“There’s still space to make tents, so unless a shitty group arrives and demands one of those tents to get removed for them, there won’t be a drama,” Lily said before she took a bite of the meat piece.
Almond was patiently eating, chewing, and watching as well. “I wonder if other people would stop such tyranny or just watch?”
“What would you do?” Natalia asked.
“I won’t help. I wouldn’t mind lending help to such trouble if I was very strong, but I’m not. So I am not in a position to help others and attract an enemy.”
“Conflicts and tyranny inside the Labyrinth will reduce,” Lily faintly smiled. “GAA is developing a type of recording camera that Adventurers can bring in and record everything they face. This data can’t go out of the Labyrinth directly, so they will build stations at the starting points on each floor, and those stations would be guarded tightly with formations and defense from magic items.”
Natalia and Almond were surprised.
If GAA and Earth Union got the proof, they could indeed nab people and punish them accordingly. If a guild group behaved poorly and tyrannically, the guild’s reputation would suffer, and it would face problems as well.
“Tsk, if we had that now, we could’ve sent that piece of trash to the pits of hell,” Natalia clicked her tongue as she remembered Zeron. “Imagine if we uploaded that to the internet. His social life would be over.”
“That will reduce conflicts, but…” Almond nodded but felt that this was going to be a double-edged sword. “If all big guilds and powerful forces can access those recordings…it might bring trouble. Not to mention, there are people in GAA and Earth Union both who are not exactly righteous enough to protect the weak.”
Natalia and Lily understood what he meant by then because they knew what Almond did.
“Yeah, that’s why this is not mandatory. You can bring that tiny recording camera with you for your safety only if you want to,” Lily faintly smiled. “And nobody would know if you bring one with you or not. You can buy it, but whether to use it or not is up to you, so everyone would automatically assume that the other party has the cameras attached.”
“That sounds good. The Labyrinth would, at most, turn like our real world. Justice will be served to few while powerful and influential will get away in the end,” Almond shook his head and continued eating. “Whatever, getting powerful is the only way to survive.”
“That’s for sure.”
…
The trio finished eating and went to bed without further ado. It was around 8:30 PM, and most of them were going to sleep already.
But around 10:00 PM, when the area was completely silent, a group arrived in the area as their noise woke people.
They came from the direction where Lily’s tent was, but seeing Alfred and two wolves, they quietly walked past them. However, it wasn’t long before the noise outside increased.
Almond and Lily woke up and looked at each other as they got up and peeked outside through a zipped window that Lily unzipped.
“Get the fuck out of here!”
“Yeah, let others sleep and find a different spot!”
“Just make some place by adjusting your tents, and we’ll camp, or we won’t mind destroying one!”
Natalia also woke up as the noise increased, “What’s going on? A group arrived at this late to make a mess of our sleep?”
She also peeked outside from the window.
It wasn’t long before the drama settled down. One of the members of that new group apologized and requested to make some space at the side to move two tents to make space for theirs.
In the end, it was solved rather peacefully, and everyone went back to sleep once again.
Of course, most of the others had one person keeping watch outside, taking turns every 2 or 3 hours depending on the number of people in their groups.
Only Almond’s group was sleeping soundly because of Alfred and the wolves that kept watch for them.
Around 4:00 AM, Almond, Lily, and Natalia woke up. They freshened up and emptied their bowels one by one after digging a hole and sitting on a portable toilet inside the tent.
A group or two seemed to have left, but the majority were still resting when Almond, Lily, and Natalia departed deeper into the Shimmering Fen.
Usually, it was better to venture when the sun came up because Shimmering Fen already had fog that reduced visibility, not to mention the pitfalls and sneaky monsters in this area.
“Almond, do you know how to Focus Field?” Lily asked as her dark blue eyes flickered with the faint glinting light blue of Mana while a circular invisible field appeared around her that only she could see.
“Didn’t have time nor stats to practice it,” Almond shook his head. “And we can’t learn it right now, not in this situation.”
“Yeah,” Lily nodded and smiled as she said, “But I’m sure you will be able to learn it rather quickly once we exit. I planned to train Natalia with my mom’s help anyway, so you can join us.”
“That… I’d be grateful for that. Thanks.”
Focus Field required 20 Perception and 20 Focus in stats. It was an application of using Physical Enchantment in the eyes and then using Mana to construct a field via their vision.
Physical Enchantment in the eyes worked wonders, allowing one to sense the aura and potency of things and beings. The better the mastery, the more details of aura sections one could see, which could allow the user to measure a target’s parameters.
But the Focus Field was a step higher. Within the range of one’s Focus Field, one would be able to sense movements and auras of other things and beings clearly, allowing them to react fast. They would gain ultimate sight within this range.
The downside was that the consumption of this technique was no joke, so it was impossible to maintain the Focus Field perpetually for beginners. The bigger the range, the higher the consumption.
Naturally, it was one of the toughest techniques because one needed to find Chakra Points in their eyes, and a slight mistake there could cost their eyes. On top of that, after enchanting their eyes, they needed to learn to properly create the field via their eyes, requiring a challenging control of Mana.
Controlling a small amount of Mana and a higher amount of Mana had a big difference and difficulty.
Almond didn’t dare to try because he didn’t even have enough money to buy a single high-quality potion to recover his eyes in case he went blind.
He could torture his arms and legs, and he could recover them using his own healing skills from his previous class, but his eyes were different. His only healing skill wasn’t powerful enough to recover his eyes.
He had a pain-reducing skill, but it was useless in reducing pain during the process of finding chakra points because he couldn’t use Mana for it, nor would it remain active for long once he started training, and he had to save Mana for his injury recovery using the healing skill.
Focus Field was one of the essential techniques for Adventurers to eventually learn and master because it was also the only way to discover sudden attacks, traps, and ambushes unless one had some kind of skills that helped them in this regard.
As such, in case of feeling danger via gut feeling or during battles, one could use Focus Field to discover threats and react fast.
…
*Grr…*
The wolves growled as the fog thickened, and they started seeing glowing wisps.
Those glowing wisps were actually Silver-ranked level 3 monsters—Moonlight Wisps.
They showed hallucinations to Adventurers via eye contact, altering their perception, so one had to remain focused. Otherwise, they might get attacked walking into vine traps, fall into pitfalls, or get attacked by Bog Slithers, the Silver-ranked level 4 monsters that remained hidden on the ground of greenery, snake-like and elusive that released lethal water beams.
“I’ll handle those wisps,” Almond said as he looked at the three wisps over five meters away.
‘Spirit Explosion.’
Almond had no lack of Spirits, so he immediately executed two Spirit Explosions using Willowbee Spirits on the group of 3 Moonlight Wisps.
One of them turned poisons, but even without that, those Moonlight Wisps would’ve died. Their defense was too weak, even weaker than Bronze-ranked monsters.
Capturing the spirits of those three Moonlight Wisps, Almond said, “We’ll encounter more since we are properly in the Shimmering Fen now. I’ll use the sword’s skill and detect the monsters within 50 meters.”
“Great. We’ll hunt them swiftly once you detect them.”
“That’s the plan.”
Almond activated the Preying Sense effect of the sword, giving him power similar to Focus Field.
In the next second, he looked around and could see all the monsters within a 50-meter radius with him as the center!
“We’ll go in the northeast direction, as that’s the most crowded area, and clean it up while Alfred, you will go with the wolves to taunt the Wisps, and Bog slithers in the west. Just bring them to the northeast. Don’t fight there or you’ll get into trouble.”
“Understood, Master.”