Chapter 210 – Hey, wait a minute…

“Hey, was that the last one?”

“Yes, there are no enemies in the vicinity anymore.”

Roland replied to the shout coming from the front, Grisalde was there pulling her axe out from the ground. When removing her weapon he could see a combination of sand and blood covering the edge.

“Are you sure you aren’t a tracker?”

Senna popped her head out of the side and started twirling her daggers. Ever since the first ambush, the adventurers had been slowly building up trust towards Roland’s detecting skills. While he couldn’t track anything, detecting monsters in the forest was quite easy, even easier for him than for proper scout-type classes.

The forest area was quite dense and with a lot of various creatures living there. With so many living beings around it was hard for anyone to get an estimate of all of the enemy locations. But Roland only needed to look at the dots on the map to quickly point out the next nearby monster.

“No, It’s just a tracking spell…”

“That’s some handy tracking spell that can last for so long.”

Senna glanced towards Roland’s metal helmet as if she didn’t quite believe his story. While the technology he was using wasn’t all that groundbreaking, the sheer length he could keep it up was the real deal-breaker. All-day and night he could have his radar function up and it would even jolt him up from his sleep if something appeared.

“It’s not like I can detect anything, any monsters that specialize in hiding their presence would not be easy to spot for me. Don’t let your guard down.”

Roland replied as he didn’t want the trackers to get sloppy. Monsters like Kobolds or beasts that just charged at them were fine. But anything that could camouflage themselves in some way could get around his radar.

This runic detection device locked onto mana fingerprints of monsters and any other living being. Every living creature at least had a little bit of mana in their body and they could not stop it from seeping out. That is if they were not able to use any mana controlling skills to shroud their existence.

Skills of scouting classes had various other ways to detect enemies like through smell or vibrations of footsteps. While his method allowed him to detect large groups better in more dangerous situations, it was still better to leave it up to someone with a specialized skill distribution.

“Is that so? Damn, I thought that I could just nap through this whole mission.”

“Hah, tough luck pipsqueak.”

“Hey, stop calling me that you muscle-bound idiot!”

Grisalde returned from the frontlines with her bloodied axe leaning over her shoulder. It was funny to see the large barbarian and halfling get into a shouting match after each battle. Grisalde tended to complain that the trickster was not doing anything.

“How about you go take a bath, I’m sure Wayland here isn’t removing his helmet because you stink up the whole wagon!”

“Why you little, come here!”

Soon the two took off into another chase while Orson and Dalrak had to calm them down.

“Hey shut your mouths, we aren’t out of the forest yet!”

The guard leader glared at the duo of women that were running through the area while making loud noises. But this also showed how much the people started to trust his predictions.

“Wayland, are we free to move?”

“Yes, there shouldn’t be any more of them and we are almost out of the forest.”

“Great, I’ll tell them to move, keep up the good work and you might even get a big bonus.”

Roland nodded but was not really that interested in the money he could make here as it would not be as much as he could earn by selling a single golem. But on the other hand, he enjoyed the respect he was getting.

Through the day-long journey through the forest area, they had to make a few stops to fight off small groups of monsters. They were mostly beast types that looked like deformed forest animals.

With his help, they were always able to have those few seconds to prepare for the assault. His ranged spells aren’t as successful when used in a dense forest area but he had yet to move down from the first wagon he was protecting. Thus right before night fell on them they had managed to go through the first danger area without suffering any casualties.

After getting through it was back to camping at night. While he was getting more trust from the people the biggest negative was their reliance on his spells. The merchants started requesting that he stay up for the whole night and with Melaina noting down his performance he was unsure what would happen if he refused.

‘How does she sleep in that position…’

Roland was truly envious of the nap-taking efficiency that his wagon partner had. The barbarian could just sleep through the entire day and be well rested whenever trouble appeared. He on the other hand was stuck using his sleep resistance skill while looking at this radar.

‘Maybe I should install a sleeping spell to knock me out…’

There was one big downside of the sleeping resistance skill he had leveled up. While he didn’t need to sleep that much it was also hard to actually fall asleep when there was no trouble or work to be had.

When a person managed to sleep at least a few hours they received a ‘Well rested’ buff. This gave a small boost to some stats and skills while lasting for a range of hours. The length depended on how long the person slept and also the item they were sleeping on. With special beds the buff could be extended further and give clarity of the mind.

Roland very rarely saw this buff as even when he slept it was at most five hours a day. Luckily he was immune to the tired status effect thanks to his skills and thus he could function for a lot longer than the average human being. The journey continued further into the vast lands of this island. Without anything to do, he could only look through the landscape.

‘I can never really see the end of it, even from this vantage point?’

At the moment Roland was looking into the distance. At the side of the path that they were on, he couldn’t see anything of note. Yet when looking further a person would notice the land gaining elevation and the grass area’s becoming thinner and thinner.

The super dungeon that was in the middle of this huge island was the reason. From what he knew this dungeon was an active volcano and it regularly spewed out lava and thick white mist. Due to this, it created a barrier around it that was impossible to look through.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Yet thanks to a certain phenomenon this mist did not travel into the edges of the island. Instead, the soil was reinforced which allowed fields for food to grow faster than would normally be possible in the mainland area. The strongest monsters also usually stayed closer to this volcanic mist area

This made traversing towards the dungeon from the outside quite bothersome. Without specialized gears to combat the increased heat, toxic mist, and then monsters it was difficult to progress. Thus other ways of exploration involving the vast underground tunnels were preferred.

But Roland was not the usual adventurer, with the help of his rune knowledge he had thought about this problem if he ever decided to move towards the super dungeon. There were various ways of creating air filters for his helmet, with some other buffing and chilling spells he might be actually able to go through the top part.

It was not impossible and the monsters on the upper side were said to not be as tough as the ones in the underground. The difficulty was in lasting through the magma-covered wastelands and the toxic air composed of sulfur.

If there was a way to get over that bump in the road, exploring from the outside would be manageable. This was something Roland had contemplated before finding out the secret connection to another dungeon. With that in place, he could hunt tier 3 monsters from a safe distance.

‘I wonder if there are some secrets that weren’t discovered in those lava mountains. With the harsh environment, it wouldn’t be strange if they had to abandon any deep exploration attempts.’