Chapter 52 - Search

"You're too noisy," Meurig said as he turned to the two girls and smiled.

When the two girls saw Meurig, they instantly yelled for help. After all there was a large monster in front of them. Seeing the commotion that Meurig had caused, Yuki jumped down from the branches of the maple tree he was stationed at. He gently stepped in front of Meurig and held a helping hand to the two girls.

"Don't worry about my friend here. He may look scary but he's surprisingly soft on the inside," Yuki explained.

He put his palm forward and put up a fake smile to get the girls to let down their guard.

"How about you two get on your feet and we help you return to wherever you came from?" Yuki proposed.

The girls sniffed through their nose as if they had been crying for many hours.

"There's no need to be afraid. Everything has been taken care of, you can go back to your families now," Yuki assured them.

The two girls looked at each other, gave a nod and stood up with the help of Yuki. Before Yuki could even ask them what had led them to the position they were in now, the two girls sprinted in different directions.

"Well, you can't blame them for not trusting us," Yuki sighed.

"We should go after them, what if they get kidnapped again?" Meurig began to panic.

Yuki gave him a weird glance and chopped his head lightly.

"Leave them alone, you'll just look like a creep," said Yuki.

"But," Meurig tried to argue.

"You've done what you could and this is the dissuasion that they have chosen. Everyone must face their consciences to their actions as they are the ones to blame," Yuki explained.

Meurig wanted to present his reasons for his beliefs but it was clear that Yuki was making the right call. Instead of pestering him, Meurig began walking behind Yuki as they continued their journey through the forest.

"This place seems a lot calmer than I remember. There's something off," Yuki mumbled.

"Meurig, you have your disintegrating ability, but you're also able to create an aura which incites fear into others. How does your base ability work?" Yuki asked.

"Well there's my initial disintegrating ability which as it says, disintegrates anything which is weaker than me. But it also has a side effect. You know how certain animals can sense danger? Because my ability invokes death, it has an aura which imitates large amounts of danger and fear," Meurig explained.

"Then why don't guns have that aura? They also can cause death," Yuki asked.

"I'll assume that you and your people don't know what a presence is. Basically, a presence is like body heat. Everyone has it and can emit it. However it isn't possible to control it. That was why once we had completed the 10th stage of the dungeon, we could sense the people who were waiting outside for you."

"My theory is that once someone levels up, they automatically learn to control their presence. So if they were to be an assassin, they could minimize their presence so that they wouldn't get noticed by others. While minimizing your presence is easy, realizing it is when it becomes difficult. Of course, as you level up, the extent to which you can control your presence increases and you'll eventually be able to emit a large presence. The reason my presence is so potent is because I am subconsciously merging my disintegrating ability with my presence. Since I am not touching my target, it only knocks them out instead of removing them from existence," said Meurig.

"So I won't be able to knock people out by just looking at them?" Yuki frowned.

"You can dedicate your ability to doing that but I doubt that would be a smart use of your ability. It would be better to just wait until you level up to the point where you can do that at will" Meurig reassured Yuki.

"So that's why the monsters haven't been attacking us. His presence must be keeping them away. Even brainless monsters know to stay away from death," Yuki thought to himself.

After some time, the sky began to get darker until it finally turned pitch black. The only source of light was the moon.

"Wanna take a break now?" Yuki asked Meurig.

"Sure, there's no point in continuing to walk now. We can barely see a single thing," Meurig replied.

"You can go to sleep, I'll keep watch," said Yuki.

Meurig nodded in agreement and laid on the cold grass of the forest. It was surprisingly soft. When Yuki had created the new world, the environment had also been reset. There was no pollution and the land wasn't disrupted because of construction operations. However, it wouldn't be much longer before the greed of humanity leads up to mass deforestation and other environment harming events.

[Open inventory]

Yuki activated his storage system which was a clear blue hotbar. The hotbar had 5 open slots per row and had a seemingly infinity extending columns. He pressed the crown icon and pulled it out using his index and thumb. As he pulled his hand from his hotbar, the "King's Crown" began to enlarge until it returned to its original size. Once the crown returned to its original size, Yuki placed it on his head and began to activate his next plan.

"I really should've thought of this before, I ended up wasting a lot of time," Yuki thought to himself.

Yuki began to think of the zombified wolves which he had faced in the 2nd stage of the dungeon. Summoning many of them wasn't hard as they were part of the early stages of the dungeon. After Yuki had summoned 25 of them, he directed them to look for the next dungeon. Once they had received the command, the wolves went in different directions as fast as they possibly could, in hopes of being the one to be the most useful to their king.

"I don't get it, why do you push yourself so much? You still have your whole life ahead of you, you're still young. Why do you intend on using your early years on purely agonizing training?" Meurig asked.

"Couldn't get any sleep?" Yuki said as he sighed.

"Well it's simple. No matter how many times I tell myself that I am doing it to bring peace to the world, my real goal is selfish."

"I want to become the most powerful so I never feel helpless ever again. I don't want to ever feel below anyone. I want to undeniably be the strongest," Yuki stated.