Chapter 787 - The Nest (Patreon)

First, I ignore everything else. The fingers on the ground, thehand, the items, and the notifications. Instead, I expand my senses as far as I can, searching for any danger even though I know the beginnings of the floors tend to be the safest. I repeat the scans several times, cycling through each sense, until I am satisfied.

Once done, my eyes are pulled to the hand and the four fingers. Even severed, they radiate a pressure that continues to ramp up as any restrictions that suppressed and hid the velnar’s power have now ceased to exist. The blood from the cut off hand melts through the ground. It already caused the grass to grow much taller around it, and at a speed visible to the naked eye, the tree nearby also changes and grows.

The mana radiation from the hands is at the point I won't be able to suppress it anymore, and I know we will need to move away soon. I don’t even think we have anything able to hide it, and I’m sure if there is any Champion in the area, they will be able to sense it soon. Possibly even the Absolute from much further away.

I look around one more time. The place looks like the countryside, and as far as my searches go, I can detect no humans, monsters, or animals. It is dead empty here, just a small valley nestled between unassuming mountains, and that mountain range stretches further beyond.

“We have to move,” I tell Tess as I move toward her. “Can you? And how is Lily?”

At this point, her left eye is covered by what seems like an improvised eyepatch, which is held by a few threads coiled around her head.

“It will be fine. I just messed up with the [Declaration], so it might be… a bit more difficult to heal. None of us has any healing worth mentioning, so I don’t know how Lily is.” In a gesture she does when she is frustrated, she moves hair off her face. “Multiple powerful monsters attacked her at once, and I think the one that caused it used a toxin while sacrificing itself to make it stronger. I don’t think it will kill her, but I also have no idea how long before she deals with it. Sophie said it isn’t anything mental and that her mind is okay. How about the hand?”

Tess gestures toward the sizable hand covered in black fur. Right now, it is barely visible through the vibrant grass, flowers, and trees that begin to grow around.

I shake my head. “There is no chance we are taking it with us. In a minute, it will be able to kill anyone below level 100 who just comes closer, and in a few hours, possibly even people around our level, and create a danger zone similar to the ones we have seen. We need to be gone long before a Champion notices it. If we were still holding it when that happened, it would be valuable enough for them to kill all of us without hesitation.”

“Got it,” Tess says simply. “I will carry Lily and tell the others. Please check on Biscuit.” She is already walking as she says the last words, putting her hand on my shoulder for a moment to emphasize them.

I watch her leave toward the group, and just a few seconds later, they start gathering all our stuff. Izzy is still hurt and having spasms. Tess is missing an eye, wearing the eyepatch. Lily is unconscious. Biscuit is sad for the ferret, even to the point of ignoring the deer, he still carried through all of that.

Now I look at that deer's body. It looks majestic, white-furred with grand antlers. Those creepy mouths are not seen from this angle. A monster created for the tutorial only to be killed and then carried to another floor.

A face of the Lycan also flashes behind my eyes. That short moment of anger as he realized that all his thoughts and what he thought were memories of real life were fake. Then all of that was replaced by a blank expression as the System proceeded to reset it all to fit within the constraints of the tutorial. Because this is what it all is. Even if Hell difficulty, it is still a tutorial. There are rules we can abuse, things to learn, ways to cheat, and chances to survive where we would die for sure outside.

There is no uncertainty in my mind about that, but if we found the Lycan outside of the tutorial, we would spend the rest of our lives trapped there. A hundred, three, five hundred years, I have no idea how long we could live with our current levels and abilities, but that’s it.

To someone like that velnar man, who spent over three millennia there, it would be nothing. Not even a bother. For us, though, it would be entire lifetimes, years in which we would grow old and die. All of it, just like that, because of a single wrong decision.

Just how scary something like that is. I wonder what would pre tutorial me think of that, how terrified he would be.

I pass by the pile of items I took, among which I’m sure there is at least one low pristine. Right now, they feel like little more than trash in my way, entirely unimportant as I stop in front of Biscuit and sit down before him. Even now, I continue to suppress the quickly growing pressure from the Lycan’s hand and fingers.

Gently, I reach out my hand and put it on the side of Biscuit’s face. “I’m sorry about what happened to your friend.”

Biscuit stays quiet and, unlike before, when there was a threat to deal with, he allows his emotions to affect him more. I can sense it through the bond we share. I also feel regret for not trusting him more about the ferret and letting my image of it influence me so much.

I’m not someone who trusts easily, and I also know how naive Biscuit can be. Unlike me, even after all that happened to him, he tends to see the best in anyone he meets. Where I almost always see a threat in someone who is equally strong or stronger than me, Biscuit doesn’t care at all. For him, it’s just a possible friend.

Maybe it could have ended differently if I allowed his feelings about the ferret to influence me more and if I had trusted him further.

(Friend,) He says quietly.

“Yes,” I answer, carefully caressing him as he presses his face against the palm of my hand.

(Dead.)

“Izzy lives thanks to your friend.”

He lowers his head further and stays quiet. I allow him some privacy as I weaken our bond for a while before I whisper very gently, “We have to go. I’m sorry.”

Biscuit looks up at me and then nods. With his head, he pushes my hand away and turns to head toward the rest of the group. The deer’s body stays behind, entirely ignored by the corgi.

I rejoin the others as well, and we begin to rush away. The entire time, Sophie and I do our utmost to erase any signs of our presence, but we are not naive enough to think someone much more powerful than us wouldn't notice or be able to locate us. After a short talk, we leave some new tracks to make it seem like we might have passed by, noticed the severed hand of an Absolute, and fled.

There is just a hope no one will notice before the end of the floor. After all, if you are an Absolute, leader of your planet and the most powerful person here, what would you do if you found the hand of someone of your level simply thrown somewhere on the ground?

As we move, I also shield the items we carry, the pieces from the Elf’s experiment, and all the other loot.

In the meantime, a small part of my mind reviews the notifications.

Congratulations! You have cleared the 9th floor of the Hell difficulty tutorial.

Welcome to the 10th floor: Wyvern Nest.

You have acquired:

Trait strengthening token (up to 2nd stage)

Two active skills combination token

The rewards are as expected, given how little time I spent on the floor, they likely could have been much worse. I close that window and open another one.

Floor Quest:

With people unaware of its true nature, the first Wyvern egg to appear in 100,000 years has been found on this planet and is currently located in the city of Hadon. It is set to be gifted to a local Champion in two months as an egg of a rare monster.

While no one knows its true identity as a Wyvern egg, locate it, steal it, and keep it in your possession for three days.

Rewards:

???

Three active skills combination token

Even now I can tell what a mess this floor will be. I need to stay with the others at least until I’m sure they are somewhat safe, only then can I return to the Beyond to head to the 5th floor to face the Champion. After that, I might have time for the Beyond quest to get Everwood. All that should probably take a week or two, and then I will likely return to the 10th floor to help with the quest, which this time isn't as forgiving as the 9th floor quest.

As annoying as some parts of it are, I can't bring myself to feel much anger. It all could be much worse.

***

After two days, we are hundreds of miles away from where we started. Seeing a bit more of the 10th floor as we purposely passed by a few cities and villages to gather more information, I can say that this floor reminds me of the 2nd floor the most when it comes to levels of people, technology, and all that stuff. The difference is that the natives here are feylith.

They are a race with small wings and eyes, and hair that change color according to their emotions. They also often have a talent for mental magic, even if not to the level of a mind mage like Sophie. If you averaged it all out, they would likely have the most mind mages of any race.

Thankfully, they aren't the only race here, so we don't stick out. We meet a lot of humans and selari as well, which makes me wonder if the System makes adjustments, and if a thylarin would meet thylarin and selari in addition to feylith. It is a useless question at the moment, yet I still wonder.

Now, according to the information given to us, we stand at the top of a mountain. In the green valley below, the city of Hadon lies nestled right against an enormous lake. The city itself holds a million people and features a grand sort of architecture. There are towers as tall as skyscrapers, and also trees matching them in size. There is a reversed pyramid that shouldn't be able to stand. On the lake, ships constantly move, some of them enormous enough to hold thousands of people, and once in a while, a ship lifts up and begins to fly into the distance.

There are no walls around Hadon, just hints of an enormous defensive array surrounding the entire city, so intricate and with so many rules that it makes my head spin if I look at it too much. It remains mostly dormant now, using a myriad of sensors to gather information and adjust according to the rules stored in nodes all over the place.

Tess, after moving closer to stand by my side, looks with concentration at all of it. I can almost hear her mind spinning as she thinks.

Even now, she still wears the eyepatch over her left eye. Other than that, Izzy is better now and shows no more signs of tremors or spasms. Only Lily, though breathing calmly and healthily otherwise, remains unconscious.