Only when I stop in front of the giant iron door do I realize how different it is from the ones that lead into the Sanctuary.
This one feels much more powerful if that is the right word to use. There are inscriptions meant to take any mana that touches the door and use it to strengthen their defenses. Even the material itself is different. The iron is shinier, without a single speck of rust or damage.
Given the information I have, I would say that while the Sanctuary is an old abandoned bunker from before the war, this one is newer. Built using newer technologies and more up to date knowledge. Even the stone around the door has been strengthened, laced with veins of inscribed iron.
This seems like it will take a while, so I leave for a moment to block the entrance that was melted by the acid attack, I try to shield it as it was before, and then return to the door.
I take a blanket, lay it out on the ground, and set Vega on top of it, placing multiple layers of defense around her. I even add a few more mana stones inscribed to protect against the mana radiation that is so ever-present in the Valley. Then I activate my trait and touch the door, only to immediately let go, my eyes closed and pain drumming inside my head.
Yeah, this will take a bit longer than expected.
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One day later, I already feel like throwing an all-out attack against the door.
None of it makes sense! How the heck is a normal Hell difficulty enjoyer supposed to get inside? Is there another way? Knowing the system, there probably is. No, knowing the system, there 100% are different ways to get inside. And most of them are probably much simpler.
BUT.
That doesn't matter for shit. This is a clear challenge. A test of my skills, and there is no way I will stop now. 5th floor Nathaniel won't back out, otherwise 6th floor Nathaniel will remember it and laugh at such a weak show of determination.
Nope, I will open this goddamn door. It is not even powered by mana, so its defensive capabilities are dramatically reduced. For what I know, it's 50-90% easier to unlock it now compared to if it was supplied with mana. Thankfully, the core of the Bunker, either a mana crystal or mana stone, seems to have been drained. Yet, here I am, angry at the door.
“Master, I leveled up my [Mana Manipulation]!”
At least Vega seems to be happy. She woke up a few hours after we reached the door and after examining the area, she went to training.
Yes, I'm curious, but I won’t forget my role as her master. There are 4 days remaining, so I spend half of my time with the door and the other half training Vega. We spar, I pressure her, she trains her heart.
Over and over again, she gets hurt by me, forcing her to train harder and more. At this point I'm surprised she doesn't hate me. I keep watching for that. A hint of growing hatred towards me, a desire for revenge. Yet there is none.
“Vega, do you not hate me?” I ask, taking a break from the door.
Hearing my serious tone, she takes her time to answer, “No,” she says simply.
“That's it?”
“Yes. I do not hate master.”
Such a silly minion.
“I will be disrupting your mana. Do not even try to fight against it outside of your body. Try to keep the mana under your skin active to strengthen your body or send it to your heart,” I tell her.
“Yes!”
Splitting my mind into two parts, I turn to the door while the other one trains Vega.
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One more day passes when I finally decide to do what I’ve been avoiding for a long time.
With a bit over three days remaining, I take a break from deciphering the door. I take two clean pieces of cloth from the bag along with a sweet fruity drink stored in a bottle with inscriptions meant to keep the contents cold. I also take out some sweets. All the things from the 4th floor.
Then I turn to Vega and ask, “Will you eat with me, Vega?”
A pure expression of shock appears on her face, and her heart palpates, beating weirdly. Revealing her surprise and shock. A big tear starts rolling down her cheek as I sit on the ground, the pieces of cloth marking our places, and I wait.
“Master… this… do you know… I,” she blubbers, and I wait.
Of course, I know. This custom, this gesture seems to be reserved for people you either like, respect, or want to build a relationship with. Vega, up until now, hasn’t had the opportunity to do this before the 5th floor, she probably only ever got to see other people doing this.
Then she tried it with me, and I still remember how happy she was that day. That day and every day after that. No matter how many times I accepted, she smiled just as happily as the first time.
But until now, it’s always come from her. Her show of goodwill, a desire for a relationship with her master. So it's no surprise that she might react this way if I were to return the gesture.
“I don't remember my disciple being such a crybaby,” I mutter.
She quickly blinks and wipes her eyes back and forth with her sleeve, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
Vega then quickly sits down and, unlike many times before, she seems nervous as I take out food and drink for us. I take my time and carefully split the items between the two of us. Then we eat in silence, though I watch with amusement, as she nibbles on the sweets, and drinks the chilled fruit drink.
Even though she is so much smaller, she eats more than me and doesn't even seem to notice that I barely touch it, carefully sliding it towards her.
The less food remains, the more sour my mood becomes, and that weird feeling fills my chest. When all the food is gone, she looks towards me, flashing me a giant smile that makes me want to pull on her horns.
“Vega,” I start carefully, “I will say a few words, can you repeat them after me?”
She tilts her head, curious, but then she nods, “Sure, master!”
“Pairing.”
“Pairing,” she repeats.
My throat feels a bit dry, so I take a sip and take a deep breath.
“Tutorial,” I say.
“Tutorial,” she repeats.
“5th floor.”
“5th floor,” she repeats.
“Floor quest.”
“Floor quest,” she repeats.
I open my mouth and then close it, only to open it again, “Hell difficulty tutorial, group 4, Noname, Savant, Beyond, Side quest, Train and protect disciple, shards, System shop.”
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“Hell difficulty tutorial, group 4, Noname, Savant, Beyond, Side Quest, Train and protect disciple, shards, System shop,” she repeats perfectly.
“That's enough.”
“Master, are you…” Vega pauses and then shakes her head. Instead, she smiles, “Did I do well?”
“Yes, you did. Thank you, Vega.”
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POV Lily Chen
"Master, you keep staring into the air. Are you checking the community?"
I look at my disciple and, seeing no reason to lie, I nod, "Yes. Nathaniel is there, talking with Savant." I notice that my disciple is displeased by that.
He is wearing the same clothes he wore when I met him for the first time. Even though he can't be more than 7 or 8 years old, his clothes remind me of a formal black suit, clean. He wears them proudly, and his bearing is the same.
It's adorable to see someone so young behave like that, but he takes it so seriously I can't laugh at him. Apparently, his father is a Champion candidate and will reach that rank in a few years, something Pallius, my disciple, is extremely proud of.
"You don't like that I'm talking with Nathaniel?" I tease him. It's fun because his reactions are cute. A kid pretending to be an adult.
“From what you’ve told me master, the man called Nathaniel is unstable and unreliable. Master is wasting time on him. I will get my father to locate your planet and will find you after your tutorial ends. I promise to take care of you.”
Finally, I laugh a bit, unable to hold back, "Pallius. Just tell me more about the Pairing, Tutorial, and the system, and I will think about it."
“I'm not dumb, master,” he shakes his head, “I will do so only if you promise to become my Shadow.” He mentions the title of some, probably, important position.
What would Nat do with such a stubborn kid?
I take a step closer, pinch his nose and shake it a bit.
Pallius seems extremely surprised, and at a loss for words, his eyes big as saucers. His face reddens, and his eyes change color from yellow to light blue, and his hair mimics that. Pallius isn't human. His eyes and hair confirm that, as do the small wings growing from his back.
But there is something to it, I think, as I let go of his nose and watch as he steps back. Nat might be onto something!
Still red, Pallius shouts, wings on his back moving erratically, “Master! Don’t do that!”
“Yes, yes. But Pallius, your fingers are still missing, can’t you regenerate them quicker?”
He fixes his suit, and his hair and eyes change to a more neutral orange color, “It’s not that easy. Not everyone is as much of a genius as you are. I swear, master, you are dumb, you don’t realize how exceptional your healing skill is.”
“Don’t worry, we will get you there as well.”
I don’t know if the system is cruel or kind, but Pallius and I are similar. Ever since he told me about how lonely he feels with his busy father or how much pressure weighs on him, I can’t help but pity him a bit. But only a bit, he always gets ashamed and angry when I try to be nicer. So silly.
“What do you think? Should we head to the Bastion or the Valley?” I ask him.
“We have only a few days before I return to my world, so maybe the Valley? After I come back, we can go on a longer expedition, master.”
“So reliable,” I ruffle his hair as it returns to its pale blue shade.
“Master! Stop that! My father is a Champion candidate, and I’m not some kid to be subjected to this kind of childish and undignified treatment!”
“Sure, sure, Pallius.”
He doesn’t push my hand away and looks at me, “Master, just become my Shadow. And stop thinking of that Nathaniel guy. He is weak, and he doesn’t value you as much as I would. You even said he left you!”
“Don’t worry, minion, I will deal with Nathaniel on the next floor.”
“M-minion?”
“Oh yes, Nathaniel said in the Community that he calls his disciple that. Apparently, his disciple likes it a lot. So I will be calling you minion as well.”
“T-that evil man!”
I smile at him, and then, while we walk, I continue trying to use [Reconstruction] on the remains of the heart of the Fallen Hero. Even after a few weeks, it's still in pieces and It’s extremely hard to work with, but I think I'm onto something.
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Three days remain until Vega returns to the real world.
Real world.
A real disciple, from the real world. Not a fake, not a shadow of someone long dead. A real half-demon that’s become my disciple.
I might have become softer, and I totally blame it on the [Focus] that blocks most of my… violent tendencies, and other stuff. But I'm… happy, I think. So for rewards, I push my disciple more, and slowly she becomes stronger and stronger.
I could go out and level her more, but that's not what I want. What I want is to create a great base for her that she can build on. Show her what's possible and the rest is up to her.
And then, when the tutorial is over, I will find her and her world. She will be around 10 years old by the time the tutorial ends for me. Maybe even older as I'm not sure how long it will take to find coordinates to her world or how difficult it will be to travel there.
But I will do it.
I have also decided to spend one more day trying to open the door. If I don't by then, we will leave with 2 days remaining, if something doesn't change. That should be enough time to deal with the annoying acid snake, get some revenge on the Bastion jerks, stomp the Veil Guardian into the ground, and maybe even check on the Sanctuary.
It's not that I'm worried about the people there; I'm just curious about what they decided. That's one of the reasons I left Darren, Nina, and others alive. I really wonder how these people will deal with the knowledge of what they were eating. I'm also curious what Irvin, the source of that meat, did. Did he kill Darren? Did he stay down there, or did he leave to meet his daughter?
While I’m thinking of that, something clicks.
In the deep silence of the underground, it sounds deafening, and then in the light of my thermal orb, I see the door shift slightly. Just a tiny bit, creating an opening just wide enough for a human to push through.
That makes me stop and once again examine what I was doing, and after a minute, I'm absolutely sure I didn't do anything that would cause it to unlock.
Should I close it?
I shake my head. Whatever. It could be the system unlocking them; it’s set to unlock for participants on some schedule, or there is something inside that opened it.
Who the hell knows?
“Vega, take your stuff; we are going in.”
I can hear movement behind me and her small feet tap against the floor as she moves quickly and packs up everything. When it's done, we enter the bunker, me going first.
Foolishly, I try to open the door more, but it doesn't move. It doesn't move even as I use mana or as I strengthen my body. Not even the tiniest bit.
To be honest, it scares me a bit and also makes me want to take it with me to the 6th floor to examine what the heck is with them.
The tunnel we enter doesn't have any inscriptions on the walls, and it's perfectly shielded against my mana and senses. When I try to send my mana through the wall, it reflects back inside the tunnel.
After we’ve been walking for ten minutes, I start realizing how long the hallway is. All we can see is the same tunnel anywhere we look. There are no doors, no rooms, no markings. The only proof of us moving ahead is the shrinking door behind us.
Oh, and also two anchors, one near the door and another one outside. Plus, a few mana threads that will warn me the moment the door moves even the tiniest bit.
I also hold Vega's hand, so I can teleport us both. Her possibly getting hurt by the teleportation sounds like a better option than being locked here. Just in case.
Ten minutes later, the area finally changes. The tunnel widens, and we pass through a few more iron doors, which are open. Each of our steps echoes through this otherwise quiet and dark place, and dust flies into the air. The air becomes stale in this perfectly empty bunker, devoid of anything that hasn’t been bolted down.
We pass by filtration plants, we pass by an enchanting facility. We pass by a forge as big as a two-story building.
There is a room full of shelves covered in dried-up plants that turn to dust when I touch them.
Another room is as big as a football stadium, filled with thousands of seats. The walls have been painted in a pale blue color and there’s a podium with a few paintings, barely visible behind it.
We eventually reach the core, a circular room with stairs running along the sides and heading down. When I send my thermal orb down there, I realize that it is as deep as a skyscraper for sure.
A single crystal goes through the middle of this room. It brilliantly reflects the light, perfect and beautiful. The biggest mana crystal I've ever seen. The core of this place.
A few more rooms later, we finally reach a much smaller one. It's barely as big as the room I used to live in with my sister. In that room, stands a simple mirror. It has no frame and it's hovering in the air, just a bit over the floor.
I take a few steps and watch our reflections inside of it. Both of us are a bit dirty and our clothes are not in a good state. Then I read the information that appears.
The Mirror is an item.
Yup, an item with a higher rarity than epic has finally appeared.