777: At what cost?

At what cost?

Liam walked away from the gate and to the park that was right next to the street. He looked around at the flat ground and nodded. "This should do it."

This was typically a busy spot, but today it was completely deserted. So this was a perfect place to do what he needed to do.

Ideally, he would have liked to have more privacy as he had no idea what was about to happen next, but for now, this small park had to suffice.

Liam then took a deep breath and summoned his system interface. Immediately, a red screen flashed in front of him, followed by numerous notifications.

<Ding. Rewarded 10 extra stat points and 10 extra skill points for the first discovery of the dungeon

<Ding. Rewarded 10 extra stat points and 10 extra skill points for the first discovery of the dungeon

…

…

Liam directly ignored these updates and looked around for the one thing that mattered to him right now. A few seconds later, his eyes widened as he finally found what he was looking for.

<Unnamed Spatial Artifact

Status: Bound

Structure: Simple Tower

Stage: Level 1 unlocked

Liam's eyes widened as he took a deep breath and prepared to enter this space once again. 

This wasn't the complicated part. All he had to do was will it, and he would be able to enter the artifact again, but the thing that made him nervous was… what he was going to find inside or, rather what he was not going to find inside.

Liam took another deep breath and finally entered the space. But before he could even get a glimpse of where he was, a small furry figure pounced on him furiously, knocking him back with the impact.

Kyuuu! Master!

Liam's face was suddenly dripping wet as a white fox clung firmly to him and started licking the heck out of him.

"Heh." Liam sighed in relief. He did nothing to stop the fox and simply laid back and closed his eyes with a smile. "You are alright. That's good." At this moment, it was as if a huge pressure had been lifted off of his shoulders.

He was not completely aware of what happened in the last few minutes, but he clearly remembered seeing a giant snake and this little fox standing between him and the snake, determined to protect him with everything she had once again.

"That reminds me. Luna, can you tell me what happened?" Liam finally pulled the fox off of him and asked her. He wanted to know what exactly went down. He wanted to know everything the divine temple did to make him fail.

Seeing that his warm and loving gaze had turned cold, Luna became serious and started filling him on everything that transpired. But the more she started describing, the frostier Liam became.

"Master… Grandpa…" Luna's voice trembled.

As an 'NPC', he was definitely not supposed to interfere and expose more information than what could be exposed. But the elf had gone one step further and actually did more than that. He had protected Liam.

"He risked everything for us." Liam mouthed. Now that he thought about it, he did not even know the old elf's name. He clenched his fist and stared at the ground. 

He had indeed won. He managed to awaken his mana core fully, bind the tower and secure his soul minions and Luna at the last minute, but at what cost?

The old elf had sacrificed himself for his sake. He couldn't even imagine what hell he was going through now, considering he broke a huge rule. Perhaps he was also chained up like that draconian princess?

What about the blacksmith grandmaster Acalan? He was also missing when Liam had looked for him earlier. It was as if he had completely vanished. Was he also imprisoned somewhere?

What would become of Mia?

He had come out victoriously, but he also paid a huge price for it. No, the people who had supported him and helped him had paid a price for it.

Liam took a deep breath and calmed down his turbulent emotions. He was cold and calculative but never to his own.

"Luna… how badly do you want those divine temple freaks to pay?" He silently muttered. He still did not understand all of it and what exactly the tutorial was, but he understood one thing. 

The divine-affinity beings were the ones behind everything. They were pulling strings as administrators treating everyone like puppets and using them as fodder for their own purposes.

Liam knew that the path ahead was going to be incredibly perilous. The enemy this time was too formidable, someone he couldn't even comprehend. On top of this, they first had to survive the apocalypse.

But he was also now stronger than he had ever been. Though his enemies wanted him to lose, he was still standing here, and he had already taken the first step to repay this debt he owed them.

Liam smiled as the face of the high priestess flashed past his mind. He vividly remembered those eyes that looked at him as if he was just an insect that would amount to nothing no matter how hard he tried. 

He was meant to live and die a meaningless short life, struggling for survival. That was all that he was supposed to be. Nothing more and nothing less.

"We will see." He closed his eyes, and his smile widened, even scaring Luna away. The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes when Liam finally jolted to stand up. 

"Ok, it is time to head out." He leaned forward to lend a hand to the little fox, who was more than happy to jump on his back and curl around his neck as she always did. 

Kyuuu! Luna cocked her head to the side and curiously asked. "Master, where are we?" 

She had been wanting to ask this for a while as she could sense that the world she was in right now was a different one than the world she had been in before.

Or rather, the fox had only known one world all her life, so she was very interested in what had happened and where exactly they were now.

Liam patted the little thing and asked her to wait. "I will show you once we head out, but we should first take a look around here."

He turned his attention to the spatial artifact inside which he was currently standing. There were many things he did not understand about this place. 

When he first bound with this artifact, a bunch of notifications had popped up, which he barely remembered now as he had randomly selected the options for the set-up.

In short, he made it look like the PVP tower back in the game with the default, reset to the last structure format, and right now, that seemed to be the case as he craned his neck and observed the space from floor to ceiling.

Everything was indeed just like the PVP tower, except that there were no NPCs around or no mana arrays set up. The thing was literally just a space, as the name of the artifact suggested.

"I guess this is it then?" Liam was not disappointed. This was already good enough. After all, it allowed him to bring Luna out. "Ok, let's head back out. There is a lot of work left to be done."

He did not have to monitor the beast wave as he was pretty sure his soul minions and the guild members should be more than enough to handle them, at least from this gate, but there were other things that need to be taken care of.

All the beasts that were slaughtered need to be properly skinned, cut and stored for consumption. The entire world was at a standstill right now, so it was only a matter of days before the food supply runs out.

There was also the task of consolidation of territory. Since only this part of the city was probably safe and cleared of beasts at the moment, there would be several eyes on the land.

Unfortunately for them, Liam was not planning on simply handing over anything to anyone, even if it was the government, so certain precautions needed to be taken.

As he was contemplating these things and the next steps of action and was preparing to log out, suddenly, a huge shadow fell on him.

Liam immediately became alert and turned around. What was happening? 

He couldn't even sense the presence of this creature up until now. How did he miss it? There wasn't a single whiff of killing intent coming from whatever it was. This could only mean that this was a very powerful being. 

Just what else did he end up inadvertently bringing from the damned tutorial to the outside world? Fuck!

As his gaze rapidly flickered to take a look at the monstrosity that had somehow slipped in, a small squeak sounded from the big creature, and Liam's eyes landed on the familiar culprit.

"You?"

However, his shock did not end there. 

The next second… 

Hic…0

An item fell out from the mouth of the creature.

***

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