Chương 118: (B2) Chapter 45 - Preparation

Despite the initial surprise of Alex showing up on his doorstep, Ethan had taken it in stride. After everything else that had happened recently, an old friend appearing without warning was hardly a problem, so Ethan had brought the man along as he went about his day selling off everything they had acquired during their expedition. He had known Alex and the others would begin showing up eventually as the timer for the first level slowly ticked toward zero.

He just hadn't expected it to happen for another few weeks at least. Not that Ethan was complaining. Ethan had already decided he had something of an obligation to drag the man toward a higher threshold of power whether Alex particularly wanted him to or not. So, with that in mind, he was glad to see him. Even if a small part of Ethan couldn't help wondering why Alex had arrived a good few months before the first level officially came to an end.

With Alex in tow, Ethan had quickly sent out a few messages to Seb and the others, confirming he had the go-ahead to sell everything before they met up and divided the rewards. Thankfully, the old man responded promptly, confirming it was fine by him. That made things considerably easier. Ethan didn't particularly want to drag everyone around Nexus while they haggled over monster parts, and having Alex with him meant his chances of getting the best possible price had skyrocketed.

Alex might no longer be the vice guild leader of a branch, but he was still a shining prospect in the eyes of the Broken Dawns. If a position in leadership opened up tomorrow, Ethan had little doubt Alex would be one of the first candidates considered for it. So it was with a sense of satisfaction that Ethan let Alex lead the way back toward the Broken Dawns guild. It was a nice change not having to armor up the moment he stepped outside.

Instead, he simply made sure the ring on his finger was displaying the name of Jack Rivia before heading out of the apartment. There were benefits to walking around Nexus without armor strapped to his body, and Ethan was beginning to remember what it felt like to move through a city without everyone assuming he was either about to kill something or had just finished doing so. The trip itself was rather mundane.

Alex filled him in on everything Mark and Sarah had missed since leaving the first level, along with a few developments that had happened after Ethan's own departure, but honestly, the first level wasn't much of a concern to him anymore. He had given them what tools he could. He couldn't do much more without personally carrying everyone to the finish line, and he had neither the time nor the inclination to do that. At some point, everyone else had to meet him halfway.

Instead his attention was firmly on what came next. The second level was only the beginning, and he needed to build enough power over the next few levels that he could start making real changes, both within the Trials and for humanity as a whole. He had known from the beginning that simply possessing knowledge wasn't enough. Knowledge only mattered if people listened when you shared it, and Ethan was under no illusions about how that worked. A weak man claiming to know the future would be called insane.

A powerful man saying the same thing would at least be heard out. So as sad as it was, Ethan needed to protect himself before he could truly start protecting humanity. The moment they entered the guild, Ethan became aware of quite a few eyes turning in his direction. He ignored them at first, assuming Alex was the reason for the attention, before quickly realizing that most of those looks were aimed directly at him.

That was when Ethan remembered something he probably should have considered before deciding to leave his armor at home. Jack Rivia was rapidly becoming more renown than the armored Ethan Carter, especially within the Broken Dawns. News of him clearing the challenge dungeon had traveled far faster than he had expected, and Ethan grimaced as another pair of guild members looked away the moment he glanced toward them. Turns out there was more than one reason to keep the armor on.

"What did you do?" Alex asked, scanning the hall as several more people suddenly found the walls interesting.

"Why are they all looking at you?"

"I just cleared a dungeon," Ethan answered. Then he paused. He had cleared the challenge dungeon, but he'd also found the Conevil killer. More specifically, he'd found the people responsible for the murders and then proceeded to kill both of them. Perhaps there was more than one reason everyone was staring at him.

The entire debacle had seemed so far beneath everything else Ethan was dealing with that he had almost forgotten about it, but to everyone else, two people being killed wasn't exactly something you shrugged off. Especially when the guild leader personally stepped in afterward, pardoned the person responsible, and made it abundantly clear that said person was someone the Broken Dawns cared about. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Fuck.

He really should have worn the armor. Still, perhaps the attention wasn't entirely a bad thing. If nothing else, it served as a reminder that Ethan needed to stay wary. The smith's daughter and the bartender had almost certainly had friends, and Ethan doubted all of those friends had heard what happened and decided the pair deserved it. People had an annoying tendency to overlook someone's faults once they were dead.

He didn't expect anyone to be stupid enough to attack him inside the Broken Dawns headquarters, but he had learned a long time ago that expecting people not to do something stupid was a good way to end up disappointed.

"What's the big deal, then?" Alex asked as they continued across the hall.

"Nothing. It just hadn't been cleared before." Alex went quiet for a few seconds, processing that rather important addition as they reached the elevator. He glanced sideways at Ethan, then toward the guild members still watching them before giving a small shrug.

"Yeah, I guess that would do it," he said, pressing the elevator button. One thing Ethan had always liked about Alex was that the man never seemed particularly fazed by anything. It was almost a hidden power of his. Something strange happened, Alex accepted that it had happened, and then he carried on with his life. Ethan had always been slightly envious of that. Unfortunately, he possessed the opposite ability.

He could take the smallest problem imaginable, turn it over in his head a few thousand times, come up with multiple different ways it could ruin his life, and then eventually do something drastic enough that the problem stopped existing. Perhaps that was part of the reason he had pushed so far into body cultivation. It had been an almost entirely unwalked path, which wasn't for lack of trying. Plenty of people had attempted it. Most simply hadn't survived long enough to make anything useful out of their attempts.

The death rate when trying to push body cultivation into the higher tiers was absurd, and even Ethan had only possessed scraps of information when he'd started. Naturally, his response to that had been to push the limits. In hindsight, maybe Alex had the healthier approach to dealing with problems. They entered the elevator and began ascending through the tower. Alex seemed reasonably acquainted with the building.

It wasn't particularly surprising considering he was part of the guild, but it did confirm something Ethan had already suspected. Alex had been on the second level for at least a day or two. That only made Ethan more curious about why he'd arrived so early, but he pushed the thought aside for now. The guild's smithy occupied a floor roughly halfway up the tower, sitting directly beneath one of the main training levels.

The elevator doors opened to a wave of heat and the unmistakable ringing of metal striking metal, and Ethan stepped out with a smile as he spotted a familiar figure on the other side of the room. Donovan—the creator of Ethan's armor—was hunched over something on his desk, completely absorbed in whatever he was working on. His workstation had been shoved into one corner of the enormous chamber, and the man hadn't even noticed their arrival.

Considering the amount of noise around him, Ethan wasn't particularly surprised. At least fifteen smiths were working throughout the room. Every forge burned with shimmering coals, throwing waves of heat into the already warm air while thick smoke disappeared into large vents built across the ceiling. A constant hum came from above, almost drowned out by the smith's work and occasional hiss of hot metal being plunged into water.

Everyone appeared to be working on something different, though Ethan couldn't identify half of what was being made. Armor plates sat cooling beside one forge, while another smith was carefully working on what looked like the head of a spear. Farther away, a young man was in the process of making a sword, and Ethan found himself watching as the smith tipped glowing metal into a waiting mold.

"What can we do for you lot, then?" The voice pulled Ethan from his fascination. He turned to find a man standing a few feet away, watching them closely. Ethan gave him a quick once-over. He was mid-to-late twenties, if he had to guess, with a bald head that practically shone beneath the light of the nearby forges. He was on the shorter side, and when Ethan stepped closer, he realized the man's head barely reached his chin.

What he lacked in height and hair, however, he had apparently decided to compensate for with a truly impressive mustache. Ethan had never seen him before in his life. That wasn't particularly surprising. Around this point in his previous life, the Broken Dawns hadn't exactly been in the position to recruit new smiths. They had been too busy getting eradicated. Alex stepped forward with an easy smile.

"My friend here is looking to sell the guild some monster parts."

"That right?"

"I'd also like to sort out some armor," Ethan added. The man's eyes traveled over Ethan from head to toe before one eyebrow rose.

"Ha. Wouldn't have picked it. All right, then. Show me what you've got." Ethan glanced around the room before looking back at him.

"You're happy for me to do it here? It'll probably make a mess."

"That's all right. We do the processing and forging on this floor anyway." The man paused, apparently reconsidering after taking another look at Ethan.

"How much are we talking?"

"A bit."

"A bit?" Ethan smiled.

"Enough that I think it'd be better to place it elsewhere." The smith stared at him for another second before snorting.

"Right. Back room it is."

"Probably for the best," Ethan said.

"Don't want to annoy the other workers." The man smiled at that before he started walking toward the rear of the smithy.

"Name's Neil, by the way. Now follow me and we'll see what you've got." Ethan fell into step with the man. It was time to offload this gear and hopefully make out like a bandit.