Antagonist Protection Service-Chapter 192 - Respite

192: Respite

192: Respite

Spending a while at home, I endured boredom, and, for the first time since perhaps returning from Drakon-Rasa, subjected myself to a proper time of rest.

Needless to say, there was no use in forcing myself to not think about what Contracts to take on next or how to clear the Tenth Floor of the Tower, and I actually ended up using some of this time to figure those questions out.

For the question of ‘what my next Contract should be’, I simply told the Librarian to find a suitable one of 3-star Difficulty.

After I returned home, I came to the decision that I wanted to promote one more time, increasing my Tier of Authority to Four before I went back to challenge the Tower.

I still needed to clear a few more Contracts for that, so it might take a while, but I at least hoped to have it done by the end of the year.

Of course, it would’ve been easy to just take out a bunch of 1- or 2-star Contracts in order to farm dispatches, but doing that would hardly reward me much in terms of World Stability, which was the primary reason for doing it in the first place.

‘Hm…

Actually, that might not be such a bad idea for the Villainous Blade…’

Anyway, if I decided I wanted to do that, I would think about it later.

As for how to clear the Tenth Floor of the Tower, I searched around online for a while, but because hardly anyone has climbed that high so far, I couldn’t find a single article that even gave an accurate description of what the Tenth Floor was.

They all either gave their ‘best guesses’ on what it might be, or just straight up lied.

Obviously, it was just for clicks, but the sheer amount of misinformation spread about everywhere was quite annoying when all I wanted was a simple answer.

Well, I guess it was clear from that that even John Pierce hadn’t told the media yet what the contents of the Tenth Floor was, only that he had cleared it―whatever reason he had for keeping it secret, I could only guess, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter.

Speaking of which, that guy; in the past month, he had only climbed up to Floor 14.

I wasn’t sure if that was due to the Floors becoming that much harder after Floor 10, or if he had some other matters to deal with, but either way, it was good news for me.

Or at least…

I’m saying that from my perspective, but for everyone else, climbing four Floors in a single month was crazy work.

Considering it took so long even for just the Fifth Floor to be cleared, and now he had gone almost ten beyond that in such a short time, it really was impressive.

Especially considering the wide breadth of subjects that the ‘Tutorial Floors” Objectives covered, you would need someone with a hell of a lot of flexibility in their skillset in order to clear all of it alone.

That’s the only reason why I was able to do so well, after all.

“I wonder what kind of Awakened abilities he has…”

From searching up everything I could about him, I realised that guy John was very deliberate with what information he divulged about himself and the Tower.

In terms of personal information, other than his appearance and other basic facts he revealed in T.V.

interviews, it was only public knowledge that he served in the U.S.

army before Awakening, and in terms of his combat prowess, he only showed off that pure white spear which seemed to be made out of something like bone.

Of course, that was the type of weapon you could only obtain through an Awakened ability, so despite not having any other information about him, it gave at least a small hint.

‘Although, maybe the rumours are true that he has a secret team of Challengers he clears the Tower with…’

“Enki…!

It’s time to go, are you ready…?”

Hearing a raised voice call me from downstairs, I turned the computer off that displayed the famous Frontliner’s wiki page and rose from my chair, leaving my thoughts at that I’ll simply have to find my answers the next time I returned to the Tower.

“Yep, one minute…!”

That’s because today was an important day.

“Ahh, where did I place it…”

Rummaging around the wardrobe for a second, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for…

because I didn’t own a lot of clothes to begin with.

In any case, retrieving a black, smart-looking suit I had gone out and bought a few days ago, I looked at it with a smile and nodded.

‘Good thing I saved up.’

Tonight, we were going out to eat with Ella’s family for her birthday.

Our families have always been close since before we were kids, with even Ina and Evelyn, Ella’s older sister, being close friends around the same age.

Even if one of them was much less of a slob than the other.

In fact, I used to wonder after Gil was born if my parents and Ella’s parents had been timing their…

‘deeds’ to be around the same time so that we would all be near-matching ages.

That was something I very quickly stopped wanting to think about.

Anyway, the reason I went through the effort of picking out and buying a suit, which turned out to be far more expensive than I would have liked, is purely because I didn’t own anything suitable.

All of the smart clothing I owned was from other worlds, and unfortunately, it was also all old-fashioned, either styled like a mediaeval noble or a gothic one.

Of course, part of me thought it might be funny to go to a dinner with that sort of outfit on, but I also just wanted to fit in.

Also, if the discussion came up where I bought it from or how expensive it was, I could certainly say I just ordered it online, but that also had a chance of landing me in hot water if it was somehow discovered that I was lying.

I knew there were certain places I could go to sell some of the rewards I obtained from the Tower, so I could at least recuperate my funds there.

Fortunately, you didn’t need a license to sell those sorts of things, so I could also list them on an online bidding website if I wanted to.

Naturally, I planned to sell some of the stuff I obtained through other worlds too, but all of that was stuff I’d get to eventually.

I wasn’t in an urgent need of money right now, so it could wait.

Dismissing those thoughts there, I finally put on the suit and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror.

“Damn…”

‘Don’t I actually look pretty good…?’

Turning my head left and right to check out all the angles, I thought the majority of the work was done by Charismatic, but I also couldn’t deny the improvement in my body frame itself from working out.

Although there was no gym in the Tower, I did spend at least some time exercising during all the moments where I had to wait for an extended period of time, so it’s not like I was letting myself go…

and to be honest, everything I was doing in the Tower was pretty exhausting work by itself, so although it comes from a place of bias, would it be so wrong to call that working out in a sense…?

“Enki, hurry up!

We’ll be late!”

‘Whoops.’

“Coming!”

Giving one last final glance to myself in the mirror, I ran a hand through my hair.

I hadn’t gotten it cut since way before even the first Contract, so it had grown pretty long…

‘It’s just not something I thought about, but I guess I should probably do something about it soon.’

For now, I’d have to deal with it another way―grabbing a black hairband from the pile that sat by the sink, the same ones that Ina often used, I quickly tied just the back to look more neat, running a hand through the top one more time.

‘Eh, it’s good enough.’ freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

With everything done, I hurried downstairs where everyone was waiting for me, and we quickly got in the car and drove off.

As we were on our way to the booked restaurant, I had no doubt that everyone was looking forward to it.

It was the first time everyone was going out together in a long time, and it was a meal at a nice place to boot, so it was only natural that we were all expecting a good time.

…Really, it was unfortunate.

Because, if I had been just a little bit more prepared for the topic that would inevitably be brought up…

Maybe I wouldn’t have ruined the occasion for everyone.