"I hate my life…" Dante sighed inwardly in the treehouse.

In the end, some merchants and mercenaries didn't believe him, walking directly to their death.

But he didn't blame himself anymore.

'I tried. Exposing my regression ability and deciding to isolate myself was already too much, doing anything more than this would be foolish.'

Despite everything, he still prioritized himself. The reason behind his guilt was that his actions were directly involved in harming others. But now, he left them completely and gave an honest warning.

'Anyway, I absorbed most of my cores and got two boosts—what should I do now?' Dante stood up and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

He had no urgent things to do. Ruby wasn't here yet, there were no missions he had to complete, and no people to talk to.

Out of boredom, Dante walked up the stairs until he reached the entrance of the treehouse.

His gaze landed on the lightning mark: 'What should I do about this?'

The entrance was already opened, but the runes behind the mark were there. Still, he felt that reactivating them was useless.

'Why would I activate a door that needs the Lightning Aspect to open? I think I should remove it and maybe add something else later.'

Taking a deep breath, Dante turned Sin of Greed into a drill and worked on removing the mark.

He dug carefully into the tree until he found the engraved runes. Then, using the Rituals Dagger, he scratched and decayed the lightning runes with high accuracy.

After he finished—ensuring that no one could reactivate it—he returned to the inside. But this time, he went to the shadow runes.

'This one is different.' Holding the dagger, Dante looked at the mark thoughtfully: 'It isn't opposed to my Aspect, I might be able to use it, right?'

He started digging into it as well, but this time more carefully than the other mark. He only wanted to take a look at the runes.

After a moment, he saw all the runes and started examining them.

'It's a defensive runic formation made of several arrays.' His eyes sparkled as he saw the structure.

An array is simply a group of different runes that make one perfect effect by combining all of them.

It was like merging the runes of Spike, Iron, Sharpness, Fire, Sensation, and Durability to make a flaming spike trap.

Looking at the internal structure, he saw tens of arrays with similar runes spread across the entire internal wall. And if his guess was right, then they reached the entire place, not only this wall.

That was a large formation of tens, hundreds, or thousands of arrays.

'No wonder it was able to cover the entire place. But how was it working? What was the source of its energy?'

Dante's mind raced to find any explanation to the formation working for years, and only one conclusion formed in his mind.

'It's likely a one time activation rather than continues. It absorbs a high amount of mana to activate once, but the effect stays almost forever so long as nothing interrupts it.'

The effect of the formation was basically creating a door of shadow to prevent anyone without the Shadow Aspect from entering the place.

If Ruby and Jin attacked the barrier that prevented them from entering the place and managed to shatter it, It'd have likely become unable to reform due to the lack of energy.

Some formations had mana crystals or people empowering them all the time, ensuring that they'd keep standing even against the external attacks. But this one didn't seem to be one of them.

Thinking of that, Dante sighed in relief: 'I should be grateful that drunk man didn't attack! For this kind of defensive formation, there is likely a backlash for trying to go through it by force. Maybe attacking it could have caused self-destruction!'

Knowing his misfortune, even though it was now significantly lower than before, it was still possible! He could already imagine a possibility where Jim attacked and the entire place collapsed with Dante inside.

Ignoring the shiver than ran down his spine, Dante went to the treasure room and sat there. He couldn't do anything about the formation for now.

He neither understood the runes nor was capable of examining all of them safely. Because they were likely spread across the internal walls of the treehouse, he'd have to go through the walls to do that safely.

'Maybe Ruby can help me with that when she arrives. It's better to let an expert take care of that.'

Sitting on the cold floor, Dante finally retrieved the chaos magic book from his ring.

He was finally alone, which meant that no one would see him learning black magic.

'Let's see… where have I stopped again?'

¢¢¢

The Central Region, The Holy Kingdom, the southern side.

As Elizabeth and the others finished reading the news, Michael left with a depressed expression for his watch after a soldier called for him.

Fafnir, Elizabeth, Mira, and Ragnar were left alone in the tent, eating their dinner while discussing different topics.

'I have to gather some cores…'

Fafnir tapped Elizabeth's hand lightly and wrote a small sentence on it.

"You have to leave again?" Elizabeth's lips slightly curled downward as she hugged Fafnir a bit tighter: "You still won't tell me where you go every night? And how did you convince the commander not to tell me!"

Fafnir lowered his head with apologies before turning into a complete shadow, escaping her embrace and crawling out of the tent.

Mira and Ragnar looked at their interaction with confusion.

"Wait, I know that he leaves you at the night, but what does that part about the commander mean?" Mira asked with a puzzled expression.

Elizabeth sighed: "You think the commander would let anything enter and leave the camp freely? He knows about the shadow and he himself gave him permission to move freely out the camp."

She crossed her arms in annoyance and puffed up her cheeks: "I can't believe they're refusing to tell me. Am I not trusted enough?"

Ragnar frowned sharply: "That's strange… is your shadow working as a secret scout?"

Elizabeth shrugged: "No idea. They're too secretive... Though, he usually returns returns with some mana crystals."

Ragnar stared at Elizabeth with a deadpan face: "Yes, he's definitely doing some kind of job."

Mira sighed: "Ask your shadow if you can join and earn a little bit of that job—it's better than staying in this tent all the time."

Shaking her head, Elizabeth refused: "It's his choice, I can't interfere with his decision."

She sighed helplessly and decided to change the topic, trying not to think about Fafnir while waiting for him to return.

¢¢¢

Outside the tent, Fafnir crawled rapidly as a shadow.

The camp was surrounded by short walls and watch towers. Inside the camp, many soldiers were watching to ensure that nothing could sneak into the camp.

Not all soldiers were able to sleep in tents like Elizabeth and her group. Most of them were sleeping on the ground next to campfires.

Fafnir, who was stopped several times by watching soldiers, headed toward the centre of the camp. His gaze landed on one particular tent that was larger than the others.

The soldier in front of the entrance of the tent noticed Fafnir immediately and stepped aside, giving him a path to enter the tent.

It was obvious by that interaction that Fafnir truly had something to do with the commander every night.

Fafnir entered the tent indifferently, seeing a bunch of soldiers already present inside and discussing something with serious expressions.

"The situation isn't that safe anymore. A camp that isn't so far from us was just attacked a few days ago."

"What are you suggesting then?"

"Less resting time, and maybe even less sleeping if necessary. We can't afford to face a sudden attack while the new brats are still treating this as a vacation!"

"I suggest giving them less food and water per day just in case. If we were blockaded, we'd need the largest amount of supplies to last!"

They were three men and two women talking around a large table. The table had several sheets of paper. Some of them were maps and some were reports.

Fafnir ignored their discussion and emerged from the shadow, turning into his physical small form.

"Talking about supplies… Commander, our little shadow is here." A woman chuckled, shaking the shoulder of a middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man looked at Fafnir and smirked: "You know that I don't prefer this form. Show me your true self!"

Fafnir sighed as his body expanded.

The cute-looking plushie disappeared, replaced by a human-like shadow with hollow eyes and long inky-black hair. Random strands of the hair moved like living snakes or tentacles, and his body was slightly leaning forward, giving Fafnir a terrifying appearance.

He raised one hand slowly to reach his head, giving the commander a scary soldier's salute.

"Hahaha! See? This one makes you look like a true soldier!" The commander smiled, satisfied by Fafnir's 'true' form.

That was far away from Fafnir's real form, and all those scary things were just acts he learned to scare the trade convoy. But the commander was happy with them.

'My real form doesn't make me look like a shadow…'

The next moment, the commander threw a fancy-looking sword to Fafnir, which he caught easily.

The commander rubbed his chin, working his brain relentlessly to remember something, before pointing at a specific direction.

"Your next victims should be there, less than an hour of walking. Try to kill them cleanly if possible without burning or exploding them."

Fafnir gave the commander a slow nod before crawling out the tent, heading to the direction of his next "victims".

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