Inside Nivava's dungeon Pillar Angelo was probably the most miserable of all, he wanted to have an offensive ability like others and act manly, but he gained a mage profession and his cheat ability was one to create mirror images of himself, which was rather pathetic.
Of course he didn't even sit to think of ways to use it in battle as he gave up on it and took up the sword.
Through hardship he rose to level 55, only to learn that his sister whom was an enchantress had reached level 67 at that time.
He was jealous of her power, she could raise the HP of a person, gaining experience as a result, meaning that in every hunt all she did was boost everyone's health and didn't even assist in the battle, well she did have the leadership, which gave a bonus, but in general she did nothing.
Angelo whom desperately fought on the frontline and directed his troops ended up being lower level than her.
He of course accused the Nivava country for teaching him stupid skills like memorization and quick chanting, he begun to accumulate warrior skills, like the dodge roll and quick attack, not caring about magic, other than of course the basic stuff, like heal, clean, cure and fire missile, the rest were useless to him.
Of course he would use his cheat power to trick enemies from time to time especialy before a quick roll, but with his chances of it working he didn't really put his hopes in it.
The problem however was that the village was going for the worse, after the first month that he wasn't able to gather the quota, there was a huge uproar which the village elder had to apease, the reason being because they weren't given the same amount of food as the last month, he even learned by the advisor given by the queen that regularly they weren't even given half of those supplies, but those whom were strong would hunt and gather enough for themselves to live well.
The next month the quota was met, but the villagers still weren't satisfied, they had even given him the title of "Shorty Jinx" which made him furious, in truth he wanted to kill them for this title.
Shory Jinx
Makes you less popular with the public and people whom stand close to you will suffer from a small luck penalty, also applied to enemies.
Angelo was angry with everything these days, first being with himself, second with Chris and the others whom hadn't informed him on their plan, at the new queen whom didn't seem to give a shit if they become strong or not fast, at Ecclesis whom gave him a shitty power and at himself for not leaving the country with Mina when he had the chance.
He was so angry that the system generated a new skill for him called self-righteous fury.
In general it was similar to the berserk skill, raised attack while lowering defense, but without the all losing control of yourself stuff.
In general he had a crappy time.
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Mina on the other side was rather successful, of course she didn't hunt like crazy she just hunted enough to meet the quota and the rest of the time she managed the village's matters.
Mina had begun to mediate between villagers made weddings and became a benevolent lord, but when a crime happened she was both a judge and the jurry, thus being given the title of Judgement Knight, to which she gave no attention.
Judgement Knight
when you target someone as guilty or as a target he sufferes double the damage from all attacks.
Of course she had no idea what her title did.
Mina even the first month had met the quota since she hunted systematicaly and with a target in mind, even without the title.
She didn't try to level up, but to gather slime cores instead, which led to the disatisfaction of the queen's observer, but he could do nothing about it, in truth if Mina had went all out, maybe she would have already reached level 100 instead of 67.
The most however disturbing for the advisor thing was that she begun learning support skills, like cooking, singing, harvesting meat from animals, ingredient preparation and other skills that would give her no experience, but she seemed to enjoy them.
Although the singing did give her experience, she was sort of like a bard in combat after learning it, she had even got song compilations from this world which she learned in order to raise others combat efficiency, while in her free time she would sing songs from her own world.
You could say that she was a born leader, if she was a class noble, then she would be the best noble there was till that moment.
She was Just, kind and benevolent, there was nothing anyone could say against her.
Only she was somewhat melancholic at times, as she thought about her family, about matters that she could do nothing about, but those moments passed swiftly.
In their meeting she discovered however that the others didn't have as easy a time as herself, thus she had decided to try and help her brother's village, it was after all the nearby village to her own, to which till then she had given no attention, since she was too preocupied with her own village.
The two of them thus begun to have joint hunts thus ending her brother's problems with management, since she took over for both villages.
Making her advisor unhappy with it, in his opinion she would be a much more useful person on the battlefield than her brother, once again however he could do nothing about it.
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Alexxa's story was rather pitiful as she slaved away in order to help Ludicar reunite with his children and wive, whom were being held as slaves for ransom.
12 wives and 8 children, she could only curse the moment she had agreed with him, but he was so handsome and good with words that even the villagers didn't mind him hitting on their wives, unless they wanted a cold bed.
Of course he acted reserved and didn't touch another woman, this was the agreement they had made with Alexxa, Ludicar had some crazy leadership boost, simply by being part of his army they gained enormous boosts to their stats.
Ludicar was even a good commander and he taught Alexxa whom was a general how to command the troops around.
In the end she reached level 79, but they were nowhere near to raising enough money to even buy back a child, the quota was simply too high, you have to understand that even if you hunt 100 slimes you might not even get 10cores, since the chances of a core not breaking were rather low.
When she saw the 'fuck the queen' note, she was all in. She had a bone to pick with the bitch of a queen after all, killing people as if they were cattle.
In truth there were multiple heroes like her whom still believed in our world's values. Their difficulty to abjust to their new reality was of course due to inexperience and because they were being sheltered by others.
Alexxa most of the time had help from Anna's talismans, which she generously provided her, thus it was no surprise that she had no danger to her own life from the start, even before going to the dungeon pillar she had enough persuers to protect her.
Alexxa wasn't a vengeful person, but if she was to decided sides she would decided on the side she found most trustworthy, simple human logic.
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While the Queen only laughed when seeing the note, there were countless places that smiled after seeing what the notes stated.
The most important of all Being Eolia, It had been ages their Immortal ruler had only pets and no wife, now he was after Bloom, he wanted her to become a High elf and rule with him the whole surface level, with two Legendary nobles in power it would be impossible for others to even content.
Well Runia does have a legendary mage, but they knew full well about his plans on returning back to his own world.
Other legendary beings had long died or taken in the Fey blood, a single trait of the High elves that gave Immortality.
The Immortal emperor whispered something to the three blackhooded people whom brought him today's news and they disappeared right in front of him.
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Lastly Anna was in her Own castletown, shouting at Joseph for not informing her about important stuff before the meeting, stuff that many of the others seemed to know.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
"Would you trive forwards with the same determination if I had told you that you're on a fool's errant?"
Joseph said, but in truth he himself wanted her to become stronger, at the moment he could even taste the happiness of being able to free one of his three wives, it was only a matter of time.
"Now begin talking, tell me all the things that you've been hiding from me"
Anna declared angrily.
"Well for first I have to inform you that your elite hunting group only has one person at the moment, while meaning that you will be pressed to even reach the tenth floor, next unless you weren't informed, ascending the pillar is as dangerous as descending it, but for another reason, while descending you will have to fight monsters, but while ascending you will have to fight the uglinesss of human nature, there are wars going on up in the heavens, Even Ecclesis is only one of hundreds whom call themselves gods, the higher you ascend the more strong the people you find, the difference between a level 100 and a level 120, might sound small to you right now, but in reality it's huge, every level after 100 for commoners is a huge huddle, but those in the higher floors live in a different world from us, here on the surface and lower floors, we have an unwritten understanding among the rulers of each country and we even trade with those up in the heaven floors, the problem is that what they trade to us are not only matterials, but slaves and even human meat, you don't need to know what is happening up, only understand that your target should be to reach level 500-1000, gather together with other heroes and then go to Ecclesia and ascend from there, it's the only sure path up, they are followers of the god of light after all"
Joseph's apathetic tone made it seem as if he had already planned this all out making Anna even more angry, in reality she had even thought of throwing him away, but the problems was that she had no ability to manage a Castle town, It was like Alexander had stated, everything was done by her two followers, Joseph was managing the internal affairs, while Kilkis the wolf-man was hunting for cores, all she did was making talismans and raising her level expotentialy, since the talismans absorbed damage, thus making her sort of like a help in battle and gaining around 1/100 of their total exp, of course when we are talking about hundreds of people hunting with her talismans that was simply reaping benefits since she didn't even have to do anything after her magicality reached a certain point, she could make thousands of magic talismans.
In general lines Anna was far from happy right now, even with her insane leveling speed which would only grow with time since Joseph was selling talismans to the adventurers' guild, meaning that he talismans would spread throught the Pillar and more experience points would flood in.
Of course this type of training was all Joseph's idea, he even came with skills and spells that will raise her experience gains, like the swift learner skill and area attacking spells that did ignorable damage, but would still raise her contribution in a battle, she could even shoot it when there are her own troops around since the talismans would simply block her attack and even if it doesn't she was rather weak to begin with.
Swift learner raised all exp gains by 1% and it would rise accordingly, this skill was known as a rare skill, but was better known as waste skill, since in general even if you reached a 100% bonus it wouldn't really help you much after reaching your max level.
In other words a commoner would still have problem passing level 100, it just speeds up training a little, in other words he will reach the cap faster than than others.
Of course the thing that made her somewhat angry was that Joseph probably already knew that she would gain another cheat power after her magicality reached level 100, but he still adviced her to reache 30 in both physique and mentality before going for magicality, of course his reason was to raise her survivability, but would she even believe him.
In general most talented people had a strength of around 50 when they reached level 200, meaning that they went for a 50/50/100 for mages, the warriors went with 100/50/50 and rogues went with 50/100/50, which was commonly called golden balance, of course there were also people whom would go full into their class stat, this was called Frail balance, the last was called Unbalanced and the reason was because those people simply balanced all their stats to a certain level, which was plainly stupid when in a group.
Of course all this he had already informed her about and others also agreed to his world, even Kilkis the grey haired wolf-beastman with whom Anna had a sort of an Affair agreed that it was so.
Of course their affair was mostly in words since he didn't dare touch her, he was a talented class and to their misfortune he had a stunning 100physique, even touching her would result in serious injuries, for him breaking her protective talisman was as simple as flicking his finger.
"Joseph, here is a list of powers, I want you to devise ways for people with those abilities to level up, if you do so I will reward you"
Anna said with anger in her voice as she said so, in truth she still had some need of the despicable fellow in front of her, she didn't stay for long she simply left a note and left with Kilkis accompanying her as she went to visit Alexxa, she had lots of free time since she now knew that reaching the 100th floor would take years, do remember that the fastest record on reaching the tenth floor is two years.
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Back in Nivava
Vadima had just assembled her troops and was about to depart when a messanger came informing her that her target was now travelling towards the close by dungeon pillar.
Vadima had long stopped trying to understand what he was trying to accomplish, she only had one target and that was to have him join the Nivava Country once more, if she could make that happen she would return to her past glory and the troops that had been sent down the pillar would be amnestied and returned to her.
Of course before leaving she already had a plan in mind, she was going with plenty of gifts and proposals, she had even visited Christopher's teacher to ask for a little help, whom she found in the library.
After visiting him she had gained some confidense in succeeding, the main reason being the letter she was given by the students' teacher.
Her own Caravan was smaller than Christopher' thus she was confident in overtaking him, but unknown to her major events were taking place in the Castle behind her.
"How can this be, Are you sure!"
The queen shouted at the black cloaked person in front of her, whom was the sent by the Eolia Country of the high elves as a messanger.
The black cloaked person noded and extended his hand, a bright Eala crystal was thrown towards him which the person with happiness accepted.
The person was a double agent or maybe even a triple one whom knew.
The news she got however made the queen rather disturbed, Eolia's ruler had decided to wrest three of her heroes, One of which being Anna, the matter was rather dreadfull since he already had Anna's friend Dina and of course his conditions would be much better than hers.
This however wasn't the only thing on her mind, there were other countries that would learn about the heroes being disatisfied with her conduct of using them as working force to gain capital, of course it was the common conduct, but she had forgotten that the heroes had to be willing to do so themselves, that was the Rogue hero's condition for helping her keep them.
Thus the queen took Bloom with her on a journey to the Pillar Dungeon.
Eolia's Immortal King was laughing as he saw everything through a small mirror, a divine artifact which was passed down their royal family, the existance of which no one else knew about.
Then he begun speaking to the wind.
"Let the mission commence!"
In different locations throughout the lands people in black cloacks begun to move and assemble at their prearranged locations as a sinister plan was to be executed, something that the Queen had no knowledge of.
A conspiracy that she had no idea about, the gears of fate were coming into place as countless people even unknown to Eolia's begun to move.
This was the chance those people needed and a disaster was comming to befall, one thing the Queen couldn't have predicted was that a weak person having a pearl was considered a crime.
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At the time Christopher's caravan was travelling backwards to the Dungeon pillar, the moment they reached the first village of Nivava, the caravan begun to break apart.
The adventurers were paid and left, even the two rogues were left go, from there on only one carriage would go on, Tris had Riff and Raff travel to Munnero to handle some matters and so a single carriage begun to head to the dungeon Pillar at incredible speed.
Christopher in their travel leveled up like crazy as wild goblins were simply crazy, they even disregard their own lives as they charged at the caravan again and again.
Christopher's carriage arrived at the Pillar outpost only to find Vadima waiting for him there with soldiers.
Vadima with confidense delivered a letter to Christopher, the contents were brief, his teacher wanted him to help the unfortunate woman called Vadima by joining the Nivava Country. Christopher didn't trust her, but since she was asking him for his help there was nothing else he could do but help.
"Alright, but I have conditions of my own, we should go speak with the queen"
Christopher said making Vadima happy and thanking his teacher, not knowing that it was sheer coincidence that the letter had any effect at all.
Before however she could be happy a soldier full of wounds arrived asking for reinforcements, the man was healed but there was no time for the fortress to gather troops, Vadima's troops were the only ones on their horses.
Vadima told him to wait for her at the fort, but Christopher wasn't a person to be ordered around. His carriage went after the horses, it was of course slower, but it was still enough to keep up with them since the lizard wouldn't get tired as fast as their mounts thus keeping up, but still losing ground.
Christopher wanted to see what was happening, out of curiocity mostly, but he also didn't like losing time as they could simply continue their travels from there.
Sounds of Battle could be heard from the distance as sparks of magic were visible from afar.