Chapter 83 - Rescuing Leonard

Leonard Pendragon hadn’t been crushed because one of his enchanted artifacts activated, creating a thin barrier between his body and the stone. That was the only reason he walked away unharmed.

Still, he was trapped, and he would eventually die of hunger and thirst if nobody showed up to rescue him.

The man had already given up. He’d screamed for hours without getting a single answer, and had accepted that he’d probably lose his life chasing that treasure. Then Arthur appeared like a messenger from the heavens, sent to save him.

"How are you going to get me out of here?" Leonard asked. "Are you going to break this rock? Push it?"

Arthur was studying the rock that had fallen on Leonard. He could see a small hole behind it, almost unnoticeable.

"This rock is blocking the path we need to take, right?" Arthur asked.

"Yes, exactly. The mine slopes downward, so if you tried to push it, you’d have to carry it uphill. Basically impossible unless you’re really strong. That leaves breaking it, but is that even possible?"

The rock was huge. Under normal circumstances, there was no way to break it without it falling on Leonard again, but his artifact changed things.

"If I break the part of the rock near your body, can you make the barrier rise a little with that artifact of yours? Give you some room to get out?"

Leonard thought for a moment, then said, "Yes, that’s possible."

"Great. Then be ready for when the time comes."

Arthur took the pickaxe out of his inventory and started breaking the rock. Leonard’s expression was one of surprise, but he didn’t say anything.

’He probably thinks I have a spatial treasure where I keep my items. Which means he doesn’t know about the Chosen Ones yet.’

That was his conclusion. The players had only arrived a few days ago. If Leonard had spent days in the forest before reaching the mine, and then more time stuck under that rock, there was a big chance he had no idea the players even existed.

With controlled, precise strikes, Arthur chipped away at the rock bit by bit, slowly freeing a little more of Leonard’s body. But the process was going to take longer than he’d like.

Point Blank walked up to him and whispered, "Tower, Suzy and Shadow Cloak are calling us to the dungeon. What do we do?"

Arthur couldn’t abandon Leonard, and he really wanted that Spell Creation Leonard had mentioned. There was no world where he’d leave Leonard here to go do something else.

"I’ll take you back there, and you guys can keep killing monsters and leveling up, maybe do some other stuff. You think they’d be fine with that? I want to do this first, and then we can go to the dungeon."

Was there a risk of another group clearing the dungeon near the city first? Maybe. But the chance was pretty low. As far as Arthur remembered, after the first dungeon was discovered, it took around 2 days to be cleared.

In fact, that was the average for ’common’ dungeons, 2 days. The more advanced ones took even longer.

Because of that, he was confident the chance of losing the first clear bonus was low.

Arthur kept breaking the rock with his pickaxe while Point Blank sent messages to the rest of the group.

"They agreed," she said. "Can you take me there?"

Arthur nodded, stopped breaking the rock, put the tool back in his inventory and stood up.

"Hey, where are you going?" Leonard asked.

His tone sounded a bit rude, but Arthur knew that wasn’t the case. The man was just scared of being abandoned again.

"I’m just taking my friend somewhere else, it’ll be quick. I’ll be back in 1 hour, tops. Probably less, actually. Can you hold on?"

Leonard sighed.

"Yeah, I guess so. I’ll wait here for you."

Arthur and Point Blank left the mine and climbed onto the Cloud Chaser.

"Are you sure you don’t want my help?" she asked. "I know it’s something tied to your class, and you want to do it alone, but maybe you’ll need some help."

"I don’t want you risking yourself with me," Arthur said. "There’s a high chance I end up dying down there. Places like that are full of traps and stuff."

That part was true, of course, but Arthur also wanted to keep the rewards for himself. Selfish, in a way, but he had to get everything he could to become stronger, so he could help his family in the future.

Besides, from what Leonard himself said, the treasure could only be accessed by a Soul Artisan. Point Blank would be left out of the best part. She might have to take a lot of risks to get to the end, and she wouldn’t get anything in return.

She thought about that too, so she didn’t look too sad about it.

"Alright. I hope it works out and you manage to complete that quest," she said, a warm, contagious smile on her face.

The two flew to the elven settlement. Arthur dropped Point Blank off there and talked briefly with Tower, Suzy and Shadow Cloak. He didn’t give them many details, just said he had something important to do and apologized.

"No problem. Go ahead," Tower said. "While you’re slacking off, a real man like me is gonna be out here killing monsters and leveling up."

Arthur laughed.

"Go check who’s rank 1 on the leaderboard, dummy."

He climbed onto the Cloud Chaser and flew away, heading back to the abandoned mine. Leonard almost cried when he saw that Arthur had returned.

"Deep down I thought you were going to leave me here... I should trust you more. We’re all Soul Artisans, we’re all brothers."

A sudden brotherhood speech coming from Leonard. Arthur wasn’t that surprised, honestly. There were very few Soul Artisans, and they all really did help each other. That was why the Soul Artisan who joined the Holy Church was looked at with so much hatred. Nobody liked him because of that betrayal.

"Don’t get emotional on me now," Arthur took the pickaxe out again and went back to breaking the rock. "Keep telling me what you know about this place. What are we going to find down there, and so on."

"Sure, sure. Let me see, I believe there will be a lot of traps, yes, indeed, traps for curious people like us, hehe, and maybe monsters, I don’t know, I think maybe. And of course, the grand finale, the dragon waiting for us down there," Leonard said in a rush, almost tripping over his own words.

Arthur nearly lost his train of thought from the sheer number of words Leonard produced in such a short time. It was something unique, for real.

But he still caught the most important part of all that.

"The dragon who created the magic, and this Spell Creation, is down there? No freaking way."

Another dragon trapped in the same kingdom? Arthur already knew the Aldora Kingdom was full of secrets, and that it had been ignored by players for a long time, with few starting there or studying the language to try to explore it. It was only later that players started paying more attention to this kingdom.

"Yes, yes. You see, maybe we’ll have to spend some time with him to learn Spell Creation, but it’ll be worth it, oh, will it ever. We could become mages! Maybe even stronger than mages, creating spells mages wouldn’t even dream of using."

Every time Leonard spoke, Arthur got even more excited about the possibility. The idea of creating those spells made him way too eager, and at times even thoughtful, like it might be too good to be true.

But the quest was right there in his Quest Journal. It was real.

It took about 1 hour until Leonard finally crawled out from under the rock, turned his body and stared at the mine’s ceiling, sighing deeply.

"Finally free, ah," he said. "But you know, there’s still the problem of the rock blocking where we need to go."

Arthur had no idea how to get that rock out of the way.

"Relax, my friend," Leonard got up and dusted off his clothes. "I know exactly what to do."

Leonard had all kinds of... items hanging off his body, trinkets, you could say. Which made sense. A Soul Artisan’s greatest strength was the ability to master every profession and produce really powerful items.

Now that he wasn’t trapped anymore, Leonard could use the rest of his items to break the rock.

"Step back."

The two moved far away. Leonard pulled a staff out of a bag, surely a spatial one that could store lots of items.

He channeled the staff’s power and launched a powerful fireball at the rock! It was way bigger than Chris’s spells, for example, which meant it was an advanced fireball, something regular players still couldn’t master.

A boom echoed through the mine, the walls and even the ceiling shaking, dust falling from above. Arthur was afraid everything would collapse, but it didn’t happen.

The rock was destroyed, shattering into several pieces, and the path was revealed.