Chapter 208: Curiosity

Chapter 208: Curiosity

I placed my hand on the device floating in midair among the trees. Erani and Ainash looked at it interestedly, while the Goblins standing among us seemed more concerned with whether Ainash was angry or happy with the recent development.

Making contact with the “Beacon,” I tried pushing my Mana into it once again to see what it could do.

Beacon requires at least one other placed Anchor Point to be activated.

Unplaced Anchor Points remaining: 1

“Uhh,” I said, “okay, so I need to place an ‘Anchor Point.’ How do I do that?”

“Since you activated the Beacon, you should automatically have placing privileges,” Index responded. “It should be instinctive, like casting a Spell.”

“Alright, so...” I closed my eyes and mentally searched for the trigger. After a moment, I found it residing within my mind, as though it had always been there. I hadn’t even noticed its appearance, but now that I found it, I had easy access. I flipped the switch, excited to finally see how the thing worked.

Could not place Anchor Point. Anchor Points must be at least 10,000 paces away from all other Anchor Points.

I sighed. “Well. Okay.”

“Is something wrong?” Erani asked.

“There’s some sort of additional requirement before I can use it. Gotta be entire cities away from here. Index, you can explain more now, right? Now that I’ve interacted with it?”

“I still can’t tell you what it does. But you should be careful about where you put down that Anchor Point. You won’t be able to move them around once placed, so pick somewhere good. Don’t just wander off in a random direction until you’re far away enough to place it down.”

“Well, how do we know what’s a good spot?”

“Hm. That’s a question. Uhh...Actually, when you get to that capital city you’ve been trying to teleport to, try throwing one down in a secluded place. A place that nobody will find it, obviously; remember, you can’t move it.”

I grunted. “Not sure I’m too big a fan of blindly putting down these things in random spots without even knowing what they do, especially if all I have is the one.”

“Technically, there’s always the possibility you can get more. If you find more of these Beacons, they can join in with the main network as additional Anchor Points.”

“What? Where would I—wait, what even is this thing? Where’s it from?”

“It’s made from highly-specialized, high-Level Enchanters. You probably wouldn’t find any specced into that path around here—honestly, chances are you wouldn’t find anyone anywhere who could make them. Just statistically.”

“Well, if we found one, that means its maker has to be around here somewhere, right? If that Dragon had it in its hoard, the Goblins had to steal it from someone.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It could be that the Goblins just found it buried in the forest somewhere, or that the Young Dragon was the one to bring it along into the forest, having gotten it from ancient ruin in the mountains. Could be hundreds of years old.”

“So, what, just ignore it for now? Until we get to the capital and then we set down the other point?”

“Keep an eye out for now. But yeah, probably not a priority.”

“Well. One more thing to add to the agenda then, I guess.”

Erani looked over at me once I was done talking with Index. “So? What’d you learn?”Ñ00v€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.

The next day, we prepared to head off into the mountains. Our goal was to find those missing border guards off in the south, which would hopefully be a good bit of money for relatively little work. Though, really, it was closer to gambling and hoping we stumbled onto their location—dead or alive.

Over the night, Erani and I had retired to our bedroom at the guild, so I was free to use Light Plate for Noxious Grasp training all night long. By the time I woke up, I was up to 3.39k out of the required 3.71k Spell XP for Noxious Grasp to hit Rank 19. And, of course, my leftover Time Loop uses got converted to Stat Points at midnight, as well.

Time Loop has refreshed its uses.

Recycled Loop has activated. Due to 3 uses being leftover, you have gained the following Stats:

I shrugged. “Not sure I agree with what you’re saying, but I can respect it. You obviously know more than me about the situation, that’s for sure. But, uh, we really aren’t friends. With the guards, I mean. Like, we barely know them.”

“So then what makes you so confident they’ll give us any information, even if they do know it?”

I exchanged a look with Erani. How was I supposed to express our relationship with Bon, Jannin, and Poppins? We’re frenemies? Friends that used to be enemies? Enemies that used to be friends? Maybe I could just say I’d threatened their lives enough times that they would probably do what I said if I came knocking, and that would suffice as an answer. Though, admitting to doing that would probably be a bad idea.

“We’ve had some disagreements in the past with them,” Erani spoke for me in a diplomatic tone. “They might believe some strange things about us, but we’ve mostly cleared the air, so we’re hoping they’ll be understanding enough to answer our questions.”

“Well, it should be quick enough that as long as they don’t hate you guys, we’ll be fine,” Sylvie said. “All we’re really gonna be asking is whether or not they’ve heard about the disappearances, and if so, whether they know what happened.”

“I sure hope the conversation is that short,” I muttered.

“Father,” Ainash sent me a mental message, “if Humans try to tell this one about you, try to turn her into bad guy, should I kill them all?”

“I’d sure hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.

“...So do I kill them?”

I sighed. “Just...if they’re telling her about my identity, sure. Kill the guards. But leave our ally alive. At least, leave her alive until she proves herself to be an enemy. I’ll probably just use Time Loop to undo it all, anyway.”

“Okay!”

Eventually, we arrived at the guard outpost. It was silent this time, despite the hour not being so late that they would be asleep. In fact, the sun had only barely begun setting behind the mountains. But I supposed they couldn’t all be shouting over each other every night; after years together, they had to run out of conversation topics sometime.

I led Erani, Ainash, and Sylvie over to the stone box, glancing up at the shut-tight windows. Hopefully this place would give us some sort of answers regarding the other missing guards. If I remembered correctly, Bon and his gang were only a few outposts away from them, so it wasn’t entirely unlikely. Not that I had my hopes that high, of course. These guys always seemed to prove less useful than I hoped.

I stepped up to their door with my companions behind me, and swung it open.

Inside were Bon, Jannin, and Poppins, all sitting around their living room table like usual. Only, when I looked at them, I saw them staring at me with surprise and fear. Well, I supposed that made sense; I had implied the last time I saw them that, if they ever met me again, it would be because I was there to kill them.

“H-hey,” Jannin said, holding sweaty hands up to me before I could even take a step into the building, “we didn’t tell her anything, okay? Promise.”

“What?” I glanced behind me to look at Sylvie before turning back to them. “Have you met her before?”

Jannin continued frantically, “I-I don’t know if you came here for her, but I swear, we didn’t say anything, man. Flamin’ nothing!”

“What are you talking about? Came here for who?”

Jannin continued stuttering on as the other two guards stared at me in fear, and I took a step forward to walk inside.

But just as I did, the blade of a battleaxe came swinging out from behind the wall, straight at my face.

Then it collided right into my nose.

You have been sliced. 56 damage.

Your Health is 624.

You have been inflicted with Burning Blood.

For the next 10 seconds, you gain the following effects:

You lose 1 Health every second.

Whenever you take damage from a physical source, that source deals an additional 50% damage, up to a maximum of 25 additional damage.