Chapter 219: Alliance (1/2)

Zac surveyed the battlefield and finally walked over to the corpse of the Medhin member. He was still decked in all kinds of expensive-looking rings and amulets, and Zac unceremoniously threw the body into his sack so that he could look over them later.

He already knew from before that the Medhin had monopolized all the best stuff from their empire, and the power of the rings proved that the man’s equipment might be even better than Zac’s own.

Next, he walked through the whole army, looking at each and everyone for anything that could be of value. Only the things inside the sacks were transferred over automatically upon a kill, but not the things on their bodies. But it seemed there wasn't really anything of interest.

Finally, he walked over to the downed bodyguard. A large part of his torso was completely ripped off, leaving a gristly wound as he blankly stared up at the sky. Zac sighed and bent down to close his eyes, before turning his attention to the shield that lay not too far from him.

It was a different one from the shield he saw this man wear at the auction, and it was clearly of high quality. It was slightly dented but otherwise in good condition. That was saying something because Zac had felt the power of the strikes even when he was down on the stairs. It wasn’t the shield that failed, but the user's endurance was simply insufficient to bear the power of Tyrbat.

He walked over to the shield and lifted it up, and found it was extremely heavy, making it feel like he was holding a huge boulder. It was also quite large, covering everything from his head down to his knees when he held it up. He could also see that it had a string of fractals that ran all over the inside of it.

It might not be a Spiritual Tool like he wanted, but it was far superior to anything he possessed at the moment and would have no problem surviving through the quest to block 5 000 attacks. Unfortunately he’d found out that he couldn’t advance the quests in his human form. Otherwise he could have finished it by running down the mountain to the beasts for a couple of hours.

It turned out that his class quests only were active while he actually had his class, so he would need to turn back into an undead before working on them. However, that posed a bit of a problem at the moment.

It was far easier to turn back to a human for Zac at the moment since Miasma was both the source of life and fighting strength for an undead. It was different for a Human though. Expending all his Cosmic Energy wouldn’t have any other effect than completely exhausting him and making him a bit nauseated.

He had a theory that he might be able to turn back into an undead by bleeding himself out since that should empty him of all his vitality. But he wasn’t in the mood to try that out unless at back at home with someone to watch over him. Also, there might be other restrictions in place, such as how often he could turn.

However, even though the shield would be useful to him he didn’t put it in his bag. It belonged to the Marshall clan, and the man lying next to him had sacrificed his life to protect Thea from an attack. Perhaps she would be unwilling to hand it over.

“Just take it,” Thea suddenly said without opening her eyes, making Zac’s brows rise.

Was the woman a psychic? His eyes slightly thinned and he looked over to the girl calmly sitting ten meters away from him. In response, she opened her eyes and leveled her piercing blue stare toward him.

“You were stomping around like a rhino, I heard what you were doing,” she calmly said added before closing her eyes again.

Zac didn’t comment, but simply put the shield into his bag. Since he'd looted the battlefield it was time for Zac to go over the spoils, so he focused his attention on his Cosmos Sack.

When he looked inside he was shocked to see the amount of stuff inside. There was a huge tent along with all kinds of foods and delicacies, and an enormous amount of pelts and pillows. The army must each have taken a part of the camp with them to bring it all, as not even Zac himself could carry that much stuff.

“Just how did these people find each other so quickly?” Zac muttered to himself.

“They just needed to touch when they got teleported and they’d end up at the same place. The tutorial pixies told everyone that, have you forgotten?” Thea said in response without opening her eyes.

“Well, I didn’t go to the tutorial, so no one told me,” Zac said with a shrug.

“What? You’re a mortal?” she said, her eyes opening in shock. “Then why are you so strong?”

“Lucky, I guess,” Zac muttered as he gazed upon the palace at the other side of the summit.

It was both larger and in better shape compared to the palace he entered on the last mountain, which might hint that the protections in place were superior as well. He could only hope that it was somehow calibrated to a reasonable strength. Otherwise he would have to scale the mountain somehow to reach the hidden gardens.

But he had a strong feeling there were protections in place against that in place, which is why he went up the mountain the normal way in the first place. He wouldn't do any mountain climbing unless he had to. But suddenly he was dragged out of his thoughts as he noticed Thea was glaring at him with red eyes.

“Uh, are you okay?” Zac hesitantly said, afraid that she wanted her shield back.

“Every day,” said with a hollow voice. “Every day I’ve fought with my life on the line, one battle after another. Just so that I can protect my family and humanity. But I couldn’t even save John. Instead, he had to sacrifice himself to keep me alive.”

Zac didn’t know what to say and only looked at Thea with some sadness in his eyes. He knew just how it was to feel powerless. Every day the first month on the island he’d spent sleepless nights being overcome with despair, not knowing whether he’d ever get off the island alive, or whether his family was alive.

“Meanwhile you just keep getting stronger, increasing the distance between yourself and the rest of us. We thought you might have gained a top grade cultivation manual from the tutorial, as that was the only thing that could explain it. But it turns out you’re not even a cultivator,” she said as she looked up at him with tears of frustration pooling in her eyes.

Zac coughed, a bit uncomfortable from the intensity of the stare. To avoid it he walked around to her back and placed his hand on her shoulder. She immediately tensed up and shot a glare at him in response.

“I have the Dao of Trees, and it has healing properties. It will speed up the process with absorbing the pill,” he explained as he infused the Dao into her through his hand.

After feeling that nothing was amiss with the energies she relaxed again and refocused on healing. The silence felt a bit uncomfortable after her outburst so he started to talk about what came to his mind.

“When the integration happened I was camping with my girlfriend and three others, but it turned out all four of them were cultivators. The patch of forest we were in got moved, placing me alone on a remote island together with an Incursion. That Incursion was both a curse and blessing. It made my life a living hell, but closing it also gave me a bunch of advantages,” Zac explained as he kept infusing her with the Dao of Trees.

“You singlehandedly closed an incursion?” she asked with shock and couldn’t help to glance back at him.