Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 193: Merit and Debt

As soon as his targets were above level 60 [Verun’s Bite] started to absorb blood again, just like it did with the mink he killed long ago. Zac was delighted, as he hadn’t found anything that it wanted apart from blood and the stone.

As he kept going toward the core of the island the fights got more intense, creating widespread destruction in the area. After an hour Zac started to imbue his strikes with his Dao to end the battles quickly. After having walked for two hours he’d killed well over a hundred strong beasts, and his Cosmos Sack was quickly filling up with high-level carcasses.

He also made some interesting discoveries about his axe. It appeared that it didn’t just take any type of blood. Every time he killed a beast it took a small amount of its blood, but far from all of it. Furthermore, it only took blood from each type of beast once. Zac ran into a pair of leopards for example, and the axe only absorbed blood from the first kill.

It almost felt like the axe was taking trophies in the form of blood from the various types of beasts it killed. Zac started to hypothesize that perhaps the method to upgrade his axe was to collect enough types of blood.

That realization made him stop for a second, making him wonder if the types of beasts he killed had any impact on how the Axe would turn out when it upgraded. Perhaps feeding it with inferior blood would result in an inferior upgrade.

However, now was not the time to worry about such things. Everything was still a hypothesis. And besides, if the axe followed convention it would require a few types of E-Grade blood to evolve. If the blood had an impact on the upgrade, then the E-Grade kills would likely be far more important than the F-grade blood.

With that in mind, he kept cutting a path straight toward the core of the island. He was initially worried that the commotion he caused would draw attention to himself, but he soon realized he didn’t need to worry about that. Raging battles kept happening all over, with beasts fighting for territory, or just for the heck of it.

However, suddenly a primordial roar echoed through the forest, coming from somewhere close to the center of the island. Even Zac stopped and hunkered down, his body physically impacted by the reverberations it caused. It was the call of an E-Grade beast.

Zac didn’t move a muscle, instead warily looked around for a minute until he got up to his feet again. After the powerful roar there was no follow-up, perhaps meaning that it was simply a reminder of who was the king of the jungle.

It appeared that the other beasts in the area came to the same conclusion, and soon the forest was filled with the roars of various beasts once again. Zac hesitated a bit but decided to keep going. He really understood why Abby and Adran had no idea whether there actually was a Mystic Realm here or not.

Unless Ogras personally entered the fray, anyone else would simply throw their life away heading to the core of the island. Zac knew he wasn’t immortal either, and started to keep going more carefully, not wanting to lure whatever was the source of the animal cry earlier.

He was pretty confident that he would be able to defeat a normal E-Grade beast, as he’d gotten quite a bit stronger since he fought the Fiend Wolf. However, there were many unknowns in this forest. For one, being a beast that had already evolved told Zac it was no average animal, but it likely had its own lucky encounters.

Furthermore, there was nothing that said that there was only one of them at the core of the island. Who knew, there might be dozens of E-Ranked beasts idling about, and that would likely be too much even for Zac.

He kept sneaking forward, now starting to avoid battles. The closer he got to the core of the island the calmer it was. There likely weren’t as many beasts in the top tier of power, and the fights for territory might not happen as often. Any battle here would likely garner quite a bit of attention, something Zac really didn’t want at the moment.

After a while, Zac finally stopped, as he’d reached an edge leading to an abrupt cliff. He quickly got down on his knees and looked around, and realized he was next to a huge crater. Just a quick glance around told him that it was over a hundred meters deep, and at least a few kilometers across.

The bottom was covered with another forest, with huge trees fighting for space. He got a sense of foreboding as he looked down at the dense forest, hesitant whether he should actually head down or not. Before deciding anything further he instead took out a pair of binoculars, trying to glean anything of importance.

It was with some relief he realized that he wouldn’t have to go down after all, after seeing what was going on in the core of the crater. There was an area of a few hundred meters where nothing grew, creating a stark contrast to the lush surroundings.

In the middle of the desolate field, something that could best be described as an anomaly was flittering about. It reminded Zac a bit of the phenomenon that occurred when he used [Nature’s Punishment] as it looked like cracks in reality.

However, the center of the anomaly was far more chaotic, looking like a large hole that phased in and out of reality. Zac pretty much knew he was looking at a wild unstabilized entrance to a Mystic Realm, even though he’d never seen one before. He simply couldn’t imagine it being anything else.

That at least proved that there wasn’t a supreme treasure in the center of the island causing the high density of the energy the beasts enjoyed. He took out a crystal that recorded the scene in front of him before he started to move backward.

Judging by the high density in the area the Mystic Realm likely had a quite high density of energy as well, rather than being a desolate pocket of subspace. Zac saw no point in going down into the crater to investigate further at this time. The crater was likely home to the most powerful beasts, including the E-ranked one that roared earlier.

He started making his way back toward the secluded camp, going in a slightly different direction. The fights with the elite monsters on the island didn’t hold him up much but provided both a good deal of experience and Nexus Coins.

When he reached the camp he told the demons about his findings, and they looked quite excited by the Mystic Realm. Zac realized he likely wouldn’t have any trouble finding volunteers for exploring the realm in the future, going by the demonic guards in front of him.

He stepped through the teleporter, this time finding himself in the main arrival lobby. From there he walked to the commercial district for the first time since coming back.

Before he left the district had simply been former battlefields and forests, with the only exception being the Thayer Consortia Headquarters. But as he walked he saw that the district had changed much in the same way as the residential district.

The square that would be the core of the district stood finished, and there actually were a few hawkers having set up stalls. From what he could tell they mainly sold daily necessities for now, but Zac was sure that it would improve in the future.

The plots of land surrounding the square was still mostly empty as they were earmarked for special buildings. One exception was that the Thayer Consortia owned a satellite store placed right next to the future placement of the bank.

It was time to enact some things that they had decided upon in the meeting earlier, so Zac brought up his menu and started to browse structures to purchase. Since he’d become a Lord and Port Atwood was deigned a World Town more structures had become available for purchase. Of course, the drastic increase in population helped as well.

Most of the structures still were locked out though, as it seemed that a pretty basic requirement of most structures was to have a population of 1 million, which Port Atwood wasn’t even close to. He wasn’t sure how he’d get there in the short run, as the archipelago he controlled simply wasn’t very populated.

Even when they found people on an island there was usually only something like a hundred of them. The upside was that the average strength of these people was far higher compared to those who were safe within large towns on the mainland. There were barely any people below level 15 in Port Atwood, a sight that was quite common in places like New Washington.

Soon he found the structure he’d agreed upon yesterday with Abby, but before he was able to buy it he was interrupted by a familiar figure walking up to him.

“What are you doing here?” Zac asked as Alea walked up to him with a smile.

“I was bored, so I was thinking of having tea with the Sky Gnome,” Alea said, as she looked at the empty plot Zac had been focusing on. “But this seemed more interesting. What are you doing?”

“I’m getting the Contribution Store we talked about some time ago,” Zac answered as he made the purchase.

A large building was quickly materializing in one of the empty plots close to the square. It looked like a large box with huge rectangular windows letting light in. Otherwise the building was completely unadorned, apart from a large sign hanging above the 4-meter tall doors.

[Merit Exchange]

“Golems and their sense of beauty,” Alea said with a shake of her head as she surveyed the contribution center before she turned back to Zac.

“So, are there any benefits to being friends with the big boss himself? Do you provide any good discounts?” she said as she hooked her arm in his with a wink.

Zac smiled a bit at the quip and was about to answer, but his smile froze when he saw a familiar face in the distance.

It was Hannah who was holding a leather armor that seemed to be one of the latest creations by the inscriptionists. She was mutely staring at Zac and Alea, who were likely looking like they were in the middle of a romantic outing from how Alea acted.

Zac wanted to say something but Hannah simply turned around and walked away with hurried steps. Zac extricated himself from Alea with a sigh, but as he did he noticed a small smirk on Aleaʼs face that was quickly erased. However, it was too late to hide and Zac felt rage build up inside him. Alea had played him, probably in order to hurt Hannah, who she saw as her competition.

“Never do something like that again,” Zac said with a growl, his words punctuated with a wave of a brutal aura that pushed Alea back and drained the color from her face.

Zac’s mood had been completely soured by Alea’s ploy, but he would have to set things right later. With a face that made the citizens quickly and quietly leave the area he entered his newly purchased building.

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Humiliation rushed through Hannah as she hurriedly walked toward her home. David had told her she was being delusional, but she had refused to believe the rumors. She thought she knew Zachary, and that he wouldn’t do something like that.

Scenes of sneering glances by the citizens the past week flashed by in her mind one by one as hurried down the streets. It almost felt like everyone that she passed was laughing at her, and her folly.

How could she have been so stupid? People must have been thinking she was a gold digger, trying to curry favor in order to gain some benefits from the big boss. Was that to be her fate, to live in the shadows of her former lover and his new mistress?

Finally she was back home, forcefully slamming the door behind her as she entered her little sancturary. The walls shielded her from the stares of the world, and she breathed out in relief.

The exhale seemed to have drained her energy as well, as her legs slowly gave out, and she found herself sitting down on the floor. Two streams of tears couldn’t help but emerge as the suffocating feelings from yesterday exploded in her chest.

She was truly a fool. She had thought herself like the princess in some fairytale. Not only did Zac’s army save her and everyone else from the lunatic that kept them prisoners for months, but he also turned out to be a real prince. The real protagonist of the new world they lived in.

But clearly she was no princess. Even after yesterday she hadn’t given up, instead hurrying over to the merchants to get some gear. She needed to get stronger so that she could stand next to Zac with her head held high. But the prince had already found a new princess, shattering her dreams.

Sadness and humiliation was quickly transformed into fury as she thought of that woman’s sneer. Hannah just knew that demoness whispered poison in her boyfriend’s ears for months, ruining everything. The anger gave her strength and she started pacing back and forth in her living room, imagining strangling Alea with each step.

Here eyes fell on the bottle of champagne she’d arduously acquired for her and Zac’s reunion, and with a snarl she hurled it into the wall, creating a fizzy explosion.

“That demon bitch,” she spat out between grit teeth.

“So you got kicked to the side, huh? What did I tell you?” a voice sounded from the shadows, making Hannah turn around.

“Shut up,” she snarled at David, who only sardonically shook his head.

If Zac had seen the man today he would have been shocked. David had seemingly turned into a completely different person, and he radiated a sinister aura. The fall changed some far more than others.

“These demons will push us out of the picture. Zac is our chance to rise, you saw those Inheritances. They are our opportunity. We need to get stronger so we can protect ourselves. Remember what happened to Izzie,” David said.

Hannah stopped her pacing, a frown emerging on her face. It was true. This life was no fairytale, and Zac was clearly no prince charming. Her eyes slowly hardened until she looked up at David with a nod. A small smile emerged on his face, and he took out a slender dagger from within his robe.

“Take this. You wouldn’t belive what I had to endure to obtain this offensive array. It will be useful to us,” he said, placing the handle in Hannah’s hand before leaving the house.

The dagger felt cool to the touch like she was holding a piece of ice, and she thoughtfully looked down on it. She had waited for so long, only to be toyed with and betrayed. Just what was the debt, and who were the debtors?

[New quest: The Price for Betrayal]