The surveillance was boring for a while. The group entered a building and stayed there for about an hour.

It was only after that waiting period that they started doing things that Amon cared to pay attention to. When they left, they started heading toward the outskirts of the city, and Amon’s party followed silently.

They didn’t change their attire since they didn’t want to look too suspicious, but Amon made it a point to cover his face with the hood of his cloak. If he could recognize Nykal, would someone be able to recognize him from the Tutorial? His face was broadcasted to everyone, after all.

He followed Nykal’s party outside of the city limits and onto the road that cut through the vast desert right outside of the city. He never would have guessed that there would be sand dunes surrounding the city that he knew to be a metropolis, but there were more surprising things to focus on.

Like the behemoths that roamed the sea of sand. He couldn’t tell what exactly they were, because they looked like really long sticks going straight into the air, but when he followed one of them up he found that it, and 5 other sticks, were all just the legs connected to the torso of something. He couldn’t see what it really looked like since its belly recreated the image of a dark night sky.

For a while, he was able to follow Nykal effortlessly, without fear of being sighted due to their distance and the darkness of the night. He followed them to an oasis and that was when Nykal’s group started to really do something. They set up camp near the water’s edge and began to prepare for something.

Amon’s party was laying down quite a ways away, just watching the location. As soon as camp was set, everyone besides one white robed woman began to jump into the oasis. Nykal was first, and after everyone else was gone, Amon noticed that the signal disappeared. He was able to follow it to a certain point into the water, but out of nowhere it just vanished.

What’s under the water?

He looked at the guard. She had a gnarled wooden staff that was probably around four feet tall, with a soft blue gem embedded into the swirled part at the top that added a soft lumination to the night. It was safe to assume she was a mage, so his best choice would probably be to rush her and close the distance. He could fight at any range, being a magician and a swordsman, but he’d have the best advantage at close range.

The problem was how he planned to handle her. He assumed she was a Player, which meant that she had her own circumstances. She was a living, breathing person. She could’ve been from any of these floors, or maybe from an entirely different world like he was. She was someone’s daughter, friend, maybe a sibling too. And, unlike anyone he’d engaged in battle with up until this point, she wasn’t his enemy necessarily.

She just happened to be working with someone he kinda didn’t like, but that didn’t mean he needed to kill her. But, it would also be dangerous for him to just… leave her be. He couldn’t sneak past her, so–

Wait, yes I can.

“O’ wind spirit, obscure my visage with your control over the atmosphere.” he cringed softly as he whispered this to himself. The Spellslinger skill was amazing, but since he wasn’t exactly proficient at it he found that he had more success with spells when he made lofty and dramatic incantations for them. He hoped that he would be able to compress the process as he grew more capable.

Nevertheless, the air around him began to shimmer softly so that he was mostly invisible. If someone focused very closely on him they’d be able to detect him, but he’d be able to avoid most eyes.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I’ll summon you two when I get inside.

He sent Seru and Blue back to his dungeon and started approaching the base. He knew that his footsteps could still be seen disturbing the sand and that he still made noise, so he was stuck moving as fast as he could quietly move. It was an awkward pace.

He didn’t exactly have experience running in the sand though. At one point, he slipped a little bit and stopped dead in his tracks. Had he alerted her of his presence?

The silence in the air was suffocating, or maybe that was the fact that he was holding his breath. He needed to train his rogue skills so that he could effortlessly do things like this. He wasn’t always going to go guns blazing, sometimes he wanted to feel like a ninja.

Maybe I should master every class… Would I be a good berserker? I mean, I am a dungeon master so I should be proficient in mostly everything so I can properly understand and utilize my dungeon right?

He avoided detection so he resumed his infiltration. He felt like he was going to pull it off until he barely noticed a thin veil in the air. It was surrounding the camp like a dome, a barrier that matched the shade of her gem.

If they have a barrier magician this must be really important… I don’t think he’d take too kindly to me interrupting such a thing, but… He couldn’t just turn around. He was curious, and he was greedy. If it was this important, it would make him even stronger than he already was. He had a power fantasy to live out and Amon needed to stand at the apex of all of the strongest characters in fiction.

He didn’t have the ability to pass through the barrier undetected, so he decided to end this as quickly as possible. He released the spell as he rushed into the camp, running straight at her since he was had to close the distance as quickly as he could.

The mana in the air began to gather around the tip of her staff, but it wasn’t faster than Amon. Once he was directly in front of her, he maximized the output of his legs and almost slipped on the stand again with his burst of movement. He practically vanished from thin air, only to reappear behind her and wrap one arm around her neck and cup his hand over her nose and mouth simultaneously.

‘Active Skill Generated: Burst!’

He was thankful for the new skill, but he was hoping that the System would’ve given him something that was related to incapacitating enemies. He’d only learned how to defend himself and kill his targets, which limited his range of actions greatly. Even now, he was burdened by the fruitless throes of the woman he was currently stealing consciousness from.

Thankfully, she wasn’t too skilled. She should’ve continued to cast and attack him even at the risk of taking a bit of damage so she could escape, but she panicked and dropped her staff so that she could struggle.

She wasn’t his peer.

After a while, she fell limp and he gently placed her body on the ground. Hopefully she didn’t have, like, brain damage or anything serious like that because of this. He was about to jump into the pool, but something told him to stop. He sighed heavily as he turned around and picked her up.

They had set up a guard for a reason. It was dangerous out here. There were thieves, monsters, and enemies all around.

There were even people like him.

The least he could do was hide her body inside one of the tents so she wasn’t completely out in the open. When he put her down for good, he took a moment to look around the tents to see if there was anything useful he could find. Unfortunately, his eyes didn’t react to anything in particular so he assumed that there was nothing of value to be found.

He dove into the water and swam toward the bottom. He wasn’t surprised to see a source of light deep inside the pool, which was definitely way too deep to just be a regular pool. It was a swirling mass of mana, so it was safe to assume it was some kind of portal.

His guess was right. Once he was on the other side of it, he found himself in an entirely new location.

‘Quest Generated: Defeat the Colloseum’s Champion!

Time Limit: 45 minutes!

Hidden Objective: Disrupt the Succession of Inheritance!’