Chapter 68: He might’ve Transcended Mortality… but he’s nowhere near the ranks of the Emperor!

Porter.

That was the role Kaelen had been given. The role closest to the main team, because his job was to carry their luggage and try to keep up with the main team while keeping enough distance to not get caught in the crossfire.

Kaelen was disappointed.

This was better than making him fight, because then all eyes would be on him. But as a porter, he should be invisible in the eyes of these astronomical players and surrounded instead by weak players.

According to the letter, due to the size of the ruin, the main team would be splitting up to cover more ground.

That would give Kaelen the opportunity to eliminate his team and move ahead of the other teams alone. Kaelen didn’t care about how difficult the dungeon might be. If his father did it ten years ago without a system, then Kaelen could definitely do it now.

He was going to beat the entire expedition team solo to the end of the ruins, and when they finally arrived at the boss room, Kaelen would be patiently waiting... as the final boss.

The invitation suddenly lit up in flames and burned to ashes. It wasn’t Kaelen’s doing, but he wasn’t surprised.

It was probably a mechanism to ensure the letter was only seen by the intended candidate and didn’t get into the wrong hands.

Little did they know that they had delivered it right into the enemy’s hands... all thanks to Black Rose.

***

In a dark room softly illuminated by the moonlight seeping in through the cracks of the curtains, a cyan-haired woman sat at her night desk, staring at her phone with a complicated expression.

She was about to get ready for bed when she received the arrangements for the expedition. Strangely enough, the first name she checked after hers wasn’t Cindra or any of her executive members.

It was Idris Thompson.

Earlier that day, after she left the hangar, she’d instructed Cindra to submit his name as a replacement for the last slot she had, only to be informed that his name was already on the list, onboarded by the Emperor himself.

She was certain it had something to do with his feat in the wasteland, witnessed across the nearby Stronghold, which made her pause to actually replay the events of that day.

Earlier that day, she had been consumed by strange emotions that surprised even herself and forced her to take a cold shower in the freezing weather just to clear her mind.

Now that she was back to herself, she was finally coming to a realization that what Idris had pulled off in the wasteland was not worthy of a Tier 5 A-rank awakener.

First was the sword torrent, which was already impossible to pull off for an SSS-rank. But it was believable, considering the nature of his Talent... until the colossal earth dragon appeared, and the energy beam that hit the sky—which could only be explained as the convergence of dense mana and pure energy.

In all logical senses, putting the nature of his Talent into consideration, it should be impossible to pull that off. Not for Idris, not for an SSS-rank awakener. Except they were on par with her father and the Stronghold Lords.

Then he’d survived the entire night in the wasteland fighting non-stop.

That wasn’t something a Tier 5 could pull off. Neither was it something a Tier 5 or even Tier 6 could do.

She wasn’t confident in doing all that herself, even at Tier 8 with her SSS-rank Talent.

This refreshed her memory of the first day they met at the elevator, and how the man she’d never heard of before was suddenly everywhere for the next few days.

The day she’d met him at that elevator was the same day she was looking for the slime who’d killed the Hidden Dragon boss, and the man who’d confidently walked into the bank to make an astronomical transaction of one billion Evolution Points.

She suspected the man to have met her uncle, President Hunter, and had a small scuffle with him that resulted in the state of his office when she arrived.

On her way out, she met Idris on the same floor. Though he was in different clothes from the masked figure she was looking for, then again, she didn’t really know the face of the said masked figure.

Then suddenly, Idris had casually flown to Stronghold 1 with her uncle, who then risked his life to return to the wasteland in search of him.

The coincidence was all too common to be just that.

Idris had claimed to be an orphan, yet had so much money to buy a private jet. Though he did claim to be a former member of a mercenary group, but what kind of private organization gave one so much money?

She hadn’t even considered the fact that he’d casually met and teamed up with the infamous Kaelen Cross and earned 400,000 Merit Points for the guild, whereas his name was never displayed in any of the boss kill announcements.

There could be only one explanation for everything that was happening around her.

She was beginning to suspect that Idris Thompson was the same man who’d entered Stronghold 5 on that fateful day to make a transaction of 1 billion Evolution Points, which explained his astronomical wealth.

Yet she’d seen Kaelen Cross’s in-game character with her own eyes. Idris Thompson couldn’t be him.

Unless... Idris had some connection to Kaelen Cross.

She’s known the infamous Slime to like crashing parties and stealing boss kills, and the one opportunity he wouldn’t want to miss would be that of the expedition.

This was one of the reasons she wanted to keep him by her side during the expedition, but unfortunately, the arrangements didn’t favor her plan. But one thing was for certain...

The expedition arrangements had been kept discreet and disclosed to only the core members, making it impossible for Kaelen Cross to possibly infiltrate the location, but...

If somehow, Kaelen Cross were to make an appearance in the expedition, that would be enough evidence to point her towards Idris being a mole in her guild.

She was also looking forward to the infamous Slime making an appearance, because that would be his last.

He might’ve transcended mortality... but he was nowhere near the ranks of the Stronghold Lords and her father.

The Emperor.