He turned around to look at the trail known as the Path of Trials. The area was desolate and boring—he had never liked it, especially considering all the time he had lost here trying to find the stupid temple.
But what really drew his attention now was the place he now knew to be where the Temple of Divine Trials stood. Where those two priests were currently located.
And he couldn’t help but wonder how those two poor fools were going to get out of the mess they had gotten themselves into. Even considering Mira’s unjustified attack, he didn’t feel any ill will toward them. After all...
“Hey, Nero. What are you looking at?” came the irritatingly cheerful voice of Blondie. One of the reasons was that he didn’t have the heart to be too harsh with the girl. After all, if he hung out with these two, who was he to criticize people who were certainly more innocent than they were?
“Ooh! I see,” concluded the little blonde genius. “Well, if you’re worried about them, we could always wait.”
A reasonably sensible point. But he knew this might take a while, and the more time they spent with the priests, the greater the risk that they might uncover things they shouldn’t. So this was the best solution.
Besides, based on the variant of the Divine Palm the girl had used, Whit was probably right when he said they were unlikely to face any serious problems. Even the group that had previously been involved with the priests would have had to think twice once they discovered what those two were capable of.
So he turned back toward the road and declared, “Go on, get moving. We’ve waited here the day I promised—that’s enough.”
The two exchanged glances, nodded to each other, and returned to the road. Grumpy and Blondie in front, he in the middle, and the mule closing the group.
As he walked, rather than trying to recall spells—or, more accurately at this point, trying to say words that sounded like spells to see if they worked—he thought instead about what he had discovered in the temple.
From the start, the chances of finding something truly important or even just useful had been slim. But when he’d found the priests wanting to go to that temple—and more importantly, when he’d learned that it would be open—he hadn’t had a more rational option than to make this small detour and see what he could uncover.
And in a way, he’d gotten some good news. His memories of the temple had been correct. Which, given the time he had spent in this world, he had already expected. That and the fact that he had been able to pass through the barrier in the final chamber, confirming that his blessings still existed—and were still functioning.
Something he had already suspected, but hadn't had any way of verifying. And that really was good news, because from what he remembered, Nero had some decent bonuses that could be very useful under the right circumstances. And those bonuses were likely still active, if even the blessings were.
The unexpected and truly frustrating part was the fact that his name wasn’t on the temple’s stele. How could it be possible that he had the blessing, but wasn’t recorded in the temple?
The worst part was that not only was Nero’s name missing, but none of his other characters’ names were there either. Not even any names he might recognize, like those of his friends' characters, or some more famous players. And he was sure that even the base list should have had more names than the ones he had found.
Either he was very mistaken, or in one of the updates, more names had been added to remind fans of the game. Something like JustCraig’s Peek had earned its name. Which raised the question: how had JustCraig kept his name, but these had vanished?
An interesting question—but not one important right now. The real issue was how this could wreck all of his plans.
All of his plans so far assumed that the northeastern territories he intended to go to after leaving this plateau would be a region he knew well. Something that, in principle, was still true.
The problem was that he—like every player he knew—was a hoarder. Which meant that everywhere he had gone, there should be locations where he’d stashed all sorts of things: potions, weapons, spells, armor, ingredients of every kind—and, most importantly, money. Or at least something easily convertible into cash.
Which now seemed to be the most important thing. Because even though his financial situation was currently comfortable, there was no way of knowing how long that would last. It certainly wouldn’t be forever. Meaning he’d need another way to earn coin. Because he certainly wasn’t planning on becoming an adventurer— even with Nero’s powers, he wasn’t stupid enough to start taking unnecessary risks.
For example, he remembered that next to some ruins, there should be a cave with a secret entrance where he had left about twenty suits of armor that he had obtained from those ruins. But when the time came to try and sell them, the amount he would have gotten for them at the time didn’t make it worth the effort of transporting all that heavy junk the necessary distance to sell them for a halfway decent price. So he had just left them there.
And although the armor had been fairly useless to him at the time and without much value, ever since he had arrived in this world—aside from the knights he had recently encountered—no one had possessed armor of a comparable quality. Even Figor’s soldiers mostly wore leather armor with some bits of metal, but nothing nearly as good. So he could certainly sell those twenty suits of armor for a good price.
But now...
Which left him in his current situation. One he saw no good solution to. So the only alternative he could find was to stick to his plan. Even if he didn’t manage to find any stashes, maybe he could remember some easy quest where he could get a decent return. Perhaps some forgotten artifact that wouldn’t take much effort to find.
Scratching his head as he tried to think, he shrugged and muttered to himself, “I’ll think about it later. There’s still time.”
After all, just the journey to the region he wanted to reach would take at least two weeks. And maybe once he was actually there, seeing the lands with his very eyes, something would come back to him.
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