79 79 - Answers

"I have a cousin who has dwarfism, and he definitely doesn't look like that guy," a young healer in the group said in an uncertain tone as she compared her cousin to this dwarf corpse, or at least, what was left of it.

Hearing what she said, Noah, who during school had liked to play various games with his friends, remembered something that was very common in the role-playing games he played. "This dwarf may not be a human, but just like in an RPG. In fact, his species probably is dwarf." Noah told the group as he put a hand on his chin.

Hearing what Noah said, some of the Blessed Ones who had already played RPGs quickly understood what he meant. The lightning wizard quickly stated as he pointed at the corpse, "This... His facial features fit perfectly with the stereotype of an RPG dwarf, and apparently he was a lot wider and what's left of his body also fits well with that stereotype."

"But what is a dwarf doing here?" Marcel asked aloud, with a contemplative expression on his face.

Unfortunately for the group, there was nothing special about the dwarf's corpse, nothing that proved that he was truly not a human, and also nothing that proved that he was.

The group had decided to be more cautious inside the Fortress from now on. The fact had already come to light that the Fortress was strangely a moving train, and now they had found a corpse of a dwarf, the likes of which had never been seen in another Fortress.

Fortunately, the group had been very impressed with Noah's Blessing. When he was walking slowly towards the monster, Marcel had regretted letting him try, since Noah was not showing any of his ability to support the confidence he had before, but as soon as Noah teleported in front of the monster, not only did Marcel's jaw drop, but so did the rest of the team's. None of the other Blessed imagined that Noah had such a powerful skill up his sleeve. He was already the most powerful wizard on the team, and no one was ashamed to say that, as Noah alone had managed to do more damage than two of the others at times. But seeing Noah move with that strange flame-blast ability left everyone, besides Jasper, completely impressed.

They thought that Noah at most would have an ability that would cause his agility to increase slightly, something like Jasper's Blessing, but they never imagined that Noah would have a skill as dominating as teleportation! It was a skill that was ranked at the top, considered to be one of the rarest and most versatile skills, and then there was the fact that a wizard on their team had developed that ability and none of them knew it.

They were right to think that Noah was being too lazy in helping Jasper, but the truth was that battles like this, where Noah only needed to teleport for short distances, were extremely advantageous for him since the [Hell Tunneling] skill would consume very little energy, since consumption was based on the distance covered in the teleportation. That is, if teleporting 10x to cover 100 meters would consume just a little more energy than teleporting 1x to cover those 100 meters, using only a single teleport would still be cheaper, but if you teleported several times around a monster from a distance of less than 30 centimeters, it didn't consume much energy at all.

The problem for Noah was, in situations like the Angry Birds Fortress, where he would need to teleport to the sky or run towards the birds to close the distance, which would probably tire him out a lot, decreasing his productivity by a considerable margin. Besides consuming more energy than he should using his skill, he would also end up wasting physical energy, which in general would decrease his efficiency in killing monsters and consequently getting exp.

Another thing that caught the attention of the group was the strange reason for the monster to protect its own belly. The monster had died face down; when they turned his belly up, they saw a recently made seam. The monster's entire body was extremely robust, but that place was much more fragile than normal.

When they opened its belly, what they saw inside shocked the group. Strangely, that monster had a processing chip. Apparently this chip was sending signals to another place while producing certain enzymes in the monster's belly to induce it to do something.

'Is this a new method of mind control? Something like a tummy control?? Mother told me that winning over women through good food could be called belly control, but I didn't think anyone would take those words so seriously...' Noah thought in horror.

"We will have to be careful, this Fortress is getting stranger by the moment. We don't know what will happen in the future, so be prepared," Marcel warned the group after reaching the same conclusion as Noah about the chip in the monster's belly.

As they exited the railcar through the door behind the monster, Noah explained to the team the fact about his Blessing that he could use it more often for shorter jumps without feeling strained, which made them understand why Noah acted like he was acting before with Jasper. But that didn't diminish Jasper's anger in the slightest, since Noah basically said he didn't want to get tired just like he had. Unfortunately Noah couldn't explain the real reason to Jasper, as he couldn't just say, "I couldn't help you because I would get less exp from this."

Fortunately for Noah, the monster's body had given him more energy by being absorbed by [Hell Flames] than [Hell Tunneling] had spent. This was one of the advantages of fighting in Fortresses of higher ranking, since the monsters in this ranking also generated more energy than in the previous ranking. This meant that as long as he didn't have to teleport long distances, Noah could use his ability to teleport during the battle almost carelessly. This would greatly increase his security, so it was not something he would complain about.

Unfortunately the dwarf had been dead for a while, so there was nothing the group could do to save him and possibly get answers to the questions they were looking for.

' Hopefully we'll find answers in the next cars...' Noah thought as he walked through the door.

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