Chapter 222: Open The Barrier
Stepping out of the base, Lake headed towards the mark he had placed on that gargoyle that had run by them. As he got close he realized just how close it was to the barrier and became much more careful in the way he moved. He didn't want to just stumble into whatever was happening with it looking like it might be something new and important.
He was happy that there was a chance that the barrier was finally going to come down even if it was just for a second to let someone else inside. Either way he could probably get out. It would be too bad to leave his group behind but he would choose to leave if he had the chance.
Finding a place he could see the gargoyle while hidden pretty well He saw there was a small group of three gargoyles standing in front of the barrier motionless. Marking the other two, Lake fell back slightly so there was no way to see him at all and bunkered down to wait to see what would happen.
He knew there had to be a reason why they were just standing there and wanted to see if it was them waiting to be let out like he thought it was. He briefly thought about going to get the others but decided He couldn't risk missing whatever was going on by leaving or the group giving them away by being too loud.
Hopefully the barrier stayed down and the others could safely make it out on their own with him killing his way out first. He was excited to see what the rest of the city was like now that some time had passed. With no one getting in touch with them yet he had kind of changed his expectations of what was happening and now felt like it was going bad for the Metal Domain.
This meant he would probably meet a lot of opposition on the way up to the surface where he would meet the biggest of the problems he needed to defeat to get paid. It was an uphill battle but the more he got to do the better he would look once this was all over and all he needed to worry about was running into the Demon Worshiper bigshots that would be scattered around.
Using Detector he hoped to get the upper hand on this situation though by being able to find them before they noticed him. He wasn't sure what he should set Detector to though so he planned to turn into a Demon Worshiper and use Play The Part to blend in until he got a grasp on the situation.
If it went well he would be able to find out who and what he was looking for to crumble the Demon Worshipers army. Once he took out their important people he hoped the Metal Domain could handle the rest pretty quickly because if he had to go building to building for the whole city he would be here for years.
After about thirty minutes Lake started to wonder if what he was waiting for would even happen today. It could be the people the Gargoyles were waiting for had been killed or something and they would never arrive. He had no idea how the gargoyles were programmed to work and maybe the Demon Worshipers were in fact losing to a degree where their plans for this gargoyle/undead army would never happen.
Not that it was going to happen even if the people that were going to use them survived because Lake had already killed most of the gargoyles and undead. It would be too bad if he ended up being stuck here until the end just because they had kind of just been forgotten about because the rest of the war was just so chaotic.
There was also the possibility whoever made the gargoyles could tell they had all been killed and that it wasn't worth coming to get the three that had survived. If that was the case he was sure they would just leave the barrier up for as long as possible to keep whoever had killed their gargoyles trapped here until they had the time to come deal with it.
If that ended up happening he was happy he had decided to hide some food away for himself and if no one ended up coming to open the barrier in a couple of hours he was going to get more food to hide away.
...
Seeing some movement outside of the barrier Lake wondered how much time he had actually sat here waiting. It could be kind of hard to tell since he usually just used the sun to tell. He had been underground for days now and he had kind of lost track of time since he didn't know how to read the things the Metal Domain used as clocks.
To him it looked like a few gears that spun but he couldn't tell how to know what time it was because they didn't have any symbols or numbers to read. He guessed it was possible the things he was looking at weren't clocks at all and just some gearwork that did something else but he felt that was unlikely with there being no other things that could tell time around.
After a few seconds he could get a good enough look at who was outside the barrier to see if he attacked he was going to have to use his actual strength because there was a small army of people lining up outside. He then realized that there was still a small chance that they were on the same side and that he should actually see what they looked like before he attacked.
Just because they were here didn't mean they were the people responsible for getting the gargoyles to gather here. They could have just been a group the Temple had sent to find a way to drop the barrier that had stumbled upon this spot while looking around. Poking his head out to look at the group with his actual eyes instead of just seeing they were there with Mana Vision, Lake realized they were Demon Worshipers right away by their clothes.
He guessed he preferred it this way because they would definitely know how to drop the barrier unlike people who were sent by the Temple. He would have probably had to help if it had been people from the Temple. This would have been a small inconvenience but it would probably take longer than the fight he was about to have.
A few seconds after the Demon Worshipers stopped moving, Lake saw the area of the barrier in between him and the Demon Worshipers started to ripple slightly and he got ready to run in and use the opportunity to exit. As soon as he saw a hole form he jumped towards it and was through to the other side.
Landing he was expecting for the Demon Worshipers to start the fight right away but when none of them turned towards him he realized none of them had even noticed him because of the speed he had moved at. This was a great thing because it meant he could continue to let them open the barrier before he attacked them.
If he was lucky this would leave him a way in and out of the barrier permanently instead of it possibly closing if he interrupted them opening a way in. It also gave him a chance to see how they were doing what they were doing. It seemed they were able to control the barrier because of what element it was made from but that didn't seem right to him.
If you were able to control something like a barrier just because of the elemental affinities you had, it drastically affected how safe it was to hide behind a barrier. There had to be some way this barrier was different to the ones he had seen like around the Alchemist guild if they were able to control it like this.
Maybe they weren't interacting with the barrier at all and instead were using a special job to control the flesh that the formation was made in. That seemed way more likely to him because he was pretty sure barriers couldn't be controlled in any other way than messing with the formation that was projecting them because it made barriers completely useless if that wasn't the case.
Once there was a nice entrance in the barrier Lake saw the people that had been the ones acting like they were the ones doing it stand back slightly and he was about to attack when he heard them start talking. Not wanting to waste this chance to gather some information He stood still and listened.
"What should we do with the three gargoyles?"
"Just have them follow us while we look around. We were told to stay here as long as it took for us to find out what happened so our other option is to just leave them here until we're done."
Hearing this made Lake wonder what he should do. He had planned to kill them, turn into one of them and let the body take him back to their base but there wasn't really a way around the fact that if he did that he would look suspicious to the people he would be returning to.
He could pretend they had been wiped out and he was the only one that got away but he wasn't sure how the Demon Worshipers were expected to act. There was a chance a real Demon Worshiper wouldn't have run.
Seeing them start to walk into the barrier Lake decided it wasn't worth the hassle and drew his sword. He would rather find other Demon Worshipers to pretend to be than walk around with these ones until he figured out how he should handle this. He wasn't willing to risk that they would close the barrier again if he was to follow them in either so his only option was to kill them.
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