I spend the next two hours thoroughly searching the area around me, making sure the lab isn’t hiding right under my nose. After searching enough to convince myself it’s probably not nearby, I wake Daniel up around an hour before sunrise by kicking his foot. His eyes shoot open and find me, and he sits up without even stretching or yawning, like some kind of robot. It amazes me how he’s able to go from sleeping to awake so easily.
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it? You’re supposed to wake me at sunrise.” He says while drinking from his waterskin.
“Yeah, sorry about that. I got a new [Quest] last night and need some time to complete it.”
He pauses for a second, and I realize he's probably checking his [Quest] screen. “Must be from your god or whatever. What does he want?”
I read the [Quest] details to him word for word, and he silently takes it all in until I’m finished talking.
“So he’s sending you on an errand, and you have to beat his rivals’ underlings, who are probably after the same thing?” He says while tapping his finger on his chin. “I would offer to help you search, but I think we both know I’d just slow you down.”
“That’s what I was thinking too. My plan is to search for the entire day, and then once I find either the lab or the enemy agents, I come back and bring you two there, and we deal with it together.”
“So you do all the boring parts and then call us in for the fun? Sounds like one of the best plans you’ve ever made, Ray. I’ll stay here with Corvax and maybe loot the area a little while you search for your lab.”
Corvax is still sleeping, so I leave without saying anything to him. Daniel will fill him in while I’m gone.
I start my search by doing something I’ve been itching to do since yesterday but have held back mostly due to low mana levels and then keeping watch. I push my spatial perception to its limit and find a nice rooftop a few hundred feet away, start feeding mana into [Space Control], and teleport myself onto the roof, making sure to bring my clothes with me this time.
I disappear from the room and reappear on the rooftop of a two-story building. The smile on my face might as well be permanent with how elated I feel. Out of all of the cool shit I can do with mana and skills, teleporting has to be at the top. I get a sudden feeling of vertigo and nausea as my surroundings suddenly change, but it goes away after a few deep breaths.
I spend the next few minutes practicing teleporting, going from rooftop to rooftop while slightly tweaking how I use [Space Control] to make the process faster and a little bit smoother, as the transition can be a little rough. A few more minutes later, I decide that my teleports are good enough for now and begin my search of this quadrant of the city in earnest.
I start by teleporting on top of a building and using my spatial perception to search the area thoroughly, making sure to constantly shift my field to find anything hidden. After I search an area and find nothing, I teleport to the next area and start my search over again, keeping track of where I have and haven't searched in my head. I find that it’s much easier than it should be to keep track of such a large area, and in the amount of detail that I can, but chalk it up to the wonders of the [System] and probably my space affinity.
During my search I end up finding some pretty interesting things, but I just make a mental note of them before moving on after confirming they have nothing to do with the lab. A few of the bigger houses have hidden safes in the walls, and one even has an entire wine cellar with some kind of security array still protecting it. I thought it was the lab when I first found it, but after breaking in, I found out it just belonged to a guy who really loved his wine. The array seems to have kept the wine protected from the ambient death mana as well, so I make a note to bring Corvax and Daniel here later.
After moving deeper into the city, I start to notice more mansions, all complete with a courtyard and wall surrounding it, all made of the same gray stone as everything else. I find a couple parks, or what I assume used to be parks, but anything growing here died a long time ago. All that’s left are a few stone paths and what looks like it used to be a fountain. One park still has a few standing statues left along one of the paths, and I imagine that it used to be quite beautiful before it was all destroyed.
Most of the statues are destroyed, lying in a pile of rubble on the ground, but a few have survived the passage of time. They don’t have any kind of plaque telling me what they're known for, or even their names, only their titles, carved into the stone at the base of the statue.
There is a statue of an angry-looking woman wielding what looks to be fire magic in both of her hands. Her title simply reads ‘34th Flame of the West,’ whatever that means. The statues depict a few different races, but most of them seem to be human, but it’s kind of hard to tell with what some of them are wearing and with the stone being an unpainted gray. I stop at one of the statues, of a stoic-looking human wielding a staff in one hand. The staff looks pretty plain, just a pole with a big gem housed on the top and a few carvings along the shaft. He wears a crown and a long regal cloak. His title reads ‘The Space Sovereign.’ I make a note to look up anything I can about this guy once we get back to civilization. He’s the only statue with any kind of obvious spatial relation, making him very interesting to me.
Unlawfully taken from NovelBin, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I quickly leave the park and continue my search, scanning each house or building for any sign of a hidden research lab. The hours pass by, but I stay focused. I want to do a good job on this [Quest], and hopefully finish it without a fight, because my gut tells me the enemy agents are probably fellow initiates. I read the exact wording of the [Quest] a few times, and it only says I have to stop them, not necessarily kill them. Finding the lab before they do is the best outcome, I think.
I find a few more hidden and warded safes in the more affluent areas of the city, which I add to my ever-growing list of things to loot in this city, and keep searching. After about twelve hours, I decide to go deeper into the city, but after a few teleports, something catches my attention right at the edge of my spatial perception field. I immediately recognize it as the fog that blocks off dungeon entrances and completely stops my spatial perception.
It lies in a small building, an inconspicuous shack in the corner of a large courtyard. The shack has a hidden hatch that leads to a small basement room with the fog on one wall. I teleport to the roof of a nearby manor and scan the local area, looking for anything out of place. After finding nothing, I teleport into the basement of the shack and step through the fog. It’s about five feet thick based on how many steps I took to reach the other side.
On the other side of the fog is exactly what I expected: a small room with an array on the floor. Touching the array, I get a notification.
[You have found a converted dungeon]
[Skill Core Research Lab]
[Minimum level: 0]
[Current occupancy: 0/5]
[Do you wish to enter? Y/N]
A converted dungeon? They converted a dungeon into a research lab? What does that even mean? And what is a skill core? I remove my hand from the array, and the notification disappears. I should get Daniel and maybe Corvax if he’s healed enough. I step back through the fog wall and into the basement of the shack.
I expand my spatial senses as soon as I can and nearly start chaining teleports back to the other two when I spot movement in my perception range. Three big-ass praying mantis-like creatures are walking along an alley together. They are a few streets away from me and seem to be heading straight towards me. The one in the lead is holding some kind of magic item out in front of him, and after watching for a bit longer, I realize it’s some kind of compass or tracker leading them right here.
Each of them stands about seven feet tall and has some slight differences from an Earth mantis. They have four arms, two ending in four-fingered hands, and the lower two ending in crab-like pincers. They have six legs coming off their long and skinny body but do not appear to have any kind of wings. Their heads are triangular, with two big eyes and mandibles over their mouths. Unfortunately, my spatial perception does not allow me to see their color, but if I had to guess, they’re green.
They aren’t wearing clothes but do have bags and pouches attached to their bodies. They also aren't using any weapons, which makes sense, I guess. They do have natural weapons after all, and they look physically strong and fast. It makes me wonder what kind of skills they got.
Merrick gave us a warning about these guys and how aggressive they are. Looks like a peaceful resolution is off the table. I’m not going to try and make peace with a bunch of bug people who are just going to attack me anyway.
I think they’re a lower level than me based off of the mana I feel coming off of them. Less mana is coming off of them than Daniel or Corvax, who produce less than I do, meaning that if they aren’t lower level, they are at least producing less mana.
With how close they are, how fast they’re moving, and the fact that they have a GPS leading them straight here, I don’t have the time to get Daniel and Corvax before they find this place, and I fail my [Quest]. I need to do something now.
I consider using my skills to launch several quick attacks against them by teleporting in and out and hitting them from odd angles, but after a second of thinking, I’m already almost in the perfect position for an ambush. Because I teleported down here, the hatch above looks like it hasn’t been used in centuries, and the basement room has a dirt floor, so no one will see my footprints. With a smile on my face, I walk back through the fog and into the dungeon entrance room.
Once inside the small room, I wait a few minutes for the mantis people to hopefully get closer and find the entrance, and then I turn on my sword and focus on the fog wall, waiting for any sign of movement.
Less than a minute later, I get exactly what I want. The lead mantis’s head is the first thing to poke through the fog, followed closely by one of his hands. My sword pierces its face with only a hint of resistance before I shoulder tackle the thing back through the fog wall and into its allies.
I ignore the notification as I swing my blade through the creature's head and at the next mantis, who is pinned under the first. My blade cuts deep into its… chest? Or maybe thorax. I’m not too familiar with mantis anatomy, but I am familiar with killing, which is what I do to the second mantis before turning on the third. It lunges for me with its pincers out, but I disappear right as it reaches me, causing the mantis to let out a clicking noise from its mouth before I behead it from my new position to the creature's left.
[You have slain multiple creatures]
[Level 15 Kryntari]
[Level 12 Kryntari]
[Level 13 Kryntari]
I turn off my sword and take in what I just did. I don’t feel quite as guilty as I think I should, and that bothers me more than killing them does. They are people, just like me, and I killed them. I struck first, before we even had a chance to settle this peacefully, and I would probably do it again. And I did it just so I could finish this [Quest] and get the rewards. I would have thought this was inconceivable just a month ago, but now I think I’m a murderer, and I don’t even care that much. I wonder if the other Earthen initiates feel the same way, if we are all adapting to this place. Either way, I have better things to do now than ponder the morals of this whole situation.
I pick up the magic tracker that they were using and put it into my storage core to examine later. I chain a few teleports together and make it back to the manor with Daniel and Corvax in about fifteen minutes. Corvax and Daniel are in the courtyard, sitting around a fire and talking when I suddenly appear between them, causing them to jump a little.
“Jesus Christ, Ray. There’s really no warning with that. You’re just gone one second, there the next.” Daniel says as he looks up at me. “Did you find it?”
“I did. I also ran into the other agents. They were three of the mantis people that Merrick warned us about. They are called the Kryntari.”
“So you already killed them, then?” Corvax asks. He looks mostly healed. There are only a few small wounds left on his arms. Surprisingly, none of the wounds left any scars, probably due to his sunlight healing.
“Yes, I had little choice. They were about to find the lab. I haven’t looted the lab yet, though, so we can explore that together.”
Corvax just nods. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
“How was the fight?” Daniel asks.
“Fast and easy. I ambushed them in a room too small for them to fight properly. And they were all lower level than me. The highest was fifteen.”
“Have you hit twenty-five yet?”
“No, still at twenty-four. You?”
“Same.”
“Did Corvax tell you what his class is yet?” I ask.
“No, he was waiting for you, but now we have something exciting to do.”
“I need at least an hour or two to regenerate some mana before I open that many portals.” I sit down in the third chair that they brought out to the firepit and look at Corvax. “So, what’s the class?”
“I got a few choices but ended up with [Sunlight Barbarian].”