’And then Draven, who was evidently as excited as a child on Christmas morning, ripped open a portal and retreated without doing anything further to you guys…why does this all sound a little too sketchy to me?’ My father asked as we all stood half a mile from the edge of the Runic inscription.
’Dad, trust me, if I weren’t there, I wouldn’t believe a fucking word outta Taylor’s mouth, but it’s exactly like he said; he did some weird mind trick on all of us, made it seem like Xipher was there…which I guess technically…’ Pausing, Brenden looked over at me, who was standing off a bit and examining some aerial photographs taken by plane of the inscription.
’Anyway, all he did was drop some stupid nickname, put on his Xipher hat, and convince everyone that he was hiding in the shadows; honestly, Tay deserves an Academy Award for that performance…’
’Hardly, it’s too easy playing the role of idiot Hero, all I did was quote DBZ, and it threw that moron Draven off his game-opening himself up to a bit of coercion from me, thankfully it’s reached a point where even if the target has a high Intellect Stat I can give some suggestions.’ I said as I continued arranging all the photos on a large plastic table.
’It was already too late to deal with the Runic Inscription, and the last thing I wanted to do was reveal all my cards and have a large-scale battle with someone CLEARLY above our pay grade.’ I said while putting the final picture in place to form a collage of spyplane film.
’Above your pay grade?’ Dad asked as he walked over and joined me in examining the overall layout of the inscription.
’Could I have beaten Draven and his army? Yeah, if I pulled out all the stops, but considering how Every single one of those guys had an Arm or higher bracelet, they would be able to exhibit the strength of a B-rank or higher. While that generally wouldn’t have been an issue, they were all above 3C, making them an actual problem, unlike the monsters we handled in the instance.’
’Setting the army aside, Draven is a 6C, and his race is unknown to us; for all we know, he could be able to absorb all his pawns and spike his strength through the roof; as such, I would have to pull out all the stops, using both talents and every weapon in my arsenal, it simply wasn’t worth it; thus I used Xipher as a scapegoat to move things along.’
’I have dealt with Draven time and time again, and I can say without a doubt I could manipulate him to an extent into, at the very least, backing down without a fight. By saying I had plans for Nexus, Marek, Piniki, and Sonnasitc, I labeled the four identities as untouchable, something that Draven would heed without question.’
’But how do you know he will?’ Brenden asked while walking around and greeting several heroes he knew around our little makeshift base camp.
"So, what do you think it is, Nexus?" the voice of a young man I had come in contact with not long ago asked while walking up behind my father and me.
"I gotta say, Fredrick, you’ve got some hella good resources on hand over at Stillwater," That’s right, Fredrick Colt, the very person I had messed with over those cards, was here, in the flesh, along with about 50 of his people, and just about every Hero he could reach.
It had been 8 hours since the Runic Inscription began its Empowering Stage. While my timeline was WAY off, that didn’t mean I was incorrect in my assessment, just that Draven was taking his sweet time finishing his plan…probably in an attempt to impress me or something along those lines.
"My dad is pretty good at that; he wants to meet you, by the way…if that’s alright," Fredrick asked with a hint of nervousness in his voice.
Between Sonas and Piniki, the two had practically praised me to the sun and back to Stillwater and the Colts after witnessing me stand alone against an army of Cultists, which was both good and bad.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fгeewebnovёl.co𝙢.
Good in the sense that I had earned a bit of reverence thanks to them knowing I was at 6C, and bad because now I was being recruited by anyone and everyone here at the base camp.
Although they were budding, the presence of Guilds was definitely felt here, and of course, the largest one was none other than Stillwater, who, upon witnessing the retreat of Draven and his cult, took the stage to investigate.
At first, they had been all high and mighty. Still, after bashing a few heads with my Eskrima sticks, Fredrick appeared and, upon learning my identity, quelled the situation before bringing us to where we would inevitably set up camp…watching and waiting for the appearance of the instance.
The surprising part was how easily Stillwater took control of the chaos outside the border of Colorado; either their reach was far deeper than I estimated, or they had bribed their way into anonymity, but so far, not a single person from the long caravan of news vans reporting on the "Colorado Light Wall" had stepped foot in our direction.
"Tell him I will come to find him once I have a better grasp on what we are dealing with; these high altitude pictures of the inscription are good, but I need to cross-reference the image with my memory, even then at a glance, I don’t recognize the meaning behind the lines and runes apart from summoning an instance."
"Scratch that, summoning an Instance Tower…the color of the lines alone tells me that it will be of the undead variety, so I would go ahead and start setting up for a Zombie Movie scenario, just in case… it’s just that…" my words trailed off as I noticed several lines of runes that caught my attention, causing my eyes to widen slightly before I hid my expression from Fredrick.
’Uh…guys…I think we have a problem…’