Chapter 850 (1/2)

Despite the fact that Randidly overwhelmed the strange plant goliath spell, the Obyrn Ironfist insisted in continually reiterating his own Level superiority at every chance he got. It made for tiresome negotiations. Often, the discussions about the treatment of ogres would stall out for several minutes after he blurted out extraordinarily unreasonable with his demands and refused to back down.

During those time, Randidly just stared at the larger ogre and focused on the image of Frigid Ash Extinguishing Storm. Despite the fact that the ogre was an impossible sculpted physical specimen, Obyrn seemed rather shy and embarrassed when he was exposed to the prolonged chill.

Not that Randidly blamed him. The cold was biting. There were patches of grass underneath the wooden table by Randidly’s bare feet that were visibly browning from overexposure. And once Obyrn was cold, he seemed lost and unsure how to proceed. The discomfort literally froze him. Honestly, the fellow seemed rather socially awkward for someone who claimed to lead a large area of land.

But Randidly wouldn’t waste such meaningful seconds. While he was staring blankly at Obyrn and waiting for him to break, Randidly was considering what to do about his arm.

There was an obvious choice: either use a Soulseed and grow a plant to replace his arm or design and build a mechanical arm. Of the two, Randidly was leaning more toward designing and building his own arm.

The real drawback of the Soulseed Skill was that he had very little direct control over what the final plant would look like. Well, perhaps that wasn’t the correct way of looking at it.

A better way to phrase it would be to say the plants he could grow were bound by his Skills. And although there were some Skills that were related to his arms via physical body enhancements, there was a chance that he would swing and miss several times with Soulseed. And based on how childlike his plants were, Randidly didn’t want to risk not giving them a use.

Besides, simply using engravings to interact directly with the Aether of his body for control the arm seemed possible. And it sure as hell beat trying to figure out how to connect the machinery to his senses. Plus, if he managed to figure out how to successfully complete his new Mana Engraving, Randidly could add a growing Skill to his mechanical arm.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t blow up. In the middle of a fight.

Like he always did, Obyrn eventually made a grudging admittance that the two parties at the table were equals and perhaps they both needed to reconsider their stances. Randidly eased up on the image. Some part of him felt bad at the subtle pressure, but he wanted this settled as soon as possible. There were more things he needed to address before he could hole up and train.

Without the image, the talks were able to continue as if the previous demands hadn’t occurred. Which, to Obyrn, was an admittance that he knew his requests were unreasonable.

Honestly, as long as the other wasn’t a fool, Randidly wouldn’t be too hard on him for his pride.

Randidly and Alana had only a few scant seconds before the meeting started to communicate, but they had plenty of time during Obyrn’s stall outs to discuss the situation on Earth, and what had changed while Randidly was gone.

As such, Randidly’s message to Obyrn was rather simple: his group of ogres could come through the portal and settle in some of the unexplored areas North of the Ogre Gorge. The different Zones had known about this area for some time and hadn’t expended much manpower to map out the area.

It was a mountainous area, but Alana informed Randidly that Mrs. Hamilton recommended gathering some sort of allies in the area because she suspected it to be extremely mineral rich. However, this was made difficult by both the long distance from Donnyton, the marauding Monsters that were over Level 65 in the area, and some of the other new arrivals to New Earth. Basically, no amount of minerals was worth the cost.

But Mrs. Hamilton’s economic decisions weren’t the news that held Randidly’s attention.

During the five and a half months that Randidly had been on Tellus, two more Zones had been able to complete their Raid Dungeon and connect: Zone Seven and Zone Eleven. Zone Seven was some populous prefecture of China’s that had been forewarned about the arrival of the System. They had currently allowed few people to enter into their lands and were rather firm about it.

But trade was beginning to flow freely outwards, which seemed to be met with muted optimism.

What the merchants allowed into the countryside had seen were strange mega-cities, constructed more like bug nests than human habitations. They were given sliding drawers to crawl into for sleeping. Rations were distributed as a jello-y, calorie dense superfood.