The Insider System

Chapter 391: The Deal Pt.27

As he moved further into the underground area Lake got to an open area that reminded him a bit of the parts of the city that were underground in the Metal Domain just without the nice buildings or the extreme size.

The buildings here were more like holes in the cave walls with one exception in the very back of the cave that looked kind of like a small fortress and the amount made it seem like thousands of people had lived here at some point.

He wanted to know what was up with this but with the amount of attention that was on him growing as he moved in the direction of the bow he decided to just focus on what he was doing and think about what this place might be at some other time.

At first he had assumed that something like a small rodent or something had noticed him walking near their hovel but now he was starting to think someone related to this place was somehow alerted to him entering and was on their way here now while he slowly made his way through the streets.

Usually he wouldn't be too worried about this but he had skill that should make it impossible to detect him with magic and if the person coming here had overcome Trespasser there was a good chance they were slightly more than mortal.

He knew it might be a bit paranoid for him to think this with no real evidence but with the types of things he had been involved with recently it honestly wouldn't even be a surprise if his guess was right. "Hopefully they'll be nice." He didn't want to run because he would have to take the cave and that would make it impossible to hide with how open the way in had been.

He was much better off trying to hide once they got here if there was in fact anyone on the way even if them being able to sense him was almost a guarantee. It was also probably a good idea to increase the speed at which he was walking if he wanted to finish what he had come to do before he had to try and run.

Starting to run in the direction the bow was in, Lake used man Vision to veer around anything that looked like it might be alive until he finally made it to the biggest building at the very end of the cave. He had never expected the bow to be anywhere else so he was already prepared for having to go into the fort-like building having set Detector to look for barriers before he had even made it here.

Unexpectedly his attempt at speeding this process up failed when Detector didn't find another barrier around the fortified building. "If there's not a barrier blocking Mana Vision, where's the bow?" Up to this point every enchanted item he had seen had glowed at least a bit when he used Mana Vision so something weird must be going on if he still couldn't see it.

"I guess I'll have to go in to see." Lake had really wanted to see the bow before going in so he could use Ghost Touch to avoid the front door and spend as little time as possible inside but he guessed going in blind was the only option he had left.

Walking up to the door Lake was able to just push it open using his strength even though he could tell had he not been so strong this would have been much harder to do. This inside of the building ended up being as barren as Mana Vision led him to believe but that didn't matter because there was another door inside that seemed to lead deeper.

"I can't go any further." It was very disappointing but he had no choice because even now the amount of attention on him was increasing and going any further almost guaranteed that he wouldn't be able to avoid whoever it was that was coming his way. "I need to find somewhere to hide."

Turning around to head back outside, Lake realized he had started talking to himself again and wondered if there was something about being underground that made him want to say his thoughts out loud more than normal since the last time he had done it this much was when he had been in the Metal Domain.

"Maybe it's the echo." This was the last thing he said because soon after this left his mouth he found the best place he could hide inside one of the human sized wall cubbies. This room had what had probably been a bed at some point in the last one thousand years and after he scooped some of the rubble onto himself he didn't think anyone would be able to see him with just their regular eyes anymore.

Of course the thing he was hiding from still seemed to vaguely know he was here but the strength of the attention seemed to have stopped increasing so he had hope hiding here was having some effect.

After about ten minutes with no increase, Lake started to try and think of a way to figure out what was after him using his skills and remembered something he hadn't used in a long time.

Burglar Alarm (U) Lv.1

Lets you know who owns the property you're on and where they are.

This skill was meant to be used in cases like this one so maybe it would work even if the person who owned this cave wasn't a mortal. After activating the skill with nothing happening Lake waited a few seconds in hope that it would eventually give him something but when those seconds passed and nothing showed up he turned back to the skill that always worked the best.

He knew Detector probably wouldn't work if he used it to look for a demigod in any way but if he targeted the cave instead and set it to look for a cave that was owned by a demigod he would probably get an answer on whether or not his guess was right.

After using this workaround and still getting nothing Lake went back to thinking about his other skills that might be useful in this situation but after reading through around half the list realized something he would have never noticed had he not stopped for a while like this. The amount of attention on him had gone up the entire time he had been moving forward which had stopped when he decided to take a pause to hide.

This could mean that whatever it was that was watching him was actually further in the cave beyond the door he had decided he shouldn't go through. Taking out an arrow, Lake set up magic compass while trying to think of a way to test this new theory.

Eventually he settled on an arrow pointing at the thing watching me and set the arrow spinning. Before long the arrow lit up and Lake decided to do it again with a slightly different setting to decide if what was watching him was stronger than him. When the arrow lit up again Lake knew whatever it was that had been watching him since he arrived was not a threat to him and he stood up brushing all of the old bits of furniture off of his body.

"It seems I hid in a pile of garbage for no reason." It wasn't that big of a deal since this was the least nasty type of garbage but he still felt like a bit of a fool for getting down and dirty for no reason when he had Detector and could have probably found out that he was in no danger if he had thought of using the skill the right way earlier.

Getting back to the door he had run at the sight of Lake went to open it and found this one was locked and seemed sturdy but not guarded by a barrier so he quickly used Crunch and had it out of his way so he could go through in a matter of moments. Seeing another hallway, Lake activated Mana Vision again and went inside.

As he was walking through the hallway Lake switched what Detector was looking for multiple times in hopes of seeing trapped or barriers before he actually ran into them but he made it to another door before he saw either of those things. This door was locked like the last but didn't hold up any better to Crunch so it didn't matter.

Stepping through the now ruined door Lake felt whatever was watching him had finally turned its full extension to him but it wasn't the only thing that had finally seen something. In front of him was another good sized space but this one was decorated like a house would be and in one of the rooms off to the side was a bow shaped item.