Chapter 114: Risk of Rain

The entire sequence of the day was… a bizarre adventure.

They came across two foreign races, one of which was friendly and the other hostile.

And the leader of the hostile one just so happened to be Clear, Ash’s brother.

Only for a fight to ensue that ended not with Clear’s defeat, but with one of Ash’s own turning on him — an event that happened in full view of everyone else.

Then…

Clear simply left.

After a few sparse words with his estranged brother, he acted like nothing was odd and went on his way.

Weirder, Ash had done the same.

He returned to his Holy Land, where a forced pragmatic conversation ensued in a feeble attempt to drown out the awkward air of sudden rebellion.

Ash almost felt bad for the two Harpies caught up in their internal affairs.

Then again, they’d just been provided with the ultimate fuel to use against them if their relations fell through in the future.

In any case…

After a bit more discussion and the unveiling of the terms Claude had agreed to in his haste to earn their cooperation, Ash was made to escort them back to their Totem.

Quite the awkward, silent journey ensued, followed by an equally quiet and slow return up the Mountains of Spring.

But during that slow trek, without anyone around, Ash dipped into reflection. Mainly about how to fix the situation…

How to succeed as a leader.

It wasn’t as if he suddenly understood empathy and truly felt for Nora. Nor did he feel bad for anything her brother had gone through.

All he’d accomplished was admitting his judgement of her brother was premature.

‘I don’t even know if that’s what I said to him… or if a conversation happened at all.’

Either way, Ash still believed the ending line of her brother’s life was worthy of it: ‘So, clearly, I wasn’t wrong.’

What he had to do was not figure out ‘why’ another thought he was in the wrong, but ‘understand why’ another thought he was in the wrong.

In an odd twist, he’d pawned off the task of earning his understanding on the very person who wished him the worst.

‘Or perhaps she’s second in line…’

Cross hated Ash to a much greater degree, and his promise of despaired love had been the same.

No…

Ash had modeled Cross’s promise into Nora’s fuel, feeding her flames of vengeance with the embers of Cross’s will. His blazing feelings of hatred were tempered and pure — the primary source of retribution.

The only question was whether Cross still existed and held such a grudge against Ash in reality.

Ash sighed as he pulled himself up over the lip onto the next shelf of the mountain. He’d learned how to climb with an awkward technique of shoving his hands into the wall and using the scales of the armor to hoist himself up or wedging them into narrow cracks for leverage.

‘Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be interesting…’

As he reached the top and staggered to his feet, Ash looked up at the graying sky.

It wasn’t an exact interval, but the Mountains of Spring had a day of torrential downpour. This rain was the main reason the basin at the top didn’t dry out, but it also caused a few other things, both good and bad.

Mainly, it caused the respawn rate of the whole area to increase and drove some underground dwellers above ground.

The main negative for Ash was his glitch…

Since the rain wasn’t an attack, it didn’t cause him to stutter when it hit him and simply passed through his skin. But there was a major issue whenever he fought something in the rain. The water flung onto him by an attack did count and could render him immobile.

Plus…

‘I can’t use [Focus].’

Ash had indeed tested what happened when casting it while submerged in water and under running water.

The result was… weird.

He’d already seen it happen with the Ice Golem: his tail got stuck, yet wasn’t sliced off. He figured water would behave similarly, except that, because it wasn’t solid, he should still be able to pull himself free.

But… he was wrong!

While it didn’t slice off his arm, the water held him still as if it were a solid mass. He could pull and tug, but the only way to remove his hand from the body of water was to slice it off or cancel [Focus].

Something very similar happened with running water, but somehow, it was even weirder.

Any part of him caught beneath the stream became pinned in place. He could still force the limb forward or backward, but doing so meant tearing his flesh through the water itself.

What he learned was that the effect didn’t apply to the stream as a whole. It applied to every individual droplet intersecting his body.

Each droplet hardened like a tiny ball of titanium the instant it passed into him, locked to the exact point in space where contact occurred. It wouldn’t fall with the rain. It wouldn’t move with his body. It simply stayed there, embedded throughout his flesh like countless invisible anchors.

And the moment his flesh tore free of one, the droplet became ordinary water again and continued falling as if nothing had happened.

It was a lot of words to explain something with quite a straightforward answer:

Ash was rendered useless in the rain.

The most he was good for was insight and scouting.

But…

It wasn’t simply the rain that made Ash think tomorrow would be interesting; that was compounded by what was destined to happen.

The rest of the summoned…

Ash didn’t know exactly how or when, but anytime in the next 48 hours they were destined to appear in the world.

‘I wonder if they’ll be spawned at the Totem or by the mountain…’

Or perhaps it would be entirely random.

Either way, the day of reckoning and those following it were destined to be hectic.