The Insider System

Chapter 215: Three Hours

Chapter 215: Three Hours

"Alright, it's break time." Lake had been leading them around for a few hours now and he had heard a few whispered complaints so he thought it was a good time to let them stop working. They had cleared most of the big piles already anyway so from now on it would be them going into the houses he had killed the undead that couldn't move.

This would be a lot slower of a job so he was fine with them wasting a few hours since in the long run it wouldn't really matter. Finding one of the other dwarves from the temple, Lake decided to see if they were willing to talk on the way back to the base. "So how long have you worked for the Temple?"

Lake had realized these people were a trove of knowledge and since they had nothing better to do they were willing to talk to him about anything. "My whole adult life." The man looked kind of old so Lake didn't know what that meant and after a second it seemed the man understood Lake was confused because he said. "Thirty Five years."

That was a really long time which meant this guy was probably a good person to ask about how things had changed over time. "So how long has the Temple Head been there?" He had noticed Lucas seemed to be a lot older than he actually was so he was wondering if the Temple Head was the same.

"The current temple Head has been around for almost as long as the Temple itself. I think he's on year 92 of his position in the temple." The Temple Head was an old man and depending on the way dwarves aged he could be well over 100 naturally so it might not be the same as with Lucas.

With Lucas' position Lake was pretty sure he had some kind of potion that lowered his age. "Is it an election to pick the Temple Head?" The dwarf started to shake his head and said. "The Oracle askes the God of Metal whenever we need a new one and he chooses for us that being said he chooses from a small group we put forward ourselves so it's like a mix."

"Is it like that in every temple or just here?" He also wanted to know if every temple had its own Oracle and what kind of things they could do but he would ask that next. "Most of them are like that but there are a few gods that don't have Temples like the God of Antimagic. He only has a small domain with almost no one that lives there."

"Why is that?" Lake could kind of guess but he wanted to hear from the dwarf. "Magic doesn't work very well inside the Antimagic domain so the only people that live there are people with no magical talent because they are able to live there without worrying about running into mages. It's a warrior's paradise."

This sounded like an interesting place but he had no reason to go there since he planned to get serious about magic soon. Going back to the Oracle thing Lake asked. "Do a lot of gods have Oracles?" The dwarf nodded and said. "It's usually the first Legendary job a god gives after they ascend so they can speak with their followers easier."

"And what kind of things can the Oracles do?" Lake found them being able to tell the future unlikely but he still wanted to make sure to know if he should try and steer clear of robbing the Temples. "Mostly just passing down the God's orders but they all get other skills like any other job meaning they all have things they can do that don't involve the gods. The Fire Oracle has been known to fight in battles so that tells you the kind of differences the skills have depending on which god they follow."

"What's the Metal Oracle like?" Lake hadn't heard anything about being able to read the future yet so he was starting to think they couldn't. "She's nice but she mainly just worries about finding new metal deposits so we know where to dig so we don't see much of her. It's been over a month since we heard anything from her or the God of Metal."

"Is that normal?" The dwarf nodded and said. "Yeah he really only says anything to us if we do something wrong so we all take it as a good thing when we haven't heard anything from him."

"What was the last thing he told you guys?" Lake was actually kind of surprised when the dwarf answered this question because he felt it was over the line for him to even ask. "He told us to hire the Fighters guild to investigate and hunt the Demon Worshipers." Foresight was kind of like being able to see the future so maybe the gods were able to do it to an extent because if they could see the actual future they would have just told them what the Demon Worshipers were doing.

It was probably like what the insider did when it showed him a vision of what could happen. It might have just been that someone told the God of Metal that there might be something going on here and that he should look into it. "So do you know where the Oracle is right now?"

"I don't but the Temple Head has a way to find her if we need to talk to her." The dwarf didn't seem worried about her not being around so Lake had no reason to ask about her anymore and just went straight to what he wanted to know. "Can they tell the future?" The Dwarf started to laugh at this question and said. "That would be nice, but no, or at least ours can't. We've heard that there's something similar to future telling that some of them can do but it's more of a prediction." So exactly what he thought.

They were back to their base so Lake nodded to the dwarf and led the others into the building. He still had another dwarf to talk to but he didn't know what he wanted to ask them about yet so he would save it for later.

...

Donny heard something and opened his eyes to look around the room. He quickly found out that he was safe and nothing had gotten into the room he was using to sleep. That meant it had probably come from outside because it hadn't come from the direction of the other room. Getting onto his feet that hadn't really ever left the floor Donny walked over to the door and cracked it open.

Once he saw the front door was still intact he picked up his guild badge and family crest and put them back into his bag. Opening the door Donny looked to see the other door was still closed so he was almost curtain nothing had come in while he slept. Looking at his Stamina and seeing it was full he decided that he had been able to sleep for almost three hours and in a time like this that was pretty good.

He would be able to get through the day with that much sleep no problem so he needed to go and find the army he was supposed to be a part of. He was sure he wasn't the only person who had run yesterday when all the bodies started to get up but he was probably one of the last to come back.

He had been too tired and he was afraid if he went back to meet up with the main group they would have been put into another fight by whoever was leading the group. If that had happened he knew there was no way he would have lived through the battle. He had no plans to just stay here and hide until it was over though so it was more like he had retreated than ran away.

Cracking the front door Donny saw that the street was still empty of people and opened it enough to walk out before closing the door again. He planned to use this place if he ended up needing to retreat to sleep again today so he didn't want anything getting inside while he was gone.

Donny could vaguely hear that there was something going on close to where he was but it was in the middle of the night so he wasn't sure if it would be safe to start walking the streets to get to the battle so he climbed to the roof of the building instead of going down the stairs. Once he was on top of the building he saw that there was a lit area not far from him that he could get to using the roofs of the buildings so he started towards it.

He was sure that it would be the humans that were fighting using some type of magic to light the area so that they could see well enough to fight. As he was getting closer and closer Donny started to see something new he hadn't seen yet. He could tell by their color they were most likely with the Demon Worshipers but what really gave it away was the fact they were dragging screaming people into buildings.

He wasn't sure what they were but they would most likely be some type of new undead monster the Demon Worshipers were planning to use too surprise them enough to get an advantage in the first few fights that the new monster were in. It seemed to be working to with the number of people they were dragging away.

Getting his sword ready Donny fell onto the next one that passed aiming to slice its arm off to free the screaming man it had. When his sword hit and Donny was able to feel how solid the arm actually was he realized he hadn't used enough power to get past whatever its flesh was made from.

Dodging the attack from the monster Donny got a better look at it and realized what it was. It was a gargoyle and he could tell from the first hit that it was the metal kind. Making a small smile Donny used his Mana to lock onto the monster and in the next second shrapnel went flying in every direction.

Donny knew he was probably one of the few that could use Mana Control good enough to do this but he found the fact that the Demon Worshipers decided to use gargoyles to attack the Metal domain funny. Most of the people here learned how to fight using gargoyles since they were so easy to make and you could summon them anywhere if you could use Earth or Metal magic.

He then remembered the fact that all the Metal Mana and Earth Mana in the city was missing and wondered if the Demon Worshipers had used it to summon these Gargoyles; if that was the case it would have been free to them, so it was a good choice because a free army was always better than one you had to pay for, even if it wasn't the most suited to who you were fighting.

Looking down at the man he had saved, Donny decided the man still had a chance of surviving so he helped him up and carried him into a small alley before asking. "Are there a lot of them?" Donny could probably only use that trick a few dozen times before he ran out of mana so he wanted to know if he was better off saving his mana for something else.

The man nodded and said. "Healing." Donny was going to have to disappoint the man because he didn't have any potions. "No, sorry, you're going to stay fucked up." The man nodded down at his bag and said. "My bag." Donny realized the man wasn't asking for his but wanted Donny to get his for him.

Donny dug around in the man's bag until he felt the bottle and pulled it out before grimacing. It was the cheap kind meaning he was right about the guy staying fucked up. All this would do was speed up the man's clotting so he didn't bleed to death. It was better than nothing though so he fed the man the bottle.