The Demonic Servant at Entry Point 021458 closes up the ether commands that give entry into the Citadel, but the twisted grin on his face doesn’t leave.
The Servant stands at the ready, monitoring thousands of other Lords he’s sent down into the wilderness. Many of which are intelligent beasts he’s categorized and sent to agreed-upon regions with similar crown levels and suitable environments.
Usually, unintelligent beasts stay with their own, within the biomes they’ve been sent to.
However, intelligent Lords often wander.
These Demonic Guards, especially the 1st Class Guards, have a small amount of control over the environment in the wilderness.
Certain beasts can be manipulated to hunt targets or keep unstable biomes in line until more Lords are sent in to keep the population regulated.
Though a bit of chaos is necessary, the Servants don’t interfere much more anymore, other than choosing where to send the Lords that wander from Mensa and Ellipsia.
This is an important choice because a small fraction of crown experience gained by the Lords entered into the Wilderness is granted to the Servant that sent them down as a referral bonus.
While a Demonic Servant wouldn’t normally think twice about a random 5th Class Human and 3rd Class Goblin, a small interference in its tracking system upon entry into the construct makes the Servant pull up his system with interest.
It initially programmed these two rogue Lords from Ellipsia to be sent to a tame zone in the wilderness, where other humans and goblins were mostly sent. Yet, a fluctuation in the 3rd Class Goblin’s Avatar rerouted their path.
After checking and confirming that it was only about 45 thousand kilometers off from where the Demonic Servant initially meant to send them, it decides to leave it be.
The diameter of the Wilderness is over a million kilometers, and if one were to walk the outer ring of this construct, it would be a perfect circle almost 5 million kilometers long. In the Servant’s mind, such a small defect does not matter, especially for such low-class Lords; but following protocol, the glitch is sent in for manual review.
—
Meanwhile, I watch the pale human with long white hair down to its shoulders walk toward me. Its last words still replay in the back of my mind.
“You can stop faking those injuries now too. I can see right through them, you’re just wasting your mana…”
While getting found out isn’t what I planned on doing, this makes things even more interesting.
I grin and deactivate the illusions of my injuries while the final remains of the ether orbs from these beasts are absorbed, and their avatars fade away.
All that’s left around me on the ground are seven varying-sized blades, one from the troll I killed earlier and six from off the boss wolfman’s corpse. To my other side, a single black scale glows with green divine threads and a small amount of white ether.
While I was planning to flail to the ground to continue my act, I land on my feet instead, completely unscathed from the various fake near-fatal wounds, and stare back at this strange human with an equally untrusting glare.
“You can see through my trick and dare tell me? You don’t fear you’ll face the same fate as your leader?”
I send a mental note to Ava to let this human walk by, and she turns away, back to the two wolves that stare up at her like she’s their mom.
The pale human’s eyes dart back and forth, noticing that I’m interacting with Ava based on our facial features shifting, but it keeps a straight face and stares at me while walking right past the two wolfmen, then shrugs.
“I know you saw me hide before the serpent attacked, and we use the same light magic technique. It would be more suspicious for me not to point it out, don’t you think?”
While there is a hint of truth to this human’s words, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. However, framed like this, this white-haired Lord does make sense.
“That is true. But you’re only a 5th Class Lord, and I do not even sense a True Core in your chest. You should not have the reaction speed to do what you’ve done. Just because you’ve brought attention to yourself doesn’t make it any less suspicious—”
Before I finish speaking, the Lord stops right before me and places out a hand for me to shake.
“I sense nothing but positive intentions coming from you two. And if you decide to change your mind, I am powerless to stop you. The logical thing for me to do is make an alliance. Please do allow me to show you the way to the safe zone.”
I stare down at its small, feminine-looking white hand, and even more confusion falls over me.
The look in this Lord’s eyes is still tight, like a predator staring at an opponent, trying to find weak spots; yet at such close range, my purple barrier picks up on the sensation of fear, dread, anxiety, and, for some reason, loneliness.
“Well, I sure don’t sense anything positive coming off you…” I murmur while reaching out to grab the 5th Class Lord’s hand, then waste no time in spreading a wave of perception through it.
Its white eyes widen with shock once it feels my unfathomably dense mana control probing around in its body, expertly avoiding every single ether command and avatar setting, though my own eyes widen once I see what’s behind this Lord’s confidence and advanced perception.
A bright [Lv. 42,660] and [Supreme Light Summoning] hit my consciousness, along with a single ranked-up buff [Light Elf’s Eternal Curse] that makes this Lord’s appearance even more confusing.
Though, this level being so high does answer my questions about how a non-true cored lower class Lord had the reaction speed to watch my fight and hide from the serpent.
That still doesn’t answer my questions of where its other two buffs have gone, as its ranked up three times… but these thoughts are pushed aside once a warm feeling starts to appear in my senses as I dig deeper. It is extremely similar to the aura I’ve felt coming from all of my generals and Zashen the Berserker; but it most closely resembles the sweet and inviting aura that comes off Ava… Even the purple ring on my finger that makes contact with this Lord’s skin vibrates upon contact for a second.
However, before I can get any conclusive evidence, the small human pulls its hand back with a scared look and heightened heartbeat.
I throw both hands up and smile dismissively, now fully invested in seeing what or who this Lord really is. At first, I was considering killing it to upgrade my light magic and moving on with my search for the safe zone, but now I know this is no ordinary adventurer.
A wave of telepathy is sent through a small amount of mana I’ve released into the air.
“I was just making sure you weren’t out to kill me. Well, I guess I’m still not sure… but, I’ve decided I don’t care.”
I tighten my gaze again and put down my hands, and the Lord stares at me emitting even more fear but keeping a collected facade on the outside. If not for my purple ring, I wouldn’t be able to read its emotions.
It pushes out its own probing aura of perception my way for a full five seconds. I even feel premium avatar commands using system inspection tools activate. I let it invade the fake avatar I’ve created around me and give it amusingly low stats, below level 500, with light and fire magic summoning both at the un-upgraded rank as my only skills.
This only puzzles it further, and a weak response comes back.
“I’m… Ren.”
“You can call me Jay,” I reply, but after a small nod, Ren’s head turns backward fast. Loud footsteps are coming our way, but it’s just Ava with a mix between an annoyed and an amused look on her face, with the two wolfmen following close behind at attention, looking like her personal bodyguards.
“So it looks like we’re not killing them,” she bellows out, then throws her own hand out to shake. “I’m Ava.”
Ren hesitantly shakes the massive green hand but is relieved that another aura of invasive energy doesn’t wash through her again and replies as they step back from each other.
“You can return them to the pack once we get to the safe zone if you want…”
The Lord’s eyes dart to my side, where the leftover scale of the serpent rests on upturned earth, and I respond by mentioning it to Ava.
“Looks like we have a guide straight to the safe zone then. Let’s pick up this loot. I think their boss said there was some kind of bounty on that snake.”
Then, I start picking up the swords by my side one by one while Ava walks over and picks up the single scale.
I can tell Ren is even more shaken now that neither of us are reacting like this is a big deal, talking like they are allies and not enemies that just tried to kill us. The white haired Lord musters out another reply in a weak tone.
“Yes… there was a bounty. That 2nd Class Beast was eating a large amount of the wolf population over the last few weeks. If we bring it to the Adventurer’s Hub—I mean, if you do, they will reward you… even though you killed—”
Ren’s eyes stay on the swords where the boss died.
“No… The Serpent was taken out by the brave sacrifice from the King of Eden Forest, you mean.”
I cut this pale human off and smirk, handing all seven of the blades up to Ava as she stores them all in her ether storage.
“Oh—right… that’s what happened then.”
Ren gulps, and the two wolfmen behind Ava repeat my words as fact, as they did not have keen enough eyes to see what really happened.
“Old Boss sacrificed himself to save the pack! His nose never lies!”
“He sure did! Old Boss saved our lives and killed the beast!”
I nod and cross my arms, pointing my gaze off in the direction where the partially filled-in map shows the safe zone’s position.
“Well, no more wasting time. I’m ready to continue walking. How far is the safe zone off anyway? This map makes it look like it’s right in front of us, but then again, it looked like this two biomes ago…”
Ren takes a deep breath in and out, then turns where I’m pointing and starts walking like my wishes are direct orders that must be followed.
“It’s just at the edge of the forest, around the backside of the Eden Mountains. It borders two other territories… it should be less than a two-hour walk from here.”
Ava responds as we all begin to follow, moving out of the clearing where the destructive facade of a powerful display took place.
“Oh, so we’re already basically halfway there. How do the exit commands work? Is there a special platform or avatar update we get once we get there? I don’t see any pop-ups for it on my system like that guard promised…”
She starts scrolling through her system, and her eyebrows scrunch…
“Actually, now that I mention it, that timer for the fighting event is gone.”
My attention is captured too, and I check my subconscious to see Ava is right… That seven-day timer is completely gone.
Then, Ren replies to Ava in a shaky tone.
“Wait… you two are actually new Lords here…? You really still believe it’s possible to leave the Wilderness?”
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