'I can get us inside,' Jake thought as he struck the fake ore layer with his chisel and hammer, making crevices around it. 'This fake ore layer has weak spots, allowing miners to do fake mining. If there was a layer impossible for a low-level player to mine, the alliance would have investigated it! Whoever created this last hurdle must have thought about it.'
It was this countermeasure against anyone finding the hidden path that helped Jake.
He was confident in breaking in.
Time was against him, however.
Jake stressed that inwardly as he worked on the impossible obstacle.
Behind him, Prince and Sin exchanged glances. These two were a perfect duo for leveling up and fighting against monsters and other existences, but they surely wouldn't have reached this point without Jake's help.
The fact that it all depended on him made them less selfish.
Their current goal centered on breaking in and enabling their party to take a glance at Cerberus. What was after that could wait for the future them!
A few minutes later, Jake shattered the tough obstacle.
It crumbled like an old building.
"We can go inside," Jake said. He smiled from ear to ear, and his voice was thrilled, to say the least.
Going past him, Prince tapped Jake's shoulder and congratulated him in his unique way. He felt much fonder toward the man who had facilitated him! It could have been said that Prince liked anyone parting curtains for him as he stepped onto a new stage!
Jake did that more than once.
In the darkness of the hidden path, Prince's dark armor stood out. Expensive though it may have been, Prince's presence completed the image of him owning everything here.
It was like the lord had returned to his home.
The hidden path was tight but high enough for a tank like Prince to enter. This gave Jake's team the idea that another tank must wait at the other end.
It'd be pretty difficult if that were the case.
At the other end of this hidden path, a high-level assassin had turned his head behind.
He said, "We have uninvited guests."
"The alliance?" asked a man wearing lean red steel armor and wielding a sword.
The assassin shook his head, "Can't tell. They're low-level players, though. They might have found out about us by chance."
"Even if those guys are sent here to investigate about us, Cerberus is at his final stage. Nothing can stop our descent to the dungeon room to steal him! Alva, take care of those noobs," the swordsman said.
Alva—a high-level mage—nodded and slowly walked past everyone to meet the pests.
"If I miss all the fun, I will kill you guys," Alva said as he strolled toward the hidden path's other end. It took him only a minute to see the tank in expensive equipment whose presence was stealing the spotlight.
Mighty though he was, Prince's level and stats were naked to the experienced mage.
At such a high level, players developed various skills to see through their opponents. Those skills turned low-level players nearly naked, meaning Alva could see that Prince was indeed a low-level player who could only dream of going past him...
That said, his armor would fetch Alva a few precious gold coins.
Ignoring his words, Sin pressed her sword stronger against the barrier, conjuring sparks. So many of them flew past her head that her face shone. In a few seconds, she drowned in them.
At the same time, Prince screamed, "Stealing Spotlight! The Undead Knight's Gauntlet!"
Two crowd-control skills went past Alva's mana barrier and hit him. One of them was a taunt skill, which differed from what players learned on the mainland. The skill could breach the high-level player's mana zone, after all!
That said, such a weak skill should never be able to taunt the high-level player.
Yet, it worked.
Which was because of The Dark Knight's Gauntlet. Prince put his pride on the line and activated one of his epic skills that forced anyone and anything, regardless of their status, to face him.
Prince shouted, "If I can return to life to stay on stage, of course, I can make it my own!"
That skill turned off all of Alva's active skills.
Of course, he could activate them again in this battle against the dark knight. Nonetheless, what Prince and Sin wanted were the precious seconds.
Hidden beneath the sparks, Sin spun and kicked the mage's dominant hand. Now, he couldn't use his strongest skills for additional seconds!
"Jake!" Prince and Sin screamed.
Understanding their goal, Jake passed the defenseless mage and rushed to the other end of the hidden path—he didn't even glance behind.
He knew these two went out of their way to expose their best skills to make a path for him! Prince had turned into an undead, and Sin didn't even think twice before meeting the high-level mage face-to-face.
It was difficult to know whether Jake would succeed at the end of this hidden path, but these two didn't want to disappoint him after what he had done to them.
He enabled them to enter the hidden path, so these two would enable him to go past the high-level mage!
"We're even now, my dark horse!"
"He's not yours, as I said before."
"Hah! Now that I've thrown the gauntlet, I won't die until I punch that poor bastard's face! He looks like someone who has never had a million in his bank account!"
Jake smiled. No, he was grinning so much because of them! It was so nice to see Prince being himself and taking pride in his wealth that he even started insulting others with it. Sin was also more active and rebuked his every word.
They were in such a good mood that Jake couldn't think of a failure!
Alas, that was when the assassin of The Ark appeared before him.
"I don't know how you could go past Alva, but that's where your endeavor ends," the assassin said. He disappeared into the darkness and reappeared behind Jake.
Of course, Jake had expected that.
Those assassins liked going behind people!
But even that knowledge wasn't enough.
The blade sliced through Jake's neck.
He fell like a broken marionette.