“Maybe I shouldn’t be too critical,” she murmured, unable to hide her frustration. “After all, even for … someone … like you, you have worked hard.”

I was amused by her sense of entitlement, assuming herself to be my clear superior even after I had saved her life twice. “As you wish, your dragoness,” I said as I gestured the tunnel. “Please, ladies first.”

But before she stepped in, she gave me a suspicious look. “Shouldn’t you go first, you’re the one that knows the route.”

“If you can handle dismantling the tunnels without alerting the enemy as we move forward, making sure our enemies don’t catch us, all without actually triggering the traps I had embedded, I can go first,” I said with a smirk.

She clearly didn’t appreciate my glib answer. Frustration danced over her face for a few seconds, making me wonder whether I was pushing her a bit too much. But when I looked up worriedly — a fake worry, of course, as the opponents had long gone away, tricked by the little scene I had created — she decided that little digs or the sequence of the walk were not that important.

She started walking down the tunnel, and I followed, stretching my mana to slowly and carefully destroy the tunnels, making sure that not only I didn’t let out a flare of mana, but also making sure that if someone noticed the fake nature of my gift and tried to dig down, they wouldn’t be able to trace the path correctly.

Of course, I didn’t destroy every tunnel with the same skill, as if someone had already arrived down here, searching for a clue about our destination. I made sure to destroy the tunnels that were pointing away with much less care — or a different kind of care — so that if they had actually arrived at this point, them following a fake path would give us the time to retreat.

It was a boring, tedious task.

Luckily, I had the perfect view to give me some enjoyment. The deliciously thick hips of my new companion were dancing back and forth with each step thanks to the ridiculously high-heeled shoes she was wearing. And while she was short, her curves were just delicious enough to compensate for it.

And the rough floor wasn’t helping any, making her stumble occasionally. She didn’t fall down, of course, not with her supernatural agility, but the occasional stumble was impossible to avoid. Still, that hardly helped my enjoyment of the show.

“What a shoddy tunnel,” she murmured.

“Sorry, your dragoness,” I said with exaggerated seriousness. “The next time, I’ll try to find some high-class marble to dig through.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, turning just enough to give me a stink eye.

“Well, I don’t have your name yet, your dragoness.”

“And you won’t have it if you act like this!”

“As you wish, your tall and imposing majesty,” I answered, even though I received another punch in response.

-52 HP

She let it slide with one punch, falling silent as she walked, while I smirked, happy with the short discussion. Her responses gave me a lot of clues about her background, and the levers I could push.

It would be nice to talk to someone other than the headmistress about the Eternals, especially since the dragon didn’t hold any power on my only base, unlike the headmistress, who hold the power in my only power base.

She might be a dragon, but clearly, she was also some kind of noble, at least in terms of societal expectations, which guaranteed at least some kind of accuracy in terms of the information she might have. And despite that, her immature reactions were far too emotional for her to be any kind of dedicated agent, making her weak to subterfuge.

The skill she had shown against the combined assault of the Eternals was significant, of course, especially considering she lacked the extremely efficient shortcut provided by the system. However, her skill didn’t have any implications in terms of her social status, especially since I had no idea about their power balance.

Apart from her magical skills, the ease she transformed, and the quickness she had changed into her dress and her shoes, implied that it wasn’t a rare affair for her to use this form on social occasions, which had an interesting number of implications.

However, I didn’t waste too much time in the land of assumptions. Instead, I turned my attention to the results from the detection wards, observing the battle on the surface, which was going on with occasional frequency, people battling against each other, people fighting against beasts, even the occasional beasts fighting against other beasts…

“So, how are you finding your accommodations in our nice neighborhood?” I asked even as I pulled down another segment of the tunnel, timing it perfectly with a stumble, optimizing her frustration.

“It’s the worst place I could ever imagine. Just a little accident, and I’m away from home, in a land filled with upstart barbarians who think themselves strong just because they could kill a few monsters, captured by a bunch of disgusting skeletons with delusions of grandeur, who dares to defile the bones of my ancestors. Then, I get away, and a few days later, I find myself in some kind of training deathmatch, hunted by those incompetent abominations.”

She turned to face me. “Yes, I’m loving my new home.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, shaking my head, trying to hide my surprise. If I was reading her answer correctly, she came from a long way away, and if the dismissive tone she was taking toward killing a monster to get stronger, maybe far enough that the system didn’t affect her.

Which meant, she came from the lands that were still ruled by the gods.

Without the power of the System, the only thing I had was the scraps of the Divine Spark I managed to steal from the headmistress. I doubted that was enough for a trip. That fact alone was enough to mark her as a valuable source of information.

It was easy to fall into the illusion of whatever was happening in the distant lands was unimportant, that the only thing that was important was what was happening under the control of the system.

An illusion that the training adventure I had accidentally stumbled upon destroyed completely.

I had no idea how many people would be pulled out as a consequence of the training session, but unless it was as low as one or two in a hundred, the Eternals, as an organization, was clearly stronger than I was expecting.

And with the way they designed the event, I would expect at least one in ten to survive, maybe even going as far as one in two if my estimation was correct. And moreover, the cost of raising them was likely not that high, otherwise, they wouldn’t be taking the risk of possible candidates dying.

To be able to treat the death of several level-thirty combatants as an acceptable casualty, they had to be strong. Really strong.

Of course, that forced me to revise several critical assumptions in terms of their involvement. At first, the support they had provided to the undead army and the rivals of the Crown Princess in terms of Mana Gems, rather than getting directly involved. I had assumed that it was because of a lack of power.

But all they needed to do was to deploy these wards around Silver Spires and conduct their test around the school to destroy the school-like aftermath.

I might have assumed that I had read their involvement wrong, but the presence of three assassins sent to capture Titania invalidated that track prematurely as well. If they had no care about it, they wouldn’t have three warriors ready to capture Titania.

That still left one likely option. They clearly preferred not to interfere with the activities of the Empire for some reason — though, considering the slow collapse the Empire was suffering, it was definitely a questionable call.

However, it was also clear that some of them believed otherwise, intervening to help Zokras, the princes, even sending some agents to kidnap Titania.

Interestingly, that assumption also explained the sudden absence of a follow-up after they lost their three agents. The Eternals were clearly not an organization to be scared of that loss, but if a smaller faction of them was responsible for those activities, it made sense of them not sending a follow-up.

They clearly had a limited number of agents, at least the kind they could use for illegal missions.

However, I wasn’t able to think a lot about that, because we finally arrived at my shelter.

We had a lot to talk about.

—————

Level: 31 Experience: 493210

/ 496000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6226

/ 6324 Mana: 6831

/ 7750

SKILLS

Master Melee 100

/100

Master Tantric 100

/100

Master Biomancy 100

/100

Master Elemental 100

/100

Master Arcana 100

/100

Master Subterfuge 100

/100

Expert Speech 75

/75

Expert Craft 75

/75

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1

/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

Cornelia – Level 22

/26

Helga – Level 22

/26