Chapter 200

“It is the best price I can give you, having taken my cut of the materials for processing,” Ogden confirmed. “You could probably get a better percentage in Alluria if you sold everything individually over time, but wholesale, no one else will give you this much.”Nick nodded, his eyes still fixed on the pile of coins. Sure, it had to be divided into three, and it had taken them a month’s worth of battling dangerous creatures, risking their lives in toxic tunnels, and facing extra-dimensional demons, but it was still a lot.

He wasn’t exactly sure how far it would extend in a big city, but in a place like Floria, they could live off that coin for years. And that was without being overly cautious with their spending.

Of course, if they began purchasing enchanted equipment, potions, and other rare items, they would quickly deplete their newfound wealth. Nevertheless, it was still a significant sum of money.

Double or triple casting was something Nick had adapted to out of necessity. was a real-life hack, given how much flexibility it provided him, but if he could reduce half, or even just a third of his defensive spells…

The few times he’d put his everything into an attack spell, he produced outcomes that surpassed his norm.

“I think we’re good,” he finally said in a slightly strangled voice.

Rhea grinned smugly, lifting her nose in the air. After all, she had been the one to insist that they take the time to harvest all those valuable materials. Without her, Nick was sure their haul would have been halved, or possibly even less.

“Thank you, Rhea,” he said earnestly, making her blush at his unexpected forthrightness.

Ogden chuckled, a sound halfway between rocks grinding and the wheezing of a sick man. All three teenagers turned to him in shock, which quickly silenced him.

“Bah, what are you looking at?! Take your money and get out of here! I have work to do, you know?” He grunted, turning around and leaving them there.

Nick smiled despite himself. Yes, Ogden might be equivalent to a nuke hiding in plain sight, but he was their nuke.

Rhea then quickly provided them with two sacks, which they proceeded to fill with coins. It was honestly cathartic. “We should do this more often,” Nick joked, flipping a gold coin so that it landed directly into the bag.

That alone would be sufficient to buy him an enchanted sword. A low-tier one, sure, but still valuable.

A hiss of annoyance from his thigh, where his dagger was strapped, prompted him to pat his side in consolation. “I wouldn’t ditch you,” he said, amusedly.

Who would have thought that such a seemingly empty spirit could display so much personality?

“Alright, this was wonderful, but I have a lot of work to do,” Elia finally excused herself. Nick and Rhea exchanged surprised looks, but it shouldn’t have really shocked them when they thought about it.

They had embarked on this extended adventure precisely so that Elia could take on leadership of the beastmen community after all. The role carried a significant amount of responsibility; it would have been weirder if she had a lot of free time.

Finally, it was just the two of them. Nick quickly checked to see if Ogden was within earshot, but he found him in the basement, working hard to mash a particularly tough root into paste.

“Did you talk to him about that thing?” He asked.

Rhea pursed her lips before sighing. “No, we’ve been very busy with the materials, both yesterday and today. It will probably be a couple of days before we have the time to talk.”

Nick hummed, remaining silent.

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“Okay. Keep in mind that I’ll be leaving in a few weeks, so we should discuss it pretty soon.” He limited himself to saying that much. He could have gone into detail about the recklessness of her plans, but he had already voiced his concerns. Restating his point would likely push Rhea away, placing her in even greater trouble.

If she pursued the Ultimer Clan Head alone…

After a brief stop at home to deposit his newfound wealth and give Talbot strict orders to protect the hoard, Nick set off toward Arthur’s.

’s range had grown sufficient that it only took him a couple of minutes of walking to find the old adventurer, not that he could have missed him.

Where Marthas had been a shrouded yet overwhelming pit of flames, hot enough that merely being in his presence was enough to start sweating, and Ogden had been like standing on top of a glacier, feeling its solidity but knowing that at any moment everything could come crashing down, Arthur was much less nuanced.

His presence in the ether was unmistakable. Crackling with suppressed lightning and as bright as the sun, it could only be him.

Nick slowed down before he reached the property’s edge, having learned his lesson. Rose, the man’s adoptive granddaughter, was on the other side of the fields, but her attention quickly turned to him.

She didn’t move, simply noting his presence and how careful he was being before evidently deeming him acceptable and returning to whatever she was doing.

Nick considered whether to speak with her. She was certainly mysterious enough to stir his curiosity, and based on what he was sensing, she could be considered a real talent.

Although the girl was only a few years older than Rhea, she seemed much more established. Not to the point where she could challenge him, but he wasn’t exactly a fair comparison.

If he had to pin her down, he’d say she was close to that particularly large bandit he’d defeated on the bridge. She had real power, and considering who was training her, some battle experience, but had yet to break through the wall into the high levels.

Still, she was someone to keep an eye on. Not everyone shared the same drive as he did, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t reach just as high with some time.

“I cannot help you,” Arthur’s voice drifted from inside the house as Nick stepped onto the porch.

He sighed, annoyed that the old man had immediately assumed he wanted to meddle in his father’s trial. Although he had nearly done so the day before, it didn’t mean that should be the first assumption.

“I just want to ask some questions,” he said in lieu of an answer. It came out a bit more irritated than he’d intended, but could he really be blamed? Everyone seemed determined to keep him in the dark about very important things.

A moment of silence passed as Nick entered the house before a sigh echoed. “Alright, come on, let’s get this over with.”

Just as last time, Arthur sat in his comfortable leather chair in the living room, its walls decorated with monster skulls and an assortment of battle trophies.

Once Nick stepped in, he saw that the old man had his eyes closed, as if in pain, but when he opened them, they were clear.

“I thought you’d be annoyed at my coming back after you told me to leave,” Nick said, probing.

Arthur shrugged. “I warned you about a possible danger. What you do with that information is up to you.”

He seemed tired, and the stress lines around his mouth had deepened, even though only a month had passed since Nick last saw him.

Nick considered it for a moment before dismissing the option. Arthur’s power felt unchanged. If anything, it was clearer than ever, though that might have been due to his own improved sensing ability.

Sitting down in the chair opposite him, Nick tried to think of a way to ask the sensitive question he wanted to know about before deciding to just go ahead. Arthur might deny him, but in that case, it’d be better to know right away.

He had just opened his mouth to speak when a massive pulse of mana rushed through Floria.

Nick was on his feet and out of the house before he even consciously realized what that meant. It had come from the northwest, exactly where his father was supposed to be, and more importantly, it felt just like him.

Behind him, he faintly sensed Arthur stepping out of the house and pausing briefly to say something to his granddaughter, but he couldn’t care enough to focus on the details.

Instead, Nick launched into the air as a powerful gust of wind lifted him two hundred feet. He shot off in the pulse’s direction, using the air resistance to his advantage and creating a funnel of wind through which he traveled faster than ever before.

Distantly, he realized that this could be the foundation of a very useful spell, but he set it aside for later consideration. There was a much more pressing issue to address now.

As he rushed over Floria, he sensed a few people emerging from their houses. The pulse wasn’t as powerful as the dungeon’s destruction, but it was still strong enough that even those with minimal magical abilities should have felt it clearly.

Ahead of him, the temple buzzed like a hive that had been kicked over. Acolytes and priests scurried about, while in the central nave, where Sashara’s hearth was, Marthas sat silently in prayer.

Nick felt his attention linger on him for a moment before he was already past the temple grounds. Still, the fact that he hadn’t made a move to stop him made it clear that he was good to go.

Indeed, by the time he was flying over the northwestern border of the Green Ocean, trying to pinpoint the pulse’s origin, he sensed a presence streaking toward him from the ground.

It felt slippery, and it was only because functioned on so many separate layers that he could get a lock on it.

Unsurprisingly, it was his mother. She was using the Stalking Gait at a level he could hardly hope to match, moving through the tall grass without disturbing it; not through elemental manipulation, but with sheer dexterity.

Together, they rushed on, desperate to find Eugene. The pulse had faded, but a chaotic mass of fire and wild mana was left in its place, making it difficult to know whether what he sensed through the ether was just a lingering trace or a repressed presence.

Somewhere within that swirling mass of fiery, sharp power, something else lurked, yet Nick couldn’t find a way to pinpoint it without attracting its attention. He suspected that such an invasion of privacy wouldn’t be well received, especially if, as he thought, it was the King’s Shadow.

It took them another twenty minutes of moving quickly to find them; it was a shorter distance than he had anticipated, given the hazards of high-level battles, but he supposed corralling such a monster wasn’t easy, even for another Prestige warrior.

Finally, they reached the edge of a crater, where magma bubbled and mist swirled, obscuring their view inside.

Yet Nick could sense it: a fiery heartbeat still pulsed within.