Is this really a Game?!

“YOOOO!!” A loud shout reverberated through the safe zone as Tank ran at Reign and Wolf who promptly dodged to the side in order to evade the hug from the giant man. Tank, not realizing what they were going to do, hugged air before slipping as he tried to stop in his tracks. He fell down on the ground heavily as a dent was suddenly formed on the street.

“You trying to kill us, you muscle-head?” Wolf kicked Tank on the ass as he playfully said while Reign simply chuckled at the sight. Wolf and Tank had never really been on friendly terms before the game, after going through many battles together their relationship was of course much better, but there were many instances of bickering and the two fighting.

“Welcome back Tank.” Reign said before grabbing Tank’s arm and helping him get up.

“Thanks, bro, as for this one, f you, you blondie bastard.”

“What did you just call me?” Wolf said with a calm expression as his lip quivered a bit. His mana slowly started leaking out as he stared at Tank.

“Yeah, you heard me, let’s go garlic guy!”

“G-garlic-g-guy?!” Flames appeared around Wolf as he smiled dangerously at Tank who did the same while his body turned into bronze.

“There we go, I’ve been itching to fight after going through the evolution, let’s go, man!” Tank laughed but before the two could do anything, two small lightning bullets hit the sides of their heads.

“We’re in public for god’s sake, behave, both of you.” Reign said as he sternly stared at the two who simply shrugged their shoulders and stopped releasing mana. Even though at times it seemed as if the two would kill each other, neither one truly hated the other and they would always end their bickering when it went a bit too far.

“Only Beast and Laura are left, both of them had managed to go through the evolution, they’re probably preoccupied with something so they can’t come back just yet.” Reign said before suddenly another flash of light appeared behind them.

“Oh, hey you guyssss!” Beast shouted happily as he made his way to the three.

“Guess I was wrong, it’s only Laura that is too-”

Yet another flash of light and Laura was standing right behind Beast.

“Bruh.” Tank looked at Reign whilst trying his best not to laugh at him. Wolf on the other hand was looking at Beast and Laura, but his lips were clearly moving as it was evident that he was close to laughing as well.

Reign on the other hand simply stared at Beast and Laura with a deadpan look whilst blinking a bit faster than normal.

‘All three came back at almost the same exact time, how was I supposed to know that would happen?!!’ Reign screamed inside his head before smiling and hugging Beast who had made his way to him. .𝘯𝘵

“It’s been a while.”

He did the same with Laura who arrived right after Beast and was clearly happy to be back.

“How is everything?” Beast suddenly asked as Reign sighed and scratched the back of his head.

“Let’s go over to the building, I’ll call Greenie and Shadow over as well.”

…

“I see, so that’s what happened while we were gone huh?” Tank said before drinking a bit of coffee. Everyone was gathered together in the living room, just like they always used to do before they separated thanks to the evolution challenge.

“Pretty much, anyway, we don’t really have anything urgent to do since we can’t even locate the enemy, just like Wolf has managed to get from that guy called Bone, there is a weird array that shields the safe zone from being seen, whether that’s something the order did or it was something that came with the safe zone nobody knows, but locating them will be a pain in the ass thanks to it.” Reign said before yawning a bit. The last couple of days had been filled with all kinds of things he needed to do, from capturing the draif leader the moment he came back, talking with Loreno, getting the tree essence, trying to find the potential spies until finally meeting Marco and Carlo and helping them relocate here.

Even though Reign could function well even without sleeping for a couple of days, doing all of that was still a lot, and even though he and the others had a solid couple of hours of sleep whilst waiting for Carlo to begin the relocation, they were not really able to sleep normally since they were outside of a safe zone. Although they knew it was impossible for the monsters there to harm them, they were still half-awake during the night in case something happened.

“Anyway, let’s put all our stuff in the inventory and sort it out, it’ll take a while but it’s for the best, I also need to borrow some stuff from all of you, well, a bunch of stuff to be honest.” Reign said before explaining what had happened with his [ Broken Sword of Dominance ]. Upon learning that Reign could actually have a rank SS weapon everyone was shocked and overjoyed.

It was only when they went to do their respective evolution challenges that they had seen how valuable rank S and above items were. Even in the same rank, higher tiered items were much stronger compared to those at the bottom, none of them had even seen a rank SS item so far and from what they could gather, those were incredibly powerful and could make a normal Tier I fighter that used it into a powerful one just like that.

If Reign was able to get his hands on a rank SS item, a sword nonetheless, it would mean that he would be at the very top of Tier I fighters, and later on at the top of Tier II as well. He would have a reliable weapon with him all the way until the fifth evolution which was quite far away.

Everyone nodded at Reign as they started putting their gains in the shared party inventory. Some of them had managed to get quite a lot of interesting items that had many uses, some had many monster parts that could be used in crafting and in alchemy while there were also a bunch of materials and plants there as well.

Reign and the others knew nothing about different materials and plants and never even tried learning about them, but thankfully they could use the system. Thanks to their high talents and what they had already done, they had unlocked a fair amount of functions from the system, basic identification of plants and different minerals and ores being amongst those. Reign could get more information thanks to his [ Inspect ] skill, but the others didn’t, which made the function incredibly helpful to them.

Thanks to the huge amount of loot, Reign was able to gather everything he needed for the sword, plus a bunch of stuff he could use in order to trade with Eldar and the queen in order to get the hardest-to-get materials from them. They had even proposed simply gifting him the stuff, but by doing so they would be punished by the system, and although the punishment wouldn’t be a big one, Reign still didn’t want to let them do that, instead, he would simply trade with them which would offset the punishment.

He didn’t wait, immediately, Reign set off to find Adrian and the others. He quickly found the old blacksmith and told him to get ready, upon which the old man simply nodded at him before going inside his smithy in order to call the elven smith as well. Reign quickly made his way to the top of the castle and traded with Eldar, luckily the items he had traded were enough to offset the punishment as Eldar simply waved him off before sitting down with Jack.

“To think that sword would not only be found but even improved so quickly, it makes me happy,” Eldar said with a smile as Jack smiled back. The sword was the only thing left from an old friend of theirs and seeing it being repaired made them a bit nostalgic.

…

“Thank you, your Majesty.” Reign bowed a bit to the queen before leaving the giant tree with quick footsteps, he now had everything that Adrian needed in order to make the sword, even though it stung him a bit to give such a big part of what he and the others had, it was a necessity. The sword would make him much stronger and he would be able to deal with the threat of the enemy order much easier with it.

Exploring the other areas and fighting stronger monsters would also be easier if he had a powerful weapon with him. Thanks to that his group would be able to challenge more powerful monsters and it was a given that the monsters would drop some powerful items for them, allowing them all to get more rank S weapons and increase their strength.

As Reign returned to the castle grounds, he was surprised to see that a new smithy, one much bigger than the previous one had appeared. Adrian and the elven smith had seemingly summoned it in order to create the sword. Upon reaching the smithy he gave them the two broken parts of the sword and all the materials before he could even say good luck to them, however, Adrian slammed the door in front of his face with an exciting look.

“Alright.” Reign shrugged before leaving, the sword would take the two quite a while to finish and Adrian told him not to expect it before 2 or 3 days had passed.

“Time to explore then.” Said Reign as he made his way back to his territory.