I've Got A Mana Processor In A Magic World-Chapter 196: Visitors

That was something he couldn’t answer.

What he could though, was answer the glaring question at the back of his mind.

He’d already come to the conclusion that he was very likely going to come back to Lytheron, just like the elf had said.

’And likely with less favorable terms...’ Zephyr sighed.

He’d been somewhat rash. But a part of him felt like it was still kind of logical.

He’d only been in this convergence trial for three days. That was nothing compared to how long he expected the trials to be based on what he knew about them from the records of the Exalted told to him in Komi’s world.

He could be years in here, so he wasn’t willing to bind himself to a contract with some ancient entity... regardless of the very very delectable benefits...

’Damn!’ Zephyr facepalmed again, but gritted his teeth and continued forward. There was no way he was turning back now. It was a decision he made, and he was going to stick with it.

Besides, he knew now that Lytheron was not the only Paragon here...

He remembered that he’d even seen one out in the open while approaching the settlement earlier.

’They must surely know of each other’s presence...’ Zephyr mused.

’But wait, that other white-robed was out in the open, while Lytheron is still trapped in there...’

It was possible that they weren’t aware of each other’s presence. Or maybe they were simply in charge of different areas...

Either way, Zephyr knew there were more great figures from history in this trial. And with that knowledge in mind, his decision to decline the contract for the meantime didn’t seem as bad.

’I’ll check out my options first. There’s plenty of time anyway...’

And speaking of time, Zephyr bursted out of the tunnels stunning the guards, both the loinclothed monsters and the gray-robed. They’d felt something whoosh past as Zephyr didn’t hold back, but no matter where they looked, they could neither see nor hear anything.

They went into high alert, scouting for intruders, but it was futile, night had already fallen and they didn’t know where to start.

Zephyr was long gone, rushing back to his abode to settle for the night.

He got there in record time, and thankfully, met his troglodyte home the exact same way he had left it — without any intruder.

"What’s going on in the rankings now anyway?" He muttered as he settled in, willing his ranking panel into view.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 1

Name: ZeroOne Sovereign

Rep: Planet 7. J–22. 02–0038

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 2

Name: Queen of The Dunes

Rep: Planet 3. B–14. 01–0142

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 3

Name: Alyra Ryvelin

Rep: Planet 1. J–22. 02–0031

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 4

Name: Fate Defier

Rep: Planet 10. H–19. 03–0292

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 5

Name: Lord Supreme Overlord of Absolutely Everything (First of his name.)

Rep: Planet 13. B–14. 01–0153

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 6

Name: Harbinger of Doom

Rep: Planet 6. K–11. 05–0275

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 7

Name: Seraphim

Rep: Planet 9. F–08. 04–0207

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 8

Name: Xyrie

Rep: Planet 12. J–03. 01–0344

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 9

Name: Lightbearer of Ilyros

Rep: Planet 5. D–07. 09–0116

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 10

Name: Midnight Prince

Rep: Planet 2. E–18. 03–0001

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Ah?" Zephyr’s eyes widened. "Braddox is off the list. That wasn’t long..."

That meant he’d lost his perk too. From the little Zephyr had seen of him back in the Oasis, he was sure the guy was all kinds of pissed right now. He would probably go on a killing spree or something to get back into the top ten ranks since he knew about the existence of perks.

"Heh. Interesting. This... Midnight Prince person also wouldn’t want to lose their new rank either..."

"So, now, eleven people know about the existence of perks." Zephyr didn’t feel as bothered about it now with what he knew. It seemed minor compared to other things that were in store in the trial.

It wasn’t like he was willing to give up his top ten rank, it was only that he wouldn’t be as bothered if he actually lost it compared to just yesterday when that seemed like the greatest thing to protect.

Besides the new addition to the top ten ranks, there had also been two new changes. Xyrie had moved up from 9th, to overtake Lightbearer of Ilyros in 8th place, and Fate Defier, previously ranked 5th was now No.4, overtaking the Lord Supreme guy.

"Guess he’s not all that Supreme in the end..." Zephyr chuckled lightly.

He looked up to the top of the rankings again. "ZeroOne Sovereign." His name still sat right at the top despite another day going by without any kills. Now he was genuinely curious about how many points the giant worm from earlier was worth.

"Should I just wait it out and see how long it’ll take for Queen of The Dunes to reach me without doing anything...?"

Maybe going after massive beasts like the worm was the way to go. Even though he’d truly be risking his life doing it. At least it would be worth his while...

He rubbed a palm on his face. ’I need to calm down...’ There were too many thoughts running through his mind at the moment.

"Probably just need to rest for now..."

And rest, he did. It wasn’t until the crack of dawn that he opened his eyes again, besides the Voice of The World jarring him awake with the death toll and ranking announcement at midnight.

Only 11,422 champions had fallen during the previous day, bringing the total number of champions still alive and active in the trial to 1,124,569.

"The real trial has begun," Zephyr muttered with his game face on. While it was brutal to say, it was still a fact that most of those that could easily be killed had already been. The death toll from the previous day went a long way to prove that point right.

Only 11,422 champions, compared to the 171,004 from the day before that.

The threshold had been crossed.

Now it was time to play the game.

And for that, Zephyr had charted out his plans for the next month at least.

His thoughts had settled after having a good night’s rest, and he’d come to the conclusion that his idea from the night before — to wait it out and see how the rankings would shift if he didn’t do anything — was a terrible idea.

That would only be good if his priorities were different. For Zephyr, right now, his main priority was to stay alive, and to keep advancing. The top ten rank was the third priority, but to a lesser extent.

To achieve all of these three goals. The best course of action was to always keep ahead.

Instead of shortening his lead for a probe to find out point grading, then having to work his way back to the top again, really risking his life against such massive beasts, it was more logical to use this already large gap as a good headstart, and go even harder on the grind.

He needed to have enough buffer to take time off to design all the necessary components on his new mana node. A long enough buffer that he could confidently take at least 2 weeks off without doing anything and still be sure that his position in the top ten was safe.

And for that, he needed to delve that close-by dungeon.

That was exactly where he was headed, fully prepared and primed for action. Aegis had given him a crash course on things to note when delving a dungeon, with the asterisk that it could very well be wrong, as the information was not based on a reliable enough source. A source that Aegis, like usual, had been tight-lipped about.

Zephyr was just getting close to the dungeon gate, readjusting the hand-made strap of the container of food he carried on his back, when his enhanced senses picked up sounds of voices traveling over the hard-caked ground to his ears from the far distance.

’Other people?’ he kept walking, unbothered about them spotting him. {Silent Mirage} was up and running, so he simply waltzed straight towards them.

And immediately he saw their figures, he frowned. "What the actual fuck!"

It was the small elf variant girl and her lackey again.

"How the hell did they find me?!"

And they were not alone either. They looked to have joined up with two different teams — an elf variant group of four girls from the Oasis, and the other team being one Zephyr didn’t recognize — two dwarf variants, a demon variant, and an orc variant.

It was a whole party of champions, bickering, analyzing and reanalyzing as they stared at the dungeon gate.

Not a single one of them sensed Zephyr’s presence even as he got comfortable just about 30 meters (100ft) away from them.

And from what he could pick up from their conversations, they seemed to have found this place yesterday, and were about to make an attempt to enter it.

’Hmm... So I have had visitors this close since yesterday...’ he frowned. It looked like he needed to up his area scouting game. Imagine this team had happened on him when he was harvesting some of the tuber crops... That would’ve been a sight to see... Crops defying gravity and disappearing out of sight as he plucked them with {Silent Mirage} active.

But that worry would be for later. Right now, since they couldn’t see or sense him, he was simply content to watch them pave the way into the dungeon. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

’What are the odds huh...?’ he mused, then stopped abruptly, frowning. ’Improbability... again...’