The Insider System

Chapter 237: Talk

It was pretty easy for Lake to find where the Fighters were stationed by following the sounds of fighting and seeing where the people were running to and away from. As he was heading towards them he wondered if these people were stationed here by the Fighters guild or just happened to live here.

This was one of the biggest places in the city so he felt it made sense for this place to have a large enough population to have this many people here that could fight. He also knew the struggle Masters had had getting enough people to send out to attack the places the Temple Head had told them to attack so it was unlikely they had stationed a large number of Fighters guild members here.

Looking down at the fight that was happening in the center of the city\'s square, Lake wondered what the best way for him to get down there and look for a sword was. He could take out his bow and handle the Demon Worshipers but he was trying to stay out of the fight. There wouldn\'t be a fight if he killed all of them though.

It was also another chance for him to look important in front of a large number of people. Imbuing Fire onto a Magic Arrow and using Crunch Lake shot it and started to pierce it through all the people in black robes down below. He was able to get over half of them before any of them seemed to notice what was happening.

It was too late and none of them were skilled enough to do anything about what he was doing to them. With this almost done Lake used Detector to look for people that could kill him. Not seeing anything he went down to the group of people that he had just helped. They didn\'t immediately trust him like he had expected but he guessed they had no reason to.

Just because he had killed the Demon Worshipers didn\'t mean he was on their side if you really thought about it. "Hello I\'m Lake. I\'m a member of the Fighters guild trying to make it to the surface." Lake was going to give them more information about himself so they knew who he was when they made a report of what happened here but someone cut him off.

"The surface is blocked by a barrier." This was true so Lake nodded and said. "I was planning on digging a way up so I could see what was going on up there." Lake knew he would probably sound stupid saying he was going to dig but it didn\'t really change the fact that he would be successful and people would know he was once they noticed his tunnel once the elevators started again..

"Can you dig at a good speed?"

"Yes, but I\'m trying to find a longsword to make it faster. That\'s actually why I\'m here, I thought you might have a pile of extra equipment." Lake guessed this person he was talking to was their leader so he tried to get a better look at them. Their poster had changed during their conversation so Lake was pretty sure they trusted that he was with them.

"You said you\'re going to use a sword?" Lake nodded and said. "I have a skill that helps me cut through things but my current sword is too short to be efficient." Lake had found people pretty much accepted anything you said as long as you used the word skill in an explanation. They had also just seen him take out an army\'s worth of Demon Worshipers so he was obviously strong.

"Sir they\'re all dead." Looking at the person who had interrupted their conversation and let them talk. "All of them?" The new guy nodded and everyone looked at him with grateful eyes. "We appreciate what you did for us, we\'ll give you anything you need." It seemed they had been checking the people he had dropped with his arrow while they had been talking to make sure he had killed them.

It made sense to check because undead were pretty hard to kill even if they had been set on fire it took a while for them to burn to death. "Come inside and you can pick what you want." Lake nodded and followed them inside. Once he was inside their base he saw just how bad they had needed help. Every available surface had a wounded person laying down on it.

"You guys don\'t have a healer?" The man shook his head and said. "They killed them first, all assassinated by infiltrators or killed during battles."

"What about potions?" Lake had always used potions so he wanted to know if they were just holding back because these people weren\'t important enough. "We ran out after the second day." It was too bad there weren\'t many plants around because Lake could have helped but he hadn\'t really seen many plants here in the Metal Domain.

He guessed the low light level made it so you could only grow curtain things and in special places. He knew they had a lot of mushrooms and root vegetables at the markets so they were probably grown down here and all the other stuff came down on the elevators. "Well I guess it\'s good they lived even if they\'re in bad shape."

"Ok the gear is here in this room." Lake went ahead and switched Detector to look for long swords as he walked into the room. Four swords lit up so all he needed to do was pick one and get back to digging. Lake found the one with the thickest blade out of the four and said. "I\'ll take this one."

With a thicker blade he would be able to swing it harder without it flexing too much. Because of Crunch he didn\'t have to worry about the stone he was swinging it through damaging his blade but his own strength was a problem. When he swung too hard weapons tended to break and the problem would get worse with a longer thinner blade.

He was about to walk back out of the room when the leader who had followed him in closed the door and asked. "Can we talk?" Lake had no reason not to hear what they had to say so he said. "Sure." He had kind of expected for them to ask him to do something for them before he left anyway.

"We think the base of the Demon Worshipers will have the things we need to heal everyone because we found potions on some of their bodies and we were wondering if you could help us find it." Lake knew what they were talking about because he had also found potions on some of the Demon Worshipers he had looted. He had never taken any though since he had his own and it felt gross to take a potion from a Demon Worshiper.

"I can find it but I don\'t think it\'s worth it. I\'m sure you know there will be a person we don\'t want to fight in whatever base we find." Lake really didn\'t want to fight any more big battles until he got outside and could run if he needed to. Being trapped underground was making him feel he needed to not make any more powerful Demon Worshipers mad, especially this close to his tunnel.

"If they have someone like that why wouldn\'t they have been part of the fighting until now?" Lake didn\'t really know why the strong people held back but it was what happened so he just shrugged and said. "Not sure, but I know because I was helping the fight up until now by going floor to floor but I pissed them off and they started sending actual threats after me so I know it isn\'t worth going to get potions from one of their bases because as soon as we do the real treats will come out. All that will happen is everyone will get killed and then I\'ll have to start running again."

Lake was pretty sure he had convinced them that it was a bad idea and said. "Hopefully the bodies outside will have potions you can use and the problem will seem less severe to you after some of your guys get back up."

"Yeah you\'re right there should be a good number of potions out there right now but I don\'t think it will be enough to heal everyone." Lake could tell the guy was looking at the potions on his belt as he said this so Lake decided it was time to end this before he had to be rude. "Ok I\'m going to go back to work. I\'ll come see how you all are doing whenever I take a break."

Standing up, Lake walked out of the room and past all the people that were listening to their conversation through the door. Once he was outside he Gathered the mana needed to cast Fly and flew back to his tunnel.