Chapter 346 - That maniac (Patreon)

When I return, thirty minutes remain until the attack,I spot Tess next to group 4; everyone else is gone.

As I land near her, she seems tired. So, even the extrovert class can take damage from prolonged exposure to other extroverts leech aura.

“Don't look at me like that, Nat, it pisses me off. I swear some people are straight-up stupid.”

“Surely you mean Gareth. Did he reveal his evil side already?”

“Gareth is fine, the most reasonable out of goddamn Hell difficulty actually. Group 4 included,” she sighs. “Savant keeps calling Gareth disgusting and then leaves to do his things while calling you dumb for going no [Restriction].”

“Well, his face is stupid.”

“Then there’s Tacita. Anytime I try to ask her for anything she just draws her emoticons and shrugs when I ask her for things. By the way, good job with killing BenDover, the remaining 3 guys from his group refuse to cooperate.”

“I can go and beat them up a bit.”

“Please don't.”

“Okay. What about the natives?”

“They are somewhat fine. According to them, we are sent here by their Champion to help them defend the place so they mostly listen. The one with the highest level is close to three question marks, and a few more men are level 200 and the rest are below that. There are even some civilians we sent to hide in the mines. Most likely we will get rewarded based on how many natives survive or how much damage the mines take.”

“Did they know anything about Pairing, 1st Generation, Tutorial, and other stuff?”

“Nothing, unlike natives from the floors they feel more machine-like and not as human.”

“Attackers?”

“Tens of thousands of monsters controlled by the neighboring kingdom that specializes in taming and controlling huge amounts of monsters.”

“Damn, Sophie's in for a treat.”

Tess nods, “She is already setting up her web with the help of twins. If you are free, try to improve it a bit. How’s your crown?”

“It's as full as it gets, but it would take days, not hours to fill it fully.”

She points at her own [Storm Crown] that floats over her head, “It’s the same for me, but it’s nice to have preparation time and this event seems to be more fitting for those of us who focus more on regeneration rather than amplification.”

Such heresy is hard to listen to but I decide to let it pass this time, “Do you still want me to go all out?”

“Yes. Blow up the mountain, burn the valley, just do your stuff. I want to scare off others a bit. Samuel’s too cocky to my taste He forgets how much more powerful Hell difficulty people are than his group from Hard difficulty. It should also make Gareth more cooperative, since he thinks that his group can deal with anything so proving him wrong will make it easier for me.”

So interesting. “Are you planning to take over?” I ask her.

She looks at me for a moment and sighs, “I wanted to take it easy and split this kind of stuff with others. But Gareth is too soft. I mean, even that could work, he and his group are powerful enough but it's painful to watch how slowly he moves. Meanwhile, Samuel would like to recruit us all into the army so we can serve the greater good the moment we step out of the tutorial.”

“Anyone else?”

“A few guys from Hard difficulty but they are too weak to order people from Hell difficulty. Group 3 with your friend BenDover seem to just want to leech off others and group 8 with AnotherOneHere and Swordmaster showed some interest before the 1st event. Apparently, they got their asses kicked by you and they are mostly neutral.”

“It sounds like you were super busy, but Tess, what do you want out of this? You know we can just easily ignore it and focus on only our group. With a few of us, we will do well no matter what happens here or after the tutorial.”

“I agree.” She gestures for me to come closer while she creates a field around us that makes it impossible to listen in on us. “But you are too antisocial, Nat. Sure, we can get out like this and threaten people with [Disintegration] or whatever kind of bomb you will develop by then. That would be doable, but things will become much simpler if we get a few more guys to our side. What if in other rounds there are people who will control all the people from that round? What if we get to Earth and someone will be already controlling people from multiple rounds? Some of us could die if it came to this.”

“It pisses me off that you’re right.”

“Yeah, me too. I just want to take over some nice place for our group so we can stay together and move our families there. But for now, let's do it like this. Do you mind?”

I shrug, “Not really. Just ask me and I will help, I know I let you deal with plenty of annoying stuff so that's the least I can do.”

“You are reliable as always, Nat. Do your stuff and I’ll do mine. I also saw that Tacita seems to like you, if we can call it that. She ignores me so maybe try to get her to our side. That girl is scary. Don't take it personally but if you don’t pull off some trick out of your sleeve she will be winning the duels.”

“Yes, I know, but have some faith in me, I already have some ideas. By the way, what the fuck is Izzy doing?” I point at the 11-year-old girl who sits on the stairs, Noodle around her.

Over her head, a weird construct seems to be manipulating the light around her in a weird way, and to the little girl's side, two blue flame orbs float. Both of them are as big as basketballs and I can feel that the amount of heat they have keeps increasing.

“Oh, Sophie's idea. She did some mumbo jumbo and manipulated light, air or whatever over Izzy so it works like a magnifying glass. Similar to you, Izzy can absorb heat but in her case, it’s mostly from natural sources while you can do it with others' skills as well. So she is charging it up.”

Oi, I'm jealous now. I know I shouldn’t be, since my skill still seems to be stronger, but I can't help it seeing Izzy’s new shiny toy.

“I will stick around and join you before the attacks start,” I tell Tess, already heading to Izzy.

As if expecting that, Tess waves her hand, looking like she is dealing with a silly child, but I decide to let it go.

Stopping in front of Izzy, she opens her eyes and shouts, “Dumb Noname!”

“Yes yes, so what did Sophie prepare for you?” I point at the construct over her head.

“No idea, but it makes the sun much warmer and I absorb all of that heat.”

Well, warmer is an understatement. I’m sure if Izzy wasn’t absorbing it the concentrated light would be able to melt the stairs she sits on or burn a normal human alive.

The construct Sophie made is also very fragile and I’m sure just a tiny poke would make it crumble or disrupt. It is also connected to the web she set up and powered by it. The amount of mana it requires isn’t big at all and its efficiency is nice.

Maybe I should sit down with Sophie and the twins when I find some time. Lately, they’ve been cooking up some really nice stuff.

“And what is Noodle doing?” I look at the pearl-white snake with green eyes. The beast with an ancient bloodline or something.

“Noodle eats mana!”

“I know that; he’s always done that. Did he become stronger, gain a new ability, or anything? What else can he do?”

Izzy starts thinking and then adds, “Noodle sleeps a lot too!”

I exchange a glance with the mentioned danger noodle, and he flickers his tongue towards me.

So eating and sleeping.

What a life.

I'm jealous. Not even joking.

 ***

POV Sophie Martinez

“That maniac is at it again!” Aaron says out of nowhere, and I look up from the table where the three of us draw our web.

By maniac, he can mean only one person. With a sigh, I connect to our web, and it's as he said, the maniac is there. He is going through the entire web of extremely delicate mana pathways I created as if it's nothing. He reads them at a speed that still shocks me, even now. How does he do that?

“Shhh, he might hear you,” Dennis says quickly and turns to me. “Should we try to push him out?”

“Just let him be, he did it multiple times before. He’ll get bored after a while,” I turn back to the table.

“But how does he do that? We are using [Connection] so we can all cooperate, and he just joins it. Oh, wow look! He made a change!”

“He is not connecting but infusing his mana into our web. I could spend more time on defenses, but there is no need for that now. And it’s okay, he is creating a backdoor so he can connect to our web more easily next time.”

Dennis also connects to the web to observe what the maniac is doing, “I wonder if it would be the same even if we didn’t restrict ourselves.”

“Yes, it would be,” I answer him. “But focus back on your work. That also reminds me you guys are getting better at this, so talk to him after the event. Maybe you can learn the coordinates from him and sell them for ten thousand shards. He will probably want a part of them, but you can earn a nice amount.”

“A few thousand shards is nice, but after hearing how much he has, it feels depressing,” Dennis sighs and connects to what I'm doing to help me with it.

His and his brother's skill are great and it helps to connect multiple smaller webs I have created and some other things. Both of them already got [Mana Manipulation], and I agreed to teach them a bit.

I am just happy that they do not blame me for failing to fight against the First One back then. I wouldn’t blame them, and they were angry, but after what happened to Aaron's disciple on the 5th and to them on the 6th, they opened up a bit. Things here are complicated.

For me, it’s also a new experience, but for now, I will go with what Tess wants. It's not that bad, and most importantly, Izzy seems to have fun. She also finally stopped bothering me to befriend others.

Her [Empathy] is something else, a really scary skill, and my precious little sister is slowly growing up. Surrounded by danger she shines so painfully brightly, constantly reminding me how much I love her.

The same is true for the twins; I can see the constant messages they exchange and the care they show for each other.

“So what do you think?” I ask them as they both examine my preparations.

“We probably won’t be able to finish it before the attack starts, but around somewhere in the middle, we will be able to convert your webs into one for a short moment. The communication part is easy.”

“That much should be fine; Gareth and his group's pathetic web can fuck off.”

“Yeah, fuck off Gareth!” the twins smile happily, “Our skills work well together. Maybe we can become the psyops unit of group 4.”

“Tess will be the leader, and Lily will be our healer, Biscuit and Noodle our mascots. Izzy, we will come up with something for her to do, and Kim can be long-range artillery with Tess while Maya will tank for us.”

“How about the maniac?” I ask curiously, using the nickname the three of us gave him.

“He’ll be the person we’ll call when we want to blow shit up.”

***

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