The Insider System

Chapter 424: Hidden Hostility Pt.6

After being brought to his room, Donny tried to sleep, but he'd quickly given up on this because he was honestly having trouble even closing his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. He was feeling a mix of emotions, but one was undeniably excitement, so sleeping wasn't an option, even if he logically knew he had to be tired.

After spending his first few hours in his new room training to the best of his ability, Donny quickly realized he would have to ask for learning materials even if he wanted to keep to himself to avoid any trouble. Not sure how he should get the attention of the demigod assigned to watch him, he'd stood in front of his door for 10 minutes before he had an idea.

Reaching out and knocking to see if someone was outside the door, Donny waited for a few seconds to pass with no one speaking before trying the doorknob. Finding the door locked, Donny wondered what he was supposed to do if no one was around and he couldn't exit his room.

He then remembered it was too early to let such small things overwhelm him and opened his mouth to say. "Is there anyone around?" There was no way he wasn't being watched, and they should be able to hear him as well if they were doing a good job.

He didn't miss that if they were watching him, they would have seen him trying to get their attention and ignored him, but what could you do when people hated you before you even met them other than deal with it? "What is it?"

Getting a voice in his head, Donny wondered if they were reading his thoughts constantly and were still going to make him say it, but decided he would be happy if they were in his head because it would give them a clear idea that he wasn't an enemy. "I don't know anything about Unholy Magic."

Donny knew the basics of every element because once you knew one, you could figure out the rest on your own, so what he had just said wasn't quite true, but knowing what the principles were called didn't mean you could fumble your way to becoming a master of that element. "That isn't something we could help you with, but I'll ask the God of Metal what we should do."

With his problem being looked into, Donny went back to flicker training, knowing that it could be a while for him to get any help with Unholy magic. The number of people who knew anything about Unholy Magic and weren't directly related to the Demon Lord was quite small, so in all likelihood, the help he would receive would be from someone in the Demon Lord's army.

...

"That's two successful outings in a row." Lake was aware you weren't supposed to say things like this before you returned home, but the amount of trouble they had in gathering these items was honestly so little that he couldn't help himself. "No one out here in these mountains is expecting someone to find them. They probably haven't seen a single person since moving out here."

"Yeah, it's actually crazy how little life is out here." Even with Mana Vision, Lake didn't see a single living thing for miles at a time when they were running through these mountains. "Yeah, the water out here isn't suitable for drinking unless you purify it first. The God of Metal will get around to adding life to his Domain eventually."

"What do you mean, are you saying he'll take animals that could survive here and bring them out here to the mountains to breed?"

"He might do that, but there's a better chance that he'll make a few new monsters of the metal element for people to hunt or take animals from another world to bring here."

"I didn't realize that was something they did." It made sense if you thought about it because it seemed the gods were able to change people to their liking, so why couldn't they do it to animals, but for some reason, he'd figured the monsters and animals were all natural.

"Yeah well, it doesn't happen very often. It's probably been over 50 years since a monster was intentionally brought to one of the Domains. Most of the time to find something new you'd have to head out from the Domains to the wildlands." Lake had heard someone mention the land not settled or owned by the gods before, but that didn't mean he knew much about them.

"The wildlands is a name for unsettled land, right?" Getting a nod from Lucas, Lake then asked. "That's where a lot of the spire residents are, right?" This has been one of the first things Lucas ever mentioned to him but had never come up since, so Lake was making sure he remembered correctly. "Yes, they're all looking for new ingredients to help with granting new affinities. It's a direction of research the guild has been working on for a long time with almost no progress."

"It's too bad we couldn't gather them all to take on an expedition. With my skills, I'm sure we could make progress in tracking down the right ingredients, and we're going to have to head out to the further domains to gather journals anyway." Most of the domains only had one or two journals in them, but they would have to go there all the same.

"I might speak to some of the more trustworthy people about this if you really want to help the Guild in this way." Lake couldn't see a reason not to do this, so he nodded and said. "I wouldn't mind, and it would be nice to have a bigger group to keep us safe."

"A trip that size might take months for us to plan, but the guild would profit immensely if we're finally able to crack the Affinity Elixirs. Have you actually used your skill to find ingredients before, or are you just guessing it will work?" Lake was just assuming, but knowing it would only take a second to find out, he took an arrow from his quiver and used it to look for an ingredient that could be used to make a potion that granted a new elemental affinity.

When the arrow started to light up in almost every direction, Lake knew there were quite a few they'd be able to choose from. "It works when we get back to the guild we can use the map to figure out where they are."

...

"Is something wrong?" Dawn's question made Tiff sure she needed to work on her facial expressions because the bad news she had just received was supposed to be a secret, so none of the members of the Temple lost hope and her looking worried was going to cause others to be affected even if they didn't know what was bothering her.

"Nothing's wrong. My next mission is just going to take longer than I hoped." Tiff could tell that Dawn didn't quite believe her, but their conversation on the matter ended there. "I'm about to start training. Are you coming too?"

"Sure, let me go get ready. I'll meet you there in a few minutes." Tiff had a meeting with the God of Light, but they would find her wherever she was. After she had her armor on, Tiff met back up with Dawn in the training room. "Are the others going to be here?"

When Dawn invited her to train, Tiff had thought it would be with all of them. "The others are probably treating this like a holiday. When you were chosen we took a few days off as well."

"Are you sure about that, I'm pretty sure you were still in the training room every day after I was given my job." It had been a while, and Tiff hadn't been paying the closest attention to the others at that time, but she was pretty sure she had seen them in the training room the day after.

"Well, we might have done it a few times, but it definitely wasn't as much as normal." Seeing Dawn didn't seem to quite remember either, Tiff decided there was no point talking about this and said. "How does defense and dodging sound?"

Trying to hit one another was always a great way to practice hand-to-hand without hurting anyone since it didn't involve their weapons. "Yeah, but I want to be the aggressor. I know you must have gotten faster, and I want to see if I can still get you."

"All right, come after me and one second." Speeding off to the other side of the room, Tiff didn't use her full speed right away because she wanted to surprise Dawn with it when it looked like one of her attacks was going to land. "Here I come." Like always, Dawn was much faster than you would expect from someone who fights at a distance, but Tiff was able to see her no problem now, so she knew the results of this practice fight would be much different from the ones in the past.