'Alright, I can make your squad members disappear from their current positions and keep them away from you till you finish your test.'
Ronny shook his head before replying to Layla:
'That would just raise more suspicions in Lady Zee's mind. I would rather quit this test than risk something like getting an entire cultist organization breathing down my neck.'
Layla sounded angry when she replied to him next:
'You gutless man. My bold and manly master shouldn't have a scaredy-cat successor like you.
But I cannot ignore you either. Because it seems that you are the only half-blood left here.
I'm only allowed to assist in my limited capacity. Keep that in mind and tell me, what do you want me to do? I can't help you win the match with my participation if that's what you are asking.'
Ronny rolled his eyes when he heard Layla's childish standards in men that were not mindful about their own safety. He then tried to clear the air with his next words:
'No, you didn't get it, Layla. I'm not telling you to rig the test from your end. I am not seeking participation from you or my team members. There's a simpler way. Just change the opponent. And this time, if you can help it, make them not wield their elements. You can do this, right?'
Ronny asked with a hopeful voice. He didn't want to give up on clearing the round with maximum participation. Especially when he knew there weren't many floors he could clear with his current team because it was simply not possible.
The average rating of the group would make it easy to clear the initial floors. But the group's weak links would start to create problems when individual participation is considered on the tests as well.
To clear the dungeon, the butcher would need a group of professionals who had the maximum potential to grow as the rankers. Something like his White Raven crew. But that was a possibility that belonged in the future.
Ronny had to think about making the most of his current visit. So he asked Layla if the thing he proposed could be done:
'*Sigh. I can stop your opponent from using the way of the elements. But the dungeon's mechanism will make it so that the difficulty level of your current battle stays more or less the same.
And I don't know what it will do with yours to compensate for the lack of an opponent who is not wielding their elements.
Plus, your default rewards will also be affected by this change. In case you are still having doubts, let me go ahead and confirm that you have been given better rewards than your peers.
It's because you performed better than your peers, which in turn was made possible by the dungeon putting you through harsher tests. With me interfering in the test manually, your rewards won't be as grand as they ought to be. So tell me, do you still want to proceed?'
'This childlike existence is surprisingly obedient. I wonder what makes her listen to my requests.
Two plus two equals four. Ramy shouldn't be allowed to speak the word ranker in the presence of girls. Lalalalalalalalala….
Alright, Layla. I'm okay with anything as long as it doesn't get in the way of the elements involved.'
Ronny thought to himself. Then he mixed those with random words and another set of thoughts. So that they wouldn't be read that well by Layla. Then, in his head, he agreed to her question.
**********
The butcher was a blank slate when it came to predicting thoughts through the real-time analysis of the mana signatures. That power belonged to the Sages.
Sages were impossible for the butcher to deceive. But he knew how arrays could be used to analyze rankers in general. Since the arrays don't have the mental capacity of a human, they will only behave the way they are programmed with runes.
And the runes would not be able to differentiate between his real thoughts with fake ones he had introduced to fool the same arrays.
Due to the cocktail of thoughts he had bombarded his mind with recently, Layla couldn't figure out what he had been thinking about. But she ignored that when she received his affirmation and got to work.
**********
Lady Zee was confused.
This year's dungeon exploration left her confused. First, she hadn't expected to see that the opponent generated by the dungeon would employ elemental fusion in a battle against one of her teammates.
Then another weird thing happened. Ronny's opponent started changing into another faceless ranker. But the weirdness didn't end there. The opponent apparition had also been joined by another faceless ranker.
It seemed that her team member was preparing to battle two opponents simultaneously. Exceptions like these never happened in previous explorations. Not with her. Not with any of the other Illuminati members as far as she could tell.
Ronny was part confused and partly relieved that Layla had pulled through. Then it dawned on him that the dungeon mechanism had optimized the difficulty level of his current battle. He needed to battle two opponents of higher-ranking status than him because he had avoided someone who could wield their elements.
"What is happening, Ronny?"
Jules asked in impatience. Ronny shrugged his shoulders before responding:
"Beats me. Maybe there's a glitch in the dungeon mechanism."
Ronny blamed his special treatment on the glitch in the dungeon mechanism which was almost non-existent. Lady Zee couldn't refute him either because she had been surprised by the way the dungeon behaved sometimes. So she let the matter rest.
Soon, the first apparition turned into Dom Walker. The second apparition turned into Edward Jenner, the LA lab-in-charge he had killed before starting his revenge plan on Sienna. He smiled mirthlessly to himself when he thought of how he had taken care of Dom and Edward:
'I had killed both of these guys using Reen, thinking I had skipped battling with them. But who knew they would have their revenge like this by teaming up with each other to take me down one day?'