Child of Destiny

After contemplating for quite a while, Lawrence decided to go along with his plan of staying here and training according to the methods given to him by the Dark King himself.

This way, those parties that would be coming after him would not be able to learn anything much about the true legacy left behind by Tang Hyeon in the real world.

Moreover, he could also preserve his life much better since he now had a better card to play against them.

“Let’s just hope that Big Brother Arthur and his family will be able to make their move much faster and rescue me as soon as possible,” he mumbled, feeling a bit troubled.

He would most likely get beaten up by the people of the Black Market once he logged out of the game if he did not reveal much information about the inheritance.

He was planning to give them the useless information bit by bit, buying himself as much time as he could.

If they were to force him to spit out everything he knew, then they would most likely throw him in a torture chamber for further questioning.

He had to prepare himself well enough to face such a hellish experience.

He was still extremely young to be subjected to such things, but with the knowledge that Tang Hyeon had passed down to him and a bit of life experience that he had gotten from the latter’s life, Lawrence became much more mature than what his age was supposed to reflect.

After deciding on this matter, Lawrence first sent a private message to Arthur, explaining his thought process and plans.

He waited for quite a while before the other party managed to send him a reply.

Siegfried: Not a bad idea. You go with your plan, and we will handle the rest.

“It seems like they are quite busy on that side,” he mumbled upon seeing the reply before suddenly remembering the size of the jiangshi army that they were facing. “Well, that is to be expected. After all, they are to deal with such a scary army made by the Dark King himself.”

“Let’s just hope that they will be able to last long enough until those four elite corpses give them a passing score later,” he added, along with a deep sigh.

Lawrence then clenched his fists while wearing a determined expression. He then stood up and looked around before heading in a certain direction.

******

In the meantime, while Arthur and the others were busy with the troublesome commission given by their Senior Laurent, the other members of the Empyrean Talons were progressing well with their respective businesses.

The one who was the busiest among them all was still Shin, who was still trapped within that secret Elemental Land.

During the entire week that Arthur and the others were busy exploring the dungeon, Shin continued mapping out the entire island that he was trapped in.

Within this period, he managed to thoroughly map the entirety of the outer area of the island. He had also realized that this place was much larger than he had originally thought.

Including the month-long exploration that he had already done previously, he had spent another half a month to further perfect the map that he was creating just for the outer layer of this ring-shaped island.

Based on the outer layer of the island that he had completely mapped out, its size seemed to be able to rival even the entirety of the Divine Empire on the Awakened Continent.

“Tsk! Tsk! This neutral region sure is huge!” he mumbled after discovering this fact.

However, he was never disappointed by this discovery since it would be more beneficial for them if that were the case. After all, the larger the place, the more resources they could get.

Moreover, they could also monopolize everything here since the only way to get into this place was through the teleportation formation from the Forgotten Temple of the God of Primordial Waters.

He now had a complete map of the other parts of the island, along with the marks that signified the important regions that he had explored.

Most of them were perfect for grinding levels, training their combat techniques, understanding the properties of elemental mana, and such.

These areas were the perfect training ground that anyone could ask for.

Then there were also those places that he called the treasure trove, which had rare and high-quality materials meant for production class. These places were filled with herbs, ores, and other minerals.

These places were practically heaven for production classes.

“Big Sis will surely love these places, especially for her Hand of Midas Guild,” he mumbled after skimming through the places marked on the map as treasure troves.

He had also put labels on these training grounds and treasure troves indicating their danger levels, particularly those hosting dangerous Monster Bosses.

All these places had Lord Rank or Overlord Rank Monsters in the Awakened Continent’s standard.

Some of them even had King Class Monsters guarding them, which discouraged Shin from exploring them.

These places were still from the outer layer of the island, yet he had already encountered such a huge obstacle on his path.

He could not help but feel troubled when he thought about the dangers waiting for him at the inner layer of the island.

His initial assessment of needing at least 190 Levels as a minimum requirement was entirely wrong.

He was way off the passing mark.

Fortunately, he also discovered something interesting during his exploration.

Along with all these marks that he had drawn on his map, there were also the ones that he had put for the locations of the Stones of Samara.

These marks were divided into multiple ranks and effects, depending on their quality and the difficulty of the challenges presented there.

He first thought that the quality of the Stones of Samsara stood for the towns, villages, and cities under the reign of the Immortal Empire.

However, he later found out that some of these stones were located at special terrains such as valleys, rivers, plains, and mountains.

They seemed to be placed at random at first glance, but he later realized that it was not the case.

When he zoomed out the map, looking at its entirety, Shin realized that the places where these stones were located were meant to form an extremely huge magic formation.

It was an extremely grand formation that covered the entire island.

He was barely able to get the entire form of the formation because he lacked some of the major parts of the island, particularly its center.

However, based on the outer layer that he had already mapped out, he discovered that it was an extremely complex formation with multiple purposes.

He was able to figure out quite a few of their purposes, along with the help of his friends, particularly Cloe and Alice, who were quite knowledgeable when it came to the runes and formations within the game.

Molton had also helped them greatly by looking for related information in the Imperial Library of the Divinity City.

With their combined efforts, the group concluded that the main purpose of this grand formation was sealing and isolation.

Moreover, specifically, the grand formation was meant to seal something within it and prevent things from going anywhere.

In simpler terms, it was like building a wall around a city facing inwards rather than the outside.

This could only mean one thing. This grand magic formation was meant to trap whatever was at the center of the island.

Shin suspected that it must be related to whatever fell at the center of the Immortal Empire during the final moments of the Repelling Era.

“Along with the information provided by Solus and Hanzo, that so-called meteor is most likely related to the Elemental God or something as well,” mumbled Shin while trying to combine all the data that he had collected during the last few weeks.

Looking at the digital clock and the date from the corner of his eyes, Shin could not help but knit his brows a little. “Arthur and Leonard have been helping Senior Laurent for quite a while now. I wonder what their current process is there?”

He was debating whether to recall the rest of the Empyrean Talons and continue the exploration of the inner region of the island or rely on the forces under Shiella’s command.

Unfortunately, the Hand of Midas was too busy securing most of the resource territories from the Aurora Continent and the major business partnerships in the Awakened Continent.

As for Deicide, most of their forces were too focused on multiple operations, such as keeping the forces of the Pandemonium Troupe in check and helping the Righteous Churches ward off the invading demon at the Dark Cloud Kingdom.

The little people that they had left were also busy accumulating more merit points from the Mysterious Instructors scattered throughout the Aurora Continent.

They did not have any extra hands to help him.

His only option was to rely on the Empyrean Talons. Unfortunately, everyone was in the critical stages of their respective quests, which they could not delay.

“Ah!!! This is quite annoying!” he mumbled after realizing that there were no immediate solutions for his current situation.

“Fortunately, grinding here is not that bad. Should I continue grinding while waiting for the others?” he mumbled before casting his gaze at his current status window.

——————-

[Player Name]: Sickarius

[Level]: 192

[Race]: Nephilim (Transcendent)

[Class]:

Main: Grim Reaper (Tier 3)

Sub (Secondary Combat): Phantom Swordsman (Tier 3)

[Production Job]:

-N/A (Under the effects of Duplicator’s Legacy)

[Affiliation]:

Guild:

Hand of Midas (Honorary Elder)

Deicide (Honorary Elder)

Adventurer Team:

Empyrean Talons (Vice Commander)

Mercenary Group: N/A

[Stats]: (Display more details)

[Skills]: (Display more details)

[Legacy/ies): (Display more details)

[Innate Trait]: (Display more details)

[Reaper’s Retainers (Contracted Elementals)]: (Display more details)

——————-

“The experience points are not bad,” he mumbled before suddenly adding. “Arthur will surely get mad once he learns about my current level.”

From their most recent meeting, he knew that both Arthur and Leonard were already around Level 185 or 187.

Leveling up was already quite hard for those who were at their level, yet Shin was clearly ahead of the pack, given that he had already stepped into Level 190s.

There might only be around 5 to 6 level differences between them, but these levels were much larger than they looked on the surface.

It was such a massive gap that would require an individual a lot of time and effort before they could even close it.

……