Chapter 55: unexpected encounter
There were dozens of towers located in Motuni, the headquarters of the Lance Tower and Christopher Tower were located here in Motuni as well as branches of the other big towers.
It was late at night and like any other prosperous city, night in Motuni was always like a carnival as many people who had returned from their busy activities of the day would choose the night to relax and catch up with friends.
In a public park with quite a few people sitting quietly to enjoy the night view, a man could be seen sitting alone on a bench while scrolling through his phone; he would occasionally mutter something to himself.
He had short blond hair and long side beard that connected with his mustache, and wore a pair of white glasses.
This man looked ordinary just like anyone else in the park, there was nothing worth noticeable about him aside from his calm demeanor.
But what people didn\'t know was that this man was in fact James Owen in disguise!
James Owen, the Tower master of the Owen HQ in San Pluto, was in Motuni in disguise!
And he was secretly having a conversation with another ordinary looking young lady that was sitting just a seat away from him to his left side and looked like she was browsing through a magazine.
"What\'s the situation with him?" James asked discretely as if he was commenting on what he saw on his phone.
" He\'s progressing well despite our actions to slow him down, he\'s currently in third place and has just entered the Mortal king rank" the lady replied without drawing attention.
" What about the item? Found anything about it? Or did he carry it with him?" James asked again.
" That…I don\'t know, he hasn\'t made any strange actions since the start of the training and I suspect that he didn\'t bring it with him" the lady responded.
" Very well, find a way to slow down his progress. I don\'t want him causing any troubles for me like his father, not until I\'m done with my plan" James said instructed before abruptly standing up and raising his phone to his ears as if he was on a call, he began to converse while walking away.
The woman didn\'t turn and continued browsing through the magazine for another five minutes before closing it and leaving the park as well.
They had been so discreet during their meeting that no one would suspect a thing…or so they thought.
Shortly after they left, an old man who had been sleeping on a bench suddenly woke up and tapped on his ears.
"They\'ve left" the old man said, his eyes didn\'t look like what have seen memories befitting for his age but had the vigilance of someone in his prime instead.
"Alright, return to the tower at once"
A voice said into the ears of the old man before the connection was cut off.
...
Back in the abandoned continent.
Thwoop!
Thwoop!
Thwoop!!
Ten land carriers made their way through a forest with tall trees at a slow pace, signs of battles and blood stains of various colors could be found on the bodies of the land carriers.
Inside one of these land carriers, Vlad could be seen sitting on his seat quietly with both eyes closed and a peaceful expression on his face.
In his mind, an image appeared.
NAME: Alaric Vladimir
Talent group: Combat Talent type: Weapon master Talent: Sword(Flaming river sword technique)
Talent lv: S AP: 47.05% Rank: PARTIAL LORD
Vlad looked at his profile for a few seconds in his mind before opening his eyes.
\'Just a little more till 50% AP, I\'ll finally become a True Lord when that happens\' Vlad thought to himself.
It had been three weeks after their battle with the gene banshees, aside from that Mortal King who was pierced during the beginning of the fight and koblack, they didn\'t lose anyone else after the arrival of the others.
They had finally killed off the remaining gene banshees after two hours of fighting, the reason why the fight had dragged on for so long was because of the troublesome creatures that the gene banshees were turning into; one could not really predict what a gene banshee had consumed.
One would be in serious trouble if they ran into a gene banshee that had eaten the remains of a zone guardian. An example of a zone guardian was that red skinned monster with the head of a skeleton that the various heads of the big towers had fled from when they were fighting over Ivan\'s custody.
The good thing was that after the fight, they had gotten a few Nexus crystals from a few corpses; a total of five.
This was already a lot since Nexus crystals were extremely hard to find and one might not even find one after killing a zone guardian but they had managed to get five after killing almost a hundred and fifty gene banshees, it wasn\'t a bad gain at all.
A Nexus crystal was an incredibly valuable item that were only found inside creatures of the dreamscape and could be used to increase a Nexulyte\'s AP or be used as a power source for carries and even teleportation vaults.
One Nexus crystal would add up to 0.50% AP to a Nexulyte\'s total amount of AP no matter what rank they were, its value would never diminish! This was what made it very valuable and one could easily be sold for millions of bucks!
One had to know that the stronger a Nexulyte got, the harder it would become for them to increase their AP, but the Nexus crystal did not have this restriction!
Even if a Domain Lord with 69% AP and would need two months to gather an additional 0.10 AP were to absorb two Nexus crystals, that Domain Lord would immediately get 1% AP to cross to the next rank!
This was to show just how valuable a Nexus crystal was to Nexulytes.
Of course, after getting five Nexus crystals, Vlad could not keep all of them simply because he was the leader and the strongest; well he could if he wanted to but he didn\'t, he decided to share it instead.
Since there were ten squads under him, Vlad kept one for himself and they agreed to sell the remaining four which the money would be divided amongst the members of the team since everyone did their fair share of work in killing the gene banshees.
During the last three weeks, they had all decided to move together from fear of running into another large group of gene banshees or any other type of annoying monster; and they did!
Just that they were more prepared at that time, they did not lose another person but they did not acquire any more Nexus crystals either.
During those three weeks, they had been forced to retreat after engaging with certain monsters due to some of their members getting injured and needing to use healing gel or due to unfavorable conditions that could have led to the death of the whole team.
But nonetheless, they still managed to clear their way through to their destination within three weeks while maintaining their losses to the minimum of the two people who had died on the first day.
"Vlad, we\'ve arrived!" The voice of a tired Jack pulled Vlad from his thoughts.
The latter looked in the direction and through the window of the air carrier he could see it outside, over twenty meters in front of them was a mirror gate, the link to the dreamscape.
The gate was over twenty meters tall and stood in between the trunks of two enormous trees.
"A mirror gate" Vlad mumbled to himself, a flash of light flashing past his eyes for a split second.
The mirror gate was like something that came from a dream, very unrealistic with edges made of what seemed like countless broken mirrors yet perfectly reflected whatever stood before it. Inside this circle of broken mirrors was a constantly squirming mass of gray fog and sitting in front of this mirror gate was a stone monster that remained just motionless like a statue.
This stone monster was the size of a normal person and had the features of humans as well, the only difference was the third closer eyeball on its forehead. It wore a stone samurai attire and two stone swords with thin blades rested on the ground on both sides of the monster.
Without being told, everyone knew that this motionless monster would immediately come to life once they approached the mirror gate to a certain distance.
"Let\'s leave the land carriers here, Eric and a few will remain inside while the rest will follow me down" Vlad said before standing up.
Eric nodded and immediately passed the message to the rest of the land carriers, in less than a minute all the air carriers had their legs folded and were turned off.
Vlad and thirty nine people were standing on the ground in their black uniforms, each of them having a serious look on their faces as they stared at the mirror gate and the monster sitting in front of it.
But before they could make a move.
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!
Sounds of clapping suddenly came from a distance followed by the sound of multiple approaching footsteps, it was clear that a large group of people or whatever was coming.
The others immediately had an anxious look on their faces while Vlad looked over with a dull look in his eyes. Soon, people began to appear from within the forest one after the other and their numbers quickly caught up to the size of Vlad\'s team.
"Well well well, if it isn\'t the star from the Owen Tower" A malicious voice laughed out after seeing Vlad and the rest