Chapter 121: Decoy or real?

"Surely there is more to this mission, but I seriously hope you are wrong about this..." Castiel said after thinking more about it.

"Yeah, all we can do is hope for the best, but we still have to make extra preparations for the worst. No one wants to die on their first mission." Blake said with a stoic expression as his eyes were focused on the holographic map of the city which was at the center of the room.

"If the difficulty of the mission eventually turns out to be higher than the rank of the mission, the hirer will pay close to or if not double the price of the new assigned rank. Also if the members of the adventurer's party were to be injured due to the misinformation, the hirer would pay more than just hospital bills." Susan said when she noticed the tension in the room.

She had wanted to use the idea of making a lot of money if things went wrong, but it didn't make even close to half of the intended impact. To people like Blake, Brian and Castiel who were probably the most burdened youths in both Infinite realm and Earth talking about gold coins when their lives were at risk was no way to motivate them.

"Only if we survive can we talk about getting gold coins." Blake didn't take his eyes off the holographic map while talking.

"I will be at the reception in case you guys need me." Feeling awkward about the reply and seeing that there was no need for her, Susan excuses herself and went back to her post.

An hour later after they had done more planning, the trio came out of the well-equipped planning room and met up with Susan at the reception.

"Can you show us where to register for accommodation?" Blake asked.

"Sure, please follow me..." Susan said as she led them to the other side of the 5 story building.

"This is as far as I can go, I will be returning to my post..." Susan said her goodbyes.

'Guess I am missing her already.' Blake thought when he saw a brunette with deadpan eyes as the receptionist.

"Not sure if it's only me but I don't like the kind of vibe she is emitting..." Brian whispered.

"Uhmm."

Standing at a place and staring at the receptionist would raise too many unwanted questions and thoughts, so they walked up to her.

"We would like to rent 3 rooms..." Blake said to the receptionist who had a name tag on her chest that read Haley.

"2 gold coins per night and that will be 6 gold coins..." Haley said with an emotionless expression and in a tone so flat, that made them wonder if her facial muscles were still functioning.

Keeping the questions that popped up in his head, to himself, Blake handed over 30 gold coins for 5 days.

"He will show you your rooms. Enjoy your stay." Haley made a slight bow as a steward took them to the third floor.

"Before I go in let me ask, why did you choose Grock?" Blake asked with raised brows.

"That was the only name in my mind and I've been a defensive player all my life, my game characters, even my elements..." Brian replied with a sheepish smile.

(AN: if you play mlbb you should know the hero grock.)

"Okayyyy…" Blake stared at Brian with an odd expression. "Anyways, today I found out I don't know much about the association, so I have a lot to read." Blake waved the adventurer association's booklet in the air before injecting mana into the doorknob before entering his room.

…

After dinner, Blake returned to his room and began absorbing energy from the beast cores.

In the afternoon he had already looked through all the pages of the booklet and that was all the system needed to know about everything in the book.

[Interesting… Adventurer parties have quite some power, even the ash corps have to respect adventurers when they are on duty, as long as they are not against the law.] While Blake was absorbing energy, the system told him about the important information in the booklet.

'From everything I have seen so far, the adventurer association should be on par with the 3 empires.' Blake said after deep pondering.

[What makes you think so?] The system seemed to be interested in his statement.

'No country or empire would let an entity that threatens its authority to remain on its land, unless the entity is on the same level as the empire or that the empire will incur an irrecoverable injury.' Blake explained through their mind link as he didn't stop absorbing energy.

[What an interesting line of thought. If what you say is right, then the adventurer association is way stronger than you think.

Remember, the adventurer association is in every empire, which means if they are much of a threat the three empires should have teamed up to fight against them, but since that hasn't happened it means the adventurer's association should have enough power to destroy one or two of the top 3 empires.] The system ran a further analysis and the result left Blake speechless.

"Anyways these are speculations, we might be missing a lot of details and we might also be very far from the truth. So let's leave this and handle the work at hand." The system's analysis made him lose concentration, but he managed to quickly maintain his cool and continue absorbing energy.

'So, what do you think about the commission?' Blake asked.

[Just like you said something is off about the mission, but if enough preparations and certain factors are put in place it would be a success.

From series of analysis and experience, this is a mission with many decoys and that is why the route you guys would follow is fixed, so as not to come in contact with the other decoys.

Now the question is, are you guys a decoy or carrying the real thing?] The system's explanation forced Blake to come out of his meditation position and ponder deeply.