Chapter 206: High Intensity Combat
Lake didn't know how much time had passed exactly but it had definitely been more than an hour since they had come in here to rest. That meant if he wanted to go with the plan he had told Grandy earlier it was time for him to wake everyone up to see if they would be coming with him or not.
He decided to give them a few more minutes though because of how deeply most of them were sleeping. If he woke them up too early they would be mad at him and decide not to go and he didn't want to leave too many behind because he couldn't guarantee their safety if they were alone.
All it would take was for another swarm of monsters to show up and this place would be overrun within a few minutes. Of course he had no idea if the gargoyles would ever come back out onto the streets and gather up but since he didn't know he couldn't say it wouldn't happen.
He would actually much prefer if they did end up doing that because he wouldn't have to go building to building and could just wait here as wave after wave came here to get killed by him. It would save him a lot of walking but he was sure there would be people here that would get mad if he tried to save the city by sitting on his ass.
It was really annoying to have people around that made you act a certain way so things would turn out the way you wanted and if you didn't play along they would be a pain. It made him realize he wouldn't save Grandy if he got into danger while they were out hunting because so far Grandy was really the only person Lake was worried about making him look bad.
Lake could already see Grandy calling him a coward if he was ever interviewed while the guild was trying to add up how much they should pay him. One bad review wasn't enough to tank his reward but he would rather have a perfect record since he was going to be doing nothing but this for the next few days.
Thinking about this made him realize he would have been so much better off if he had just stayed at the first Fighters guild and never even came here because he would have been able to make one million in a week or less and he had no guarantee of making anything here since the Metal Domain was probably going to be short on money with having to rebuild itself.
This would cause them to underpay everyone and use the fact that you would look greedy if you complained since they had just gone through a tragedy. He could already see the fake happy face everyone would be putting on as they received a percentage of what they were actually owed.
He wouldn't be like that though, if they tried to rip him off he would just find the biggest vault he could and take what he could. It wasn't like they would have the manpower to go after him or anything and completing the mission was worth the small chance they realized it was him who had stolen from them.
...
Lake ended up letting the people sleep for another hour before he started to wake them. Going to each person and shaking them slightly Lake could tell these people had had to go with little sleep before because they were all on their feet a few seconds after he had woken them. He guessed that was one of the benefits of having trained warriors and not just regular people here with him.
Once they were all up Lake could tell that none of them were planning on staying here and skipping out on the hunt but he still went ahead and asked. "Are there any of you that don't want to go with me to start clearing the city?" No one said anything so Lake said. "Ok, we'll be heading out in ten minutes, get ready."
With that done Lake waved for Grandy to come over and said. "I need a person who can see to be in the back, are you willing?" Lake mainly just wanted to keep Grandy away from him but this was also an important job so he was pretty sure Grandy was perfect for it. "Of course, do you expect us to get attacked from behind or are you just being careful?"
Lake didn't think it would happen but he knew he would be too engrossed in using Mana Vision and Detector to look behind them as often as needed and since it was so dark out there he needed one of the dwarves to be the lookout. "Anything could happen so I need someone with experience in the back to be on the lookout."
Lake was pretty sure Grandy was usually the leader of a group in normal times so he added that to stroke his ego a little because he felt it would make Grandy more likely to be happy about the job since it would make him feel like he was in charge of something. "Do you just want me to call out anytime I see something move behind us?"
Lake nodded and said "That will work." If Grandy ended up seeing anything, Lake would probably switch to a 'let the enemies come to them' approach since it would mean the gargoyles and undead had started to emerge. With his conversation with Grandy done, Lake looked around to see everyone looked ready even though it had only been a few minutes so he decided they might as well move now.
"Alright I'm going to go out first to see what it's like out there then I'll come tell you all when we're ready to start heading back into enemy territory." After saying that Lake opened the door and looked at the street outside. It was clear so he switched to Mana Vision to see if there was anything hiding waiting to ambush them.
He knew there was a chance a Demon Worshiper who could control the gargoyles and undead might have had time to organize their forces in the time they had taken to rest so he needed to be careful. Not seeing anything with Mana Vision which had a much longer range than Detector Lake felt good that they were safe.
"Alright follow me." Outside Lake led them towards the place that the gargoyles had been summoned yesterday. It didn't take long for him to start seeing things inside the buildings they passed with Mana Vision so he went ahead and set Detector to look for buildings with enemies inside.
Nine out of the ten buildings they passed were highlighted using this setting so Lake said. "We're here. All of these buildings have things inside of them so I'm just going to pick one at random." Walking up to one of the buildings Lake was able to peer inside since the door had already been destroyed by the gargoyles.
The inside was a mess and there was a very obvious trail of blood going into one of the back rooms. "Alright for the first one I'm going in by myself to see how dangerous it is. Just stay right there and yell if you need me." Stepping inside Lake followed the trail of blood into the back room.
Once he was able to see into the room Lake saw that there were three Gargoyles surrounding a body. Lake guessed they had already done what they had been made to do because they were sitting still not interacting with the body at all. They didn't seem to know he was here either so he took the time to see if the body was already an undead or not.
Setting Detector Lake saw the body did start to glow which meant this still body was undead. That meant he was going to level up when he attacked it so he looked at the details of Swordsman.
Swordsman (C) Lv.0/10
On level up:
Strength 1
Agility 1
Exp conditions:
Kills
Bonus Exp conditions:
X2 Sword kills
Skills from job:
This Job was almost exactly the same as Spearman but that wasn't surprising; Strength and Agility were definitely important for someone who was fighting up close. Pulling his sword Lake rushed in while using Crunch and since the enemies were stationary he was able to get two of the gargoyles with the first swing.
Using the next swing to finish off the last one, Lake backed off to see if the undead would react to what he had just done. When it didn't move, Lake wondered if these undead were similar to natural undead and took a while to get on their feet after being created. If that was the case this would probably be a lot easier for them and it might even be safe for him to take the others into the buildings with him.
That being said he needed to kill the undead not to see what happened before he made up his mind. Using Crunch then Imbuing Fire onto his sword Lake cut the undead in half before baking away again. A few seconds of burning later Lake felt the Exp but could tell by how it felt he hadn't gained much even with the X2 Exp bonus for using a sword.
That made him think he had been right about these undead being weak because they had just been created a few hours ago. Looking at his Exp Lake saw it had only given 4 Experience and shrugged. He hadn't been too interested in the skills from a common job anyway so he was willing to wait until his next kill.
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