Chapter 70: 2.20-No pain no gain

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Children's screams sounded near him, and his ears twitched slightly as Avan slowly opened his eyes. From farther away, commanding cries sounded, and a smell of dust, ashes, and partial decay penetrated his nose, eliciting a noisy sneeze. He instinctively reached to his right with his hand and tried to pull himself out of the hole he was in. Shock, blurred memories and pure will to survive blocked all rational thought for the time being, and Avan simply wanted to get to safety. One death was enough for him for a very, very long time.

Of course, he had noticed the news in his messages, right in front of his face, and when he now opened his eyes in a completely recovered state without any pain, could move without problems and was in full possession of his powers, there was no doubt.

His perk [Cycle of Death and Life] had been activated, even though Avan just couldn't understand where the hell he got a thousand souls. The fights in the arena, and the kills in the dungeon itself, had not been nearly enough to replenish his soul pool and give him a resurrection.

But all these thoughts were secondary, because he knew that he first had to get to safety before he could devote himself to his blinking interface with all the messages and updates.

Just as he was finally able to wriggle free, his left hand, while resting on the scree underneath him, brushed against a cold material that, when touched, immediately inflicted a brief painful sting and seemed to suck mana away.

One thought later, the bracelet, very familiar to Avan, disappeared directly into his celestial storage without wasting any further attention, and he scrambled further out of the hole in the wall.

The children's screams grew louder and he had to suppress another sneeze when he finally caught a glimpse of the street, where to the right of his position three children were playing a game with some kind of leather ball, completely unimpressed by all the soot and dust above some parts of the city.

One of the three boys, unfortunately, at that very moment looked up at the large hole in the outer wall that was three meters above the ground, and spotted the silver-haired Avan also looking at the three children at that very moment.

The boy frowned and stopped abruptly, which brought him the leather ball with not a little force directly on the side of his head, which had just been thrown to him by one of the other children. A loud cry and an angry look in the direction of his playmate briefly distracted the boy, and when he looked over to the wall again, the almost naked silver-haired man had already disappeared.

Avan himself had hurried and in the short span of distraction had quickly landed with a graceful leap on the cobblestones, the three meters no hurdle, and had set off in the shadow of the setting sun near the walls of the house in the opposite direction.

Without effort and with only a brief, barely visible movement of one of his fingers, a midnight black ball plopped into the air above his right shoulder, adapting almost like a chameleon to the darkness at the request of its creator, making it even harder to see.

So Avan, with his silver hair disheveled and hanging loosely over his shoulders, his upper body free and his pants just barely in place, crept along the street until he came to one of the smaller southeastern gates of the city. He did not want, whether rationally or irrationally, to remain in the city of Haipu another unnecessary second longer, since there was a danger that he would be searched for if someone connected him to the dungeon or if one of his pursuers survived the implosion.

He watched the three guards, who were carefully walking down the street leading from the gate into the city, talking excitedly to each other, and kept noticing a recurring part of the conversation that sounded an awful lot like "monster".

Just as Avan was pondering what kind of monsters might be in the city, he heard renewed screaming from the direction of the arena and the destroyed tower, and in between loud hisses, explosions, and various magical discharges.

And with that it dawned on him, and he grabbed his head for his stupidity, as he shook his head and thought of the now freed monsters of the former dungeon, including an oversized snake which had remained in his memory with a clear image before his eyes.

Distracted, the gate guards were in any case easier for him to bypass, but it still remained the thought of how he now managed to march unseen past them out of the city.

A thoughtful sideways glance at his dark camouflaged sphere next to him brought him a brief smile, which disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared on his face. Further movements of his fingers later, four more spheres popped into reality above him, and he camouflaged them as quickly as he could, when one of the city guards at the gate thought he saw something odd out of the corner of his eye.

Avan held his breath and let the five spheres remain motionless in the shadows, while the guard suddenly glanced into the dark part of the street right at the edge of the city wall with narrowed eyebrows, much to the consternation of his interlocutor. The other city guard spoke something incomprehensible as far as Avan was concerned to the clairaudient guard, and the latter shook his head distractedly after a few seconds and turned back to his colleague, apparently satisfied that he had just imagined whatever it was.

Slowly expelling the held breath again, Avan finally went to his escape plan and with a mental command ordered his four new spheres to wrap themselves around him like a second skin and make use of the cloaking ability he had instinctively applied to his Akkalon forms.

A few minutes later, avan stood in the shadow of the street wall, as camouflaged as he could be and without being able to check his whole body, looking down with fascination at his arms, which now also seemed to merge with the background. When he moved, you could clearly see through the camouflage, but when he held his arms still, it was almost perfect.

Another remarkable ability that immediately caught Avan's eye was the stretchiness of the substance that enveloped him. It didn't cost him a drop of his own mana, and the forms were simply powered by his dungeon mana, much to his pleasure and relief. He briefly wondered how far he could push the ability in terms of clothing or armor, but pushed those thoughts aside for the moment to creep slowly and crouched across the street toward the wall, which let him step out of the shadows.

He had waited for the moment when loud sounds of battle would again be heard inside the city and the guards would seem sufficiently distracted to venture quickly but cautiously to the wall.

Once there, he slowly moved into an upright position, with his back pressed against the city wall, and took gentle sideways steps toward the gate, while also keeping a sideways eye on the three distracted guards.

His nose, eyes, mouth and ears were not covered, and he knew that a telltale glint in his eyes, for example, would quickly ruin any camouflage, so he made sure that no one was looking at him as he moved slowly toward the guards.

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When he was only a few meters away from the city guards, he could finally understand what they were whispering to each other, and it confirmed his suspicions about dungeon monsters and floor bosses that had emerged from the rubble of the former dungeon.

Thus distracted, Avan was able to squeeze into the three meter high archway and another step later disappeared into the shadows below, right in the back of the guards, and much to his relief when he finally arrived on the empty street outside. Merchants and travelers had probably either fled or quickly taken refuge somewhere, which is why there seemed to be nothing going on at this side gate, at least that was Avan's assumption.

So he stood with his back leaning against the wall outside, and for the first time in weeks, he let his gaze glide over the green landscape and breathed in and out the wonderfully fresh air. Apart from the breath of ash and dust from the inside of the city.

"Let's go then..."

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"I'm telling you, we need a mage on the team!" The blonde young woman just explained to her comrades-in-arms, who were all sitting together in a corner of the adventurers' guild on leather sofas with various drinks ranging from ale to water.

The other young woman, dressed completely in green-brown clothes with a cape, frowned. "Jen, I think you're exaggerating. We're supposed to be hunting damn red wolves, and the three of us alone are all just over level one hundred! From your... Guard at your side probably not to mention. The reported red wolves are in the fifties. Three of us, or four as you take it, are already a bit overkill!" The young ranger counter-argued, while casting a help-seeking glance at her friend, who followed the argument with a suppressed laugh, trying to hide the twitching corners of his mouth behind his jug of ale.

"But Dani! Come on, preparation is everything! Anything can happen out there, and Linob here will only intervene if something were to happen to me.... After all, that's what he was sent to babysit me for..." The young woman with her white robe tried to make clear, while her mood and voice briefly changed, as she remembered the confrontation with her family, and how it had come to the accompaniment of the guard at her side.

"Come on! I'm only effective against undead, and otherwise useless in combat except for healing... And Patris has sunk almost all of his stats into vitality, which makes him a veritable wall with his shield in combat, but also deals little damage! And you alone want to do all the damage against the red wolves? That's ridiculous, come on! You know I'm right. Just because you don't want to split our quest reward even more..."

Dani looked around slightly embarrassed and fiddled with her greenish cloak while casting a furtive glance at her friend, who nodded barely noticeably but approvingly at the statement, while continuing to seem to hide any amusement to no avail.

A glance at the stoic man in plate armor leaning against the wall behind Jen, however, brought no further insight.

"Fine... So? If you ask like that, then you already have someone scouted out and in mind. Spit it out." She finally conceded defeat to the healer in their group and looked expectantly straight into her eyes as she lifted her now cold tea to her lips to take a sip.

Beaming with joy at having won another small verbal victory, Jen nodded to the group and looked first at Dani and then at her tank Patris. "A young man came in this morning and registered as a fresh adventurer! He caught my eye right away because he listened intently to everything and then looked at it, and his robe literally screamed MAGIC!" Nodded Jen with excitement, her blonde ponytail fidgeting up and down with equal excitement.

The ranger, however, did not look at all excited, and even the young warrior in the round now looked at the healer with equal skepticism. "Jeeeeen! Freshly registered??? We don't want to take a beginner against level fifty wolves!" Came it directly slightly upset about the naivety of the young healers from Dani, while she stared with a scolding look at her friend opposite her at the table.

"Ahhh!" She waved both hands in the air in front of her dismissively as she noticed the two looks her teammates were giving her. "No, no! He registered fresh! But he was taken in directly as a SILVER rank! I could hear the surprise in the voice of the attendant at the counter loud and clear."

Dani, who was about to take another sip of her tea, looked over at Jen in disbelief, and a quick sideways glance showed her the equally surprised look on Patris' face. "Please what? Why would someone who is already over level one hundred only now register as an adventurer? And what's more, here in this backwater? Why not in Haipu directly, or in one of the other larger cities? That doesn't make any sense!"

So the discussion went back and forth for a while, but finally it was agreed to talk to said mage that evening at the local tavern over a round of ale, and maybe a sinergy with this person would result.

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