CH342 An investigation on anomalous regions, as requested by the adventurer’s guild

“So what do you think we should take today?”

“I vote hunting.”

“We always go hunting, I want to take it easy and do a gathering quest for a change.”

“Just let Pato decide.”

“Ha, girls, girls relax, we can figure it out when we get to the guild,” The man, Pato said to his four companions as he wore a broad grin across his face, happy to be alive even in the face of the coming war.

And why wouldn’t he be? He was well respected as one of the few rank-one adventurers, he had four beautiful companions, each wanting to be the one to get the most of his affection for the prestige it could bring them, and even over three years later now he was still happy to not only have received his second chance at life, but to be free of the suffocating culture he had been born into, getting to enjoy the far laxer one that the melting pot of a world he now lived in had produced.

Unlike the others he’d arrived with, he had decided to strike out on his own, making his way in the world instead of being tied to some dusty nation as he waited for his second death, and he’d done it for one simple reason too. Impact.

If he had been taken in anywhere, he knew he’d have just been finding himself compared to the soul mage that had arrived with his group, a thought he couldn’t stand. It was much better to be the star of his own life than the side character of someone else’s, so he’d made the choice that could give him exactly what he’d wanted, and since then he’d done nothing but thrive as he completed quests and raised his fame.

“Pato!” Called out the guild worker the moment he and his group came in, waving him down with zeal as he tried to return it with his most winning smile. “I was hoping you’d come in today, we received an interesting quest that was looking for you specifically.”

“Ah, you know I get plenty of those Caxy,” He told her, waving it off. “So is it actually interesting, or just something the guild’s trying to tempt me with by dressing it up as interesting?”

“I mean, it might be interesting,” She told him, leaning in close. “A couple of deep woods expeditions have found something bizarre and we need someone to look into it. Well, both of them actually ‘cause there’s two and you’re the only one in the guild with an awakened space magic. Do it for me?”

She batted her eyes at him as she always did when she wanted to be playful and pulled a laugh from him. “Tell you what, I’ll do it if you grab drinks with me this week, what do you say?”

“Ha, I’d say your companions look ready to shoot death rays from their eyes at the thought.”

“Bah, they knew they’d have to share me when they joined up, and how could I not want to share some company with a beauty like you? What do you say? All it is is drinks.”

She pretended to think for only a moment before giving in. “Mmh, alright, just drinks for now so long as you work hard on this investigation,” She told him happily, fine to take the date and even happier knowing the task would get done.

“Got it, I’ll be back at the end of the day so look forward to it.”

With that he left the guild, knowing his companions weren’t pleased but not particularly caring. He cared about them plenty, but they all knew that they wouldn’t have gone for him if he didn’t have his awakened skills so he had no issue with flirting with others in turn. He wasn’t out looking for true love, after dying once he just wanted to have the best second life he could.

As he opened another hole in space they found themselves close to their first destination, and immediately they could tell something was wrong. Pato may have had the least experience as an adventurer in his group, originally only being valuable for the power he provided, but after a few years of work in the field he was able to sense something that the others could put into words.

“There’s no sounds from a single creature,” Said Galda, their primary hunter-tracker and an elf hybrid. “I’m not sensing anything that could be considered an animal anywhere near us other than some bugs, there’s not even any smaller ones making their way through.”

Hearing that assessment, they all tensed up as they started to approach their final destination on foot, carefully watching the area as they did. None of them knew what to expect, but there was no reason for any area of the untamed lands to be so uncomfortably empty, so completely devoid of any life but the plants around them.

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Pato kept himself at the ready, prepared to either fight or escape with his spatial magic depending on what the circumstances called for, but after an hour of carefully observing the situation where nothing happened, they finally came across the anomaly they were sent to investigate.

“Infinite hells,” One muttered as another grasped their hands together and began to pray as Pato could only stare on, trying to make sense of just what they were seeing.

It wasn’t that it was hard to understand, it’s just the purposes behind it were all but indecipherable to him as he looked at the pounded earth around him where no plants would grow, the soil dyed a new colour as small mountains of bones were piled up around something. Be it a monument or a throne he couldn’t say, all he saw was a wall that towered over the woods with a single empty seat built into it to look down on the world below.