Blacksmith vs. the System 278

“No,” Rosie simply replied. “No way! Simply out of question.”

“Why?” I asked. “I have already sneaked out of the city without letting them know, and unless you have a way to get Maria from her patrol without alerting them, you don’t have any other option to go through the wards they inevitably have around their safe house.”

“You’re too important for everything. We can’t risk you, not before we check the place. You should stay and defend the city. I’m sure Spencer and Terry would be able to unravel them. You shouldn’t risk yourself.”

I shook my head. “On the contrary, that’s the best approach,” I replied. “The safe house is not too far away from the gate at the swamp, and I could use it to replenish my mana in case of an emergency. It makes sense. And, if it gets too bad, I can open another gate for the fire dungeon to escape or get reinforcements.”

It was good to see her worry, but I had no intention of letting my so-called importance turn into a shackle. Especially not when the situation was perfectly in my favor. A reversed ambush was as much of a strategic advantage as one could get, especially not too far away from the city, and getting reinforcements easily.

She frowned. “What if that’s a trap for you?”

“That’s a possibility,” I said. “But even if it is the case, they won’t expect me in their safehouse. It’ll give us the initiative.” She looked as if she was about to argue. “We both know they hadn’t predicted me finding their safehouse location from that data.”

“Fine,” she said. She didn’t seem too happy, but she was also wise enough to realize further arguments wouldn’t change my mind. It didn’t matter whether the initial discovery was a genuine mistake or a trap. We had the advantage.

“Lead the way,” I said. An angry glare was the response I got, which made me chuckle as I followed her, once again expecting to use the emergency tunnels. Instead, she passed me a large cloak and a tabard, both carrying the markings of our scout team. If seen, we would be just another team patrolling the area. “Should I dig a tunnel instead?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “You have used that trick too many times. It might reveal to us prematurely if they have some kind of device to check for vibrations. We already have many scouts and logistics teams moving around in the area. It’s safer.”

I nodded. She had a point. Such a device was not even too hard to make, many primitive versions were even used in medieval castles to prevent sappers from bringing down the tunnels.

We embraced our role, using our scout identities even while leaving the outpost. Since Rosie was the overall leader of all scouting teams, she knew how to maintain them.

A smart call. Why risk getting caught by a spy, which inevitably existed due to our rapid expansion?

It took half an hour for us to reach the vicinity of the safehouse. We had come across a few wandering corrupted beasts, and took our time dealing with them to further sell our role as ordinary scouts. “Try to look more winded after each fight. Even with Health, it’s supposed to be a tough fight,” she reminded me with a whisper.

It was not the only correction I received. I believed that I was decent in acting, but it was clearly not the case from her perspective.

Well, she was an expert.

I did my best to follow her advice, and once we reached the target location, I detected a concealment ward.

Bingo.

Admittedly, it wasn’t as easy to detect as I expected. Even knowing its appropriate location, I needed to use my Perception and Essence together to pierce the shroud, and that was only possible due to using Mana Detection.

I didn’t use the skill on the ward, afraid of the interaction. Instead, I used it on the environmental mana surrounding the ward. Since it was a mana-dead area, they likely assumed it was not a problem. Too bad for them, Mana Detection and Perception lowered the detection horizon quite a bit, enough for me to notice the unnatural movement of it.

I signaled Rosie to tell her that I found the ward. She nodded, but instead of taking us there directly, we continued our scouting trip. If we stopped here, we risked spooking them. I continued to examine the safe house, but I refrained from casting a spell.

It was a good spot. There was no telltale sign of a hidden presence. No animals avoided the place, and there were no signs of human presence, past or current. And, what I suspected to be the entrance was hidden behind a small broken rock, where no one would accidentally stumble.

They had gone through a lot of trouble setting that safe house.

We stopped after putting three miles between us and the safe house, even pulling some dried meat to make it like an ordinary camp while we sat on the edge of a rocky outcropping.

“Their target is not Maria,” I said the moment Rosie gave me the signal that it was safe to speak, and I replied one in kind to confirm the lack of a magical problem.

“How can you be sure?” she asked.

“That word,” I said. “It’s too good. It’s a perfect tool to ambush a careless mage. I’m pretty sure Maria won’t notice it until it’s too late. Yet, instead of putting it close to her path and increasing their chances of success, they establish it so far away.”

“And, they can’t be trying to pull her here,” Rosie added. “If they engage with her then retreat, it’ll scream ambush.”

“We need to decide what to do,” I said.

That made her chuckle. “Aren’t you going to insist on a frontal assault?”

I gave her a deadpan expression. “You know I’m not that careless. We have no idea how many people are there, and their power. Just because I’m confident in my improvements doesn’t mean I’ll throw myself into a fight like a barbarian.”

“Right,” she said, but her tone implied she didn’t believe me. I realized that she hadn’t fully realized just how much I have improved after the latest upgrade, thinking I was overconfident. Doubling the stats and adding Charisma was impressive, but it didn’t begin to explain the true flexibility of combining Intelligence and Wisdom.

In any other mage, it would have been impressive, but I not only had near-infinite mana, but also the conceptual weight of the dungeon behind my attacks.

Devastating didn’t even begin to describe some of the attacks I could pull if I stopped caring about environmental damage.

I could have tried to explain it to her, but it would be hard to convince people that I wasn’t being overconfident. It would be just like the spar I had with my students. An example would be needed, and the situation didn’t allow such a spectacle.

“Do you have a way to send a message to Maria?”

“Several,” she said. “But, none of them will avoid the attention of a good scout. Contents will be hidden, but not the message.”

“And, that might spook them,” I said.

“There’s that chance,” she said, then paused, clearly hating what was about to be said. I hid my smirk carefully when I noticed what she was about to say. Gloating was not a kingly quality. “Erase that smug look of your disgusting face,” she growled, suggesting that I failed.

“Sorry,” I said, letting my tone do the gloating. Maybe I was wrong about gloating not being a kingly quality.

“Right,” she deadpanned. I smirked wider. “We have to split. In person, I can warn Maria about the upcoming ambush, and you can stay here, and observe the entrance. Depending on the size of the group that leaves, you can either move to join the ambush, or try to penetrate the safehouse.”

“A decent plan,” I said. It certainly wasn’t perfect. Far from it. If they get spooked by one of us splitting away, it could ruin the mission. But, the simple approach gave us the best chance regardless. It was also why I didn’t try to get reinforcements. The move wasn’t worth the extra effort.

After Rosie left, I found myself with nothing to do, so I started designing a new pattern for Meditation, a skill that I had been neglecting for a long time. With the dungeon getting more and more efficient at handling the external energies, I had no strategic need for it, and combined with the difficulty of improving it further, I had neglected it.

Intelligence promised an easier path, and since I had nothing better to do than set up a fake camp, I started scribbling multiple sets of formulas. The first one put a spell structure around decay, to combine both stats; the other was a potential way to balance fire and decay.

The idea of adding other elements was tempting as well, but even with Wisdom, the mechanics behind concepts were a mystery. I still relied on either my skills or the dungeon to work. I could add more elements, but compared to Decay or Fire from the dungeons, they would mean nothing.

Two hours passed just like that. I was lost in my calculations, but not enough to miss the presence of a team departing from the entrance I had identified. Ten Ascended. Far more than we expected. The spell that kept them invisible was good for a mobile one, but it was much weaker than the base itself. I could see them easily.

The situation was bad. Worse, the concealment ward around the base flickered for a moment, giving me a limited glance inside.

I detected at least ten more, all Ascended.

Things had just escalated far more than we were ready for.