The young men had moved away from Noah after a few words; only the girl with the cold expression remained standing beside him.
Noah looked at her, wondering if she still remembered him, too. When they first met, although he didn't show it, he had taken a little interest in her. After all, she was part of the "rich and powerful" people he always met at Carlos' parties, but unlike other people, she went up to him to talk and had treated him very politely. That, added to her long black hair and well-defined features, made it so that Noah did not forget her face as easily as he forgot about other people, who did not mark anything in his life.
"You really are doing what you said you would do," she said as she looked at him with raised eyebrows in amazement.
"Yes, I just stated a fact back then. I have already reached the snobbish young people I spoke to at that time, and I will eventually reach their parents in some time," Noah said while referring to the Rank C men.
That confident statement made the girl's eyebrow go up even further. After all, for someone to say with such conviction that she would reach Rank C, there were only two possibilities: either that person was stupid, or that person had something powerful to support themselves. The first possibility was immediately discarded by her, which only left the second possibility, which proved that what he said to the other young people was far from the truth.
While they were talking, the last Blessed one arrived. He was a fat man in lighter clothes, holding a small wand, probably a wizard. This left the group with 5 young people and 10 older people. Although the older people had more experience in breaking into Fortresses, the young people, who were taught from a young age to become powerful Blessed, were the ones who were leading. The older ones just followed and obeyed what they said.
Finally, despite the young people's arrogance, the strategy was very well defined, giving an important role to everyone, including Noah and the elders. Although they thought Noah would probably die at any moment, they were not going to make him unusable in the Fortress. If Noah had reached their rank, as likely as he was to last for only a short while, he had already proven that he had the strength to be among them, even though he was younger.
Unfortunately for the group, Noah had no intention of following that plan from the beginning. He wanted to invade this Fortress to become stronger, in addition to measuring and training the strength of the 13 imps he had brought with him.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtAfter discussing tactics, Noah was once again considered a magician by the group, although everyone thought that his Blessing of fire would be practically useless inside this Fortress. Noah understood their thinking, but he knew that the flame he had was not normal, which could be the deciding factor for him to know if the Blessing would be useless and he would just have to depend on the imps, which the other Blessed were unaware of, or if he could use his own flames also.
As he walked through the portal, Noah felt the temperature around him change drastically as it rose, but unlike the other Blessed Ones who felt very uncomfortable being in that place, Noah was different. For him, strangely, that climate was slightly more comfortable even than the climate of the planet he lived on, which was ideal for human life.
Feeling the hot vapors reaching his skin was a little more comfortable than feeling a cool breeze hitting him on a hot day. The gray clothing he had purchased was being perfectly useful at the time, as the floor full of burnt ash was blending almost perfectly with his clothing, which meant that some of the Blessed who wore more flashy clothes and armor would be the main focus.
In Noah's mind, an assassin was not the only one who should be dedicated to not attract attention. In addition to the warriors who fought on the front line, people on the back line should also end up trying their best to disguise themselves with the environment so as not to attract the monsters' focus to themselves.
The Fortress they had invaded was called "Fire Paradise" because of how beautiful the interior of this Fortress was. It was to the point of being compared to a paradise, if it were not completely filled with flames.
Every few meters, pools of flame with a bubbling wash made the humans think that if it were water, it would be a very relaxing place to stay. Unfortunately, these lava pools were exactly where the monsters they were going to face would come from. Just as the last Fortress that Noah invaded was very much focused on the ice element, the one this time was clearly focused on the fire element. This made water and ice magic wizards quite effective here, while fire wizards had very little use.
Noah had a lot of confidence in his flames. After all, according to the skill's description, with these flames Lucifer was able to ignite even a god of flames. This meant that with the current strength of his flames, these little monsters might not be able to resist them.
After everyone passed through the portal, the group went into combat training immediately.
Noah was looking for the perfect opportunity to be able to release his imps without anyone noticing, and the best time for that would probably be in a chaotic battle.
The young men, who previously had shown great interest in Noah, did not even give him a second look after he said he didn't have powerful support. Only the girl he talked to who was looking at him from time to time besides staying on the alert for nearby monsters.
To get to the Boss, they needed to pass between several mana pools. If they went through many at the same time, the amount of monsters that would attack them would end up being much greater than they could handle, so the tactic was to use an agile person to approach the pools and attract only monsters from that pool one at a time.
This would likely cause the cleanup rate of this Fortress to be greatly reduced, not to mention that because of the hills around them, they couldn't even have a stipulated number of how many lava pools filled to the brim with monsters they would have to deal with.
Just as they had planned, the assassin in their group (one of the young men in Thomas's group), ran into one of the pools and caused three elemental fire monsters to emerge from there before he ran back.
The two beings who emerged from the lava pools had peculiar appearances. One of them was a black wolf with lava leaking through some cracks in his body, which gave the impression that the inside of the monsters might not even contain bones, but was just made of lava.
Meanwhile, the other monster was like a ghost, in the shape of a gray ball, but when the ghost opened its mouth, it was possible to see that its interior, like the wolf's, was just made of lava and flames.
[Author Note: Illustration of the two monsters on the Discord server. Link in "Creator's thoughts" at the end of the chapter, and in the synopsis of the novel for those who want to copy the link directly.]
Seeing those monsters coming towards them, one running at high speed while the other also flew at high speed trying to shoot flames at the assassin that was returning to the group, the wizards and archers had already entered their battle positions while the warriors ran towards the monsters to try to attract their attention back from the assassin.
Noah was initially concerned about the girl who had treated him well, since from the sword at her waist, he deduced that she was a warrior. But the lack of armor and protective equipment made him doubt that she really was a warrior. After all, for someone on the front line who was much more likely to receive an attack from a monster than someone in the rear, it was very important to have durable protection, so that the moment an attack came, they would not die so easily.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmBut when Noah saw her running towards the wolf and the high agility she had to dodge attacks, all of his worries disappeared, bringing his focus back to the task he had at hand.
Noah took advantage that the magicians and archers had their attention focused on the monsters, waiting for the ideal moment to start attacking, and raised his palm slightly while 13 pentagrams appeared on the ground behind him. From inside each of those pentagrams, small imps, which looked a lot like goblins except having red skin, appeared.
It was possible to see a characteristic in one of the imps that was different from the others. While all of the other imps were very similar to each other, this special imp had the pupils of his eyes glowing slightly as if they were on fire.
This was too small a feature to be noticed in a chaotic battle, but it was something that would be easily noticeable if the 13 imps were standing side by side as they were at that moment.
Although Noah was not concerned with this characteristic and ordered the imps to run away from his group with a strategy in mind.
'Get together in a single group, each taking on one of the basic classes that I taught you, and mostly... kill as many as possible.'
Please read the author's notes down here! hehe :3 ↓↓↓
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