning didn''t make perfect sense, but he was sure it got his point across.
"Still, hopefully, we find something to cover you up a bit before we head back to the guild." Lake could tell this was Lucas joking in an extremely dry manner, so he justughed it off and said. "Here''s the map. You can n our path again this time since I don''t think either of us wants to split up to cover more ground."
It was much more efficient if they both went their own way, but the current situation in the Metal Domain made him feel a bit worried about traveling on his own. The odds he would run into someone who could kill them or low, but having Lucas around should stop them from even trying.
Lake wasn''t sure how, but he was starting to think almost everyone in the world knew who Lucas was, and it was a massive deterrent they could use to make each stop easier for them. Thest trip was a perfect example of this, with all the journals just being handed to them.
"All right, what do you think about this, see we''ll hit all these spots here, and then we''ll move over here and get these."
"Oh, I should have probably told you that these dots are for level 60 items before we drew the lines."Lake knew that if they gathered the level 60 items together, Lucas would probably want some, but it would still make his mission much easier, so it was worth passing on one or two of the items.
"Are you sure there are level 60 items at these locations?" Lake gave a nod. " You know, I''ve been told there''re less than 50 items with such high levels in the entire world. It could be a rumor, but it almost makes them more appealing than the journals. We won''t be going anywhere near them, though."
"Why?"
"Who do you think owns such things? I can guarantee that even if we get lucky enough to get one, the second item will be held by someone who kills us." Lake couldn''t help but feel Lucas was being over dramatic, but it wasn''t worth arguing as he could juste back on his own some other time.
Chapter 421: Hidden Hostility Pt.3
Chapter 421: Hidden Hostility Pt.3
"Why were you talking to the God of Light for so long?" Tiff wished she could tell Dawn the reason, but she''d promised not to tell anyone, so she just shook her head and said. "We had a lot to talk about, but I can''t get into it."
The reason why she wanted to tell so badly was because Dawn was the reason. With the core she had just retrieved for them if the god of Light said Dawn could be the next to be a Demigod, but he didn''t seem to think Dawn was the one who should go next.
While it was true that Dawn was one of the stronger members of the 23, there were about three others who were just a better choice at the moment, and unsurprisingly, the God of Light wanted Greg to go next. "Well, can you at least tell me how long it will be until you have to leave again?"
There would probably be an announcement at some point talking about their next actions, so Tiff decided she could just tell Dawn when she would be going on her next hunting mission. "It will probably be a few days." They needed more Devine cores, but the Demon Lord would have already moved the younger giants that would be their next targets to somewhere safer, so they had to wait until they found a way around this problem.
"That''s not really that long." Dawn was right, but with how fast things had been moving recently, it would probably feel like weeks to her. "So, is everyone going to be training today." Tiff hadn''t been here, so she didn''t know what the other members had been doing to pass the time in the Light Domain. "Yeah, but aren''t you tired?"
After Dawn''s question, Tiff realized how long it had actually been since she slept before saying. "Surprisingly, no, maybe the state I''m in while speaking to the God of Light is simr to being asleep." If she was right, Tiff had definitely gotten more than a full night''s rest in the time she''d been speaking to the God of Light.
"That must be the case if you aren''t tired, but are you hungry?" It took her a few seconds to think over, but after she did, she nodded. "I think I could eat. What meal is it right now?" She''d almostpletely lost track of time, but Tiff knew the time of day would change what they were serving, so she had to ask before they decided to eat.
"I think they just started serving dinner." When she asked, this was the answer she was hoping for. "Perfect timing, huh?" After pulling Dawn to the cafeteria, Tiff got a te of food slightly bigger than normal before sitting down to eat. "Is there anything you can tell me about your mission?"
Tiff knew that she would have to tell Dawn that she couldn''t disclose information a few times before the other girl gave up, but she wanted to at least try to say something that wasn''t against the rules first. After thinking for a while, Tiff decided she wanted to hint at the fact the fight had been over after a single attack, but knowing she couldn''t say it directly, she instead said. "I feel a lot more confident in our ability to win now."
Her choice of what to say probably wasn''t the best way for her to make Dawn understand what she was getting at, but it said a lot about What would be happening in the future. Hopefully, Dawn could put it together that her fight with the giant had been extremely short and surprisingly easy.
"That''s great to hear. I''m guessing the dagger was a bigger help than you were expecting. The rest of us have had our weapons for a while and had been able to use them on undead already, but that was your first time. It''s a shock isn''t it?" Tiff wasn''t too surprised at how easily Dawn understood, but to say the reason was the weapon was only half right.
Sadly, Tiff was still unable to break her skills down to other people because her job was still supposed to be a secret. They would be able to talk about it in detail if Dawn did end up being the second person to be granted this job, as the God of Light hinted. "All right, we have to change the subject. I can''t talk about this anymore."
"Fine, but I''m not going to be the only one who wants an answer from you, so be ready to share some more cryptic messages with the others." If Dawn was right, Tiff would just say the same thing again, so there was really nothing to get ready for.
After taking a few bites of her food, Tiff finally thought of something else they could talk about and said. "Can you believe the God of Life is making a race already?" This was something that had been told to her by the Temple Head right before she went to speak to the God of Light, so she knew everyone else already knew about it, making it safe for her to mention.
"Yeah, people are saying she''s going to make the first Angelic race. Did the God of Light say anything about it?" He hadn''t, but even though the answer to this question was no, Tiff wasn''t allowed to answer it. After about a minute of no one saying anything, Dawn eventually realized what she had done and said. "Oh sorry, I Didn''t mean to bring him up again."
"It''s fine. It''s just really annoying that I can''t say anything, but it won''t be like this forever." Tiff would fight much harder next time to make sure Dawn was the next one chosen. "Hey, you two, the Temple Head just called all the 23 to gather in her office."
"Thank you for telling us. Come on, Tiff, we don''t want to bete." She hadn''t finished eating her food yet, but Tiff knew if all the 23 had been called for something it was probably more important than the rest of our food. Leaving her half-eaten food behind, Tiff followed behind Dawn until they reached the office that was maybe a bit too small for everyone to enter at once.
She and Dawn are still able to squeeze into the back of the room. She didn''t get to stay there though, because as soon as she stopped moving, the Temple Head called her forward to stand in the front with her and Greg. "Now that everyone is here, I''ll get straight to the reason I''ve called you. Greg has been chosen as the next person to receive a legendary job by the God of Light."
Tiff couldn''t help but notice that no one seemed as jealous this time, but after a few seconds, she realized it wasn''t because they were treating Greg better than they had treated her; it was because now they all knew it wouldn''t be years until they got a chance it would really only be a few weeks at most.
I meant the jealousy was gone and had been reced with sincere celebration for what was good news for not only the Temple, but for everyone here. Greg had been the obvious choice from the beginning, and the fact she had been chosen first was still hard to believe.
"All right, that''s enough. It''s about to happen, so all you need to get ready. We will be spending the next few hours standing around the Oracle as Greg meets with the God of Light." To Tiff, this sounded a bit boring, but she could tell by the faces of everyone else around that they couldn''t wait to watch the process that would make Greg more than eligible to be a Demigod.
"Temple Head, will we be allowed to talk during the process, or should we all staypletely quiet?" As the Temple Head answered this question, Tiff finally took the time to look over at what the face of Greg looked like. She was pretty sure if she''d been able to see her own face when she had been chosen, it would have looked, um, overwhelmed, but that wasn''t what Greg looked like.
He was clearly relieved and excited which fit his character perfectly. He''d been nice to her the entire time, even when the others were still mad, but Tiff was sure Greg would have been secretly disappointed had he been looked over twice in a row.
If she was in Greg''s ce, she would have started to wonder if there was something wrong with her performance in the tests the God of Light had given them. The God of Light had looked through their entire life when he had met with them, so it was pretty nerve-wracking to be what was considered the best of the 23 and continuously get passed over.
None of this had happened though, so there was nothing for Greg to worry about anymore. "Okay, we have about 10 minutes, make sure you''re ready to stand around for hours without moving." Realizing they''d been dismissed, Tiff made her way To Dawn before asking. "Is there anything you need to do?"
Chapter 422: Hidden Hostility Pt.4
Chapter 422: Hidden Hostility Pt.4
Feeling himself moving again, Donny wondered if this would be the time he''d appear somewhere and he wouldn''t be alone. He understood why the God of Metal was keeping him away from anyone else who might be around, but after the cart ride and being in the prison cell, he was starting to get extremely tired of being treated this way.
Thankfully, he was free to feel this way now because he no longer needed to worry about how the Demon Lord might take advantage of him while he was unstable. It had been years since he was free in this aspect, and he nned to takeplete advantage of it.
As soon as he stopped moving and found himself in another empty room, Donny opened his mouth and screamed as loud as he could. He knew there was a chance the God of Metal was seeing all of this, but what did it matter; they were stuck with each other, and his actions couldn''t result in being sent back to the mortal world.
After a minute, he calmed down again and started to use this time productively. He wasn''t really in the mood for training, but after all these years, two new elements had just opened up for him, meaning the amount of work he needed to do had tripled.
Having some of his Mana leave his body, Donny started training a principal he knew about but had never actually used. It was a principle that came from the Dark element. Most people called it the shade or blinding principle because those were the two main functions, but anyone who had studied magic as much as him knew, that just because you could change how a principal expressed itself in a spell didn''t make it a different principle.
A much better name for this principle was just dark or darkness as it was the principle that was directly opposite of the principle that made light magic light magic. After he had filled the room to the brim with Darkness and could no longer see, Donny absorbed the Mana before starting again.
He had done his best over the years to stay away from knowledge of both Dark Magic and Unholy Magic, but Donny was pretty sure this was a training method called flicker training that could be done with both Light and Dark magic, and the fact it was used in Light magic was the only reason he knew about it in the first ce.
The goal was to fill the room you were in as fast as possible before clearing it and doing it again to create a flickering effect. It was a control-focused Training Method that helped a bit with the dark principle, but the main point was to increase the speed at which you could overwhelm anyone around you with Darkness.
It sounded more sinister than it actually was, as all magic could be used as a weapon, but when you remembered the starting speed of Dark Magic and Light Magic, this increase was a bit scary to think about. As a member of the Fighting Guild, Donny had fought against both of these elements on multiple asions and knew firsthand what it was like when someoneunched a spell that moved faster than you could directly at your head.
Hopefully, now that he was allowing himself to use dark magic, he would have a better way to defend himself the next time it happened than just hoping the shield made it in time to save his life.
Halfway to filling the room a second time, Donny felt his position shift again and hoped this would be the time that brought him in front of the God of Metal. When he arrived in a new empty room, Donny thought he would once again be alone, but not long after arriving, he heard a voice in his head. "Sorry, I have kept you waiting."
Even without a real introduction, Donny assumed the voice belonged to the God of Metal because he didn''t see a reason he would have been left to a subordinate. "I don''t like it, but I understand." He wanted to ask what was about to happen to him, but he kept his mouth shut to let the God of Metal exin in whatever order he thought best.
"Over thest few hours, we''ve been looking into your past since I am unable to read your mind because of the deal. It took longer than expected to track down the information about you from the Holy Domain." It made sense that it would have been hard to get information on his life in the Holy Domain because the God of Metal would have been unable to speak to the Holy Goddess, and he had purposely kept a low profile to make it harder for his brother to track him down.
"If you would like, I can just tell you about what I was doing on the Holy Domain." Donny had been living a pretty simple life other than the constant harassment from the Demon Lord, so there wasn''t really that much to tell, and of course, the God of Metal should be able to tell if he was telling the truth.
"That is why I am here. Now that I have a vague description of your actions, it will make it easier for me to tell the kind of person you are without overstepping any bounds set by the deal." Getting the feeling that it was his turn to talk again, Donny slowly walked through everything that brought him to the Holy Domain in the first ce before exining why he chose to make it his home even though there were obvious problems in staying there.
"Were the cheap prices really worth staying in a ce that was probably ying into the Demon Lord''s ability to speak to you?" Donnie knew it probably sounded funny to the God of Metal that cheap potions and food were one of the reasons he had stayed in the capital of the Holy Domain, but it was only a small reason; the main reason was he was afraid that if he left the Holy Domain, the Demon Lord would just send someone to kidnap him.
The Temple of Light''s presence in the capital had been heavy, making him feel physically safe even if his mind was being yed with. "Inaction felt like the right move to me at the time, and I did leave the second it looked like the Demon Worshipers would be taking over the capital."
"Why did you never join the Temple of Light or at least ask to be put under their protection? If you told them the Demon Lord was interested in you, they would have kept you in one of their many sanctuaries."
"I thought about it many times, but I was always afraid that they would see fit to end my life instead of risking me ever falling into his hands." This was paranoia at y, but it was hard to deny this possibility if you do just how much the God of Light despised the Demon Lord.
"Do you regret your decisions now?" This was a hard question, and it took him many minutes to even start forming an answer. "No, I know it might sound weird, but I''m grateful because every time I thought about what might happen if the Demon Lord convinced me to join him, I never once thought it could turn out like this. You''ve been looking into my past, so you know my family is from the Metal Domain, and bing a Demigod aligned with the Metal element has been my goal from the very beginning."
"So you''re saying everything technically has worked out for you. I guess it''s good to look at the bright side. That''s enough talking for now. I''m sending you to one of the other Demigods to be looked after. I need you to focus on your training Because we''re on a tight schedule if I want to keep my end of the deal, and you need to be at least proficient with Unholy and Dark magic before it''s time for you to be a Demigod."
Donny wasn''t sure what to say to this, but it didn''t end up mattering because before he had a chance to say anything, he''d been whisked away to another ce. For the first time, the ce he appeared in had another person. "Do you need anything?"
The question was polite, but how they''d said it gave away the fact he was unwanted. He''d expected to be treated like this from the beginning, so he just shook his head and said. "Just basic things like food in a ce to sleep."
If the next few months or weeks of his life would be spent training, it didn''t really matter where he was, and if they all hated him, staying on his own was also the best decision he could make. "Okay, follow me. We have both of those things prepared." As the person who had been speaking to him turned, Donny couldn''t help but think that there was about a 50% chance they were the Demigod of Silver by the vibe they were giving.
If he was the God of Metal, he would have chosen the same person to watch someone who''d be using Unholy magic within my Domain. It was too bad he didn''t think they would answer him if he asked though, because he would be interested in asking for their help getting started on Unholy Magic.
Chapter 423: Hidden Hostility Pt.5
Chapter 423: Hidden Hostility Pt.5
Handing the item he''d just stolen to Lucas, Lake said. "Go ahead and put that with the others." On the way back to Lucas, he''d inspected the item and decided to sell it. "That''s more than enough to sell to the Thieves Guild already. Do you want to switch to only going after items in the fifties?"
When they''d drawn the path they would take, Lucas had drawn it to include every item they could go after, so almost 80% of them were items marked as 40. "We might as well keep going like this; we''re making such good time, and we can hold on to some of the items to sellter if you''re afraid that we''re getting too many to sell at once."
Lucas didn''t seem convinced by what he said and quickly added the reason he thought they should change how they were going about this. "If we arrive back at the guild a few days early, I''ll have the free time to teach you about curses like I said I would."
The original n was to stay in the Metal Domain for around three days, but it had only been around one since they left the guild, and Lucas was already talking about going back. It made Lake wonder if there was another reason for them to return sooner that he wasn''t aware of. "If that''s why we can cut the trip short. Here''s the map if you want to redraw our path."
After handing the map to Lucas, Lake silently watched as their path was simplified before asking. "It should only take us a few hours of running to make it to each ce. Are you sure you don''t want to at least scope out the location of one of the level 60 items?"
Lake knew Lucas had been pretty firm when he''d said no the first time, but he''d also said it was very tempting, so Lake thought there was a chance he could tempt Lucas into going if he was persistent. "No." The short and to-the-point way Lucas said no made Lake think maybe he was barking up the wrong tree.
...
"Congrattions, Greg." It had already been over 2 hours since the ceremony had ended, but this was Tiff''s first chance to speak to Greg one-on-one. "Thank you. I look forward to working together to protect the others until they''re able to join us."
The words Greg chose were nice to hear because even if she wanted Dawn chosen, Greg was the obvious choice when it came to prowess. He''d always hit harder than any of the others, and that was sure toe in handy in keeping everyone alive. "Did the God of Light say me and you are allowed to speak on any subjects we normally can''t with the others?"
Greg had yet to share which job the God of Light had given him, and Tiff wanted to see if he could tell her now that they were alone. "You want to know what job I got, don''t you." Nodding her head, Tiff waited to see if Greg would continue. "He said I could tell you and the Temple Head, but you have to wait to tell me your job."
She was happy the God of Light had already gone over this with Greg because she would have probably told him or at least tried to had he not said this. "My job''s called shde. There are already a few other Demigods with this job as it is a job shared between multiple elements, but the God of Light told me there''s a skill that''s only been recently added that I''ll be the first to have."
"Did you get your first mission?" Greg was already strong enough to kill a giant in one-on-onebat, so she couldn''t see him going to waste by being assigned something that wasn''t directly rted to fighting. "No, not yet. The God of Light said being out in the open is too dangerous for me."
Tiff guessed that was true since Greg couldn''t hide like she could, but him just staying here doing nothing was a real waste. "Did he say anything else that was meant for me?" Tiff knew that at any moment, she might be sent out for the next giant, and since each hunt meant another member of the 23 would be granted a legendary job, she was more than ready.
"Me and him didn''t really speak for very long. It seems he''s pretty busy at the moment, which makes sense." One of the things that was keeping the God of Light so busy was probably looking for her next target, but she still wished he would hurry up. Just because she felt more confident in her ability to kill giants now didn''t mean she had lost all her urgency.
The amount of time the war would stay in its current state was probably only enough time for her to kill a few more giants; after that, the rest would have to be gathered on the battlefield. The downsides to doing it out on the field were obvious, so she wanted at least a few other members of the 23 to be Demigods by then to help her.
"Yeah, it does make sense, but it''s too bad you can''t go with me on my next mission." Skills that affected other people were rare, even if you were talking about Legendary ones, so it was unlikely she would ever be able to take others with her and have them under the same protections she was.
"Don''t worry, once I''m fast enough I''m sure we''ll use me as bait." It was true that as Holy affinity holders, any of them could draw enemies to certain locations before the rest of them cleaned them up. Drawing out giants like this would only work a few times before the Demon Worshipers realized what was happening.
"Once you''re fast enough, I''m sure, you''ll just go on the offensive. There''s no need for you to take a passive role like bait when ites to a fight." Tiff wasn''t sure why, but this was probably the closest she had ever felt to Greg. For years, their rtionship had been strained by the constantparisons, but now she guessed that was truly over.
It was a nice thought that maybe now, after all this time, the two of them would be able to have a normal conversation that didn''t just sound like Greg trying to be overly nice to her for no reason. "Sorry to keep you two waiting."
"It''s alright Temple Head, we know you''re busy." Turning to see if the three of them were alone before answering, Tiff asked. "What was it you wanted to tell us?" The Temple Head had asked both of them to wait in her office after the ceremony, saying she had things to tell them, but then she''d disappeared soon after, leaving the two of them to wait for almost an hour.
"Bad news. Enough time has passed since the first few gods made a deal with the Demon Lord that the details are starting to spread, and it seems the details aren''t that bad, making it an easy way to protect their Domains from Demon Worshipers."
Tiff already expected this news as it had been the reason they''d run from the Holy Domain so quickly, but hearing it confirmed was still hard. "Are we going to continue the fight?" Greg''s question cut straight to the point, so Tiff patiently waited for the Temple Head to answer even though she had questions of her own.
"Fighting is uncertain for now, but the God of Light has asked to see you two in a few hours, so you should be prepared for a new mission. Tiff, you just got back less than a day ago, do you think you''re ok to go again if that''s the assignment."
Tiff couldn''t see saying no as an option, so she nodded before saying. "I''ll be fine. I''ve been put through worse than myst mission during training." Tiff only meant this physically, but she was doing just fine mentally as well, and it seemed her confidence showed because the Temple Head nodded before moving on to Greg. "What about you?"
"I''m doing great." If it was someone else saying this, Tiff might think they were being overconfident or putting on a strong front, but when Greg said it, she knew he was telling the truth. Greg was the only other member of the 23 that had killed a giant, and he had done it with his level of strength before bing a Demigod, so all that had changed for him was that he was more prepared now.
"All right, good. The two of you can return to the others but don''t tell them about anything I just told you. It''s going to stay a secret for morale purposes." Tiff knew she still hadn''t asked any questions, but she decided to use whatever time she had left to say goodbye. She was going to be talking to the God of Light anyway, and he was a better source of answers than the Temple Head.
Chapter 424: Hidden Hostility Pt.6
Chapter 424: Hidden Hostility Pt.6
After being brought to his room, Donny tried to sleep, but he''d quickly given up on this because he was honestly having trouble even closing his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. He was feeling a mix of emotions, but one was undeniably excitement, so sleeping wasn''t an option, even if he logically knew he had to be tired.
After spending his first few hours in his new room training to the best of his ability, Donny quickly realized he would have to ask for learning materials even if he wanted to keep to himself to avoid any trouble. Not sure how he should get the attention of the demigod assigned to watch him, he''d stood in front of his door for 10 minutes before he had an idea.
Reaching out and knocking to see if someone was outside the door, Donny waited for a few seconds to pass with no one speaking before trying the doorknob. Finding the door locked, Donny wondered what he was supposed to do if no one was around and he couldn''t exit his room.
He then remembered it was too early to let such small things overwhelm him and opened his mouth to say. "Is there anyone around?" There was no way he wasn''t being watched, and they should be able to hear him as well if they were doing a good job.
He didn''t miss that if they were watching him, they would have seen him trying to get their attention and ignored him, but what could you do when people hated you before you even met them other than deal with it? "What is it?"
Getting a voice in his head, Donny wondered if they were reading his thoughts constantly and were still going to make him say it, but decided he would be happy if they were in his head because it would give them a clear idea that he wasn''t an enemy. "I don''t know anything about Unholy Magic."
Donny knew the basics of every element because once you knew one, you could figure out the rest on your own, so what he had just said wasn''t quite true, but knowing what the principles were called didn''t mean you could fumble your way to bing a master of that element. "That isn''t something we could help you with, but I''ll ask the God of Metal what we should do."
With his problem being looked into, Donny went back to flicker training, knowing that it could be a while for him to get any help with Unholy magic. The number of people who knew anything about Unholy Magic and weren''t directly rted to the Demon Lord was quite small, so in all likelihood, the help he would receive would be from someone in the Demon Lord''s army.
...
"That''s two sessful outings in a row." Lake was aware you weren''t supposed to say things like this before you returned home, but the amount of trouble they had in gathering these items was honestly so little that he couldn''t help himself. "No one out here in these mountains is expecting someone to find them. They probably haven''t seen a single person since moving out here."
"Yeah, it''s actually crazy how little life is out here." Even with Mana Vision, Lake didn''t see a single living thing for miles at a time when they were running through these mountains. "Yeah, the water out here isn''t suitable for drinking unless you purify it first. The God of Metal will get around to adding life to his Domain eventually."
"What do you mean, are you saying he''ll take animals that could survive here and bring them out here to the mountains to breed?"
"He might do that, but there''s a better chance that he''ll make a few new monsters of the metal element for people to hunt or take animals from another world to bring here."
"I didn''t realize that was something they did." It made sense if you thought about it because it seemed the gods were able to change people to their liking, so why couldn''t they do it to animals, but for some reason, he''d figured the monsters and animals were all natural.
"Yeah well, it doesn''t happen very often. It''s probably been over 50 years since a monster was intentionally brought to one of the Domains. Most of the time to find something new you''d have to head out from the Domains to the wilnds." Lake had heard someone mention thend not settled or owned by the gods before, but that didn''t mean he knew much about them.
"The wilnds is a name for unsettlednd, right?" Getting a nod from Lucas, Lake then asked. "That''s where a lot of the spire residents are, right?" This has been one of the first things Lucas ever mentioned to him but had nevere up since, so Lake was making sure he remembered correctly. "Yes, they''re all looking for new ingredients to help with granting new affinities. It''s a direction of research the guild has been working on for a long time with almost no progress."
"It''s too bad we couldn''t gather them all to take on an expedition. With my skills, I''m sure we could make progress in tracking down the right ingredients, and we''re going to have to head out to the further domains to gather journals anyway." Most of the domains only had one or two journals in them, but they would have to go there all the same.
"I might speak to some of the more trustworthy people about this if you really want to help the Guild in this way." Lake couldn''t see a reason not to do this, so he nodded and said. "I wouldn''t mind, and it would be nice to have a bigger group to keep us safe."
"A trip that size might take months for us to n, but the guild would profit immensely if we''re finally able to crack the Affinity Elixirs. Have you actually used your skill to find ingredients before, or are you just guessing it will work?" Lake was just assuming, but knowing it would only take a second to find out, he took an arrow from his quiver and used it to look for an ingredient that could be used to make a potion that granted a new elemental affinity.
When the arrow started to light up in almost every direction, Lake knew there were quite a few they''d be able to choose from. "It works when we get back to the guild we can use the map to figure out where they are."
...
"Is something wrong?" Dawn''s question made Tiff sure she needed to work on her facial expressions because the bad news she had just received was supposed to be a secret, so none of the members of the Temple lost hope and her looking worried was going to cause others to be affected even if they didn''t know what was bothering her.
"Nothing''s wrong. My next mission is just going to take longer than I hoped." Tiff could tell that Dawn didn''t quite believe her, but their conversation on the matter ended there. "I''m about to start training. Are youing too?"
"Sure, let me go get ready. I''ll meet you there in a few minutes." Tiff had a meeting with the God of Light, but they would find her wherever she was. After she had her armor on, Tiff met back up with Dawn in the training room. "Are the others going to be here?"
When Dawn invited her to train, Tiff had thought it would be with all of them. "The others are probably treating this like a holiday. When you were chosen we took a few days off as well."
"Are you sure about that, I''m pretty sure you were still in the training room every day after I was given my job." It had been a while, and Tiff hadn''t been paying the closest attention to the others at that time, but she was pretty sure she had seen them in the training room the day after.
"Well, we might have done it a few times, but it definitely wasn''t as much as normal." Seeing Dawn didn''t seem to quite remember either, Tiff decided there was no point talking about this and said. "How does defense and dodging sound?"
Trying to hit one another was always a great way to practice hand-to-hand without hurting anyone since it didn''t involve their weapons. "Yeah, but I want to be the aggressor. I know you must have gotten faster, and I want to see if I can still get you."
"All right,e after me and one second." Speeding off to the other side of the room, Tiff didn''t use her full speed right away because she wanted to surprise Dawn with it when it looked like one of her attacks was going tond. "Here Ie." Like always, Dawn was much faster than you would expect from someone who fights at a distance, but Tiff was able to see her no problem now, so she knew the results of this practice fight would be much different from the ones in the past.
Chapter 425: Time Skip Prelude
Chapter 425: Time Skip Prelude
"The God of Light is ready for you now Tiff." Tiff hadn''t expected the Temple Head to be the one who came to get her for the meeting, but when she really thought about it, she thought maybe the Temple Head nned to talk to her on the way to the meeting. "Okay."
After saying bye to Dawn and quickly changing her clothes, Tiff followed the Temple Head towards the Oracle while waiting for the Temple Head to say something to her. When they made it to the Oracle''s room with nothing being said, she started to think she had been wrong, but as she was opening the door, the Temple Head finally stopped her to say. "I did my best on your next mission. I''m sorry if it seems like it''s too much. The God of Light Seems to think you can handle more than the rest of the army on your own."
Tiff was a bit taken aback at first because this was the first time the Temple Head had ever said anything that came off as criticizing the God of Light''s judgment, but she felt it wasing from a ce of worry, so she decided to reassure the Temple Head. "I can''t tell you how my first mission went directly, but he''s probably right that I can handle it."
Right after saying it, Tiff could tell the temple head was taking her words seriously because the look on her face changed drastically before the Temple Head said. "In that case, forget what I said a moment ago."
Tiff knew the Temple Head was probably embarrassed that she had second-guessed the God of Light so openly, but Tiff felt it wasing from a ce of caring for her safety, so not only was she not offended; she was a bit touched. Ever since she could remember, she''d felt the Temple Head was distant in some way, so her being worried about her was a nice turn of events that made her think they''d gotten closer in the past weeks.
"Don''t worry, I think that kind of stuff all the time. I don''t think anyone will hold it against you even if you''re the head of the Temple." After Tiff said this, she gave the Temple Head a small smile before she turned to go through the door. Even if she would have liked to keep talking to the Temple Head for a few more minutes, she would be making the God of Light wait, and she was sure he didn''t have enough time for that.
The first thing Tiff saw when she entered the room was that Greg was already waiting near the circle of light that surrounded the oracle at all times. "Were you waiting for me?" In the past, Tiff would have stayed silent in the Oracle''s presence, but she''d realized that the Oracle was friendly and wouldn''t mind her speaking to someone briefly.
"No, I was told I''ll go right after you." Tiff was sure she could find a few reasons this might be the case if she tried, but knowing the God of Light would tell her once their conversation began, she just nodded to Greg and went to join the Oracle in the circle.
After taking the Oracle''s hand, Tiff found herself in the white room and went for the door because she''d been told she didn''t have to wait in here if she didn''t want to. Stepping out into the hallway, Tiff headed for the first ce she''d been brought here in the fake version of their world, the balcony with a view of the Light Domain.
She didn''t spend a lot of time thinking about this ce, but there was something to say about being able to look directly at the dream of a god that might nevere to be. It was sad, but even if their world wasn''t like this, it existed here and showed her exactly what they were fighting for.
"Sorry to keep you waiting again. The God of Earth wouldn''t stop our meeting just because I needed to speak to a Demigod." After an unknown amount of time, Tiff heard a familiar voice and pulled her eyes from the city below. "It''s okay."
The God of Light said sorry every time, but he had no way of making her his top priority, so she knew it would keep happening, and her best choice was to just ept that. "I was expecting you to wonder why I was speaking to the God of Earth."
It had been a while since the God of Light had read her mind so tantly, but Tiff wasn''t worried about it and said. "I just want my next mission and the reward for thest one." Over thest hour of training with Dawn, Tiff had built up a lot of motivation to get more divinity points for the other members of the 23 before it was toote, and she wasn''t interested in any small talk.
"A normal person would have assumed my talking to the God of Earth was rted to their mission but fine, let''s get right into it. I''m going to send you out of the Light Domain because I think we''ll be soon ced under quarantine, so the other gods don''t think I''ll start a war that will force them to kill me. While you''re gone, your task will be to gather as many cores as you can so we can use them when the timees and you''re able to return to the Light Domain."
Tiff was expecting something like this after what the Temple Head said to her in the hallway, but it was still a bit more than she was ready for because of how long it sounded like she would be gone. "It will be a few months if I had to guess how long the other gods will lose interest in watching my ever move."
"Well, it doesn''t change that this is what you need me to do. How long do I have before I need to leave?" with how unstable the situation was currently, Tiff knew that even hoping for a day was pushing it, but she just hoped she had enough time to tell Dawn that she would be gone for a long time and to not worry in person. "The observation of the Light Domain will probably start tomorrow after the god of Earth signs the deal with the Demon Lord, so I''ll be giving you around eight hours to say goodbye and get ready."
Tiff couldn''t help but think eight hours was more than enough after the expectations of getting a few minutes, but she knew most of it would probably be spent talking to the Temple Head and Greg in the office, so she didn''t let her expectations of those eight hours get to extreme. "I''m not done talking to you yet, there''s one more thing you need to hear before you leave."
"Oh, what is it?" Tiff had been thinking she was done here because of the way the God of Light had said thest thing. "There''s a chance I''ll be forced to y along and sign a deal with the Demon Lord as well, so I need to tell you about Greg since there''s a chance you would be confused if you saw him and do something you shouldn''t if no one told you what was going on. Greg has both an affinity for Holy and Unholy and he could be traded away if the details I''m hearing about the deals the Demon Lord''s making are true."
After hearing the God of Light''s words, it took her a few seconds to process what he had just told her and understand it. Having one of these affinities was already rare, so the fact Greg had both was almost unbelievable to her, and not only because people getting opposing affinities was one in a hundred.
She had known Greg for a really long time, and while there were times he creeped her out in a hard-to-exin way, she didn''t think she had ever felt any Unholy magicing from him at all. "We had it sealed to help keep it hidden."
Tiff didn''t have anything to say anymore, so she just asked. "Are we done now?" Getting a nod from the God of Light, Tiff made a brief bow before she saw the world she was in fade away. Letting go of the Oracle''s hand and standing up, Tiff took a nce at Greg before walking towards the door to get ready to leave the Temple.
...
Stepping off the elevator into Lucas'' office, Lake watched as the journals they''d retrieved were added to the shelf with the others before saying. "I''m going to go change. When do you want to meet back up for this lesson on curses you said you''d give me?"
"Don''t leave just yet. I have some new papers on my desk, and one might be about that fortress you told me about. Remember when we had some people go check it out?" Lake hadn''t been thinking about anything like that with them just getting back, but he guessed he might as well stick around.
After Lucas took the time to read through the papers, he shook his head and said. "Nevermind. They''re not back yet. Come back in three hours, and we''ll have the lesson, and we''ll talk a bit more about the expedition you proposed on the way back."
On the way up to his room, Lake couldn''t help but wonder how Lucas would find the time for an expedition that would probably be a month-long at the least when he could barely find a few hours to do something other than work. "He''ll find the time if it''s good for the guild."
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