Chapter 279: The Return
Seeing the capital in the distance, Lake briefly thought about heading off to the Metal Domain but figured he should at least find out what happened to Helain first. If on the off chance they hadn't brought her with them on the trip to the Metal domain, Lake would ask if she wanted him to take her back to the Temple Head of the Metal Temple.
He felt like she wouldn't be there though since they had probably taken her with them so they could study the formation more on the way to the Metal Domain. As they were entering that city Lake saw that one of the fields they were passing had a golem working in it and was about to say something to the Temple Head about it but then remembered it was probably Alchemist Guild business meaning he shouldn't just talk about it with anyone.
Trying to remember to say something to Wallace the next time he went back to the guild, Lake quickly put the golem sighting to the back of his mind and asked the Temple Head. "Are you going to go to the Metal Domain?" The Light Temple was the Demon Worshipers number one enemy so he felt like there was a 50/50 on if she would go or not.
"I don't think I'll be going unless something really bad happens and the God of Light wants me to. Are you going back?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty involved at this point so it would be weird if I just forgot about it. There's also a large amount of people I helped hide in the mountains that I need to go check up on."
"How many?" It seemed they had gone into a bit of small talk so Lake went with it and said. "Around a hundred I think. There's another group that's trapped underground that's around the same size and I want to be there when the barrier comes down so I can see if they survived."
"Are some of your friends in that group?" Lake didn't know how to answer this because he really didn't know anyone from the group that well but he just nodded and said. "Sort of. They were the group I was with at the beginning of the crisis."
"Why aren't you trapped like them then?" Lake didn't really want to go into the whole story so he just said. "I was able to slip out of the barrier because it was opened by a Demon Worshiper but by the time I got back from killing the Demon Worshipers that were nearby it had been reclosed."
This wasn't quite what had happened but it made the story really short with all the things he had left out so he didn't care. "How good do you think their chances are?" Lake felt like the Demon worshipers had migrated into the barrier after he had destroyed their base and thinking of the people he had fought he didn't think the people inside had a good chance of living.
"Not good. They weren't particularly well suited for the situation we were in which was why they weren't with me when the barrier opened. I really thought the barrier would stay open and that they would be fine while I was gone."
They were almost at the Temple as he said this and their conversation ended since they had to go through a brief check to enter. With them here both of them had their own things they wanted to do with him needing to find Helain if she was still here and the Temple Head off to let the doctors wake Tiffany up.
Using Detector to look for Helain Lake did a quick look around before asking someone. "How big is this place?" He didn't see Helain but without knowing how big this place actually was he had no idea if the range on Detector might be too small to find her. "I don't know but most of it is empty so really just the three hallways that have people in them are being used."
Hearing that this place was almost completely empty, Lake set Detector to look for the Temple Head so he could go tell her he was about to leave. Finding her in a room not far from where he was, Lake walked in to see Tiffany on a bed with five people standing around her. Getting the Temple Head's attention, Lake waved her over to him. "It looks like you were right and they're gone already. I'm going to go and catch up with them."
"Alright, well thank you for your help getting Tiffany back." Seeing the Temple head really didn't intend to bring up the fact that he had asked her to carry him. Lake guessed him running into things constantly while they had been running had really made it seem like it was necessary.
Walking out of the Temple Lake set Detector to look for Helain's footprints and started to follow them out of town. He eventually found a place that seemed Helain had wandered around for a while and guessed this had been where all the groups had met up before they set out for the Metal Domain.
Seeing her footprints went onto a road that went straight to the Metal domain, Lake guessed they didn't have any plans of hiding the fact that they were coming from the Demon Worshipers. Starting to run, Lake was able to quickly catch up to the group and saw Helain and the rest of them just slowly walking.
He had no idea why they were going so slow or why they weren't using any carts but Lake guessed they had their reasons and went to join them. Like he had expected they didn't like the fact that he just walked towards them but it was pretty easy for him to convince them that he was on their side when the people from the Light Temple including Helain said they knew him.
Once they got back to slowly walking towards the Metal Domain, Lake walked up to Helain who was surrounded by various people studying the formation that was floating above her hand and asked. "How's it going? Have they found anything that will stop them from destroying the barriers as soon as we get there?"
Lake was really hoping that they would be able to drop the barrier as soon as they got there and he wouldn't have to go all the way down to the 42nd tier again. "They're saying the formation is too complicated to be sure of anything yet especially with the fact it's made inside a living creature. They say there's a chance the Demon Worshipers took advantage of the fact the flesh things could move and made it so all that would need to happen for them to be able to make another barrier is for it to move and change the formation slightly."
Lake really didn't see how they could do anything about that if it was true since they couldn't kill the flesh from outside. He guessed they could have the people inside do it but if they knew how they would have already done it and they didn't have anyone in the other barrier underground so there wasn't a way for them to take out both sides at once like they had to because of the bridge formation.
"So what's the current plan?" Helain didn't answer his question and instead someone that had been next to her did. "There isn't one. There's no point in wasting time on a plan until we're ready to try and take the barrier down. Right now all of us are just focused on thinking about this formation so we can try to predict what will happen when we begin our attack on the barrier."
Seeing that none of them had even looked away from the formation as the man had said this, Lake guessed he was getting in the way of their work and after giving a small wave to Helain he faded into the background. Thinking of walking to the Metal Domain at this speed without even being able to talk to anyone, Lake wanted to go ahead but knew he needed to stay to protect them if they were to get attacked.
With the way they were traveling there was almost a 100% chance that they would get attacked at some point so him being slightly annoyed wasn't a good reason to leave them to possibly be killed. Using Detector Lake set it to look for Demon Worshipers
A few hours passed Like this as Lake looked for Demon Worshipers and while he didn't think any would show up this early he eventually saw some golden figures rushing at them from the side of the road. He didn't rush out to meet them and just yelled. "Incoming attack." He wanted to see what the people in the group could do so killing all of the Demon Worshipers himself right away would be a real waste.
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