Noel and Anna walked through the dark, decrepit caves - so many caves. Anna began to wonder just why so many dungeons were either caves or forests, but she remembered that most monsters lived in similar environments, so perhaps that’s why things were like that.
Anna fidgeted around nervously, both scared and anxious, not from the monsters, no, no no, she was scared of Noel. That man was practically a trigger-happy individual in the game, killing so many random side characters that dared to offend Holly in its numerous events.
Perhaps he’ll spam fireballs, burning her in the aftermath of his terribly powerful spells, but perhaps he wasn’t that dumb and trigger-happy as she had first thought, and that her worries were simply a fruit born from her deep-rooted paranoia.
Instead of using fireballs, flames converged around him to form long lines akin to javelins, burning brightly in a controlled manner, far more skilled and efficient compared to Anna’s previously prided fire magic. Compared to him, her fire arrows, or in this case, fire javelins or whatever the name of the spell was, are utter trash, with erratic flames and poor use of mana.
His was clean and concise, and now that she was slowly witnessing his superb skill in magic in real life rather than through a mere game, she was beginning to realize just how amazing the man truly was.
Noel used a small portion of his mana reserves, forming long lines of flames and launching them toward the distant group of trolls excavating the nearby walls for stones and ores. Monsters, if left alone enough in their dungeons and were smart enough, would make use of their environment to create crude armor or weapons. Perhaps some natural magical equipment would be made through the arcane mysteries of nature, but most of the time, such tools were made by the inhabitants themselves.
There were even numerous cases of dungeons that had been left unchecked for years having their own society within consisting of its dungeon dwellers. Villages were built, knowledge was spread, and even spells were created by magically inclined monsters such as Shaman Orcs and the like.
Dungeons were weird constructs of the world with no known source, they just sort of popped up from nowhere a long time ago, with many secrets and mysteries surrounding their precious dimensions. Monsters were just created from nowhere inside, the systematic creation of Boss Monsters and how they were linked to opening the dungeon was another thing to understand, and the mere fact that such a large plot of land just appeared from nowhere is confusing.
All in all, dungeons are strange and are one of the most researched things in the world of Tyr.
“Hey,” Anna called out while silently contacting the spirits around her. “Do you know how dungeons appeared in this world?”
Noel wore an amused smile, and answered, “No.”
“No?” said Anna.
“No,” repeated Noel. “Even with all the things I know and have experienced, my research upon dungeons is simply glitter and no gold. Although they are quite great research material for the creation of pocket dimensions. The rest is still a big mystery.”
“For example, skeleton mages, a common foe but holding a confusing source, after all, the corpse of a mage is needed to create one, so where did the mage come from exactly? Even the creation of monsters is peculiar. Is it the creation of actual matter, do they come from some unknown source and are bred?” Noel said and chuckled. “If you want to research them, then go, but I’d advise you that you probably won’t gain much.”
“I see,” Anna hummed. She kind of knew where dungeons did come from, kind of. While it wasn’t explicitly stated in the game, a lot of fan theories concluded that the dungeons were created by the Demon Lord, as if it was some sort of probe and preparation for his later descent into the world.
The dungeons continuously spewed out endless mana in differing quantities, elevating the ambient mana of the entire world through time. Even Noel commented somewhere in the game that the general level of mana in the atmosphere had risen quite a lot compared to a few centuries ago with the endless supply coming from the dungeons.
Some fans claimed that this was the Demon Lord fattening up the world, making it more valuable to claim when he takes over Tyr with his hordes of devils and demons. And, now that she was living in the world herself, along with the fact that the Demon Lord was a devious little bastard, it wasn’t that improbable.
She woke up from her thoughts as a loud screech boomed from in front of her. When she was contemplating, a troll had apparently sneaked up on her, sneaked up on Noel, and was already ready to attack her.
Anna hurriedly waved her arm, and a pillar of rocks rose from the ground to bash against the troll ahead of her. Then, when she regained her calm, she swiftly manipulated the pillar of rocks and transformed its tip into something sharper, piercing through the troll in the process and killing it.
With the enemy dead, she glared at Noel who only looked at her with a smile, and said, “You should focus on what’s happening around you unless you want to get killed.”
“Ugh,” she grunted but silently admitted that Noel was right.
…
Time passed by in unbearable silence. The group of four sat inside a spacious cavern devoid of life except for them. In front of them, glowing rocks were scattered to illuminate the place to lessen their mana expenditure and so that the oxygen wouldn’t run out so quickly because of the fire.
Holly looked at the entrance to the cavern with worried eyes, fiddling her fingers as anxious thoughts overwhelmed her mind.
Elaine was almost the same, but there was a voice inside her telling her that Rob was fine, and also because of the fact the two of them gave each other a tiny little seal that would glow with a dim green light to indicate the other was still alive. And, when she looked at it, it was glowing green.
Melvin and Leo seemed to be fine mentally and somewhat believed that Rob was fine.
Elaine looked to the anxious girl beside her and leaned in, showing her the glowing seal, “Hey, Holly, Rob’s fine. Look, this thing right here would show us if the other is alive, and if it’s green, then this would mean they are still kicking.”
“So… he’s fine?” her eyes brightened up upon hearing that fact.
“Yes… hopefully,” Elaine said and paused, formulating the words inside her mind to better explain the situation. “But it just shows he’s still alive. Perhaps he’d been knocked unconscious or on the verge of death, dragged somewhere else by the trolls to be eaten alive.”
“W-What?!” Holly almost yelled but stopped herself from shouting out loud. “Then what are we waiting here for?!”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” said Elaine. She waved her arms and patted Holly on the back. “He’s Rob for God’s sake, do you really think he’d risk his life for us if he doesn’t need to?”
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“Yes?” said Holly.
“Oh… my god,” Elaine almost gawked at her response. “Trust me, he said he’d sacrifice me to a devil if that meant he’d live… well, it’s not like I wouldn’t do the same, but he’s not the kind of guy to throw away his life willy-nilly like that.”
“But still, do you really think he’d be fine against thirteen ogres? They’re B-rank monsters! Even Grand Knights have a hard time fighting against a group of them, much less someone who’s only a mage!” Holly said with a disgruntled tone.
“Well, that’s true I suppose…,” Elaine mumbled. “But he has a gun that can one-shot an ogre.”
“Urgh, we shouldn’t have left him!” Holly said with a helpless voice. She scratched her head and tugged at her hair as if her mind was in chaos. “Why did we even do that? Why did he even suggest we leave him alone in the first place?”
“I kind of agree,” Melvin said, pacing around the place in slight worry.
“Hmm, he must be fine,” Leo muttered. “I know when a person is either confident or arrogant, and Rob isn’t the type of person to foolishly do something as willingly sacrificing himself.”
“But still-“
“That’s true indeed!” a voice cut her off all of a sudden, with the source of the voice coming from beside her.
Wait. Besides her?
“Ah!” Holly yelped, leaping off to the side as she pointed her staff to the wall, to the wall with a head poking out of it.
“Wait, wait, wait! It’s me!” the head hastily said, revealing Rob’s face under the dim illumination of the glowing stones on the nearby ground.
“R-Rob?” Holly gaped, unable to believe what she was seeing.
“Why are you in the wall?” Elaine asked, amused more than surprised by his sudden appearance.
“Those fucking ogres didn’t stand a chance at all! I just wormed myself into the wall, then shot at them safe in my little hole!” Rob laughed, explaining what had happened.
“Oh,” Leo hummed. “A cowardly tactic, but an optimal one. Smart.”
“Damn right, I am!” Rob wormed himself out of the wall, landing on the ground with a roll and using magic to dust off the dust on his clothes.
“Rob, you’re safe!” Holly lunged herself forward, hugging Rob in a tight squeeze. Her eyes were teary as she sniffed, saying with a wail, “I thought you were gonna die and get eaten by those ogres!”
“Yeah, right,” Rob said and rolled his eyes, but he still had the courtesy to pat her on the back and comfort her. “There’s no way those ogres would be able to kill me, only A Rank monsters can threaten my life at this point.”
“A Rank monsters?” Melvin asked curiously.
“Heh, only a dumbass would fight. If I can run, then I’d run!” Rob said with an arrogant grin.
“Ah,” Elaine mused. “Of course, only A Rank monsters can threaten you, after all, they’re strong enough to chase you down even if you try to escape.”
“Shut up,” said Rob.
Holly had finally stopped crying her eyes out at his apparent death, and they began to talk about their plan of action. Rob had suggested they should loot the ogres later when they fill up their mana reserves, which everyone agreed to. There was no reason to say no to loot.
After that, Rob began to pull something out of his pouch dangling inside his robes, five items, in fact. The others looked curiously at the swishing yellow liquid inside the vials. They could tell it was a potion, but they were unable to know what potion it was exactly and its effects.
“It’s a… mind-soothing potion, if you will,” Rob began to explain. “It helps with the stress and could give some greater focus after a short daze.”
“Oh, it’s that potion,” Elaine muttered as if she recognized what she was talking about. “So much for magical drugs, but why is it yellow though?”
“It’s a worse version of it, I’ll only leave the really good stuff for me,” Rob said and snickered.
“Wait, magical drugs? As in those drugs?” Melvin stared at the yellow potions, wondering if what he had heard was right.
“It’s a mind-soothing potion! It’s a different thing!” Rob waved his hands. “Just drink it already, you nosy little rats.”
“Fine, fine,” Elaine grunted and grabbed the vial. Then, with strange familiarity, opened the lid and downed the whole thing. Soon, she began to find herself entering a hallucinatory daze, a worser and more illusory daze than the ones she had experienced. Her eyes droop, and she mumbled unintelligible staff after a short while.
The others stared at the sketchy potion in their hands, but when Rob drank it all in one go just like Elaine, they decided to put their trust in him and drink it too - a huge mistake on their part, Rob mused.
Finally, he was here! It was a plan he made out of the blue, a plan that he kind of rushed but still succeeded in the end. There were some minor flaws, like too forceful of a sacrifice on his part, but it doesn’t matter. A win is still a win.
That’s what it means to be supreme! Rob snorted with a delighted smirk. Impatience just means you have to be more forceful with your actions, though my luck did take a little hit though. But that doesn’t matter in the face of such valuable loot!
Unlike everyone else who was practically high on drugs and couldn’t even think well, Rob slowly stood up with a perfectly clear mind. With squinted eyes, he approached the target of this entire scheme of his, the target that had piqued his interest more than once for weeks on end.
Fortune Stealer, as Rob named his supreme cheat, was a profoundly versatile ability with various uses, one of which is to steal the surface thoughts of others and basically read their minds. Rob wasn’t the type of person to shy away from doing a little bit of tomfoolery, especially since he had done worse stuff, so across the month, he had read the minds of others without their consent and had gained some interesting tidbits, especially from Annabeth Auburn… and Melvin Dolton.
Sigh, if only Anna was also here, then this plan would have been hitting two birds with one stone! Rob shook his head and dismissed his wishful thoughts. Even he wasn’t that lucky, especially since Anna’s luck overwhelmed his.
On the other hand, Melvin was only on the precipice of acquiring S Rank luck, while Rob already had 5-S luck, so he wasn’t that surprised to nab himself such a lucky opportunity.
And what a lucky opportunity indeed.
Rob’s eyes glistened with a golden glow as he began to activate Fortune Stealer. He pressed his hand against Melvin’s hand, taking a deep breath and downing another potion to deal with the headache he’ll soon face.
Give me your fucking memories, you little reincarnator! Rob wore a maniacal smile, and with a swipe of his hand, a surge of memories flooded his brain.
Naven. Gods. Demons. Towers. Blessed. Samsara. Reincarnation. Magic.
Years upon years of life invaded his brain, but compared to the eons of life he had lived, it was nothing more than a drop of water in an endless ocean. He quickly regained his clarity and drank another potion to swiftly deal with the headache he felt.
Rob slowly sat down on the ground, leaning back on the wall to process what he had just learned. It was… interesting, to say the least. Another world altogether, a different world, a Great World.
“What a downgrade,” Rob mumbled. “You’re now stuck in a Large World, how pitiful. Although Reincarnation sure is a boon… especially since that god of yours is just Buddha in disguise.”
Buddha, according to what Rob knew, has many aliases to spread his Supreme Truth all across the infinite realities, and just based on the god that had blessed Melvin with the power of Reincarnation, the mysterious entity known as Samsara… was Buddha in disguise.
He chuckled. How ironic indeed.
Rob shook his head and stood up once again to walk back toward Melvin with a devilish smile. That was only the start, and this was merely the first part of his devious scheme.
He already knew Melvin was special, but to think he was this special. Rob sighed in amazement at his own luck and thanked his past self for being so great.
Now, it was time to dig in for his large meal!
Rob once again pressed his hand on Melvin’s head, his eyes glowing with bright golden light and a strange force wrapped around Melvin’s soul and mind. Rob has risen to supremacy with his supreme truth, his deepest understanding of everything.
Stealing had led him to the top, and stealing meant a lot more than just stealing physical objects for Rob. He can steal almost anything in his past self, even the truths of lowly Higher Existences and the only thing he wasn’t able to steal was the Supreme Truth of other Supreme Existences.
This is what worried Buddha when Rob succeeded in his plot to be reborn and acquire Fortune Stealer, after all, this was a supreme cheat created by a supreme existence. It had limitless potential.
Who knows, maybe by the time Rob returns to the supreme ranks, he’ll have achieved what was once impossible.
Rob took a deep breath, relying on his memories and deep experience with stealing to do one of his most beloved thefts. And what is it you may ask?
Well, it’s nothing more than the free will of others!
“Come be my slave, you little Buddhist fucker!” Rob grinned and shouted in a mad tone. Golden light erupted out of his eyes as a strange force began to warp Melvin’s mind.
And soon, after a short while, Melvin’s eyes regained their clarity and he looked at Rob with endless devotion. “Greetings, Mas-“
“Just call me Rob,” he interjected with a dismissing wave.
“Uh…” Melvin paused. “Greetings, Rob?”