Roberion watched with bathed breath, the undead moving slowly in the street just below him, the runic purple light shading their skin in a magical glow. Making the gray and white atmosphere of the buildings a bigger contrast to this singular beast. Now that the null got a better look at the place, the architecture of the place was extreme brutalist, lacking bright colors, giving the feeling that the place was made in a hurry, more concerned with having a location to this selection than making sense.

On the side, a school was near a manufacturing plant, a thing that wouldn't make sense in a normal city; some buildings fused with others like a mutation; stairs in the side of the buildings led nowhere. Roberion felt that as an incongruence, a randomly generated architecture, but what really caught his attention was that the runes scattered all over the place; the runes seemed to be the priority before the city; they were connected without any failure, without a rune being void or thorn apart, the constructions morphing and changing to adequate in the spell formation.

Even someone as ordinary and inexperienced as Roberion knew that this spellwork was something bigger, something important. I feel that the thing I felt—the spell is connected with these runes, even the healing the baroness used. That undead also has familiar burning marks on it, like the laser that cut me apart in a previous trial. The Ceruelean Baroness is planning something; now my doubt is whether I should act or wait on it.

"Let's wait a little", Roberion and Percival watched the undead. He looked like a broken machine, waiting there, doing practically nothing. The two kept talking silently about random topics, like Shade, the research station, and their odds of survival. They started getting bored as the hours went by. Looking at the undead, almost four hours in, they were already getting other ideas, dangerous ones.

"I think we should wait more, Percival, you?", Roberion said quietly to the capybara knight.

"I, I don't know, sir; maybe it would be a better idea to let me take a look outside", Percival answered Roberion without taking his eyes off the undead.

"…Maybe later, the more we are undetected, the fewer participants we will have to deal with. This region we are in seems pretty calm, which is both a blessing and a curse; it's probably calm because they are using the same tactics as us."

"Indeed, sir—", before Percival could talk with Roberion, a movement was seen in the street; a ragband of individuals dashed at the undead creature. The group seemed to be composed of the most varied species; in their numbers, four seemed to be humans, the other being a null.

The humans were much different from each other; two of them seemed like average humans, one with a light blueish skin and the other with a darker skin. The other ones had a pointy ears, not as big as the one he saw in the drawings of the old temple, and the other humanoid was small but squat, with a wide frame and a big beard that was almost the size of his lower body, full of braids.

All of them had some sort of slashing melee weapon that they were using to attack the undead creature that Roberion and Percival watched for hours. The only one that had a blunt weapon was the squat humanoid with a hammer. The way they fought the undead seemed to be trained and tactical, using the least amount of time and resources necessary and not letting the beast have a chance to injure them.

Legs crushed, arms hacked, the pointy ears individual fell the creature with a quick stab at the squiming creature on the floor.

With the beast eliminated, the individuals started taking a look around, with one of them pointing at the building they came from. Roberion waited with impatience for what this group would do. I won't join them; wasting time with a team will be just another hassle because I will have to kill them too later. If I joined them now, they would probably kill me first, as I'm a newcomer, when the time is right. And I have to say, my equipment seems good enough to make them seeth with greed, I would kill me too. Scratch that, this ugly [Behemoth Skin] wouldn't tempt anyone; maybe my gloves, obviously they would want the [Hellish Plasma Cannon]. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? Time to focus.

Roberion and Percival kept watching, growing tense as the bearded person pointed at the building they were in. It would take some time for them to come to Roberion's floor, but not more than a dozen minutes.

BOOOM!

Before Roberion could make any sense of the situation, a bomb exploded at the group; the damage was brutal, with concrete falling everywhere. Percival had a smile plastered on his face. Roberion had only exhasperation and curiosity. As he looked at the street floor, the parts with runic symbols were intact underneath, only fracturing the asphalt surface, the lighting shining stronger underneath on the grey material. The color of it resembled the gray tone of the old temple, and the resistance of the material seemed similar because most of the street and the asphalt that wasn't made of this material was broken apart.

A moment later, a small humanoid creature dropped near the street; it looked more like a doll than a person. With a grenade that had a mesmerizing blue and red rune on it. Weirdly, the color itself doesn't seem similar to the lines; it doesn't have that ethereal feeling, like these cursed purple runes that are everywhere in this city. There is so much I don't know.

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Before he could keep thinking about the nature of runes, the dool-like humanoid dropped the grenade near the explosion. Before it fell, the squat humanoid jumped from the rubble, took his hammer, and hit with the hammer. To Roberion's surprise, as the hammer neared it, the bomb changed direction without hitting the weapon, flying overhead out of the building. When it hit high up at a window, an explosion of fire and ice shocked the building. Compared with the previous explosion, the damage to the building was minimal. But the glowing flames assaulting it and the ice frost that took almost ten meters of diameter from the explosion seemed to take a while to dissipate.

The small, doll-like humanoid dashed to the side, a hand at his cape, an arrow piercing the floor where he was, debris falling out of the hole the projectile made in the street. The arrow shot was strong; the only signal it was an arrow was the feather in the point of the visible wood out of the concrete.

As a new arrow was shot from the top of the building, the squat humanoid ran after the small individual, trying to intercept it. The dool-like person didn't wait for the confrontation, throwing a granade at the dwarf, who defends himself by taking a shield. The bomb hits the shield, but instead of exploding in the robust humanoid, as it explodes, it seems all the energy of the explosion was changed to be around him like a vortex. The bearded individual doesn't wait, jumping like an impregnatable ball high up.

In the building, shadows jump from the roof, and an arrow is nocked at his bow. Only with the help of the parasite could Roberion barely recognize that it was the pointy ear person. This time, an ethereal glow shone around him, a white light enveloping the arrow as he shot it down on the small humanoid.

Before the small humanoid could drop a new bomb at his enemies, the arrow flowed at the speed of a bullet hitting the bomb and penetrating the middle of its body before the bomb blew up. If the arrow didn't kill him, the detonation made sure of that. As the smoke dissipated, a black and red carcass appeared.

As the point ear humanoid neared the floor, Roberion could see a fanged and predatory smile from the archer. That smile was destroyed and fragmented as another big explosion happened, making debris and blood mist shower all around him, his body and viscera painting the area. The impact was as big as the first bomb. After the explosion, a small figure appeared near but outside the zone of explosion—another doll-like being, but this one had long hair. This new small creature was already running from the place. The squat individual had none of that; he followed the being as fast as he could.

Both of them were running and vanishing from the Roberion camp of vision. The last thing he saw was a couple of undeads following them, some unclothed, some burned, and some a little squashed like a worm that was stomped.

"That baroness is full on recycle mode; these guys can only be the ones that died in the previous trial. But how did she make them undead? "Are the parasites?", Roberion touched his nape. The being that freed him from the system—could it become his downfall?

"Sir, did you see the same thing as me?", Percival said with wonder in his voice.

"Again, about explosives?"

"No, sir, the beings; they seem like fairytales from my kingdom, dwarfs and elfs!"

"Fairytales? That doesn't make sense. They are real."

"I expressed wrong, Sir Roberion; they existed but were incredible rare to find. Some said it was because they came from other places; some said they came from other planets; others said that they were just in extinction. There were even some who believed we could become them", Percival answered as if in a lecture.

"That is honestly useless. But alright, it would be easier to call them by their supposed species. What is a dwarf, and what is an elf?"

"The one that was small but wide, with a beard, is a dwarf; they are really strong people; his body seems to be fat, but underneath it is all muscle. I heard their females also have beards. The elf is the archer; they have point ears; that one seemed to be only half-elf though", Percival answered pensatively.

"Woman with beards?! Talking about pointy ears and the drawings that we found on the old temple, could they be full elfs?"

"The term correct is simply elfs, not full elfs, sir. They could be, but if I'm totally honest, there are so many species with pointy ears. It was just that the archer seemed like a half-elf to me; I don't know, I just feel it; I don't have any memory about that", Percival ended in a sad expression.

"Alright. And the small guys? Do you know what they are?"

"I don't know, sir", Percival looked around the room with apprehension, "Sir, maybe we should go out of here; what if they came back?

"Nah, I don't think so. After all that, I bet most people run from here or are attracted by them. Here is the securest place of all!", Roberion said happily.

"Now let's just keep watch—", before the null continued, he heard a sound of nails on wood, like a beast was clawing its way. Taking a look back, he could see a little movement on his left side, where they put all the heavier objects to block the patch from the door.

"Now that is great; something is trying to enter here. It seems that my plan is a bust—", Roberion said, looking at Percival. The knight capybara had an expression like I told you so. "—Yeah, yeah, you are right—mostly right—because we are going to kill these assholes. That is, if they are weak, if they are strong, we are running on Shining Crown. Hum, your bombs are impact bombs, right? So get ready to throw the explosives at them. If they don't get hurt, let's get out of here. I will fight, but only after most of the participants are dead. My potions aren't infinite; I used almost half of them."

"Yes, sir! Nonetheless, I have other bombs", Percival took two bombs; both of them had a black exterior. The type of bombs is a mystery to everyone but the capybara knight.

Both of them looked at the barricade with anxiety. It didn't matter what showed up; they would try to put them down.