Chapter 316 - The first one in thousands of years (Patreon)

Each one of us gets another pendant. We put on the chest plates made of silver-like metal with streaks of copper color. Nevan even quickly makes a pretty one for Vega, and since then, she becomes much friendlier towards him.

My minion might be really weak to gifts and shows of goodwill.

I watch as she spins around, looking at her reflection in one of the steel panels on the wall of the facility.

Even Nevan has a soft smile on his face, watching the little half-demon girl being happy.

At least she accepted only after asking him multiple times if it was for free and he won't want anything for it.

“I will go outside for a moment, something destroyed one of my anchors,” the duplicate says and disappears at the same moment.

A few seconds later, he returns. “Two Veil Guardians sniffing around,” he says simply.

So that's it? Is a normal Hell difficulty person supposed to be hiding now, or should they be capable of taking on the Veil Guardians? Or was it intended for them to join the Bastion or some other places and survive the remaining two weeks with disciples there?

“We could take them on together,” I offer.

“Probably, but we are already prepared for the station. Wanna bet something would screw up if we went to fight?”

“That's true. Well, let's follow the plan.” I wave at Nevan, “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Take as much as you can; we might not be able to return here.”

Looking at me for a moment, he nods and quickly does just that.

“Vega,” I call, “you will be staying near me the entire time, and by entire time I mean entire time, okay?”

“Yes, master!” the little half-demon doesn't seem to complain.

But just in case, I also give her my pendant. Then I take a few rods and some other stuff our personal blacksmith, alloyist, or however, I should call him, prepared.

When we reappear in the station, the pressure of mana immediately increases, and I observe Vega. Thankfully, she doesn't seem to notice any pressure, and can feel the increased mana with her senses only. Even now, she is curiously observing it, her red eyes wide open.

Nevan, with a full set of armor, even a helmet, heads in first, and quickly we pass by his workshop where he takes a few smaller items. I also quickly sell a few more items, getting a quick 680 shards.

The hallway stretches longer than expected, and gradually the pressure increases from somewhere on the right where the core is.

At a crossroad, Nevan turns left and leaves three rods between where we are heading at the core. That  alleviated the pressure somehow.

The next stop is yet another facility. This one is in disarray, the damage all over, similar to the entrance. Deep scratches on the metal walls, melted floor, destroyed ceiling. All over the room, mana stones are strewn. Some of them are broken, some are fine. There are dozens of them. All kinds of colors and sizes, and all of them without inscriptions.

“One of my friends used to study mana crystals here, and in his spare time, he was making mana stones from them.” Nevan enters the room and touches one of the walls. A signal-like pulse shoots from him, and a crack appears there, revealing the entrance to a smaller room.

There, in something akin to a panic room, lies the corpse of a man. Not recognizable anymore, but for Nevan, just a look at the bracelet is enough.

The corpse of the man is surrounded by a few empty bottles, some food packaging, and in the corner is a makeshift bed. But the most interesting part is the mana crystals all over, some of them turned into mana stones. The man, unwilling or unable to exit the room, spent the rest of his remaining days or weeks working. He did something he enjoyed up until the end either to take his mind off his situation or not to go crazy.

When I look at Nevan, he has the same expression.

“Oh, Orryn, I at least hope you did not suffer.” Passing inside, he carefully takes what remains of the man and puts it on the bed in the corner. From the ground, he picks up a few mana stones and hands them to me, “They will be more useful to you than to me.”

I examine them as, like most of the others in the room before it, they aren't inscribed. They are, most of the time, just beautiful mana stones ready for inscriptions, with the exception that some of them are epic grade. Meanwhile, the ones in the room were rare at most.

The duplicate also takes a few from me, and Vega picks some as well.

At the same time as me, the duplicate takes one and starts turning it into storage he starts filling with Primordial energies, something akin to what I did on the 4th floor to attack the Colony.

“Are you fine?” I ask Vega.

“I think I am, but I feel dizzy when examining the area around me.”

“You can stop using your senses for a while.”

She does just that, and I just in case put one of my anchors on her skin. I [Tether] it to her body, and I'm capable of doing so because I'm of a much higher level than her.

Room by room, we pass through the station. We find more corpses, and more damaged facilities, and I start to wonder if Nevan also doesn't have a skill similar to [Focus]. The man keeps recognizing colleagues or friends all over the place, yet he continues ahead with the determination of a man who has nothing more to lose.

As the hallway widens, Nevan places a few more rods and throws some fist-sized iron cubes on the floor, and we enter the big circular room.

“Control room,” he says simply.

Out of every place we passed by, this one is the most damaged, and the way it was damaged is the scary part.

It seems like someone just evaporated everything in size of a big sphere, leaving behind only smooth edges. This kind of damage repeats all over multiple times. The tables are gone, control panels too, and pieces of the wall as well.

On the ground, we find pieces of gray bodies filled with blue veins and even pieces of voidsteel slicers.

It looks like our friends, Veil Guardians or a higher grade of them, visited this place long ago.

Vega and I both collect pieces of voidsteel to either keep for ourselves or sell later. Even while doing so, she practices moving mana in the way I told her, and she keeps a kinetic orb floating near her.

Nevan is examining what remains, trying to get some panels to pop up from the floor or locate hidden rooms, and the duplicate goes examining the rooms nearby.

“Do you have any idea what could’ve caused this?” I ask him.

“Some of the attacks were done by the head guard, and I recognize a few from some Lords that were staying here. As for the one that destroyed the panels, I have a suspicion, but I'm not sure. But they, either by coincidence or on purpose, destroyed all the control panels.”

“Any backup?”

He nods, “But closer to the core.”

“Let me examine the rooms around for a bit, and we can head there. Any interesting ones?”

Nevan gestures, “This way, you can find the dining room; your duplicate went there. There you will find a Guard station probably with some armors or weapons left in stock. Near it, after going through a hallway, is a research center that will probably interest you the most. They were exploring ways of inscribing fabrics, creating highly conductive mana threads, experiments with the smallest possible mana stones for inscriptions, and such.”

“Thanks, fifteen minutes?”

“That much will be no problem for the equipment I made.”

“Minion, let's go.”

“To the dining room?”

I grab and pull her horn while she tries to kick me, and then we head towards the research center.

***

POV Duplicate of Nathaniel Gwyn

I sit on one of the chairs and wait. While doing so, I keep poking the leg of one of the corpses with my foot.

It's a long-dead woman with a dried-up and shriveled face, some hair fallen out, and an expression of sheer pain on it. As many did, she also died due to mana radiation that must have been even stronger 100 years ago.

While waiting, I strengthen the field around me, making sure it blocks all the sounds and mana other than mine. Not like I think that is required, but just to be safe. The original douchebag can be perceptive sometimes, but right now, he is too busy and enamored by all these mysteries to check on me. Hell, I would’ve liked to do the same.

Finally, the eyes of of the corpses move, still lifeless and disgusting, but they turn to me.

Even though it shouldn't be making any sounds, the mouth moves and the words sound in the room, “I see you haven't forgotten me, unfortunate one.”

“Yes, yes. A week ago you told me you would tell me about a way to survive when Vega comes back, so?”

“So direct. You don't have to hurry. We got ourselves some time to discuss.”

Well, usually, I wouldn't try to cooperate with an extremely suspicious being I met a few times in Beyond and once on the 4th floor when it took over Arcane Archer Bob. But it's not like I have that many options.

“If you want to talk so much, tell me why would you help me.”

The mouth of the corpse moves as if to make a smile and it makes her look even more creepy.

“To pass time,” it says simply.

“So mysterious and cool. What is the way to escape you mentioned?”

“It's not difficult, unfortunate one. You just need to kill the disciple of your original. After she dies, I can move her 'status' to you, and you will be returned to her world instead. Gaining her status and with a little bit of influence from my side, the effect of you being a temporary duplicate will disappear.”

“I see. No.”

“Are you sure?” the voice sounds playful, “If you are worried about your conscience, you don't have to kill her. You just don't help. You left your mark on sleeping Gaiathra, right? What if you just activate it by mistake and won't be here when the monster attacks? Accidents like this can happen.”

When I stay quiet, the being seems even more amused, the mouth of the corpse moving into a smile that is much wider than anatomy should allow. The old skin of the corner of the lips tears up, and the jaw moves lower in a creepy gesture.

“You might think you won't do it now, but won't you change your mind when only a day of your life remains? Don't you want to stay alive? What is some little girl you know for a few weeks only in comparison to that?”

Even though it can't use its powers, the air in the dining room starts feeling colder.

“Just a small accident, after that you will be sent to her world to explore it. You can try to become its Absolute there if you wish. You can fight and train as much as you want. A whole new planet for you to explore. As a bonus, even your original would be punished for failing his Floor quest. Isn't that beautiful?”

“You are a really stupid motherfucker, aren't you? I said no.”

The corpse moves and as it stands up, its limbs let out a cracking noise until the head of the long-dead woman stops just in front of my face, “You already refused my help once, do not repeat the same mistake. Without me, you will perish.”

“Even if I die, I won't regret it,” when I say it, I feel confident in these words.

The dumb original might not realize it yet as he is bad with his feelings, but he is the same. None of us would be able to hurt Vega like that. Never.

It would be a betrayal of someone we befriended and in that action, we would become similar to the person we hate the most in the world.

“I think the subclass of Pride really fits you. It's perfect for delusional people like you,” the being giggles and finally, the jaw of the woman's corpse falls off. To that, it only tilts its head and then steps back, “I will ask you the same question a day before you disappear. I'm already excited to hear your answer.”

So he is not the Ruler of Pride.

Well, let's try to get more info at least, “Why are you even here? There must be hundreds or thousands of tutorials going on, why this one? Because of Lissandra and her escaping the second floor?”

The corpse crumbles, but the words continue to sound, amusement dripping from every single one, “Absolutes going rogue once in a while isn't that rare. Even though what Eladore's Absolute Lissandra is doing is extremely interesting, that alone is not enough to catch my interest. No, you, Absolute Lissandra, and some other attendees in this instance are only a way I amuse myself.”

The next words only sound in my head, the corpse unmoving, (What brought me to this tutorial is someone else. It's the man who started the tutorial in Beyond. The first one in thousands of years.)

***

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