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---------------------Jonah's POV--------------------

The guild hall was so quiet, you could only hear the heavy breathing of Ryogi and his friends in front of Astaad. Everyone in the guild was listening to their conversation and were trying to be as quiet as possible.

Astaad continued, "Because you are my friend, I will be nice to you." He was smiling again and stood up from his seat and everyone in the guild made space for him to leave the hall. "Follow me, we will see what we can do about your little punishment."

Silent gasps could be seen though out the building and I knew that it wouldn't end pretty for Ryogi if he followed Astaad out of the building. High level guild officials, like Astaad, had many more rights than your everyday conqueror, so they could get away with most things as long as it wouldn’t damage the guild in a way. That included murder, yes murder.

I never understood why that was a thing, but I am not gonna lie, it was extremely effective to keep some kind of law and order when superman and flash walked around the streets like it was nobody’s business. So, to keep everyone behaving, sometimes there had to be "examples", they couldn't just let Ryogi go with just some fee. He hit someone that wasn't a conqueror, as a conqueror himself, that was one of the worst things he could have done. Abusing your power to inflict physical harm, was a no go in the city, if he just called his sponsor or some shit it would have been different, but I think he was just drunk and did something on impulse, which was bad, really really bad.

Ryogi seemed to have understood his predicament, so when Astaad turned around, he drew his sword, a katana, which was pretty cliché to be honest, but badass none the less. With his katana drawn, he jumped at Astaad and tried to slice the back of his head. Just before it hit, Astaad sidestepped to the left and the katana hit the air cm to the right of Astaad's head. Astaad then lifted his right arm, turned his body to the left and just grabbed the sword at its blade with his hand before Ryogi could pull it back from his swing, and stopped Ryogi in the air. That was fast, I mean, he looked like a tank and didn’t even see the katana and Ryogi seemed to be the fast type of warrior, not that I had enough experience to judge that stuff, but Astaad seemed to be more than meat and muscles.

Ryogi seemed to be taken aback when Astaad grabbed his katana, so he struggled in the air to pull it free, but it wouldn't budge an inch. Before he could try anything else, Astaad pulled the katana and Ryogi flew directly at Astaad, then Astaad let the blade go and with his now free right hand he grabbed Ryogi's head. His big hand completely surrounded Ryogi's head, Astaad then said with a cruel smile "My friend, I wanted to be nice to you, so I wanted to punish you in a way your friends won't have to see it, but it seems like you don't care about that. It makes me sad that you don't care that I want to be nice. So as punishment, I will punish you right here." He didn’t look sad, but that didn’t matter to Ryogi or anyone else in the building.

Astaad then slowly squeezed Ryogi's head. Ryogi started to cry and beg, but Astaad didn't even budge one bit and kept slowly increasing the pressure of his grip until Ryogi just started to flail his katana around to somehow escape Astaad's grip. It was completely useless, Astaad was a level 117 Tank...? With high level armor, the katana didn't even scratch it. Ryogi though, was just a level 23 Warrior without a helmet or special items to safe himself.

The cries of Ryogi started to become more and more desperate, until all you could hear was some kind of gurgling and blood started to flow down his body until his cries started to die down. I didn't want to see anymore, so I tried to leave the hall as fast as possible. My legs were weak and my breathing was rugged, I wasn't used to humans getting killed in front of my eyes. I mean, even the conquerors around me seemed uncomfortable, but I was completely out of it. When I reached the double door, the cries were silent whimpers so I quickly opened the door to leave.

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I didn't turn around when I closed the door behind me so I didn't know what happened afterwards. I was not sure how long I walked around the streets until I calmed down. I threw up my breakfast and then I took a deep breath and tried to keep myself together. If you want to become a conqueror you have to get used to people dying. I thought to myself the whole time until I finally calmed down.

I seemed to have walked around the market in circles, so I ended up in front of the guild hall again. The sun was now high up in the sky and the warm sunshine on my skin was somewhat calming, there was no one around the guild hall anymore, most of the conquerors started doing quests, went into the dungeons or other things at that time of the day. There were still some food carts here and there but most of them left for tomorrow or were still in the progress of leaving. I didn't want to go inside the hall again, so I checked my system for the quest I got. I had to keep making money, I couldn't stop, even after what I saw in the guild hall today. My sister would enroll into dungeon school in 6 months so I had to make enough money to pay for the tuition fee and other things she needed. I checked the quest while leaning against the warm brickwalls of the weapon store in front of the guild hall.

I pushed different blue boxes in front of me, until the quest showed up, I then closed the other boxes and checked it.

Mana Stone Mining Difficulty E The guild need mana stones with high purity to power the dungeon stabilizers though out the city. Go into the undergound dungeon - Station 17 and mine the high purity mana stones in front of the boss chamber on layer 10. To complete the quest you and your party have to bring 10 mana stones (pure) to the guild hall of the guild hall branches though out the City L Rewards: 1000 credits for non fighters (you) and 3000 credits for fighters; 1 Questpoint per person

One mana stone (pure) was worth around 2500 credits worth, which would end up being around 25000 credits for 10 of them. Where the quest only gave 17000 credits for 2 non- and 5 fighters. Why wouldn't they just sell the mana stones itself and earn more money out of it? That was because you could earn 1 Questpoint for the quest. 1 point isn't much, but if you kept doing this and maybe other higher paying quests you could buy yourself an "initiate skill level up" from the system shop for 1000 points . This level up would then upgrade one of your upgradable initiate skills and this would make it stronger, give it another ability or something else.

That was extremely good because skillbooks were expensive. Yes, you could get skills from skillbooks, but you couldn’t upgrade those and they were one time use and cost a lot. You could buy those skillbooks from the aliens, the system shop with gold or just get them from a boss drop. So, when you upgrade your initiate skill you basically get a "free" skillbook, maybe even better. Though, maybe it was just better to sell the mana stones itself when your initiate skills sucked or weren't upgradable. I would have to ask someone from the party about that tough.

My initiate skill wasn't upgradable, so for me, these points were pretty much useless, unless I get another initiate skill that was upgradeable.

Initiate skill - Dimensional Storage (1/1) Dimensional Storage (1/1) let's you store a variety of different items inside your personal crack in space, that you can create whenever and wherever. Can't store items with more than 10km/h speed; Can't store living things.

Mana Cost - None; Can hold up to 3 times your MP in kg (300 kg)

I let out a sigh after I opened my skill list and looked at the blue box with my initiate skill in it. Not gonna lie, the skill itself was hella useful for many things, but fighting wasn't one of them. Maybe I could ask to enter the party, after we finished the quest, and carry all their stuff inside of my storage and in exchange, I would get some small percent of the xp, level up, then leave the party and start going into the low layers of the dungeon myself?

Not sure I would want to do that though. I couldn't just risk my life, what if I happen to die? Then my mother and sister would have to survive on their own and my sister wouldn’t have a bright future and could even die in her first dungeon trip if she didn't go to the dungeon school and learn how to fight and survive in the dungeons.

No, I had to find another way, I had to join a party for real or just work my ass off until my sister was strong enough to help me level up a bit and then we would have to see...