The Villain Rising: Ascension of Arcane Trickster.-Chapter 220: Meeting the Blacksmith.

Death, gravity and even fate itself always had an unholy level of obsession with me and sometimes I genuinely wondered what I did to deserve so much cosmic attention when I couldn’t even return a polite smile.

And as I kept falling into a pit whose bottom politely refused to exist, my thoughts wandered further and further toward those clingy cosmic entities.

It had been half an hour since I started falling and neither did I land somewhere nor did some Eldritch bastard jump in screaming peekaboo in front of me.

What the hell is this?

Where was I even falling?

And more importantly, which new bitch fell for my charms this time?

Because let’s be honest, whenever reality starts acting weird around me, it’s usually because some higher existence decided I looked interesting enough to ruin their evening.

The thought looped again and again before something finally shifted.

Gravity came back in all its glory as I finally saw something glowing far below and yeah, after falling for that long, letting physics have its way with me would have turned me into abstract art made from my own blood. So, I summoned one of my cards and flicked it towards the ground while imbuing a part of my consciousness in it to match the timing.

The moment I was close to the ground, my card activated the [Magician] effect and my body was engulfed in a green flame before I reappeared near the ground.

Splash.

My feet landed in shallow water, barely reaching my ankles.

I straightened slowly, taking a deep breath.

"...Nice."

The water glowed in a fluorescent crimson colour, glowing faintly as if it was alive.

Ignoring it for now, I turned my attention to the dark cave I found myself in and except for the glowing pond, there was no other source of light, making it difficult to see anything properly while the hole I had entered through was sealed shut as if it never existed in the first place.

I could hear a soft voice of something metallic hitting something in a consistent rhythm, as a soft echo reverberated into the cave but that wasn’t the only sound I heard as a sound of giggles of a child followed.

"Heheheh~"

My expression stiffened almost immediately as the laughter sounded mischievous but at the same time deeply familiar.

"You are finally here, big bro..."

The voice was unmistakable.

Winter.

The boy I had met inside the loops and the one who had awakened me. His voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, impossible to pin down.

"My father is waiting for you~" he continued, cheerfully. "But before that, you need to get past those bad monsters... good luck, big bro."

"Winter, is that you?" I asked but the voice didn’t reply again.

Tsk...

There was no point chasing confirmation because if it really was him, I would find out soon enough and honestly I didn’t have much choice either as except the way where sound was coming from, there was no other exit and then there was a particularly familiar presence I was feeling from that direction.

So, with a smirk, I moved in the direction the sound felt like it came from. If trouble was coming either way, I might as well face it with a smile.

—

It didn’t take long for the trouble to show itself because after barely a few minutes of walking, I came across my first monster.

It was a disgusting abomination, a monster with a gigantic, muscular body and a single crimson eye in the centre of its head.

A cyclops...

The fuck?

This wasn’t an ordinary monster, this was a fucking alien in this world, part of one of the species under the Allied Sovereign Species.

"Hey, buddy, are you in there?" I asked cautiously because no matter how ugly they were, they possessed immense physical strength.

A newborn Cyclops could beat the shit out of an E-Ranker with a single hit and the one standing before me clearly looked like an adult, meaning it had at least the strength of a C-Ranker...

And since these monsters didn’t use mana and relied purely on physical strength, I doubted they were nerfed much like the others.

"Googa googa."

The monster muttered but I understood the meaning immediately as my <The One Who Scammed Hel> myth allowed me to comprehend most languages.

He was practically saying, "I’m going to crush you, puny but very, very handsome human, for my freedom." The words might not have been the same but sentiment was sure as hell was that.

And without any further talk, it started charging toward me, its massive fists swinging straight for my head in the already narrow cave.

There was no room to dodge. So I summoned my <Card Of Arcana> and threw one behind the monster, teleporting there instantly. In the same motion, I used my martial art [Voidpulse Kick] to deliver a devastating kick to its head while increasing the gravity around it with my <Internal Gravity> skill.

The shockwave exploded, making the cave rumble slightly but that bastard didn’t even flinch as it glared at me angrily.

"Googa tooga."

It said something along the lines of, "The puny human is fast and annoying."

But for what it was worth, I wasn’t fast, it was this bastard who was just slow. Their kind traded speed and the ability to use mana permanently for their ridiculous strength after all.

It turned around and attacked me again as I teleported behind it once more but this time I hurled one of my cards straight toward its head, hoping it would pierce through but nope, nothing happened as the card bounced back.

What the hell did these bastards eat to get so sturdy?

That dumb bastard turned around at turtle speed again, trying to grab me in the similar fashion as before but this time, I didn’t move and instead, I hurled my card straight for its big ugly eye.

It barely dodged as the card stabbed straight through.

"Guahhhhhhhh!!!!!"

It screamed but the card was too shallow to burst. So I sent another card flying, letting it hover just above the first, before teleporting myself straight in front of it and unleashing a kick at the edge of the card.

The monster, already crying out in pain, screamed even louder as my card drove deeper into its eye. It started thrashing wildly before one of its massive hands slammed hard into my chest and before I could even react, I was hurled backward, crashing into the cave wall with a deafening thud.

The stone wall behind me cracked as I coughed up some blood.

CRACK!!

I could even hear the sound of several bone cracking echoing through my body but I was still smiling, because my card was exactly where I wanted it to be...

I shielded my body and muttered, "Explode." And immediately, the Tower effect of my card activated before detonating as the monster stopped mid-scream before its head burst into a mess of blood and brain matter, splattering across the cave ceiling.

I was a bit far from the mess but the sight was still no less ugly.

I pulled out a healing potion from my storage ring and gulped it down in one go.

Damn, that attack was brutal.

Next time I fight one of them, I definitely shouldn’t get hit because it hurts like hell.

I made a mental note, though I doubted I would need to fight one again anytime soon. These bastards were far too rare and even in the novel, Noah had barely encountered them once and never fought any, since they were usually peaceful creatures... unlike this one, which had tried to crush me the moment it laid eyes on me.

—

After waiting for half an hour and taking an ample amount of rest, I started walking again. Thankfully, this time it didn’t look like I would encounter any trouble as I had been walking for nearly a few hours and most of the monsters I came across were Slimes or Goblins, while the sound of something hammering was steadily growing closer.

But of course, I had to jinx myself.

The moment I thought there wouldn’t be any problems, the worst kind of trouble I could encounter appeared and not just one, but three of them.

"The Grafted Hunger...?"

My old best friend and the one that had nearly killed me back in the Forest of Unmasked stood before me in a twisted reunion. Naturally, these weren’t the exact monsters I had faced back then but they were still no less the same disgusting kind.

"You’ve got to be kidding me..."

And there were three of them. Countless eyes embedded across their bodies slowly shifted toward me, while the mouths scattered over their flesh began making all kinds of unsettling noises.

But thankfully, this time, I wasn’t as weak.

I was immune to their corruption and I had something I could use to defeat them with ease.

A smirk spread across my face as I summoned my affinity, Arcane Jestfire. A green-coloured fireball formed in my hand as I looked at the monsters with that same smirk. My flames were especially effective against corruption-based creatures, carrying a slight purification effect thanks to all my myths.

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Without any hesitation, I hurled the fireball at one of them. It consumed a bit more mana than usual but I wasn’t touching those disgusting creatures ever again in my life even if I was immune to their corruption now.

Unlike normal sentient beings who could have dodged my fireball with ease, these monsters didn’t have the slightest sense of self-preservation. It actually tried attacking the flame itself.

My fire latched onto its body cheerfully before erupting and engulfing it entirely. Meanwhile, its two "friends" also attacked it, mistaking the burning mass for an enemy, only for my flames to latch onto them as well.

I poured nearly all my mana into it, pushing the fire to burn as hot as possible. Within a second, the monsters were reduced to piles of ash, my flames dancing over their remains for a short while before slowly fading away.

Meanwhile, my mana was nearly depleted.

Honestly, I was starting to take this cave trip more like a vacation than trouble. The closer I got to the source of the sound, the more I understood who it was and I could even feel a familiar presence, one I could never forget chilling there and that alone told me that the one who had called me here definitely wasn’t hostile.

And even if they were hostile, I couldn’t do shit for now but, it wasn’t like I didn’t have ways out if things went south. Still, I hoped I wouldn’t need to use it as that would be quite disadvantageous for me in the long run.

So I rested and took my sweet time recovering my mana completely because there was no way in hell I was going without my mana completely full.

—

Finally, after resting for nearly an hour, my mana was completely recovered and I started moving toward the sound.

It didn’t take long before I finally reached the place it was coming from. A massive door stood there, slightly ajar and through the gap, I caught sight of the scene beyond.

A man dressed in plain blacksmith clothes repeatedly hammered a sword, the strikes falling in a steady and unchanging rhythm. Beside him sat a small child with completely white eyes, Winter, watching the process with barely contained excitement.

As if sensing my presence, the man finally stopped, his brown eyes turning toward me before he spoke in a soft yet commanding voice. "Come in, Young Trickster."

I decided to enter the room, because I now knew who this man was and who the child was and just understanding that much made my body relax, knowing there was very little chance of me getting killed for now but before I could relax completely, my gaze fell on the third being in the room.

The familiar presence I had been feeling ever since I entered the cave...

... it was none other than,