Over the next few days Kaden acted like nothing unusual had happened. This was not the case with others, though. Assassination attempt of a elite team member within the city was something that quite a few people could not ignore the same way. Specifically because no one was able to find out who was behind everything. At least not immediately.
While the corpse was in pretty bad condition, it was still usable. Yet, the identity of the man was not found, but, for a time at least, someone would look into it. As long as identity remained unknown, he might as well be an enemy intruder.
This brought some attention to Kaden too. A bit more than he wanted, but it was unavoidable. Some people came to have a look at him and ask questions. Some of them were ones that made Kaden frown. How did they know to ask about things very few people knew? Like where he had lived before Sidon took him.
Speaking of Sidon. It had to be him.
“He talks too much”, Kaden muttered to himself with a frown. “Good thing my story has always included the possibility that I would have to reveal things. Still… its dangerous when people ask too much!”
This time it didn’t seem to result into anything bad, but who knew about the future. His lies were not too complex, but every time he had to hide something he had not before, he would have to add more lies.
At least no one seemed to connect him to an explosion in the fourth layer that happened the same night. Supposedly someones mana generator had a malfunction and exploded. Kaden had personally looked into the matter of the cultist hideout and this story is what was publicly known.
The cultists surely knew how to cover up things. No word of an altar to God of Lies or a demon that had been set loose in the city came up. Who had even won? The priests or the demon?
Perhaps that would be solved later, if strange occurences of people behaving unusual manner would start to crop up. The demon probably could drive people insane, if it wanted to. Kaden had no idea of its motives or what it would do once free. It still wouldn’t involved him. At least not directly.
It was good that things, that could be tied to him, were not.
Kaden expected some more things to happen. Once someone sends killers after you, it usually means they want you gone. Permanently. If its failure on the first try, there should be eventually another. Yet none came.
Someone could actually take the hint? How surprising.
It didn’t matter much to Kaden. He spent following months the same way as before. He could feel like his mana channels were getting stronger, but its was not really filling up to reach some limit. Despite that he was optimizing and fixing smaller problems in his mana system. It was good and it could be better. Having seen it function for a while, he had noted quite a few ways so improve it. Not all of these were something he could deal with right away, but he expected to eventually do so.
As for rest of his cultivation. He had tried to identify more mana types he could deal with, but had yet to find any. His body was limiting him. It was strong and powerful, but it came at a cost. Still, Kaden was not dismayed by it. He felt like, if given the chance to choose, he would surely choose his current state.
Then one day Kaden got a call to gather together in the meeting room.
Everyone from the Verdict were there waiting for Walden to say something. Walden himself was standing there and giving look on some orders.
“It’s time to get into some dangerous matters”, Walden finally said. “It might be some time until we return here. We won’t be going directly to front lines, yet its not much different. As we move towards the front lines, we are to pass through some border area with beasts first. Centralean Forest is relatively dangerous, but the border area is still fine. We will help the hunter teams there to push back beasts back a bit so that more forces can take the route. Once that is done, we will continue to one of the front line bases. Nelsen is already there with Judgement.”
“Lieutenant”, Kaden asked suddenly. “Where is Centralean Forest?!”
Everyone started at Kaden silently and Walden facepalmed.
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“You know… the forest where you used to live”, Walden finally slowly explained. “The forest that covers most of this continent. From central areas to up north all the way into No Man’s Land. It’s hard to miss.”
Kaden shrugged. “I just always called it ‘forest’. Why does it’s name matter?”
“You should look into common knowledge, Kaden”, Walden pointed out, but ignored the matter afterwards.
“Finally I can get out”, Kaden thought to himself. “City like Corand is too restricted. Still its not too bad, a lot of resources can be acquired here.”
“Anyway, speaking of which,” Walden continued. “Rest of the team members are more used to city and working in the human territories. Even I haven’t spent that much time in the wilderness other than missions. You lived in there for quite a while with much lower cultivation than now. If you think we are missing something, feel free to tell us about it.”
“Huh?” Kaden only said. “All you need to care about is strength. Its very simple. If you don’t have the strength, you are prey. Beasts don’t care who you are or whatever. This should be very obvious to everyone, yes?”
“Just noting that you, in fact, have probably most survival experience”, Walden continued. “From what I understand we should be passing through the area where you were originally found. You might be able to tell us about the area once we are there.”
“I don’t think there is anything in there that is problem to our team”, Kaden replied dismissively. “A high beast lives much deeper in the area, but thats not where we are going, right?”
“Indeed, it could result in injuries or even fatalities before we even reach our real destination”, Walden agreed with a nod.
Kaden felt he kind of owed to the boar, to be more exact, Cerulean Boar. He had found out names of different beast species. It was a water and earth affinity beast and upon evolving to Lower Cari, becomes a Saphire Boar. It was because of the Cerulean Boar that he was alive. It had led him to Trohin’s lab seemingly as reward for returning its herbs. Not only that, it seemed generally quite sensible beast. Most would have simply killed him, but it did not. Kaden did not want to lead problems to its direction.
“This is a chance for you all!”, Walden continued. “This is good opportunity to collect lots of contribution points. You will be able to collect cores from the beasts, but more importantly, once our true mission starts, you will be able complete large number of tasks! Do not lose your sight of what is important. Once we all return alive, you can acquire large number of resources! If you do not advance until that, you surely will afterwards! You are all at limits of Channel Opening. Once all of us are at Formation stage, we will be roughly on the same level as Judgement and receive better missions.”
Everyone, except Kaden, got excited expressions. He was already a High Beast. Increasing his human side to Formation stage, is good, but at the time not critical.
“Prepare today, by tomorrow morning we will move out”, Walden finalized on what was going to happen.
Kaden thought all this was probably going to be beneficial to him. He had had lots of chances to learn of things, but not really put them to use. It would be good to catch up and think. He would be able to put things in order and get good use of his time spent learning. The city was indeed getting stuffy too. He had been out only a few times on some local missions. It was good to go see something further out.
Kaden spent rest of the day fixing up his gear. His armor at least was acceptable for his level, but he had been thinking he would have to remake his claws or upgrade them somehow. He had only adjusted the formations on them to handle his higher mana output better, but the base material was getting relatively low tier for him. He would handle this with contrubition points.
He assumed he would be getting a lot of those. He was going to fight against Sacronan! Free killing buffet! His grudges against Sacronan were greater than the saints. There was no need to show any mercy or pretend obedient and nice like in Saint Empire.
By morning everyone were ready. Walden had Kaden carry lots of things needed for their trip, such as tents and other things. He had the spatial bag after all. Walden had one too, but since he was leading he carried more important things.
Kaden said that a camp would attract beasts in the wilderness and that they should take over a cave instead or some other hiding place. Walden only said that suggestion was noted, but that a few common beasts or dire beast wouldn’t matter.
So much for that talk about experience. Kaden didn’t mind much. If there was a stupid enough beast to approach, they would have their meals walk to their camp by themselves. Kaden missed good food with mana. He didn’t get to kill that many people in Corand. While they were in the Centralean Forest, they would have access to some proper food on regular basis. As for being actual cultivation material, it was doubtful, unless he ran into high beast that would insist on fighting them. He expected none of them would be quite that dumb with exception that they were desperate or really hated humans.
“Lieutenant”, Olren spoke suddenly as they were about to leave. “Will we take a glider?”
“No”, Walden replied. “We are not in rush and there is no need to waste resources to fuel one.”
Kaden snorted. The noble didn’t like to do things himself and prefered all sorts of comforts. Glider was a smaller military vehicle for strike teams. It was pretty quick, but would require fuel.
“Lets move out”, Walden said and started move. With a few steps he was already moving at a relatively good speed. Rest of the team followed soon after.
Kaden looked behind at the enormous city and its towers. He would eventually return, but now was time to see into testing his strength against lackeys of Sacronan Empire. Even if he didn’t run into significant targets, he was happy to cause trouble for his old home land.