I grow stronger by making my wife happy.

Chapter 361: 361:Multi coloured stone.

He was making better progress than he had expected. His legs were still tired, his feet had begun aching again after hours of descending, and several injuries complained whenever he put his weight down awkwardly, but none of it compared to the condition he’d been in when he first crawled out of the underground passages.

The recovery medicine continued doing its work while Primal Strength Level Three made every controlled descent easier, and Silver was beginning to understand just how significant the difference between the second and third level of a physical skill actually was.

There were sections where he would have needed both hands and several careful minutes earlier that day, yet now he could lower himself using one arm while keeping the other available to steady his equipment.

When loose stones shifted beneath his boots, his legs reacted faster and carried his weight without the trembling he’d experienced during the final underground climb.

This made him functional especially with the environment he was in without being invisible. After everything that had happened, he was perfectly happy with functional. ℯℯ𝑙.

He reached a broad shelf in the mountain and stopped for water.

The view had changed again. His car was easier to distinguish now and he could see more of the old route.

If the terrain didn’t become considerably worse, he estimated several more hours before reaching the bottom.

He drank, wiped his mouth and looked toward the setting sun. Something about the date had been bothering him for a while.

He opened the system.

”How long since the collapse?”

The answer appeared.

[Elapsed Time Since Initial Cave Collapse: 5 Days, 19 Hours, 34 Minutes.]

Silver stared at it, almost six full days. Then his expression slowly changed.

”Wait.”

He counted the time since the start of the expedition.

He closed his eyes, resignation washing over him.

”You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Tomorrow was the official opening of admissions at Alpha Three Academy.

For several seconds, he simply stood there holding his bottle, then he started laughing. The sound carried strangely across the mountain.

He looked down at himself.

His replacement clothes had survived the latter part of the underground ordeal only to become torn and filthy during the fight with the queen and the cliff escape.

Several bandages remained visible, his hair was a disaster, he hadn’t properly shaved in days, plus his sword was somewhere inside the mountain.

His phone was also somewhere inside the mountain. To add insult to the injury, his body was still recovering from being used as a toy by a Rank Six beast.

And tomorrow morning, hundreds of young Contractors would begin presenting themselves at one of the most important academy.

Silver raised the water bottle slightly.

”Excellent timing.”

He drank again.

There was no chance he was arriving normally.

Even if the rest of the descent went perfectly, he still had to reach his car, drive out of Death Row Valley, pass whatever checkpoints had been established after the incident, travel toward Alpha Three and somehow deal with the Association once his beacon was properly detected.

He didn’t even know how long the drive would take in his current condition.

He sat on the edge of the stone shelf. For as long as he could remember, the academy had been one of his major objectives.

Not because he cared about sitting inside classrooms, no, it was where important people gathered; talented Contractors, resources, training, information, characters who mattered to the original story, and opportunities he couldn’t easily access while travelling between Delta Sanctuaries.

He had his admission letter, or at least Ravenna should have it. He’d made sure she had everything important before Death Row Valley.

That thought reassured him. If Ravenna listened to him, she would go ahead.

Silver hoped she would.

He knew her well enough to know there was a very real possibility she would stand outside the academy waiting for him until someone physically removed her.

”Don’t do that.”

He could imagine her response despite having no phone.

Silver smiled.

”You’re absolutely going to do that.”

He leaned backward against the rock. Another thought entered his mind.

The multicolored stone.

His expression became complicated.

Before Death Row Valley, he had spent a considerable amount of time thinking about the stone Dillian was supposed to encounter.

The original protagonist’s opportunities were valuable precisely because they weren’t ordinary resources. They were the kinds of things capable of changing someone’s future.

He himself was proof of that. The multicolored stone his parents had left him had changed everything.

Finding another stone had once seemed like an opportunity too important to ignore.

Now Silver looked back toward the mountain he’d just escaped.

He felt nothing; no frustration, no desperate desire to turn around, orno belief that he’d failed because he hadn’t found it.

He laughed quietly.

”A multicolored stone would make a wonderful academy bribe right now.”

He imagined walking to the admissions office tomorrow looking like this and placing one of the rarest objects he’d ever encountered on the table.

He could almost picture the reaction, then he shook his head.

”Forget it.”

If the stone was inside Death Row Valley, someone else could go looking for it.

Dillian could have it, the Association could find it, or the queen could sit on it for all he cared.

He’d spent days fighting to return to the surface. He wasn’t walking back underground for a rock, not even that rock.

That brought Dillian to mind. He hadn’t seen him since their paths separated.

The last Silver knew, Dillian had been travelling his own route, dealing with Cruella and continuing toward whatever opportunities his protagonist luck placed in front of him.

”Did you even come this way?” He wondered aloud.

The original story had Dillian reaching certain places at specific times, but Silver had already seen how easily those events could change.

Cruella had changed, Ravenna’s fate had changed completely, and Antony had ended up travelling with him instead of becoming one of Dillian’s companions.

He himself had become something the original novel had never planned for.

Even Dillian’s relationships were changing. There was no guarantee he had followed the same route.

Maybe Dillian had already gone to Alpha Three. Maybe he’d found something completely different. Maybe he’d decided not to attend the academy at all.