1054 Misdirection
Date- 4 April 2321
Time- 05:08
Location- Southern Region, Blossom District, Unknown Location
“Fuck this, I should have just taken the Fine Gold floater vessels,” I muttered to myself looking at my surroundings through my slit-shaped pupils. Right now I was in the middle of nowhere disguised as Gale Cougar monster.
How was I alive? Obviously, because of a small misdirection. When the Mask-shaped creature revealed itself, the Transcendent blood slime demon shot the chunks of rock it had swallowed in every direction, among those chunks of rock was my pebble body which the slime demon was transporting.
As expected the paw clan members ignored the shower of rocks shot by the transcendent blood slime demon as they were too focused on killing it as they were led to believe it to be the target of their assassination. The transcendent blood slime demon dropping a golden grimoire upon its death was just the final touch needed for me to make the morons from the paw clan believe that they had killed their target and successfully completed their mission.
This was the second time I had successfully faked my death and both times the paw clan members were very helpful. This was not something to brag about but I did manage to fool a bunch of semi-demigods and card emperors.
When Agatha and the other two semi-demigods appeared in the sewers to pick up the golden grimoire, I was shocked to see Agatha’s reaction to my death. I know during this mission we have surprisingly gotten close enough to calling ourselves friends but I did not think she would grieve and weep for me. It seems our friendship meant more to Agatha than to me.
This realization made me think twice about my friendship with Agatha, upgrading it from just friends to good friends. Maybe things would have been different if I had trusted Agatha a little more. Anyway, things worked out in the end, I got a part of the revenge I promised to young Wyatt, made a good friend, got an awesome rune card, and finally the loot from the Circle’s sun blossom branch’s treasury. This trip to the sun blossom city could not have been more rewarding.
The reasons why I chose to continue to fake my death after the paw clan left were obvious. So despite the grief displayed by Agatha, I had to steel my heart and take the sewer tunnels to get out of the city and then travel to the sky blossom city on foot following the directions of the grimoire map.
I thought it was going to be a cool road trip, covering the distance by switching between my hoverbike and my other flight-related cards, but I had underestimated how much the dungeons had messed up the topography of this world. Even with the help of the directions on the grimoire map I somehow keep ending up in field dungeons. Gate dungeons I can avoid because they were obvious with their dungeon gates but the field dungeons were like a free for all trap, it was hard to avoid them.
Apparently, in this world, tens of new dungeons get created every minute replacing tens of old dungeons that collapse. Therefore it was really hard to have definite maps from one place to another. Making it hard to trust the grimoire maps. Now I finally understood why Diana’s Fine Gold Merchants were able to attract so many clients despite their shady history of conducting business. They were valued for the routes between the cities owned by them. No wonder despite the magical advancements such as the storage cards, merchants were still pretty much a big deal in this world.
All things aside, I have to confess, though it hurts my ego to admit this I was lost and had stumbled into yet another field dungeon. I have finally lost my patients and decided to give up on this road trip. But the only problem was since I was in a dungeon I cannot use my grimoire to call for help and the same went for my hive AI. Looking at my surroundings I could not help but squint my slit-shaped pupils wondering if I have been going around in a circle.
Slit-shaped pupils? I had transformed in to gale cougar because I was in a field dungeon with the gale cougars were the dominant monsters. The first time I accidentally walked into the field dungeon I enthusiastically used my summon monsters to clear it, but my enthusiasm only lasted till the third time. Now, on my fourth time, I decided to use the easy way out, disguise myself as a monster and find a route out of this field dungeon.
The fact that these field dungeons were all E-rank or below did not help my enthusiasm, because the monsters in these dungeons were so weak that I could not even bother to use this opportunity to use these monster to sacrifice my blood rue rune to stock up rune cards. Tens of dungeons were created every minute but the chance of most of them being high-level ones was very less, making high-level dungeons a high commodity among various organizations and guilds.
Just when I was about to scream in frustration, I finally understood why I felt like I was traveling in circles. It was because I was indeed going around in circles. Not that I had a bad sense of direction but someone had made use of the field dungeon’s unique topography to set up a clever array formation that would mess with the sense of direction of anyone entering this dungeon, especially the monsters in this dungeon.
Upon this discovery, I was both pissed and happy at the same time. Pissed because I went around in circles like an idiot because of whoever used the array formation to make use of the unique topography of the dungeon to create a pseudo-natural array formation and happy because I was I could finally get out of this dungeon and call for help.
Normally, I would find the person responsible for the pseudo-natural array formation and give him a piece of my mind but today I was not. As for some to be well versed in array mastery to set up a pseudo-natural array formation they had to be of a pretty high realm, making them not someone I would want to mess with. My fight with Mike had shown me my limits, with my current realm I cannot go up against an elite card overlord.
With Mike, I had gotten lucky, as he was not interested in fighting me but in capturing Ji Feng, so during our fight, he kept getting distracted and pulling his punches. if lady luck wasn’t on my side and I had made use of the opportunity that presented itself to detonate Ji Feng in Mike’s mouth, I would never have been able to defeat Mike with my current prowess.
Despite my cautiousness, I had really overestimated my strength. Weighing Rami Kage and his bodyguards, I underestimated the strength of the Card Overlords. Compared to Rami and his bodyguards, Mike was on a whole other different level in terms of strength even though they all were of the same realm.
Since the card apprentice I came across was a capable array master with the ability to use the dungeon’s topography to set up a pseudo-natural array formation, I believe along with his high realm he must have elite-level combat prowess. When I was busy thinking of reasons why I should not be messing with someone of this caliber, I suddenly thought, what was someone this capable of doing down here? The closest second-rate city has four third-rate cities in between, so no matter how much I think it was hard to explain what this high-level card apprentice doing in this E-rank field dungeon in this backwater part of the blossom district.
I tried hard to stop my mind from getting curious about this and thinking of something else, but many questions kept popping into my mind as to why and what this powerful array master was doing in an E-rank dungeon. Whether he was alone? To get all these answers I would have to go to the core of this Puesod-natural array formation.
Condensing the function of the pseudo-natural array formation was to stop monsters or adventures from wandering into the core region of the formation, I believed heading towards the core of the array even disguised as a gale cougar monster was not the best of ideas. Remembering the phrase curiosity killed the cat, I did not let my mind wander around and focused on leaving the dungeon.
Since the purpose of this Pseudo-natural array of formations was to confuse my sense of direction, stopping me from entering the core of the dungeon or leaving the dungeon and nothing more. I easily cracked it and found a route out of the dungeon. Coming out of the dungeon, I figure slowly descended in front of me.