90 90 - Where's the Portal?

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'What the fuck was that?' the two said at the same time as they stared at each other without knowing what just happened.

Unfortunately for both of them, they were not alone with free time to talk and find out where Lilly's sudden attitude had come from, as while they stared at each other in surprise, Jasper approached Noah and ran his hand in front of his face from top to bottom.

"Is anyone there? Earth to Noah!" Jasper was saying as he moved his hand up and down in front of Noah's eyes that were apparently out of focus.

Noah focused on Jasper's hand and looked at his friend with a doubtful look. "What is it?"

"What is it? Man, you were in a lot of pain, and out of nowhere you were silent for a few seconds just looking at your snake, AND WHERE DID THIS SNAKE COME FROM? YOU NEVER TOLD ME THAT THIS WAS A SNAKE. I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A BEAUTIFUL BRACELET YOU WERE USING! " Jasper started screaming as he pointed at Noah and Lilith with confusion on his face.

Noah finally realized where he was, sitting on the floor holding Lilly in his hand while at least 10 Blessed Ones were standing around him looking at him with concerned and curious expressions. "It's okay, Jasper. In fact, this snake is my partner. I bought her at a monster store and I have taken care of her for some time. She is a high ranking monster."

Hearing Noah's explanation, they finally understood why he had a snake wrapped around her wrist, and also why the snake was so quiet and behaved while it was wrapped around his wrist, since only a high-ranking monster would have so much intelligence to obey an order as specific as being wrapped around someone's wrist. What made them confused was why this monster accepted a contract with Noah, since normally the higher the rank of a monster, the more difficult it was to make a contract with said monster.

"Is that a high-ranking monster? So that was her ability that made the Boss stand still?" Jasper asked with raised eyebrows as he pointed at Lilith.

"Yes, but that ability was too powerful for her to be able to handle it, so she needed to bite me and use my own energy to stop the Boss. Imagine the feeling of your energy being pulled out by spikes from inside your body; that was the way I felt. I just hope this is not something that will always happen." Noah said a lot of bullshit to explain Lilith's ability. He couldn't tell them that Lilith had actually bit him because she needed to level up, let alone say that she could use that ability a few times with relative ease, since that knowledge would not be beneficial to them at all, let alone he didn't want to arouse excessive greed from anyone in the group who might want to have Lilly.

And just as Noah had expected, people looked at Lilly with a look that contained a little envy, but much of it was actually happiness, since if one of the group members had a strong monster, soon the group's strength would become stronger in general as well. It was just a shame that they were already suspecting that Noah wouldn't be in the group for long.

That was true, even Jasper and Marcel knew it. Noah's growth rate was unusually high. It was not a pace that someone who had only a Rank C Blessing could follow. Perhaps only Marcel could accompany Noah at the speed of his evolution. Since Marcel had been in Rank F and Rank E for a long time to consolidate his power base, it made it possible that, if he wanted to, he could just concentrate on getting strong as quickly as possible and in a short time he could go into rank C Fortress. Unfortunately no one else in the group could do that but Noah and Marcel, so they had accepted that it wouldn't be long before they both moved on to other more advanced groups after they became Blessed Rank D.

But as long as they were to remain on the team, the chance of surviving in a Rank D Fortress was much higher for the group, as they had two humans with monstrous power who could easily take care of the most dangerous monsters in the Fortresses. Unfortunately in this Fortress, Marcel was unable to show his strength as much as Noah had done, but an opportunity like this would soon arise for him, since in Rank E Fortresses, Marcel never fell behind Noah in terms of being useful within their confines, especially before when Noah was "just a mage".

But letting go of that thought, Noah looked away and saw Mufag holding a worried expression on his face at the sight of everything, alternating between Noah and the big pile of corpses. Noah easily understood what the little dwarf was thinking. Still feeling some pain, Noah got up and slowly walked towards Mufag with a sad smile on his face.

Pretending to be making signs to communicate with him, Noah bent down to the dwarf's height and said, "Do you want help finding your parents? The Fortress Boss... the, um, strongest monster on the train has died. You don't have to worry."

Hearing Noah's question which practically gave him permission to do what he wanted, Mufag nodded and ran with his shoulders down towards the pile of corpses to look for his parents.

Noah told the rest of the group, and in addition to BigBull and the healer who was taking care of him, the Blessed all came together to help the little boy look for his parents. They still had conflicting thoughts about these Fortresses, as they still weren't sure if this was really another world or if it was really just a very well-programmed simulation. But in their consciences, they could not watch a desperate child who had lost his parents and just sit idly observing from a distance and do nothing.

With the 13 Blessed and the little dwarf looking, they quickly searched through all the corpses and only a few resembled the characteristics that Mufag had said to Noah, which he had passed on to the other humans.

After searching the bodies again and truly confirming that there was not even a man, let alone a woman, with the characteristics that Mufag had described, since in the pile of bodies there were only male dwarfs, with females strangely being impossible to find among the dead, they were confused by not being able to find either of their targets.

"Mufag, do you have any idea of ​​anything that might help us in the search? Any information that you didn't think was relevant and ignored? Try to remember," Noah said in a calm voice to the boy. This whole situation was much stranger than they had originally imagined. It made no sense that the women's bodies could not be found anywhere.

Mufag put his tiny hand on his chin and tried hard to remember any information he hadn't said before. While Mufag tried to remember something, Eric, the one blessed with good vision that Noah had met with Jasper at Rank E Goblin Fortress said something that caught the attention of the other Blessed. "Guys, where's the portal?"

Hearing what he had said, the Blessed ones immediately noticed something was indeed strange. Normally, within a maximum of two minutes after they had killed the Boss, the familiar black portal with purple plasma would appear next to the place where the Boss was defeated, so that the Blessed could return to their world, but so far, even though they had killed the Boss quite a while ago, the portal did not appear.

Seeing this, in addition to looking for Mufag's parents, the humans started looking for the portal as well, thinking that it might have appeared somewhere hidden behind all the corpses, but strangely, the portal couldn't be found anywhere.

Only one possibility for this to happen came into Noah's mind, but he didn't believe it could really happen, since they'd gone through so much trouble getting here. It wouldn't make sense that the possibility that Noah had thought of was true. If that were really true, Noah couldn't help but think that they were actually in a Rank C Fortress instead of just a Rank D Fortress. The monsters they had already encountered were obviously stronger than the information they had received about the average strength of Rank D Fortress monsters.

Not to mention the Boss: that if it weren't for Noah and Lilith having such powerful abilities, it would have been practically impossible to be dealt with just by a team of ordinary Blessed Rank D. If the Boss was already so strong, they thought they had simply had the misfortune to enter a peak Rank D Fortress. But seeing that the portal had not appeared so far, Noah thought that the possibility in his head was most likely correct.

At that moment, Mufag, who was trying to remember something that could help the group, finally spoke up, "I remembered something!"

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Please read the author's notes down here! :3 ↓↓↓