Conquer - Chapter 197

“How many?” I asked the caretaker of the jail that Ortov made for us.

“34 as of now.” He replied.

“I see. This is difficult. I didn’t even think about that.”

It has been a week since everyone left. Me and Yefa are just hunting down monsters trying to enslave them. But it isn’t easy as I thought. Holding back for the low leveled monsters so that we can level up our skill is incredibly difficult. We accidentally killed around hundreds of monsters because we didn’t know how to control our power.

By emitting some of our force, we can cut them down in an instant. By just tapping them, we don’t do damage. Those 34 monsters we enslaved are just from luck. Most of their lives was around five to ten HP after the first strike.

I thought this would be a cake walk but… I don’t think so.

That’s why we didn’t use our Gazer weapons anymore. I used the weapon that Zieglind gave me but they all bled too much. So we had to resort… to this weapon. Well, calling it a weapon might be overboard. But… this stick that fell from the tree seems to deal enough damage.

We’re just raiding goblin camps that spawn in the other forest. Goblins have been becoming incredibly active nowadays. They have other species helping them now too. Just shows how much the world changed after the players arrived.

“Yefa!” I called out to her.

Yefa stopped what she was doing and looked at me, “Yeah?”

“I’m just going to go to Lam. The activity in the forest has been low ever since last week.”

“Alright! I’m just going to continue hunting!”

I left Yefa to do her own tasks and went on and went on in Lam’s house. I opened the door to his house and all that was there was the countless amount of books laid down in the ground. I tried to tip toe over the books I knocked away some as they were laid everywhere.

Lam noticed my prescence, “Precia, what do you need?” He began to read his book again.

I then asked, “Have you found any new places to hunt? I don’t know if these lower leveled monsters are useful for Zieglind. I can kill the 34 enslaved right now in the house with just a single swing of my weapon.”

“Neco cleaned up all the artifact dungeons that I found using the information of other people. Those dungeons will repair in a month or two.” Lam then took out a giant pile of papers under his desk. “One piece of paper is the details of the artifact dungeon. In exchange for me telling Neco the information I have, I asked him to make a detailed report on what reward he got and what enemies there are. This is his first month of the dungeons he raided when he asked me. Knock yourself out.”

“Thanks. I’ll be using this.” I grabbed the pile of papers and dragged it in my inventory and head out to find Yefa.

There she was, fighting multiple monsters at once. I waited for her to finish those up. She can’t punch since she’ll just burst the enemies to death. So she’s using a stick… is what I thought but she’s still using a weakened gauntlet she got from Ruz and Ruf.

She still insists of using that weapon… Is she… practicing something? But what? “Mana Search.” I began to observe the mana flow in her. It’s normal. All her mana is being spread throughout their veins. So it’s just nothing? I just watched her face those goblins.

The goblins surrounded her. The goblins with the shield rushed at her.

“Chain Punch!” Yefa swung wildly. Her windup being incredibly wide. But as soon as she did that, I saw that all the mana in her body disappeared and began to concentrate on the fist that she punched with.

As soon as her fists connected with the goblin’s shield, a giant defeaning shockwave ensued. Tearing down tens of trees around her and sending a giant blast from where she punched as it reached to the small stone a kilometer away, blowing up a small hole.

The aftermath of her blast was powerful. A straight line reaching out a kilometer away destroyed trees in its path and stopped as it lost momentum and power the longer it traveled. But that’s not all.

The moment of the impact started, the other goblins that aren’t even near her were blown into smithereens. Not a single part of their body was left.

It was frightening and amazing at the same time.

She only swung her fists once and the goblins surrounding her all died. “Phew… that’s a good sign… right?”

“I don’t think so…” I emerged from the shadows and faced her.

“Yeah… I killed them all instead of capturing them… So, what happened with Lam?”

“I’m having trouble on where to go from here. So I asked Lam for more alternatives. Inventory.” I then pulled out the pile of papers. “These are our alternatives.”

Yefa picked up a piece of paper then began to skim through it, “Artifact dungeons? That’s a good start.”

“Yeah but these dungeons have already been raided by Neco so them respawning aren’t guaranteed.”

“That’s better than fighting these small fries. They’re difficult to enslave since we just one shot them.”

“I guess so. Let’s check most of these out.”

For the next month, we began to search for all the artifact dungeons that Neco did. It was a lot. I didn’t think that he’d be this diligent in training or if he’s finding something. Because in these pile of papers, there’s around 73 here. I’m just amazed he managed to keep up his motivation like that.

But this journey of ours was a big luck based. In every 10 that we go and check in, there’s only four. So that leads us to waste a lot of time. Finding them is a big part of a time waster too. The places are vaguely described in the documents given to us. And the places are well hidden.

In the span of a month, we got around 340 more monsters. But this time they’re a lot stronger than the goblins that we had trouble getting. So all of this, it’s all showing progress so we’re pretty happy about that. But it’s still pretty slow.

We finished all the artifact dungeons that Lam gave us. And we only got around 32 dungeons from that.

This process is incredibly slow and we don’t want ourselves to be the least gathered amount of allies. If we did get the least amount of allies, we definitely don’t want the weakest group.

We scratched our heads trying to figure out other ways. So… I had this crazy idea. I borrowed a message skill from Lam and contacted Herold.

“So… what did you want of me?” Herold arrived within a day of contacting him.

“Uhm, Precia, is Herold allowed to be here? I mean, Zieglind put this on us not him.” Yefa had no idea on what I was about to say.

I doubt she’ll join in if it was just us two. So I had to bring in Herold. Since he’s the only one who knows that place. “Herold, we have been assigned a task by Zieglind. It’s to enslave as much monsters as we can in the overworld.”

“I see. So where’s he?”

“He’s doing his own thing as a Demon king. He says that he’ll bring the demons to our side.”

“So that’s why he’s gone. Continue.”

“The enemies here in the overworld are weak. And won’t really do much use for Zieglind. So I have an idea.”

“You want me to help you get you more monsters? Sure… But I still have some things to do.”

“No. Not that. We need more powerful monsters on our side. So I was thinking of trying out the first bottom floors of Tartarus. I’m sure that mo-”

“NO.”

“Wha- Precia, what are you saying?” Yefa voiced her opinion. “The reason why Zieglind doesn’t go there is because he doesn’t know if he himself is ready.”

“Yefa is right. I am telling you right now, you are not ready. The both of you. If you go in, then I’ll just be sending the three of us to our deaths. You won’t even get past the tower’s gate guardian.”

“Then do you have any other ideas? Raiding artifact dungeons are a helpless thing. Monsters there are too fragile and weak.” I let out a sigh and began to tell him our plans, “We’re preparing. Zieglind is planning for the war with Ouroboros.”

“I can understand that but you’re in no way ready for Tartarus. But… I could bring you two with me. Remember the fight with the Lich and the other monsters? That happens every three months. Tartarus releases monsters now and then since it’s overflowing. It’s my job to kill them all. If you want, you can try enslaving them.”