Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix
Chapter 1234 - 1234: Gearing up

"It looks like we missed a lot…" Seara said when her group arrived, she saw everyone working. "Unlike the previous zones, it seems that this one truly will test our resolve and resourcefulness."

Just as Arel had predicted, the demons came to fight on the border between the territories, but soon, they retreated when they didn't see the robots coming at them. The demon king forced them to retreat immediately since he didn't want to risk it.

In the end, Sealyn explained to Seara and the new group what had happened, what was happening, and the place that they were in… it looked like Rain sold her sharpness short since his daughter explained perfectly the issue about time dilation and the current condition of the landscape and the numerous enemies.

"I have a lot of work ahead of me, don't I?" Sakaki asked. "At least you guys obtained results without suffering any losses despite the madness of your choices."

"Your group is starting to look better and better, such a diverse types of people," Arel said. "It is quite interesting to see when all of the lords here are quite uniform with their troops."

It seemed that Arel was planning to watch the group, even though they had their own base. In theory, they didn't need her help anymore, but they still owed her and they couldn't pay it back that easily.

"Life will be hard here, even if the best scenario, which is the one where we kill an enemy leader every single day, we would stay here for almost a year," Rain said. "With that in mind, even more than before, we need to focus on improving our skills.

Even if you guys never tried before, you already know how to make the relics, so your main job will be to make relics that exponentially increase your powers."

Rain, Terra, Seara, and Sealyn already had their own relics, so the others were pretty far behind. Still, that would be a good chance for them… nothing like some sense of urgency to make people make progress.

Terra, Seara, and Sealyn exchanged glances of satisfaction as Rain assumed a leadership role, addressing the group with his words. They appreciated his ability to rally the troops and boost morale. However, once the speech concluded, Rain returned to a more passive role, leaving a sense of unfulfilled potential lingering in the air.

Sealyn, in particular, recognized the need for consistent morale-boosting efforts. While Rain's words had a powerful impact, Sealyn knew that his leadership could benefit from more frequent displays of encouragement, especially in times like that. She understood that Seara and Terra had their own responsibilities, and Rain's leadership could play a crucial role in maintaining the group's spirits.

Sealyn acknowledged her own limitations in verbal expression, and her charisma seemed to work best with her fellow sea folk. She hoped Rain would continue to step up and lead not just with actions but with words to ensure a sustained sense of unity and motivation among the group.

"Before you left, have you heard anything that had happened in the last two hours?" Rain asked. "I mean, in the previous zone and regarding the others."

"Nothing happened, as if anything would happen in two hours…" Seara said. "Anyway, do you think that we can still establish communications with the others in the previous zone? We need to find a way to inform Regis of this."

"Yeah, I can't think of anything aside from solving this with brute strength," Rain said. "I will develop a path that has Telepathy with Sakaki's help and make the skill level up as much as possible."

"That is unusual of you," Seara said. "What happened to your crazy plans?"

"We don't have time for them," Rain shrugged. "Besides, a new path will power me up instead of a clever plan out of battle."

Recently, Rain was only increasing his intelligence and wisdom, but that wasn't enough to force his way through some problems. The skills were also important for that. Most of them improved the effectiveness of some actions by ten points per level, after all.

"It is no good… both of those guys are hard to deal with," Sakaki suddenly said. "The king doesn't care for mental torture, and the other guy still has his defenses."

Sakaki showed his keen analytical skills to check the effects and knowledge contained within the cores that Rain possessed. However, he noted that the powerful energies emanating from both the king in the shadows and the robot master were complicating the analysis.

Living entities, especially those with formidable defenses, proved to be more challenging for Sakaki to dissect compared to inanimate objects or less powerful beings. The intensity of the life force and magical energies emanating from the cores seemed to resist his attempts at detailed examination, highlighting the difficulty in unraveling the mysteries contained within them.

"I suppose we can't make a skill to solve this…" Rain rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Anyway, we don't have much time for this. The demons or the zombies should attack us eventually. There was also the possibility that the death knights would… time is truly of the essence, and we need to be ready for all possible scenarios from now on."

The death knights and their general hadn't attacked the robot master and his army in a while, and they didn't know what happened to them either, but it was only a matter of time.

In any case, before checking things with the new path, Rain attached the new core to his other forearm guard, and after checking his new skills, he confirmed that his control over earth magic improved, but he also could use more mana to enhance and control earth magic and metals, the same way the robot master did.

That gave Rain an idea… with that power, he took several parts of the bodies of the robots that stopped working and used them as armor and defensive gear for his golems.