Grey picked up the pace. He and Sabrina had already been nearing the city before, so this time it felt like it wasn’t more than a few moments before he could already see the walls.
’I have to enter the city soon.’
Looking up at the skies, Grey could already see that the sun was beginning to rise. That probably meant that it wouldn’t be too long from now before the round for registration began.
Grey had no idea what Joaquin wanted to do, or if he was trying to do anything at all.
The first time, it made sense for Joaquin and his group to target him. There had been an announcement about his supposed crimes, and killing him came with a lot of clout.
Grey hadn’t really understood when it happened, but a brief flip through the tutorial and his experience had told him that how you were viewed by the audience and your popularity were highly important in this game.
But Grey hadn’t been exposed yet unless he had missed something after leaving to go kill the witch.
’Sabrina didn’t know anything about the registration, so there hasn’t been a moment to announce my crimes yet. Why would they target me, then?’
Grey wracked his brain but couldn’t figure it out. He subconsciously looked at the corner of his eye, trying to see the blurred image of a map he had gotten used to using. But the map was no longer there. It had disappeared after he cleared the quest.
’Quest...’
Grey’s heart skipped a beat. He had gotten a random quest while he was trying to learn from the gnome. So clearly, the tutorial didn’t need to end first.
It couldn’t be that those sadistic bastards had given Joaquin, Sabrina, and Eli a quest specifically to hunt him down, right?
Grey had no way of confirming it. But from his talk with Sabrina, it was clear that she wasn’t sure that he was May’s killer until he confirmed that he was the first to arrive.
If she wasn’t even sure, then why would she go through so much trouble to find him?
Sure, there was the opportunity to kill creatures and gather resources. But why travel so far from the city if you didn’t have to? There were plenty of ruins that were a brisk walk away from the city.
The more Grey thought about it, the more plausible he thought it was.
His jaw set as he looked at the open city gates in the not-too-far-off distance. There was a vague light without an obvious source keeping it bright enough to see. But other than the usual guards that had always been there, there was nothing else.
Could he really just... walk right in? What was he missing?
It was still dark. It was hardly on the cusp of dawn. There was no one to shout to the rooftops to even if Joaquin wanted to.
If Joaquin was waiting to fight, Grey didn’t even remotely fear him. He was confident in any one-on-one battle.
But it was also possible...
’That he’s not even here.’
Grey had no way of confirming that Joaquin had gone back to the city in the first place.
’Standing around here isn’t going to get me anywhere.’
Grey wasn’t usually the indecisive type. But it was hard not to be when you were thrown to the wolves without any sort of support. Now there was a cast of Big Brother wannabes overlooking his every move and trying to figure the best angle to take to completely screw him over.
He considered himself smart, but he wasn’t omniscient. If he wanted to understand what was going on, he was just going to have to take some risks.
’Risks are fine. But they need to be calculated.’
Grey looked up at the sun again. There was still some time.
’Half an hour. Half an hour should be enough to get a really good feel and understanding of what’s in Prometheus’ introduction and what the hell I’ve been strapped with here.’
Rather than approaching the city, Grey entered the tree line and climbed up. Finding a decent branch, he stabilized himself and then communicated with his pinky ring. It was time to find out what he was dealing with.
The reading was impossibly fruitful. For a moment, Grey almost forgot about his own time limit.
He had always hated textbooks, but he could spend hours analyzing engine diagrams.
This wasn’t like that. It really was one wall of text after another, but it was practically like reading a fantasy book. Everything was almost so... magical.
There wasn’t a single thing in there that told him what Prometheus was. But he did learn several important things.
For one, he learned what Types were. They referred to one’s Neural Frame. This decided how your neurons and nervous system fired and communicated. This was apparently super important in this world because everything communicated based on this system.
Certain Types of Treasures, or rather, certain abilities of certain Treasures, could only be used properly when the Neural Frame was a match.
Eli’s shin guards, for example, only worked so well because the Branching type was quite good at taking one signal and dividing it. Colloquially speaking, this was pretty good for defense. Though, it wasn’t that simple.
This was just the peripheral stuff, though. What Grey realized when he ended up reading all the way to the end of the introduction was probably the most important tidbit of information.
The time loop.
There was only one way to keep using it, and that was by keeping Prometheus happy. And right now, Prometheus was far from happy. It was matched with a highly incompatible Vessel and the minimum amount of Energy Reserve it needed to trigger once with Grey’s current strength was 10...
It only had 2.7 right now.
Simply put...
Grey had no loops to use right now.
...
Reading to the end of it all, Grey exhaled a breath and looked up to find that dawn was finally here.
’Time to face the music.’
Grey leapt down from the tree in a single go, rushing right into the city.
But nothing happened.
He walked right through the gates and into the streets.
Something kept telling him that it didn’t smell right, but he didn’t have another choice.
Logically, staying outside the city seemed like the best choice. But there were several problems with that.
First was the Fog of Chaos. Second was the lack of obvious resources. Grey had been out there for a long time. He hadn’t run into a single monster he could actually eat--plus those he killed in the ruins just disappeared after the fact. And even if he was desperate enough to eat a Skrill or one of those scythe octopi, and they didn’t just up and vanish, he hadn’t run into a single water source.
Third, how would he sleep? With one eye open? How could he safely sleep anywhere out there? With what gear?
The city might very well be a lion’s den, but it still had rules and regulations, and the only edict that could break them was already used by Grey... for now.
All he could do was keep outperforming everyone else to make sure he didn’t have to suffer at the hands of broken rules.
He had only just had the thought when he rounded the corner to Globb’s shop...
Only to find it completely surrounded by four knights in golden armor.
"There he is, esteemed Holy Knights." Joaquin immediately pointed toward Grey.
’... Fuck me.’
It felt like he was facing off against four golden mountains.