“Hydra! How do you plan on defeating the [Reaper Lich] exactly?”
“Uh you know stabby stab, and slash here and there. The usual I suppose?”
“….huh?”
Cline stood there dumbfounded, when he heard Hydra planned on getting the convicts to help he sort of saw hope. After all using the element of surprise with a few hundred convicts would work quite well, and naturally they were stronger than the skeletons even if they were armless. However with Hydra giving a ⅓ of them weapons it would boost their overall strength many times over. The moment a another weapon drops, the chance of succeeding would climb!
The biggest problem was fighting the [Reaper Lich] as with a small army there was no way the [Reaper Lich] would allow that to go unchecked unlike Hydra solely being chased. The [Reaper Lich] was no easy foe either it was a level 75 Elite Boss cla.s.s monster. Was it so simple as being a higher level? Of course not and when Cline heard Hydra’s stellar plan he suddenly rushed over to Hydra and started to uncontrollably shake him
“Well… Yeah, sure it’s not the best plan but I don’t know much about the lich other than that he can use spatial magic!”
Cline was dumbfounded and started to shake Hydra frantically, without speaking. Hydra felt like the inner monologue of Cline would be annoying if he spoke it out and thus decided to end it there.
“I already died once from him, don’t worry I’ll figure something out.”
Cline started to shake Hydra again. He just met a friend in this horrid place and he was just told that his friend died! Clearly he was a foreigner but still! Hydra had just glossed over the fact that he died to the [Reaper Lich] and he was even crazy enough to get revenge?
“What an idiot!”
Is what Cline couldn’t help but think, of course there were a lot of other things and lecturing thoughts in his mind but he wasn’t able to speak them out because of how flabbergasted he was. Hydra after being called an idiot furrowed his eyebrows and made a ‘how rude’ facial expression to match it.
“Okay I get it! It’s going to be hard, but with help it shouldn’t be impossible!”
“What if he uses spatial magic on all of us?!”
“Well knowing my luck I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. However it’s not like I can abandon the chance, after all the reason I’m even here is for the item that it has!”
Cline made a difficult expression as he realized that there seemed to be more to Hydra than met the eyes. However it was still a difficult task to completely defeat the lich, and failure would mean that regardless if Hydra could survive or not he would have to abandon Yorula and come again at a much later time.
If it was known that someone managed to escape from Yorula, it was only obvious that the [Reaper Lich] would ask for stronger soldiers from the [Mar Lolu Lich King] and if that came to be it was guaranteed that Hydra was going to fail until he was much stronger. However Hydra, didn’t know much about the world of [Tsula] and in fact nor did most of the foreigner players. After all it was a simple game to them, but naturals like Cline and Irina, knew a lot.
This was part of the reason why Irina, secretly led Hydra to the [Underwater Cave]. Originally it was just to help her savior and help him level but after made sure to bring him there. It was because she knew more about this world. After all how could the continent filled with monsters only be run by the four main humanoids? In fact the world was much larger than any of the users knew and only because of the starting setting, and the information from Phoenix Enterprises, did they think they continent was small!
The humanoids only controlled the western side of the continent and it was only because of the Mountain range of Dragons where Mt Myriad lied that other monsters and creatures didn’t care to control this puny side of the world!
Although Cline only held a small amount of power it was still a wall guards captain and he naturally had to know of the threats that may destroy the kingdom! Therefore it was natural that Irina, and Cline knew of the world that lies beyond. And because of this fact that Cline knew how dangerous it was to fail! Hydra might not know it but Cline knew, he that Yorula was the higher leveled monsters way of controlling the human’s country from expanding too greatly. Even if it was only to knock down the criminals, for the most part criminals were much stronger than the average person!
If they could kill them naturally the monsters wouldn’t care about such a puny piece of land. Of course this was only a prison to humans, as the lands in the north had problem uniting under one ruler, such as the beast clans and barbarians. The elves had no intentions on leaving their sacred forest and [Mother Tree] for eternity, and thus they were not much of a threat either! The dwarves were even less of a threat because of how greedy they were they would sell any of their fine works to the highest bidder, including the monsters themselves! This of course only worked as an advantage to monsters of higher intelligence, but considering they were the biggest threat to begin with it wasn’t much of an issue!
Knowing full well that Hydra was a foreigner, Cline took the time and patiently explained about the other side of the world. When Hydra heard this new piece of information he froze. He was sure that the world only amounted to what the game information told him. But he finally realized how ignorant he was and that there was more to this world than he could possibly imagine. This included all the ruins and temples dating back to the [War of The Ancients] it was clear that something had happened.
Hydra wasn’t sure what part the G.o.ds played in all of this, but he a.s.sumed it wasn’t as simple as them just ignoring the lives of their followers and instead that they were probably already trying their best to keep them safe!
Now that Hydra knew more clearly about the world that 99% of even Naturals did not know, he knew that failure meant a lot more than simple retaliation. Hydra was ignorant, a coward to the strong and arrogant to the weak. His emotions are easily seen on his face and he trusts people so easily that it can be considered a fault in his personality. However, Hydra was anything but stupid! Even if he didn’t know everything he knew that if he failed to kill the [Lich Reaper] now the difficulty would rise by an unknown amount and it may take even longer than planned to acquire the [Ancient Shadow Core].
Hydra was finally able to see a small portion of why Kurgal sent him here without a choice. There was no telling when the [Reaper Lich] would be killed or Yorula’s forces to expand and because the other areas were either controlled by the G.o.ds, dragons, or abandoned it was simple to say they were obvious to collect as long as he had the time!
Many things started to make sense and more questions started to arise in Hydra’s head.
‘Why is Kurgal hurt? Who are these monsters that control a significant part of the world other than the lich king? What happened in the [War Of The Ancients]?’
Hydra could not help but ponder these things, and it wasn’t until tapped his shoulder and Hydra woke up with a startle. When they made eye contact Cline gave a soft smile and spoke.
“Don’t let your judgement be affected by your emotions! You are still young and even if you do run today, no one would call you a coward!”
Hydra thought deeply about Cline’s advice and memorized it deeply in his heart. It was something that he truly never realized, and he thought it was only a simple game to be played and enjoyed by the users. While this was still the case any of their actions could cause the entire destruction of thousands of naturals!
Seeing Hydra think so hard, he had a smile across his face. He couldn’t help but be happy that this young fella pondered about his advice so thoroughly. He then spoke up to reconfirm Hydra’s feelings!
“Well Hydra, will you fight to live another day? Or will you prove me wrong and step into the world you never knew until now?”
This was the most important decision and in fact was probably the only decision Hydra had been able to chose since he started playing. Regardless if he chose to fight it was unlikely that the human world would be destroyed, as even the monsters on the other side were unlikely to care about such a tiny p.a.w.n and would at most send a stronger one the next time. But after knowing if he failed that he might not be able to obtain his shadow core so easily it made him hesitate. The finale in Yorula would be made by him and him alone!