( Scene change ) : ( Unknown place pov )
A humanoid male figure with black hair was seen sitting cross legged then he suddenly opened his crimson eyes and coughed some blood and his pale complexion was now becoming even more paler than before and he directly roard to the ceiling with all he have but weirdly no one came to check on why was he yelling as if no one heard his scream at all.
If Ryuu was here witnessing such a scene he will be able to recognize that man as the Bloodlord who had just recently got his head be shattered to pieces by him , he then began to curse loudly and without caring about anything , said while roaring :
That damn guy attacked me and killed my clone mercilessly and just when i was about to completely heal myself and unlock my limiter too, what shitty luck was this !!.
And what someone with his strength was even doing by strolling in the Wicked Forest like that , arrrgggg he even cost me a Blood Link that took me a year to form and even caused a slight damage to my soul, curse him , now i will have to recuperate for half a year in hope of healing my injuries and will at least try to check of any possible way to regain my Blood Link quickly , but for now i will have to hide that one of my Blood Links were destroyed on a virtual island like world created by the Shard's Will nor will the info about being injured benefit anyone other my enemies, i have only been recently promoted after all .
Argghh, i really want that guy to die a thousand times no a million times will be barely enough to extinguish the flames of resentment i have for him in my heart .
~Beeep~
The door of the room or whatever he was in suddenly opened automatically then three older guys with white beards and all of these guys were wearing masks on their faces and black cloaks with red collars and were currently smiling as they came in , then one of them hurriedly went to the now quite injured young Bloodlord and he held his arm then said : littleLucien , who was capable of hurting you like this , you seem like you had quite the fight were you able to acquire the Shard ?.
The Bloodlord who was called Lucian began to become embarrassed as he told his grandpa : i was actually killed in that virtual island grandpa and the guy who killed me said to have the power of a Great Emperor .
Thewordsof his shocked all of the three elders but they were able to regain their composure quickly and one of them asked Lucien to hurry and tell them what had he encounter , which he complied to and told them about he met this guy in the place who he chose to heal himself in and told them everything that happened after and how his battle with that guy ended in his loss but he didn't say anything about losing one of his Blood Links for some reason .
Then the three elders looked at each other than nodded and one of them began to say : from what you have told us, we are 80% sure that he lied about being a Great Emperor powerhouse but his exact Rank and strength we aren't very sure but he must be at least a ruler and a a strong one too, did he give you his name ? .
He said he was a demon king called Blazan .
A demon should be quite easy for us to deal with before but now that they sided with the monster race it will be quite difficult for the Emperor to avenge you .
Voice 2 : where were your Veil Of Shadows by the way ? .
His sudden question caught Lucien off guard as he believed that he was currently wearing it but he then looked at his body and saw that the Veil was nowhere to be found then he remembered the words of his opponent when he told him that he was going to pull the Veil from his cold body .
That baaasttard .
( End of the scene change ) ( Meantime at the Wicked Forest ) :
Atchoo, did i caught a cold or was someone mentioning me somewhere maybe that Bloodlord was currently cursing me .
I'm now well rested but my brain is still bulging with questions, guesses for those questions and again more questions .
I began to increase my speed to reach the next safe zone in a short period of time since i already had enough adventures for today and i also wanted to ask Regard if he know anything about what that Bloodlord told me .
And was my guess about that Shard being the Will Of The World really feasible or just another wrong assumption of mine .
I spent the whole night in the Wicked Forest and i first thought that doing my hunting task and my other business, would only take me an hour or two at most but no .
I got to encounter a goblin invasion, a Goblin Lord, a bunch of worthless human beings, a colony of Kaiju-0 monsters which had quite the dormant secret in it, a what i presumed to be an extraterrestrial threat of some sort, an encounter which left me quite baffled .
And i had dealt was all of this in my very first visit to the Wicked Forest too , but weirdly though the thing that was currently burdening me the most other than the crazy amount of thoughts and questions currently exploding in my brain, with how i dealt with those Adventurers from before.
I wasn't regretting but i was contemplating on whether this act of mine had a good impact on the world now or a bad impact and my heart was currently telling me that it was a good one but my brain was telling me that i should have at least given them a bit of leniency at least for those whose crimes wasn't that serious but i still decided to side with my heart on this one.
As the reason that my brain gave me was about if they joined their comrades in what were they doing from stealing and even betraying their new members, but even if they didn't join their comrades their knowledge of such acts was enough me to condemned them all the same with their comrades, Regard's advice about not trusting anyone while at the Wicked Forest was very much true and it's not like i was the one that killed them .
I was galloping on the road while thinking about different kind of things that i have been through overnight and the fact that i lately discovered was my new resilience to the lack of food and drinks, my need to food and drinks was still there but was now quite manageable as i won't feel hunger or thirst until i thought about it like currently and if i just forgot about these kind of things, the urges for food and drinks also disappear .
I was completely unaware of a blood like eye with crimson iris appeared suddenly in the sky above the now barren area that i was in a few minutes before and after that blood eye appeared , its iris began to turn left and right as if it was searching for something then it suddenly focused on one direction, the direction that i was currently taking .
Then suddenly a bolt of crimson lightening came crashing down at the blood eye from the sky completely annihilating it but even while it was being destroyed it was still staring at the same direction from before , then it looked at the sky a moment before its disappearance, then poof it disappeared, i was completely unaware of the scene that just happened since i was currently quite a bit far away and i was also so engrossed in my mind, trying to piece together some of the information that i have just got .
Otherwise who knows what my reaction might have been if i witnessed the scene from earlier .
I wanted to try to decipher some of the information i got but i failed miserably as just when i tried to understand what was the place he called Real World but all i got was that he was just hallucinating or something but another reminder removed that reason out of this argument and that was his mentioning of the land we were currently in and him describing it as an Island .
So him spouting nonsense was quite unthinkable to me but since i won't be getting any answers by continuing this way i just dropped the whole trying to figure out what was going on thing out of my head and focused more on finding out how far i was from the next safe zone .
And after a few seconds of galloping i determined that i wasn't that far from the next safe zone from the bustling noise that i was beginning to hear as i continued on going forward, the voices ahead of me was beginning to sound more and more clear in my ears, a quarrelling of some sort was threatening to erupt ahead .
I was now able to see a tall tower in the horizon i turned off my Obsidian Armor skill and began to calm my agitated heart and mind down and began to head in the direction of the voices .
A checkpoint was at the entrance of the safe zone with some guards intensively checking the people that were trying to go in , and the numbers of people who were waiting for their turn were quite a lot, rows upon rows were waiting to go in but these rows were currently unmoving for some reason .
What do you mean by wanting to check our storatge pouch , we already showed you our IDs and our Adventure's guild membership card .
And i was now able to realize the reason to why did the queue stop moving , as i heard the quarreling voices which belonged to a bunch of Adventurers that were currently trying to enter the safe zone but were being stopped by the guards on the premise of having a need to check their storatge equipment which was something most of the people in the surroundings were against , since all of them had some gains which they wish to hide from the eyes of others .
They quarrelled for a few more minutes then it was the Adventurers who yield to the will of the guards to be more accurate, they yielded to the guards threats about prevent everyone who wouldn't comply from passing through and me and maybe all the people who were standing here were trying to enter the safe zone to use its teleportation circle, and if we weren't able to pass through this checkpoint our chance of using the teleportation circle will come close to zero .
But luckily everything had worked out fine in the end, and both parties the Adventurers and the guards came to a non-verbal agreement in which both parties will get what they want , the adventurers will get to enter the safe zone on their side of the agreement .
As for the guards they allowed those who paid some fees to pass through without having to be checked, and i wasn't surprised in the slightest, matter of fact my brain was wondering if the king and the guards were actually originally bandits who were recruited and subdued by the previous king but their origins were still affecting them .
A greedy king and a greedy guards, i believe even The Demon King Blazan wasn't this greedy or maybe he was who knows, Demons !!!.
Yeah that Bloodlord said that demons were here for the same purpose as him and that was to get their hands on the Shard , and he did look at me weirdly after i told him that my name was Demon King Blazan could the demons who he was taking about be the same demons that are like Blazan and those guys who are currently in Diblosia or was it also some weird coincidence and there was also the possibility of them sharing the same ancestry .
But if those demons at Diblosia were those who were mentioned by that Bloodlord, it will complicate things in this world even more sigh even though my old world was bad but i didn't have to deal with extraterrestrial dangerous enemies or the looming threats of being hunted down by a powerful race like vampires who called themselves Bloodlords.
Now that i think about it if Blazan was really some demon from outside of the island, i might have intentionally or unintentionally dug a hole for him since i impersonated him when that Bloodlord asked about my identity but it will probably be something of no severe consequences if he wasn't related to the demons who are here for the Shard .
But if he is then i will just hope for his entire race forgiveness .
As i was amusingly thinking about this, i heard a sudden cold voice saying with a lot of authority : Next which woke me up and i realized that it was finally my turn to be checked, i got a 3 goblin ears from my storatge ring and readied my papers, the scene of me using my stortage ring was being witnessed by the guards and other adventurers who licked their lips at the scene while staring intently at the ring on my finger.
I paid their greedy eyes and looks no mind and was about to hand out my identification papers which included my Adventurer's guild membership as well and just as i was about to put them on the table for the guards to check them a voice came from one of the standing on the left side of the table saying : you will have to give up that ring of yours for the checking to see if there might be something dangerous in it .
I believe i already paid enough fees or more than enough to exempt from the check so let's just finish this quickly since i may don't appear to be in a hurry but i'm quite busy, so if we can wrap this up more quickly, i would be quite grateful for your leniency , i said and i began to collect back my things from the table and begin to head inside.
Then a hand outstretched and blocked my way i looked at the man who stopped me and it was the guard from before he then circled his hands around my shoulder and whispered in my ear : tellme how come that you are wearing such rags and of such a low ranking, yet you were still able to afford owning a storatge ring, tell me did you killed a noble for it or who did you stole it from .
I was about to persuade him not to stick his nose in things that wasn't his business but he beat me to it and continued on saying : i shouldn't middle in other people's business but i will have 25% of the value of every item in that storatge ring of "Yours" , or i will just shout that you are a suspect of murdering a noble and that you even stole his items and look around you and tell me who do you believe from those lousy guys that won't offer his help in taking you down believing that he will get a piece of the cake.
I looked around with a raised brow and saw quite a few happy smiling friendly faces but i sensed no warm feelings from those smiles but sensed a cold killing intent hiding beneath those smiles looking directly in my direction as if they already set me as their target .
~Puff~ i wasn't able to hold back my laughter any longer, the bandits really recognize each other, the ring was stolen that was very much true alright .
But those guys all ganging up on me and trying to rob me after all i have been through seemed quite funny to me and especially that guard who said that he wanted 25% of the value of the items that the ring's content , i was still not even sure of all the items that were currently stored in the ring and this guy want to have a quarter of its value , how funny , this whole scene was quite funny to me .
And he was threatening me with accusing me of killing a Noble and stealing the ring from him, if i didn't satisfy his demands and the most apperant reasons he has for doing that was my shabby clothes and my lower ranking , again my clothes and appearance brought unnecessary troubles on my head, but hopefully this will change with that item that i got from that Bloodlord .
What are you laughing about ? .
Nothing hahaha, the scene looked quite funny in my eyes, i then listened to what my heart was telling me as i said in a quite loud voice that was enough for all the people in the surroundings to be able to hear and said :
you said that you want to accuse me of killing a Noble , but what if i really killed a Noble, what are you going to do about this .
You, you .... .
Aura Of The Strong is the best skill in dealing with those certain kind of situations all the guys in the area were now sweating and stuck in their places without any ability to move even a muscle , all their faces were now showing a horrified expression with all their eyes were now filled with awe .
I began to unhurriedly walk in the direction of that guard from earlier and stood before him whose body was currently twitching and shocking as if it was possessed and leaned in his ears like how he did to me before and said :
You now don't need to accuse me of anything now, don't you ? .
I then paid him no mind and directly entered the safe zone leaving the effect of my skill on as a lesson to all of those guys to not mess around again with someone they can't afford to offend .
But who am i kidding an F Rank Adventurer with a storatge ring ofcourse eventually will get into trouble but the current me wasn't afraid of any kinds of trouble .
The safe zone was like a small town with bustling streets, shops on every sides selling, pieces of equipment, potions, and even spell scrolls and behind the tall tower laid the Teleportation Hall or at least that one of the guys who i asked about the directions told me .
I found my destination and arrived at the teleportation circle and took a last glance at the safe zone which was entirely different than the one i teleported to while arriving here and then 5 people came in together and completed our numbers and the teleportation begin .
This time the flashing lights didn't bother my eyes like before and a second later we were back to the Teleportation Hall outside of the city of Trond, i began to make my way out when i heard some news about two sudden occurrences happening overnight when i was passing by some folks .
The first one was related to some Female Beastfolk slave escaping its bindings and escaping , how is Lora doing currently ? .
The second incident was what left me rooted to the ground since it was also related to another Female Beastfolk girl that goes by the name Liliana and that her public execution will begin tomorrow morning .
I hurriedly appeared in front of the man who was taking and grabbed him by his arms and used too much force that his arm completely broke but i wasn't in the mood to care about that and i ordered him saying : what execution, tell me everything that happened .