Is this really a Game?!

“Well, thank you for your cooperation,” Wolf said before drawing his greatsword and cutting off the demon’s head. A slight smile could be seen on the flying head as it hits the ground, the demon being happy it was finally released from its suffering.

Before its soul could return, however, some kind of formless energy suddenly captured it as it got sucked into Reign. Aeithon swiftly captured the soul and put the demon in a cage, eager to do some experiments, just like it did with the souls that were captured during the fight against Luin.

“It’s done,” Reign told Laura who smiles at him before nodding slightly. They never really intended to let the demon get back to its planet and get a new body. They simply decided not to tell the demon and let him believe that it would be simply killed after everything was over. The demon never even suspected it since soul-based attacks were very rare before the Transcendent realm, let alone abilities.

“They have a base higher up the mountain, it seems there’s a Tier II demon leading them,” Wolf said as he returned to the group after finishing the demon off.

“So it’s a no-go huh?” Shadow said whilst stretching his arms.

“A Tier II can wipe the floor with all of us right now, we’ll have to be careful not to attract the attention of any such enemies for now,” Laura said with a heavy face, she had seen a battle between not only Tier II fighters, but even Tier IV.

The destructive power that a Tier IV had were miles ahead of them and even Tier II fighters were much stronger, an ash demon that was Tier II would be able to take most of their attacks with its bare body and barely be scratched.

“There’s more, there are 5 locations on this mountain that have Tier II combatants, I managed to create a simple map of the area thanks to the demon, there are 3 locations where no demon had entered before, we should check them out, if a safe zone is present here, then it would be in one of those locations,” Wolf said as he showed the others the map he managed to create.

Thanks to the system he didn’t need to draw anything since the system would fill in the map with the places they had previously been to, thanks to the demon however he was able to get a much more detailed map since he forced it to put its own knowledge in it.

The empty maps that players could buy were incredibly useful and easy to use and understand. It was enough for one to simply hold it and imbue mana in it to fill it with information, making it incredibly easy for people to create and sell them for a profit or, like Wolf had done, use others in order to fill it in.

Thanks to the demon who cooperated quite well, they had a simple map of the whole area, of course, it was mostly the valley and the mountain they were currently on that were detailed while the other parts of the area barely had anything on them since the demon was simply far too weak to venture deeper inside the mountain range.

The only information he had was the one that other, more powerful demons had told him, and luckily for them, that information was enough to at least get a simple map.

“Alright, so there are three areas where we could potentially find a safe zone, one is relatively close to us, about 1km to the south, it seems there’s a crevice that goes deep inside the mountain, if it’s a safe zone then it’s perfect as it is hidden and we can be sure that no monsters will be nearby which will be of great help when more people start coming over here.”

Wolf said as he pointed at a spot on the map that was marked with a blue circle. The five areas where Tier II monsters could be spotted and the demon camp were marked with a red circle.

“Now, we can’t be sure that there’s not a dungeon or a nest of monsters there so we have to be careful, the other two safe zones are further away, but they are quite close to each other and we can easily check both once arriving there, unfortunately, the demon didn’t know how those two areas look like, so we’ll be going in the dark.”

“Got it, let’s go then, I don’t want the night to fall before we manage to explore those three areas.” Reign said as everybody nodded and started walking towards the potential safe zone.

There was one place that they needed to go around before getting to the zone since there were a bunch of Tier I monsters there. It was a nest of snakes and there were hundreds of snakes there, most of them were relatively weak, but their sheer numbers and a couple of Tier I snakes made the area incredibly dangerous for even powerful Tier I fighters.

Reign and the others made sure to stay away from the area, even though it made their trip longer by about 10 minutes, they were very prudent when it came to not alerting any snakes since they would need to flee immediately if they attacked them.

The party needed about 30 minutes to get to the crevice, and a further 5 minutes to actually locate the exact crevice. It was located on the side of the mountain, hidden by shrubs and bushes. There was a small path that led to the crevice and both the crevice and the path were extremely well hidden.

“This really is a great place to set up a base, even if there’s no safe zone here, we should do our best to try and make it into an outpost of sorts.” Reign said as he looked at the area, there were some level 60+ monsters nearby and even Tier I monsters could be seen a distance away.

For those that had managed to go through the first evolution, this spot was great as they could easily find monsters to fight against and get exp. The small path and the crevice which was barely wide enough to let Greenie and Tank pass through made it a natural chokepoint where monsters couldn’t pour in from and overwhelm them with numbers.

If there was a sufficiently large cave at the end of the crevice, then even without a safe zone being here they could make this a base, which of course would heavily depend on whether or not there were more crevices to lead to inside.

“We can put a heavy metal door here and put steel plates above to seal the crevice and stop any monsters from entering, we can even do the same inside and have two layers of protection, making it nearly impossible for monsters to come in without us knowing about it.” Reign said as he looked at the crevice.

“Yeah, not to mention the fact that we wouldn’t even need a lot to protect the entrance since it’s so small, without a Tier II fighter attacking, we could deal with any enemy that might try to get inside, not to mention the fact that bigger enemies wouldn’t be able to get in, hell, simply getting to the crevice would be near impossible for them,” Wolf commented further as he examined the area.

“Well, we would need to go back to our territory in order to get everything ready first, so we should check the other two locations as well, if none of them is a safe zone then it’s safe to say that this is the best we got,” Beast said from the side as he stared at the entrance.

“But.” Shadow constricted his eyes as he stared at the crevice.

“There’s something inside, it seems we woke it up, only now can I feel the mana.” Reign said as he got his sword out, ready to fight.

Reign looks at the others as they all nod at him. He slowly made his way inside the crevice with the others following. Tank was right behind Reign, ready to block any attack that Reign couldn’t.

Hissing sounds could be heard from inside as the sound of something metallic hitting the floor could simultaneously be heard. The group was on full guard as they slowly made their way inside, the sounds only becoming louder and louder. ｂ𝚍ｎｏ𝚟ｌ.

“Hey, Wolf, what was the reason why the demons didn’t explore here?” Shadow suddenly asked.

“Cuz they didn’t need to, it was an unnecessary risk to get inside here when they already had a perfectly well base, so they simply decided to mark this spot as a mystery and never returned,” Wolf said as Shadow and the others nodded.

Reign was getting ready to burst out with full power at any moment, he could feel the mana of the thing that was inside, even though it wasn’t overwhelming, the mana the creature had was still above theirs, albeit only a bit above.

Suddenly Reign’s eyes widened in shock as lightning burst out from him as he disappeared with a shout.

“Tank!”

Clang!

Tank quickly put his shield up as something hit it and made him take two steps back. Luckily they were at the exit of the crevice and Reign had already gotten out, fighting against whatever monster was inside.