Chapter 890 – With reasonable preparations

Yup, a very reasonable floor quest as always.

I love the tutorial.

And what does it even mean? Just help? Would it count if I just cheerlead from a distance? What if I just bring a glass of water to someone who’s actually trying to save it?

And what is this even?! The second floor was a quest to witness the end of the world, and this one is to help stop the end of the world. Are these rulers taking the piss out of each other? Is this some sort of dick measuring contest or something?

I take a deep breath to keep my annoyance from spilling out. Just once, I wish there would be a quest to kill 100 monsters of a certain level. How nice that would be.

“Did you see the quest?” I ask Tess.

She turns to me, quickly realizing I can only see her eyepatched eye, and then turns a bit more so I can see the other one. “Yes. From 1 to 10, how annoyed are you?”

“Probably around 7 and a half? Maybe an 8? It could be worse.”

“It would be nice if it was a bit more of a normal setting, but even this could be low risk. Of course we can make it more difficult if we want to,” she says. “I’m more intrigued by the part about the Ruler deciding the rewards. That’s a lot of work.”

“Is it?” Min-Jae joins our conversation. “If we estimate that only about 50 of the original 250 hell difficulty attendees from each planet survive the tutorial, and 10 to 30 of them make it to the 12th floor, and out of them maybe half clear it. Then if we time it with the estimated number of tutorials-”

“Yes, yes,” I stop him and wave it off. “It’s still a lot of people. And it possibly means that the Ruler has to actively take care of it even while not being one of the 5 Rulers in charge of this cycle of the tutorials. What kind of bullshit is that?”

“Can’t you ask your sugar mommy?”

“Say that one more time, Dennis, and I will feed you to the arm I’ve got pinned to the ground over there.”

(Hehe. It seems like he might be a bit too much to handle, clearly, you need a hand with dealing with him.)

“Shut up, Aaron.”

“Are we already working on how we’re going to deal with the quest?” Izzy asks, moving swiftly closer, as Noodle expands in size so she can use him as a seat. He then moves his head so it’s on the same level as hers and keeps looking in the same direction as she does.

Then I notice that when Sophie also comes closer, Blackie does the same, lowering himself a bit to match Sophie’s height and looking where she looks as well.

The others gather around, and the hand stays forgotten in the background. For a moment, I look at it and then at the landscape surrounding us.

Destroyed mountains, deep craters, and even a massive canal carved into the ground a few miles to our right. The resulting canal is half a mile wide and very deep, and on each side of it, there are also impressions of what look to have been clawed hands.

Simply put, it looks like something gigantic crawled its way through there, such that just the act of its movements carved this huge canal. And interestingly enough, this apocalyptic view is also filled with greenery. Grass, small trees, and flowers grow from the craters. Parts of the canal are filled with water, and there’s even more greenery around them. Almost like it happened long ago.

Other than that, when I look up, even now during the day, I can see what looks like debris orbiting the planet, a bit like the rings around Saturn.

“It’s mostly made up of rock and ice, but there are parts that look like metal and bone. Debris from some sort of structure or base, and the pieces of a huge monster or monsters,” Tess says as she notices where I am looking.

In response, everyone else looks in the same direction, like we are some sort of mob of meerkats. At this point, everyone in group 4 has at least some experience with strengthening our senses with mana, as well as the basics when it comes to manipulating mana.

For example, Min-Jae’s learned to create structures that allow him to make fire, even though he doesn’t really have any skills that should allow it. Sure, that fire probably wouldn’t be much of a threat, even to someone from Easy or Normal difficulty, but that’s just for now. The Korean boy has only continued to improve, and he refers to it as “casting spells”. How original.

I think by the end of the tutorial, most of the people from Hell difficulty will be able to mimic what Easy, Normal, and maybe even Hard difficulty are capable of doing, just through their raw understanding of the nature of mana and their experience using it. All without support from their skills, or anything else for that matter.

It’s also getting darker, and unlike a full moon’s night back on Earth, this one has a slight olive green tint to it, creating hints of aurora-like bursts in the same shades. All radiating from this strange moon.

“Godzilla,” Dennis says out of nowhere.

“Oh, fuck off,” Sophie groans immediately, telling me this is her usual reaction to his usual bullshit.

“What else could it be? This planet got attacked by a Godzilla that someone who dug too deep awoke. You saw the footsteps and the canals where it dragged its tail.”

(Ehm, maybe it wasn't a tail it dragged, but-)

“Aaron Fucking Dalton, I swear if you complete that sentence, I will stick the Adjudicator's arm up your brother's ass.”

(Do it, you coward! Dennis can take it! I bet he’ll even like it!) Aaron shouts at her, full of a fighting spirit.

Meanwhile, Dennis goes into full panic mode and tries to calm Sophie, who, despite her crass complaints, is probably somewhat enjoying their banter. I can tell because of the way Izzy's smiling and the way she’s looking at her older sister.

Feeling a bit bored, I tap Lily on the top of her head as she takes a seat, positioning herself just across from me on a slightly smaller stone. Then I start moving my hands through her hair, proceeding to braid it while carefully shaping it into the style of a complex Celtic knot.

I know the pattern pretty well, with the way Vic tended to use me as unpaid labor to do her own hair, and this in particular is a design I was forced to learn under the tyrannical, uncompromising orders of my older sibling.

Lily glances back at me the moment I start, but then closes her eyes and relaxes, leaning her head a bit closer toward me.

“So we do have a few days to scan the area before you start taking rounds to return to beyond?” Min-Jae asks once they’ve finished fighting about where the hand will end up.

“I want to return. Iant said we might be able to reach the Megacity soon, once we complete the outpost. He’s recommended a good guild there, though I’ll need to take a test to get in,” Dennis smiles. “It's the same guild Tess is in.”

“Oh, they actually kicked me out,” Tess says, smiling awkwardly. “Lyraen didn't believe me when I said I had nothing to do with Tacita stealing the key, so he invoked some obscure clause in our contract, kicked me out before he completed his tutorial, and then left.”

“How petty,” Lily mutters under her breath.

“Well, to be fair, he did have a point,” Tess admits, still smiling. “But now that he’s gone, I can rejoin. I’ve already made a deal with the new guild master. I can't just let Dennis and Aaron waltz right in, but it should be easy enough for you guys to pass the tests in a few months.”

“My guild is going to be participating in the attack on the 5th floor soon,” Sophie says, shifting the topic. “Preparations are mostly done, the mental arrays seem to be working well, and I can trigger them properly now. Combined with the weaknesses of that Champion, it should be easy enough. Though the guild master decided to hire Bloodline to help at the last moment, just in case things go to crap.”

If I remember correctly, Sophie's guild is Frontier, and Bloodline happens to be the exact guild Lily is in, so I stop my hair-knotting and tap on Lily's head a few times.

Lily coughs slightly, causing the others to turn their attention her way as she offers, “I had no idea.”

“They didn't even tell you about it?” Min-Jae asks.

“They didn't ask me to join,” Lily shrugs. “I negotiated for a clause in my contract that they have to pay me for each time I participate in something like this, and the higher the difficulty, the more shards I get, so maybe they felt I’d be too expensive?”

Hearing that outrageous display of casual bragging, I tug on her hair just a bit harder and flick the back of her head a couple of times.

Lily doesn't let it bother her in the slightest, and I can hear the smile in her voice as she continues, “I’ll speak with the guild master and let him know that I'm willing to participate for maybe half price. I’d honestly go for free just to keep an eye on Soph, but I don't want him thinking I'm a pushover. I might even ask Taci if she wants to join.”

“Do you want her to steal another key?” Sophie asks flatly while staring at Lily, though I notice the corners of her lips flickering into a suppressed smile.

“I mean… you aren't going to get the key anyway, so maybe? Besides, Taci’s going to keep an eye on us, so she definitely deserves it!”

(The reputation of Earth is being totally ruined by the sole efforts of Nat and that speedy maniac.) Aaron sighs dramatically. (And what about you, Nat? What fucked up plans do you have?)

I pause for a moment and give it some thought before shrugging as I continue, “I’ll ask the other guilds for all the information they have on the 5th floor Champions. And if they refuse to hand it over, I'll just declare a guild war on them or barge into their headquarters and take it.”

While I focus back on Lily's hair and keep my hands moving, I can't see the others, but it becomes very quiet, the silence broken only by the distant chirping of bird-like creatures in the bushes.

“I think with reasonable preparations, I can hunt down all of the Champions on the 5th floor solo,” I continue, stopping as I complete an especially difficult twist in the Celtic knot. I inspect my work with satisfaction, nod to myself, and add, “It mostly depends on the information I can get and the specific weaknesses of the Champions, but I would ideally like to beat two of them at once. Just killing one will push me straight into my primary class upgrade, and that's it, locking me out of any extra achievements. Dealing with both of them in quick succession could add a nice boost to it.”

The silence hangs there a bit longer, and as I finish the knot, I give a final tap to the top of Lily's head.

“I'm totally open to ideas on how I could push things a bit further along. The best I can come up with is leveling up my skills, combining more passives, evolving a few more skills, or combining them in turn. I could also fully unseal my Ignition Heart or finally combine all my constructs into one grand monstrosity. There’s also a chance that rushing to level 450 in the earliest possible timeframe will get me into a better class tier than if I were to wait around and max out my skills first, so I'll need to math it out with our local nerds.”

I look up, locking my gaze onto Min-Jae and Sophie.

No one seems to be too shocked, but they still remain silent. I notice a few of them looking at Lily instead of me, but I can’t really see her face, so it’s hard to say what they’re seeing. But knowing our petite bulldozer, it’s probably just concern. She, more than anyone else, must realize the state of my body. And it’s a shame that I can’t tell her, or anyone else for that matter, why I’m doing this.

They would just be an open book to Adrian, while I firmly believe that before the tutorial ends, I’ll be able to fully shield my mind and emotions. So, though it may be shameless for me to expect so much from them, they’ll just have to trust me on this.

(Yeah, why the hell not,) Aaron is the first one to react as he snickers. (Lily, tell Tacita to sell her key. After Nat starts hunting the Champions down, the prices are going to drop hard. Right, Min-Jae? Economics,) he says proudly.

“Y-yeah,” Min-Jae gets out of himself, “he might have to sell some to the Handlers or drastically lower the prices, after all, only the attendees can use them and-”

He continues to explain something about that, which obviously gets him more nerd allegations soon after. That starts another small fight, and then the conversation takes off.

Lily moves over to speak with Sophie, and they immediately start planning things out, and Izzy dozes off while resting against her sister. Tess starts talking to Maya, who at some point lies down and rests her head on the blonde's legs.

And I get swarmed by Noodle, Min-Jae, Dennis, Aaron, and even Blackie starts moving closer for some reason, towering over us in his red armor.

Our conversation is serious at first, and I’m being called a moron, dumb, and similar stuff. Then it grows sillier as we start to joke around and, in a true and manly way, start throwing insults at each other. The kind anyone else would punch us in the face for.

When the morning comes, we start moving while Tess rises high into the air to scan the area. A few times she almost reaches orbit and scans the whole planet like some sort of blonde haired satellite.

Then she starts leading us in a specific direction, not saying much about where we’re going. Knowing that side of her, I guess she’s excited to see our reaction when we get there. She’s always enjoyed that sort of teasing.

It takes a few more days until we reach what she saw, and as we do, I wonder if we’re wearing the expressions she imagined.

There’s a railway, way, way too wide and tall, made of rock instead of metal, and on it rests a set of wagons. About three dozen of them. Each of these wagons is as tall as a multi-story building, filled with windows and terraces, made of a combination of metal, wood, bone, and stone, and each wagon has a slightly different style and color. At the top of each of the wagons are gardens and fields. And in a number of places, there are enormous water tanks as well.

At the front, there is what seems like a locomotive that is idle at the moment and even bigger than a wagon. Also, a part of that locomotive is a horse-like animal, it seems like it grows from the front, blending seamlessly into the metal structure. The horse itself doesn’t even seem to be alive. There are whole chunks of flesh missing from its body, leaving its bones visible, along with the metal cables connected to it. Both of the eyes are gone, having long ago been replaced with metal orbs.

Yet the animal still has a beating heart that generates mana in huge amounts.

And all of this currently sits idle in front of us, and there are plenty of natives spread throughout the surrounding area. Overhead, a few balloons float high in the air, tethered to the locomotive by long ropes, with even more natives aboard.

It is safe to say Tess is likely getting the expression she wanted to see.