“I will need a bit more time for this,” I tell Myrra.

“Sure, I will keep watch,” she answers and continues to sunbathe without any shame.

Immediately, I open the Community again and wait.

During the time I spent helping her before the fight against the Calamity, Lily improved a lot and I don’t believe she entered Beyond unprepared. The problem is that the trials are customized to the person taking them, testing their weaknesses and forcing them to improve their skills, so there is a limit to how much you can prepare.

I examine my feelings; there is a hint of worry and satisfaction. Lily could have entered Beyond anytime after I left, and her doing it now means that it wasn’t an emotionally motivated decision. She probably thought about it on her own and decided that she was ready, without so much as letting Tess know. I know how Tess would react.

It’s what I wanted, and that’s where Gareth and I disagree. Savant and I seem to think alike, and Gareth is nearly the opposite of our opinion, while Tess is somewhere in the middle.

Noname - How has she been the past few days?

Sset - Mostly fine. After Hadwin died, she threw the bow away and decided to fight close range.

Oh, I think I can see why she made that decision. Lately, she’s played the role of a ranged combatant/healer. Seeing others get hurt probably forced her hand, and so she’s decided to fight on the frontlines using [Disintegration] at close range and relying on [Reconstruction] to keep her alive.

I can understand that, considering what happened last time.

Sset - She should be fine.

And so, we wait, constantly checking the timer, counting down the hour, and keeping an eye on the number of people in Hell difficulty.

Easy difficulty 1340/2000

Normal difficulty 870/1000

Hard difficulty 259/500

Hell difficulty 44/250

Beyond 5/10

I find it hard to focus on anything else, so instead of working on the array, I just toggle in between the timer and member count. It’s silly, honestly, as if it would even help. As the time grows closer, my eyes stay glued to the counter.

seconds

seconds

second

Beyond 5/10 > Beyond 6/10

Gareth - Group 4 is a bit crazy if I have to say so myself.

Grumpy - Hello.

Gareth - Welcome, Grumpy! Good job!

Sset - I’m glad you’re ok. Where are you at the moment?

Grumpy - Nearby, I will come to you. Is he here?

Noname - Hey, good job with the first trial.

Grumpy - …

Grumpy - When are you coming back?

Noname - When you guys deal with the Calamity. Sset can tell you more.

Grumpy - You promised you’d owe me after we saved Soph and the twins. So you better keep your word.

Noname - Yes.

After that, we exchange a few more words, and reaching the time limit the Community turns off.

Lily seems to be anxious and unhappy, but it's not an easy thing to solve. She’s just that kind of person and she is the only one that can deal with it. I, on the other hand, have decided to be selfish and stop worrying so much about others. Yes, I have decided to stay with the group after the start of the 4th floor, but not to this point. I'm not like Gareth and never will be.

I quickly fix the array and turn to Myrra, “Ready.”

Unlike before, when we used charged mana stones and items to activate it, I’m fully capable of operating it on my own without any items. There is almost no need for mana stones, as there are only two of us, and I will be able to handle the expenditure with my own mana.

“I thought you were losing your touch, feral one. It took you quite a long time.”

“You know, I’ve slowly lost all the respect I ever had for lynthari,” I won’t let her bully me.

She nods seriously, “That’s what often happens when you get strong. You’ve just reached a level of strength above our own, so you’ve lost your sense of mystique and reverence for us. It’s obvious that you would feel differently now.” Myrra enters the array and stands next to me, “I’ve changed a bit as well. Without the matriarch and her personality affecting us, all lynthari will change.”

I almost ask what she thinks is happening in the city now, but I change my mind. Myrra must know something that's making her reluctant to return, and I’m sure I will find out before the floor ends.

What I find sad is that there might be a war coming, and Eris’s last words come to me. The ancient lynthari loved her kin and humans alike. She created a system that allowed them to coexist however strange and even put her life on the line to protect the future of both races.

And with her sacrifice, she only hoped for two things. For humans not to blame young lynthari who never participated in the war and for the two races to get along. A simple, naive wish coming from someone who fought in the war of Champions and Absolutes.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I cut off this line of thought as I activate the array. After a lot of testing, preparation, and a few minutes of charging, both Myrra and I disappear from the desert.

The desert view is replaced by a rocky area with a forest to the right and far in the distance, I can see the towers of the Old Capital.

“I see that we have a few scavengers here already,” Myrra’s canines show as we detect the presences around us.

It’s probably the camps they set up while their members go through the city.

“Want to bet that they started moving the second the First One ran from Virelia?” I offer.

“I won’t bet with you on that. It would be too easy for you. I just thought I ordered a blockade of all the arrays, but it looks like there are some we didn’t know about.”

The end of the floor is approaching, so there is no need to hesitate or be nice. Myrra also speaks of the scavengers with disdain, so I do not hesitate to move toward one of the camps.

On the way, I purposefully trigger one of the detection stones they’ve left around the camp and it sends a signal.

“Hey! You two! We know about you, so come out!” someone shouts and even tries to pressure us with his mana.

Still using Mana Cycling to hide my mana, I do as I’m told as a curious Myrra follows me.

“Fuck, another lynthari,” the man sighs when we get close to each other.

Ten or so humans surround us.

[Elemental Mage - lvl 141]

[Shadow Assassin - lvl 128]

[Terra Guardian - lvl 152]

[Storm Raider - lvl 129]

...

All of them are close in level and show no visible signs of alliance to any guild.

“I have to tell you that we have the support of high-ranking lynthari, miss, so I will need to ask you to leave,” he says towards Myrra. He talks carefully, bluffing with a partial truth.

Well, we did expect a few lynthari to try this kind of thing.

“Oh my, feral one, what are we going to do? Should we leave?” Myrra’s eyes glow in the dim light and her fluffy tail twitches a bit, showing her playful mood and annoyance at being told off.

Some things do not change so easily.

“Give me everything you retrieved from the Old Capital,” I say simply to the people surrounding us.

At that moment, I stop focusing on cycling my mana and allow some of it to leak. Before they can even say anything, the pressure of my mana hits them, and no words come out of them. To show the difference between us, I activate [Redistribution] holding them for a few seconds, barely allowing them to breathe. Then a pulse of [Resonance] disrupts their skills.

I let go of them, and without much complaint, they rush into their camp, bringing out everything they got from the city.

When they bring everything to me, it's quite a lot. Some equipment, some mana stones, and a few other items. Most of it isn’t that valuable.

I pick the most interesting ones while ignoring the looks they give me.

As we leave the camp to approach the next one, I sense a pulse of mana shoot over me towards the camp I’m heading to and stop. The pulse was clearly sent through an item, most likely as a warning.

A javelin forms over me, and I place an anchor on it before boosting it towards the camp where I was heading.

Then I turn around and return to the camp we already looted.

“W-what? We already gave you everything you wanted!” their leader shouts.

“Did you send a signal to the other camp?” I ask bluntly.

“What? We didn’t do…” Before he finishes, a blast of kinetic energy sends him rolling through the camp, crashing against everything in his way.

I reduced the power by a lot, but even this was enough.

After taking a few steps, I stop in front of another guy. “Did you send the signal?”

Immediately, he nods, none of them even attempting to fight.

“See, that wasn’t so difficult,” I say to calm him down, but it seems to make him shake even more.

Pushing him to the side, I reach the tent where they keep most of the items, and a small orb forms in my palm, compressing and quickly turning golden, releasing immense heat even in this state.

“I would run away,” I warn them and throw the orb in between the items.

Myrra reaches out to me, and I touch her, both of us disappearing and appearing near the javelin I tied an anchor to. A few seconds later, the camp we just left explodes into golden flames that devour everything in their path with a roar.

“Quite ruthless,” Myrra says while looking at the humans that surround us.

“I’m not in a very good mood,” I answer her, and more of my mana radiates from my body, pressuring the men and women standing against us.

They shout warnings among themselves, preparing for a fight, but I do not stop there. Like a tsunami, waves of mana radiate from me in the center, putting pressure on them, showing them my level. The amount of mana hints at a much higher level than I currently possess, people are rarely dumb enough to invest in the mana stat so heavily.

The expressions on the faces around me change. From determination and anger to shock and fear. They drop their weapons, deactivate their skills, and step back, sweat on their brows, hands shaking.

They are the kind of people who recognize strength and know what to do in such cases. Members of guilds that do not hesitate to kill people to gain an advantage.

So, I do not stop there and reach into my reservoir, more mana radiating from me, making my presence felt for miles away.

Slowly, one after another, they drop to their knees, unable to even look into my eyes.

Only then do I stop, and my mana disappears in a moment, pulling the aura I radiated back into my body.

“Bring me everything you got from the Old Capital,” I demand.

After looting a few more camps, my bags start getting full, so I get a few guys to carry them for me. So far, there are some metals they got from smithies, upper rare items with interesting effects, and plenty of mana stones, some of which have inscriptions I haven't seen so far.

There are also pieces of wood that are extremely durable, and look new even after hundreds of years. Some mana batteries too.

I pick only the best things and ignore the rest, most of the guys we visit don’t even try to fight with us and just immediately surrender their stuff.

Myrra, bored, talks to them a bit and learns that there are in fact two lynthari in the city that she seems to know. Mohg and Gawyn, a duo that she says is well known for their damage output. Apparently, they are lynthari troublemakers and some of the young lynthari who like to play around the most. It seems that without the influence of the matriarch, they’ve become even worse.

Mohg and Gawyn organized a group of humans from a few of the midsized guilds with plans to find interesting items in the city.

What pisses Myrra off the most is that they came here even before the fight against the Colony started, leaving the other lynthari to deal with it. In the end, she just sighs and says cryptically that it doesn’t matter.

We leave all of our things near one of the arrays, and I position a few mana orbs nearby, some of them should last a day at least. There is no anchor on them or any effect, and I don’t even explain it to the men carrying the stuff we looted. Their imagination will surely come up with more terrifying ideas than any lie I could come up with. We leave them without saying a word, seemingly without a care for our things, and that seems to scare them, so they quickly leave.

So after raiding all the camps, we head into the city, where the largest group should be, over a week into the search.

And here, we find the corpses of two dozen humans, thrown around the streets, smashed against the floor, bloody splats on the ground. Men with holes in their chests, a woman's body without a head.

Blood is everywhere, a massacre committed with the pure power of physical stats as confirmed by checking the remains with my eyes, there is no mana around.

“Looks like your lynthari duo did have some fun,” I say to Myrra.

She doesn’t answer, and with a frown on her face, we follow the trail of blood and massacre, finding a dozen more corpses. severed limbs are everywhere and organs are splattered on the walls.

We reach one of the towers near the center of the city and find two more corpses. Lynthari with their chests caved in, one of them has had their head pulled off and the other is missing an arm.

Both of the lynthari are very dead.