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Chapter 525: Prestige

The information provided by my little ‘helper’ turned out to be quite useful. At the very least, it became apparent why the invaders had taken so long before they really made their first move. It wasn’t just that they were gathering information about me to try to discern any weaknesses that they could exploit…

Rather, it seemed that they were working to ‘harvest’ the skills of this world, whether it was magic, blacksmithing, or anything similar. They wanted to gather all of these skills together in their skill trees for two reasons. The first was that it would allow them to devise strategies to counter whatever problems might arise.

As for the second reason… It was simply a competitive mindset. These invaders already considered this world as theirs’, and wanted to be the first people to have mastered this world’s skills when they returned to their own world.

When I heard that reason, I almost couldn’t resist gritting my teeth in anger, before forcing myself to calm down. If I look at it another way, they had to consider it as if they would surely succeed. After all, their only options here are victory or death.

In the meantime, I managed to learn another interesting fact about Sanction’s world. This was the fact that they do indeed have mortal gods, although they were a bit different in his world. In his world, after someone has reached the ‘level cap’ of one hundred and gathers the proper skills, they are able to acquire a ‘prestige title’.

This prestige is somewhat similar to a second class advancement in the way that it is carried out. Once again, it is a vow that forms their prestige, and the name of this prestige title will sometimes replace their class name.

The main difference between the two is that the skill tree of one prestige title can’t be learned by someone else with their own incompatible prestige title, no matter how many resources they spend. That’s because this title is their domain, and they are only able to learn ‘prestige skills’ related to their own domain.

Furthermore, it was actually rather rare for people in Sanction’s world to receive a prestige title. In fact, out of the one thousand individuals that had come on this mission, the only one that had met all of the qualifications was their second in command, a woman by the name of Fleece.

According to the information, she should be the kitsune that I had been watching. Her class allowed her to use an extremely volatile energy to warp space, while her prestige title was simply ‘chaos’. Between the two, she had powerful offense, defense, as well as support abilities. It appeared that she was even able to hide from Tsubaki’s divine registry.

After I was done talking with him, I told him to write down the information about the rest of his colleagues for me to review later. Once I saw him taking the pen and paper out of his inventory, I gave a somewhat bitter smile, knowing that those items were merely illusions. I would have to be careful not to dismiss him before I copy his report done onto another medium.

“Have you located the second target?” Grayson asked, sitting at his desk in the second guild hall. They had barely managed to enjoy their first base for a few hours before they were forced to sacrifice it. This left an understandably bitter taste in his mouth, something that his members understood well.

“Not yet. There are a number of possible targets. However, we’ve concluded that the most effective means of dropping the Keeper’s power is by targeting the advanced classes. There are far fewer among them who specialize to reach a high level.” The man offering the report was wearing a black and white business suit, holding a stack of papers in his hand.

“In this world, there are a small number of advanced classes that we could target. Our first objective, Scarlet, was in the Martial Spirit class. Had we managed to kill her, it’s likely that the next in line might have only had half her level.”

Grayson nodded as he listened to the report, the man in the suit continuing. “In this world, there are only a few advanced classes. These are the Martial Spirit, Elemental Monk, Elementalist, Summoner, and Perfect Self. In addition, there is the rumor that spirits are capable of obtaining a secret sixth advanced class known as Spirit Shaper. However, since we don’t have any spiritual allies, this can’t be confirmed.”

Grayson’s eyes flashed as he listened to the class names. “The Perfect Self class, tell me about it. With a name like that, it can’t be simple. It may even be a hint…”

The man in the suit smiled bitterly. “This class is actually quite well known due to a recent discovery. Apparently, this class is able to help one reach Ascension… or, what they call a prestige title.”

“There are only a few practitioners known to have trained this skill to a high level. Of them, two would pose considerable challenges.” As he said that, he placed two documents on Grayson’s desk. “These two should be the ones that had reached the highest level in this class out of the entire dungeon. However, they have both already ascended. Moreover, one of them is constantly at the Keeper’s side.”

Grayson furrowed his brow as he heard that. “So, we could treat this class as a mid-boss before the Keeper fight.” While they did have the ability to battle gods, it was not something that they would actively seek to do without reason. “Among the others, have you found anything interesting?”

“For most of these, I couldn’t say for sure… you see, in the world of Fyor, the Elementalist and Elemental Monk advanced classes are far more common. As such, we haven’t been able to locate a suitable target that would show a significant effect. However… there is one Summoner in particular that I have found.”

Grayson showed a rare smile as he heard that, looking towards the remaining papers in the man’s hands. “Please, go on.”

“The man in question is a lycan, known as the Abyssal Key. His real name is Sinclaire Ducart. A recognized fanatic studying the arts of summoning, and undoubtedly the highest level in the entire class. He earned his title through having a number of demonic forces sealed inside of keys that he keeps hanging on his waist.”

“Finally, some good news.” Grayson let out a sigh of relief, nodding his head. “Try to find his position, and we can begin planning the attack.”

I closed my eyes, taking a moment to relax after I sat down on my throne. Scarlet had been brought back to stay in the citadel until the invasion was over, at which point she would begin working to repopulate her people. Additionally, there was the invader that I had kept in one of the hidden rooms of the citadel.

Is something the matter? Leowynn’s voice spoke gently into my mind, causing my lips to curl up.

Nothing’s wrong, Leowynn. Just gotta sort everything out in my head. We don’t have any idea on when they will make their next move, so I want to be prepared.

I could feel her faintly nodding at my words. Will you allow me to participate in the next battle, as well? Given your previous state, I didn’t want to bring it up before. You seemed… far more angry than normal.

Was I? I tilted my head, thinking back. After doing so, I chuckled. Maybe I was. When I saw them going after Scarlet, I guess a part of me just snapped.

Leowynn seemed to giggle in the back of my mind, though did her best to suppress the noise. It seems that you have finally begun to accept her as your daughter, as well?

Her words made me blink in confusion. While it was true… Scarlet was technically my flesh and blood, emphasis on blood, I had never truly seen her as my daughter. She was born with a fraction of my memories, and had been in charge of herself since the day she was born. Never once had I treated her like a father in all the time I’ve known her.

Yet, didn’t she start to call me ‘Father’ lately, just like Leowynn? I thought back, imagining what would have happened if it was Leowynn they were targeting instead of Scarlet.

Calm yourself, father. Leowynn’s voice spoke urgently after a moment. I found myself gripping the arm of my throne, my fingers digging grooves into the metal.

It was fairly clear the difference in treatment, but it also helped me to understand my feelings more. From what I determined, I really was starting to think of Scarlet as my own daughter, but we did not have the same strong bond that I had with Leowynn. For Leowynn, I wouldn’t have been content with killing fifteen, and keeping one as an informant.

But at the same time, I decided to spend some more time with Scarlet after the invasion ended. Although I hadn’t been a good father for her before, I would at least like to become good friends with her.

Anyways, I had a pretty good idea about how I could break this little game of hide and seek, now that I knew what kind of system they were using. It was just a matter of finding the proper chance. If my plan worked, I could potentially eliminate all of their bases at once.

Blank was currently staring at an empty point in the vast void of the digital world, his brows creased in focus. By now, his wounds had already recovered to the point where he was able to act normally, and he had discovered something… unusual.

Within the digital realm, he would often see data packets flying about randomly, taking the form of insects or small birds in his view. They would move from one server to another at lightning speed, but always followed set paths. These paths could ultimately be traced to both destination and the origin.

Right now, Blank was standing before a suspicious ‘origin’. As a deity that quite literally lived on the internet, he was confident that he was familiar with all of the nearby server ports where these data packets could come from. In fact, he had chosen to place his own internet domain where it was because it was so far removed from the normal flow of traffic.

So imagine Blank’s surprise when a data packet smacks into the back of his head out of nowhere one day. Not just any normal data packet, either. In Blank’s eyes, this packet had the appearance of a vicious flying monster, and was even imbued with mana.

This data packet flew off into the search browser, before finding the information it was looking for and flying back. Then, Blank watched it vanish into a completely empty portion of the digital world. Well… mostly empty. It would have been empty if he didn’t decide to build his office there…

Naturally, there was the chance that this was just a mundane occurrence, someone using a magical device to access the web from an unregistered location. However, it still annoyed him greatly! That thing was flying directly through his home, and was starting to do so at an increasingly regular rate!

It wouldn’t do any good to destroy the data packet, as the terminal it belonged to would simply send out another one automatically. The most that he could do was read the information that was being brought back before the packet escaped back to its home terminal.

Through this information, Blank was able to learn the contents of their searches. It almost seemed like someone studying for a thesis about advanced classes. They were looking up the abilities of advanced classes, the methods to train them, as well as the prominent figures of each advanced class.

At this point, Blank had become suspicious, and resolved himself to send an avatar to follow that data packet back right to its source! He had to find out who was disturbing his home!