Unlimited Power 02 - The Ranger's Domain

historical

After a while, Ryan decided that it was time to move on. While Femradiel was right and that they weren't fighting alone and didn't need to hurry, they couldn't just let the monsters prepare the terrain in their favor. Besides, the chance of dealing with the first strike was a valuable one, and Ryan had no intention of letting the monsters have that.

  Before finding the camp of the black tortoises, Ryan found two other dungeons in which the survivors caused dungeon breaks. Ryan had a hard time keeping his anger in check since that was a golden chance to obtain a class almost for free, but in the end, he calmed down. He couldn't change his moral code because of that… until the very end. He was determined to kill only those who point their weapons at him.

"It looks like the guys around are pretty creative," Ryan said while looking around at his next target.

  Ryan didn't find that in their status screen, but it looked like the black tortoises also could use Earth Manipulation. Their base was basically a massive fortress made of dirt. While it didn't look that resilient, at least it worked well to hide their numbers and their secrets. Those creatures created something like a labyrinth in which they could move around in a terrain surrounded by three mountains. Ryan could see several black tortoises in the several entrances of those places, but even if he kills them, Ryan won't have the chance to attack the others because the corpses would work as a defense line.

"The path that might projectiles have to cross will be blocked and thanks to the covered labyrinth, I can't even see more than a few monsters…" Ryan furrowed his eyebrows. "This will be a pain."

  Now and then, Ryan could feel that he was being watched, and Femradiel confirmed that it was the same person who used Clairvoyance on him a few days ago. The guardian of Tokyo has his eyes on him, but not in a positive manner. Ryan was certain that unless he caused a massive blow to the monsters, he wouldn't attack the monsters' exposed back, which was why he couldn't trust in someone like him.

"What is the plan now, Ryan?" Femradiel asked.

"I am still thinking about it," Ryan said. "Still, even though it looks a bit annoying and time consuming, maybe we can do some damage while sealing the entrances of their hideouts and wait for the monsters to starve."

"That seems like a proper plan, but we know that you aren't that patient," Femradiel said.

"That is right," Ryan nodded. "I guess we need to destroy a good part of their base in order to expose the monsters. While they are big and sturdy, they are slow and not that powerful when it comes to long-ranged attacks. So, kitting them seems like a pretty decent plan."

  The only problem was the fact that Ryan was obviously faster than the black tortoises. Unless they are really stupid, the monsters won't chase him. With that in mind, destroying their base was something that could be ignored since a few of them could repair everything. Ryan had to force the monsters to leave their hideout in one way or the other. There was actually a good way to make that happen…

"Which direction is the nearest dungeon, Femradiel?" Ryan asked.

"At your five o'clock," Femradiel replied.

"You should come and join the party," Ryan said. "Let's leave many surprises along the way for the monsters in that place."

  Although Ryan said that, he waited for the sun to set before he finally left his position and headed toward the dungeon while laying many magic traps between the dungeon and the black tortoise's camp. Creating enough traps to decimate an army of those creatures was out of chance, but that was the real goal. Ryan just needed to cause some damage and make them expose themselves.

"You should be more careful because I can't sense things very well inside those dungeons," Femradiel said. "The concentration of mana can interrupt several skills; thus, I am unable to detect the number of enemies inside it. Based on what you told me, it is very likely that the boss is also using some spell to reinforce such a trait of the dungeon."

"It is all right, if my guess is right, another creature like that hag is also controlling the black tortoises," Ryan said. "So, if a monster goes as far as controlling massive monsters like that, the boss wouldn't use the dungeon to spawn several copies of itself, they would use the same thing as Fenrir did."

"There is no point in mentioning enemies that I don't know of," Femradiel said. "If you don't remember, part of our contract prevents me from reading your memories."

  Ryan explained the time he faced Fenrir and the army of dire wolves, and as expected, Femradiel understood the power of that ability pretty easily. The dungeon master selected a single boss from his army, and the other bosses that spawn during the dungeon breaks were only mass of power, or shadows that the original boss could absorb to get stronger. While that kind of technique has some limits, it was undoubtedly useful to make the bosses reach high levels.

"So, you think the boss of the next dungeon did the same because they are a specialist at controlling monsters instead of fighting by themselves?" Femradiel asked. "I guess that does make sense since creatures that have that kind of power hold the advantage against other creatures that can't even speak."

  While that did make sense, there was something that Ryan couldn't understand yet, why the dungeon masters apparently had similar powers? Was it a coincidence that they were controlling four species of monsters that were well-known in Japanese mythology? Why are they fighting against each other, and why are they trying to invade Tokyo? Ryan started to think that he shouldn't have decided to stay away from Tokyo's guardian because he probably had the answer to those questions.