Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 112: Back to the Scene of the Crime

The next few two days went by excruciatingly slow for Zac who just wanted to get up and leave. However there were more and more things to do in order to keep his town running. He couldn’t wait for finishing the third horde in a few weeks. When he became a lord he’d get a system-trained administrator, perhaps Abby, who he could leave most of the work to. Adran was a competent worker, but Zac felt it was much too early to start giving the demons real influence in his future town, especially since their alliances mostly lay with Ogras.

Ogras was someone who would take a bit of advantage and run away with it. Zac still believed that the demon would do his best in order to improve the state of Port Atwood, at least for ten years, but he wouldn’t lower his guard until he found some real assurances. Therefore Zac still felt the need to personally oversee some details.

He met up with Alea and Janos who were mostly fine, with the exception of Janos’ leg. The poison mistress looked a bit annoyed upon hearing Zac was leaving once again but didn’t say anything. Zac also talked with a few of the mages, who promised to start work on an improved home for him. Emily’s comment the other day made him realize he’d forgotten about actually improving his camp. He remembered Ogras’ lush palace over at Azh’Rodum, and even a tenth of that would be a nice upgrade to his own living situation.

The second thing he did was to travel to the mountains. He brought only Alea with him this time, pushing his speed to the limit. It wasn’t some romantic reasoning behind it, he rather needed her to spot any leftover poison.

Earlier when he traveled this distance he usually had to be careful and moved in a normal walking speed, but now he ran, ignoring the occasional barghest. The trip would take over a day back in the day, but now it only took a couple of hours. Surprisingly Alea seemed to have no problem keeping up either.

The mountain valley had finally cleared out enough for him to start collecting everything of value from his killing spree. He didn’t want to leave this treasure trove as he left the island again. And it was an especially nice timing since Ogras was occupied with absorbing the Fruit of Ascension. Zac learned that it could take weeks to absorb a treasure of that magnitude. A big reason he almost died in the pond was that the mix of Cosmic Water and the Fruit of Ascension made the absorption only take minutes rather than days, which overtaxed his body.

He didn’t set about collecting it all in order to hoard the wealth for himself. He planned on using much of it as rewards and salaries for the demons and other citizens in the future, or even stocking stores with the weapons that lay about. Besides, who knew what secret treasures all the elites of the demon army had pocketed for themselves.

They arrived at the mountain slopes at lunch, and after making sure that there wasn’t any poison around, they scaled the mountain from the same side as the demon army once did. From there the two followed along the path of the battle, picking up any armor and weapon that seemed useful. The corpses were quite decayed, but at least the scorching sun and blowing winds had caused them to dry out rather than rot, so the stench wasn’t as bad as Zac had feared.

Many of them lay in pools of dried but putrid-looking liquid though, and Alea explained that the poison he threw out would cause them to vacate from every orifice, completely drying them out, as the victims were dying. From that it was pretty clear which ones died from poison and which ones were dead from the battle before.

The number of demons lying in a pool of waste was quite terrifying, even out at the rim of the valley. Zac mentally shut down and wordlessly kept collecting items. Even Alea seemed subdued by the sight as she helped him out with the collection. They kept moving about for most of the day, finally reaching the epicenter of the poison, the scarlet tree.

The tree still stood up, even though many of its branches were destroyed in the battle. However, its trunk was no longer red, but purple, reminiscent of the poison cloud. The once pristine white leaves were also changed, now having purple veins covering them.

It made a bit of sense as the closer they got to the tree it was obvious that the corpses were even more dried out. Perhaps the tree absorbed the poisoned warriors to heal itself in the same way it absorbed the trees earlier. From all the poison it seemed that it mutated somehow.

“How magical! I wonder what kind of fruit a poisoned Tree of Ascension will sprout. I hope it survives its current ordeal,” Alea said as she stared at the changed tree in wonder.

“Can we cure it?” Zac asked, more interested in growing normal Fruit of Ascension instead of any weird mutated ones.

“Maybe a skilled botanist could, but the poison has reached its core from absorbing too much of it from the area, it might cleanse it by itself over time, or it might mutate. Or it will simply succumb and die, we’ll have to wait and see,” she answered with a shrug.

“If it makes a poison version of a Fruit of Ascension I want it,” she added as she stared at him with serious eyes. “It might even give me a poison constitution.”

“We’ll see what happens with the tree before deciding on any allocation. There is a lot of gear to collect,” Zac answered noncommittally.

It was true, the area was packed with elite warriors. Many of those who fought close to the tree even owned their own Cosmos Sacks as well, making it easier to collect their wealth. They methodically went through the central battlefield as well, and by the end of it Zac had another Seventy pouches in his possession.

Finally the two walked over to Rydel, lying close to the tree, a large grisly hole in his chest and a broken arm.

“This wound… Did Ogras do this?” Alea asked with surprise.

“I thought the four of you knew?” Zac retorted, equally surprised. “I battled Rydel and that monkey over there, but I only managed to break his arm and expend most of his aces. He was about to kill me when Ogras attacked.”

Zac bent down and grabbed a pouch attached to his belt.

“Wait, check within his clothes as well. Rydel was the unofficial leader of the invasion and a scion of the Azh’Rezak main branch. He should have more than one pouch,” Alea interjected.

Zac nodded and with a grimace started reaching around within the corpse’s clothes. After a while he actually found another pouch.

Zac inspected the two and was shocked by their quality. The one Rydel wore on his waist was quite large, comprising roughly ten by ten meters of space, far larger compared to his own ones which only had two-three meters of space. It mainly contained daily items, such as some foods and clothes. It also contained a couple of thousands of crystals and a few other assorted items.

However, the inner one was on another level completely, to the point that Zac suspected that it was an E-Grade pouch rather than F-Grade. It had a cubic space of roughly fifty meters, meaning it had a whopping 125 000 cubic meters of space. He would be able to fit a small airplane in it if he found one.

The pouch was mostly empty, but there was a small mountain containing tens of thousands of F-Grade crystals. There were also neatly stacked weapons and a huge supply of food. There even were a few siege weapons, looking far more sophisticated compared to the ones the demons built back at Port Atwood. Another corner held a bunch of vials containing pills, labeled and ordered. There also were a couple of ornate boxes, and Zac guessed those things held the real prizes.

The inner pouch held the backup resources of the whole demon invasion Zac realized as his heartbeat sped up. It was a huge amount of wealth, even for him. He recognized a few of the pills by now, and many of them cost tens of thousands Nexus Coins per pop. There were over a hundred of each type of those pills.

Zac took out the various boxes and things one by one and together with Alea categorized them. There were certain fruits that could improve the constitution far more efficiently compared to the medicinal bath, and Zac gave a few of them to Alea after seeing her hungry eyes. He didn’t need them for himself and felt it was a decent reward for having fought two horde bosses with him. He put aside most of the rest for Janos and the others though.

The contribution board clearly was an effective method of motivating people, and Zac was thinking of establishing something similar after the beast hordes. If people contributed to Port Atwood, they’d gain contribution points, and with those points they could buy various things from him.

He immediately consulted Alea about it and to his embarrassment learned that such a thing was pretty standard in the multi-verse, and not some novel new idea he concocted. Many of the things in the huge pouch were likely even meant for just that purpose during the invasion.

Done with the looting they started heading back toward the camp. The amount of wealth he collected was enormous, and including all the armors and tools Alea and he estimated the value easily surpassed a hundred million nexus coins. It was no surprise that war was so common in the multi-verse, it was extremely lucrative.

Finally all preparations were done and Zac prepared to set out. During the return he transferred most of the wealth to the large pouch which he now carried hidden under his E-Grade Robe. He left some of it to Adran so that the warriors could get new gear. Many of the demons were starting to look pretty ragged after battling two beast hordes, so they needed to swap out some of the broken items.

He actually brought a total of ten of the smallest cosmos bags with him as well, which he hid in a small travel bag. The reaction from Selas when he realized Zac possessed a Cosmos Bag was quite large, and Zac thought he might be able to sell them for quite a nice profit in a human settlement.

He learned from Calrin and Alea that these smallest cosmos bags were worth roughly a million nexus coins. Most people in the multi-verse possessed at least one, unless they were young and still needed to spend all their money on medicinal baths. They weren’t overly difficult to create for an experienced inscription master. The higher-grade ones required insight into the Dao of Space to create though, making them far more expensive.

Emily was still angry with him, but she still tried helping out in the end. On her insistence, he carried a large backpack to make it look less suspicious. Zac also wore a new pair of boots, which was actually starting to feel a bit uncomfortable after having adapted to the free feeling of nothing trapping his feet.

Zac gave some final instructions to Adran regarding the scouting missions and some other details before he walked toward the teleportation array. He inserted the crystals and paid the fee, and once again he disappeared from the island.

From the distance, a pair of eyes were observing everything, before receding into the shadows.