Chapter 2 - The Situation
Kindred woke up to see a forest. The forest was full of trees that worked together to completely block the sun. It was pitch black. However that was no problem for him, he just activated [Absolute Vision]; it was now light as day. He looked around him and saw his teammates starting to awake. They all unconsciously activated [Absolute Vision] in order to see as well.
“What the hell just happened? Where are we?” Seth muttered.
“I do not recognize this forest as anywhere from the game. I would assume that we are in completely new territory, frankly I don’t know if we are even in the World.” Kindred analyzed the situation. Suddenly, his stomach started growling, then so did the others. They were all at 0%, full depletion.
“Huh? We just took a food pill before we left. Right before we saw that monster, I was still at 98%???”
Everyone confirmed the same thing.
“Whatever, let’s go find something to eat before Pandora and I start losing our minds as hungry vampires. I’ll plant a mark here where we’ll come back to talk about our situation.”
In fact, Kindred and Pandora were already salivating just looking at his teammates. Due to his hunger, he could automatically see the red lines pumping blood in his teammates and, signalling the start of his crazed state. Everyone ran to opposite directions. Due to their race, all of them were carnivores, and didn’t even care if their food was a human. The game coded their loss of attachment towards humanity.
After blinking 10 miles at a time, Kindred found his prey. It was a pack of wolves drinking from a small creek. Kindred casted [Cast [Silent Death Tier 1] ], the pack of 15 wolves instantly died, dropping dead. One moment they were alive, the next, they were dead.
He descended and immediately bit into a wolf. 2 seconds later, the whole wolf was sucked dry. The body disintegrated after there was absolutely no liquid left. Let alone the blood vessels, there wasn’t even any marrow in the bone. After another 28 seconds, the whole pack was sucked dry.
He licked his bloody mouth, while looking into the river. A face looked back at him. It was a young face of around the age 24, with blonde, long hair. He bared his fangs before smiling and looking back to locate the marker. He blinked back to the marker and saw everyone else return one by one.
“Alright, let’s talk about what we’re supposed to do.”
Apart from being an assassin, Seth was also the chief strategist.
“I’d say we should look at our surroundings first with our spies.”
Seth promptly took out a stone from nowhere, well, that nowhere was a spatial storage.
[Summon [Servant: Surveillance]
10 servants appeared and bowed to Seth, their master. But what surprised them was what came next.”
“At your service, milord.”
“HuuuuuuH?” Everyone had been utterly stupefied by the fact that the servants talked.
“Milords, is there a problem? If it is a mistake within our surveillance servants, I will promptly discipline them and wish that you would punish me.” One of the servants stepped forward.
“No, no, tell me, what is your name?
“It is Draefus Yolduas, milord.”
“Okay, Draefus, have you always been able to speak?”
“Milord, I believe that we have always been able to speak, but perhaps that is not the case? I apologize, I don’t really understand.”
“Haha, no, no, it’s fine. Anyway, scout the around this forest.”
“Yes, Milord.” All ten servants vanished.
The squad stared at each other. What's going on.
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“Y’know, this is really givin’ me the feeling that this is real life, but real life has magic and stuff.” Kindred attempted to start a conversation. “Aii, you think all the other NPCs can talk too?”
“Let’s try it.” A simple statement by the simple, straightforward Diabolos.
Kindred took out a glowing red crystal. This was a storage specifically for living beings.
[Summon [Battle Maids] ]
Out came six beautiful maids. The maids were no different from Seth’s servants:
“At your service, Dred-sama.”
Meanwhile, Pandora had summoned her a few of her Lich Kings, Hecate, her collection of monster-servants, and Diabolos, his Death Knights. Each and every one had the ability to talk.
“Yeah, this place is definitely not the World. The atmosphere feels different, and more importantly, here, the NPCs can talk.”
“I agree, captain. That monster, the...the Creator, he must’ve transported us to another world.”
Before long, the surveillance servants had come back with information about their surroundings.
“Milord, to the west of us is a plain. It is not far from here. We saw various undead and ghouls just wandering around. Since we were unsure of their level, we decided against confronting them. We also saw several humans killing these undead, we would assume that these humans must be more powerful than the undead.
To the south of us, there is a village. It is slightly farther than the plain.We also did not confront them, in fear of agitating a potentially powerful opponent. There is around 250 people. There are 98 adult males, 100 adult females, 26 male children and 26 female children. We assumed their gender based on their clothes. It seems that the males wear a simple shirt and brown pants while all the females wore a dress.
To the north of us, there is a well-beaten path that seems to be regularly used by humans. There is a horse-drawn carriage moving towards the east at 1.96 miles per hour. And to the east of us, the forest seems to be unending after we traveled 800 miles in that direction.”
“Okay, how about, let’s go these plains and check these undead out. If they aren’t very strong, we should build our base there.”
“Aii, a wise suggestion, captain.” Diabolos nodded his head.
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They walked through the forest for 100 miles, half-admiring the scenery, half-looking for food. Along the way they had killed a couple more packs of wolves and found a couple of bears. None of them were strong. They were rank 2 at highest.
Finally, they reached the plains. Just like how the Seth’s servants had said, there were multiple undead and ghouls just wandering around. Kindred immediately activated his vampire sense and studied the undead. Then, he began to pale.
“You guys, I can’t read its power level. Are all of them this powerful? Pandora, can you sense them?”
“Pff, hahaha. K-kun, you’re overestimating them too much. Lower down your vampire sense so that you don’t automatically block them because of their level. You idiot, they are only rank 8 at strongest.”
“Ah, ha...ha...ha. Yeah, okay, uhhh. Aii maids, clear all the ghouls in a 10 mile radius. That should be enough to build a nice base.”
“Of course, Dred-sama.” The blue-haired maid answered. “Ruby, burn them down.” “Aii.”
[Cast [Hell Ring] ]
A circle of fire appeared around them and began to expand. It instantly killed all the undead it touched, until it reached the 10 mile radius.
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“Aighty, a base. What are you guys thinking?”
“Honey, I was thinking of a nice-looking castle. Our defenses would be multiple gates surrounding the castle with a gate guardian in each layer. That’d be nice.”
Hecate immediately agreed, “Definitely, I support Pandora’s idea.”
Seth decided to counter it. “No, we can’t do that. It’ll be way to showy. Remember, we don’t know how strong the people in this world are. We should be as secretive as possible.”
Diabolos and Kindred nodded at that notion.
“Oh, come one, honey, support me here...Wouldn’t a castle be a lovely idea?” Pandora began to pout, in hopes of changing Kindred’s mind.
“Sweetie, this is a safety issue. I wouldn’t bear seeing you die here as my girlfriend.” Kindred softly said in a slightly teasing way.
“That’s not fair. If you put it that way, I can’t say no…” Pandora stuck her tongue out.
“Aight, Seth, what kind of base wouldn’t be showy?”
“I wouldn’t use invisibility since it costs way too much mana to maintain. I’d suggest we build either underground here or go to the mountains farther west and build some kind of cave.”
“Let’s try...building...uhh...yeah, let’s try building underground.”
“Okay, so I’m thinking of either of a base that goes maybe a hundred meters down and then it goes sideways or a base that just goes directly down.”
“What does everyone else think?”
“Captain, I was thinking that detectability-wise, going straight down would be safer, right?”
“K-kun, why don’t we just start by going straight down, and expand sideways if we need to.”
“Aii, I agree with Pandora here, that’s a good idea.”
“Okay, 3-0, straight down it is.”
“Aight, Give me your crystals with the undead workers as well as the ones with the materials. I’ll put ‘em to use. I’ll be making an upside-down tower of some sort.”
Each of them grabbed into the thin air and pulled out two crystals. One was another glowing red crystal while the other one was like a diamond.
[Summon [Undead; Specialization: Construction] ]
“You stupid builders, come with me. We are going to build...there.” Seth pinpointed a specific location about 2 miles away. Eventually, Seth pulled out a blueprint and inserted it into the undead. They began to dig. He emptied out the diamonds, and a mound almost reaching a mile high appeared.
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“Sorry, I’m really tired so just let me save here and I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Che, lazy Hecate, as usual.”
“Oh shut up Seth, like you’re not. You’re literally asked me to do this through a mental message so that you can get a break too.”
Seth stuck out his tongue.
“How about we all just stop for today?”
Everyone agreed. “Aii, captain.”
…
“Huh? I can’t log out.”
“Wait, neither can I! What the…”
“Wait, guys, let’s calm down here. Y’know like take a deep breath.”
“Umm, so we can’t leave, what’s that supposed to mean???”
“So let’s just say this is kinda like real life, but it’s not real real life. I guess we sleep here?”
“Aii, Captain’s right, why don’t we take a nap here and see how it goes.”
“Yeah, okay, let’s try that.”
[Summon [Ins-Tent] ]