Supreme Monarch

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Tyler spoke with such confidence and conviction that he was almost starting to buy into his bullshit. Well, it wasn't exactly bullshit since he had an idea on how to do that. For now, he could always provide them with the artifacts he couldn't or wouldn't use or need.

There was always the option of, helping them expand their Mana bodies when he was done learning advanced magic runes. And although he couldn't permanently increase their magic potential, they could increase and improve their repertoire by learning new spells and skills.

When Liz and Rain heard his words, it was like a huge burden was lifted off them, they both simultaneously breathe a sigh of relief and even Erin seemed pleased. Tyler could pick up on Erin's emotional fluctuation for some reason, well it didn't matter, what matters now was to complete the demon's pact as soon as possible. 

He still needed to visit the fifth floor of this wing and find out what was behind the secret door in the throne room. Without further delays, Rain stood up with Liz and she used her dagger to make a small cut on her palm. Since she wasn't a demon and wanted to partake in the pact as well, they needed to use a more complicated method in activating the spell.

Liz then uses Rain's blood in drawing a magic circle on the back of her left hand, she then proceeded to cast a spell. »Synchronize« the spell took effect and the blood magic circle on her hand glowed brightly. She then activated the skill and Tyler saw a familiar sight. Her eyes glowed slightly with a red hue and an intricate magic circle formed within them, the same also applied to Rain.

Liz then walked towards the spotted Tyler and knelt before him with Rain by her side. The spell was ready and all they needed to do was voice the deal and for Tyler to accept it. Unlike Albert, the girls didn't desperately offer him their lives as that would be contradictory to the freedom they wanted. They had offered him their complete loyalty in exchange for what he thought they considered protection.

Tyler didn't need another life in his hands so he accepted the deal as is. The main factor was the spell prevented their betrayal and he didn't think he needed anything more from them. The skill was completed and Tyler felt nothing, truly this was a terrifying ability if your awareness of it was so low. Once the girls had stood back up, Erin came over a little excited and talked to them, Tyler thought she had the air of a mature lady but she seemed a little childish right now.

Since that was done, Tyler proceeded to ask the girls some more questions about the structure of the noble families. Since they were both isolated throughout their childhood, they had little to no important information and just told Tyler about what Rain heard when she would train with her elder brother twice a week.

Still, for someone as clueless as Tyler, this was very useful to him. He was able to learn a little about the elves and dark elves' current situation. Rain was a little too young to know the reason but, it seemed like the discrimination between the other elves and dark elves had gotten worse at some point in time so a small number of the dark elf population left the elf continent and migrated to the demon continent. 

However, they were unprepared for the complicated situation in the demon continent and most of them died while others were captured as slaves and used as sex toys. It was only about four centuries ago that the Great Five exerted their influence and freed them all, not out of goodwill but because they found them more useful as pawns than toys. It wasn't like the demons were that similar to humans that they couldn't match the elves' beauty, there were even demons whose beauty surpassed that of elves as evident by Liz herself, which made the need for dark elves ' toys obsolete.

The girls didn't know any of the specifics after that and could not even tell Tyler how the Great five had used them. They knew the Alcar family had a group of dark elves they send out on missions but Rain had never been on such missions, even though she was stronger than most of the members of that team. He learned that she had a brother but it didn't seem like they had anything that remotely resembles a proper relationship.

As it turned out, her brother was also the one who lead a team after them and when they had caught up with them he hadn't even given them the time to explain and just attacked with every intention to kill. Hearing this Tyler decided not to pry further, they didn't have any more information so he just watched as the girls discussed amongst themselves in boredom.

Time passed quickly and as Tyler was in the midst of lampooning, Albert knocked on the door and was granted permission to enter. He reported the fact that Jarret's team had arrived and were standing outside the barrier. Tyler nodded and as he was about to stand up, he remembered he had wanted to try out something. He brought his left hand close to his face and thought this was also another good opportunity. One that did not require him to put his life on the line.

He had already used both of the skills the spatial ring possessed and was pleased with the effects. Since he only had one more use of spatial movement, he wanted to test out the full effects of spatial distortion instead. The skill that had saved his life and prevented something bad from happening back there. Thinking back to the descriptions and limitations of both, he remembered that when using spatial movement he could only move to a location within his line of sight, which had been the hindrance in the last fight.

Even if he had wanted to use spatial movement here, he could only try by looking through the window in the room but he felt like that would look a bit lame so he had no choice but to test more of the effects of spatial distortion. According to the very weird description, the skill allowed him to bend the rules of space. Using this effect he was able to deceive the space around Rain, making her target an illusionary body he had created while completely ignoring him for just a moment, and that was enough to grant him victory.

Focusing on the ring on his hand, he repeated the process that happened previously and fed it with a bit of Mana, he then activated the skill, °Spatial Distortion° The skill was activated and Tyler felt the connection to the entire space within the barrier, he then stretched out his arm to touch the air in front of him.

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Deep in the eastern parts of the Darknar forest.

Jarret leads his team headed back to the castle, they had already mapped out this section of the forest so they were able to optimize their trip back. Still, after venturing so deep into the forest it was impossible to avoid all the monsters even if they knew where they were.

The forest chain of command had been broken and most of the frightened and weaker beasts were migrating towards the outer areas of the forest.

They killed several low-level monsters on their way back and took the corpses of the useful beast and left the useless ones. They also did as Tyler had suggested and picked out all the rare herbs and fruits they found. Basically, there were not to go around looking for stuffs but retrieve anything of value in their way.

Although the monsters they met on their way back were weaker ones, ranging from Tier 1 and 2, their numbers were always the problem. It was fortunate that they had only met a few Tier 3 monsters due to them already having ng an idea of where they were, and the Tier 3 ones they met were not as troublesome as the Bandersnatch.

To be honest it was thanks to Gail and Tarka scouting ahead that they had avoided so much trouble.

"Hey, Jarret," Lora called out to him as he finished placing the bodies of a Tier 1 White Hopper in the storage box. They were large rabbit-like creatures with red eyes and posses the ability to hop as high as 17 ft off the ground. They were only seen in winter and normally wouldn't be in this part of the forest as they lived near the mountains on the northern end of the forest. They possessed fluffy white fur and had a passive ability that causes people to ignore them when they stay still in the snow for few seconds.

Aside from Jarret, even Gail would miss them regularly and they would sometimes try a sneak attack, well, Tarka could usually sense them as well as she caught quite a few in her traps. Jarret didn't mind this as he knew their fur was quite valuable and their flesh was also considered a delicacy. He killed anyone he found without fail and now had more than 50 of them in his spatial storage box. Jarret didn't turn around when Lora spoke to him and just answered. 

"Yeah, what's wrong."

"Oh umm, it's nothing, just, isn't it bad to take those bodies with us? Wouldn't their families investigate when they stop receiving reports from them?"

"Doesn't matter, they would investigate anyway and whether we take the cores or not, we would still be targets, besides the bodies didn't look like they've been dead for more than a week. I heard that they should only send reports back at most once a month... unless something important happens so it should be fine for a while. Don't worry, I'm sure Lord Ty knows what he's doing."

"Oh... okay..."

"What, are you nervous?"

"Er.. well the bodies were a bit creepy."

"Huh really, I didn't notice anything."

"It was faint but I could feel a weird energy lingering in their bodies and it gave me the chills."

"You too, I thought I was the only one." Tarka cut into their conversation when she heard what Lora said, as she hovered above their heads. "I didn't sense any energy but, the feeling I got when I was close to the corpses was, um... eerie," Raz added.

Jarret looked at him and thought, he then shook his head and spoke. "Well that probably had something to do with how they died, the Captain should be able to figure something out when he sees it, so let's hurry up."

They finished what they were doing and picked up the pace to the castle. Jarret no longer actively hunted the white hoppers and they made it out of the forest in record time. They headed for the castle after making sure they weren't being spied on and without fail they were stopped by an invincible wall surrounding it. One could see outside the wall from within but it was different from the outside. Although they could see the castle, they couldn't see anyone within even though they should see someone in the watchtower in front of them, they saw nothing.

Jarret knew the sentries must've already spotted them so he didn't worry, they just had to wait for Lord Ty to arrive and grant them access. Jin seemed fascinated with the invincible wall and Jarret couldn't help but remember the chief, he had naturally ignored what happened as everyone was stunned by Lord Ty but he couldn't help but compare what Kaz was doing to the image of the chief. If he wasn't an Ogre himself, he would say all ogres were weird.

Just as he had that thought though, Jin who had leaned on the invisible wall acting cool fell right through, and just like last time, he landed face first.