CHAPTER 162: FREEDOM

The commander writhed on the ground in pain and the members were bound in ivy. No one could resist, but they still looked hesitant.

When Flain saw this, his confident smile did not fade. "Do you really want to die over a few trinkets? In either case I get what I want. If you don’t give them to me I will kill you and simply take them; if you give them to me, I’ll have them and you will live," he said.

The commander’s eyes flashed—he didn’t want to die yet. "Obey him!" he shouted, and he himself withdrew all the mana crystals and mana cores from his spatial ring.

The other adventurers obeyed, and their hard-earned wealth began to spill onto the ground.

When everything that could be taken from their spatial rings was out, Flain cut off the commander’s head and Ivy strangled the rest with her ivy.

Flain had no reason to let them live; they could become a liability. Word might spread across the hill that someone from the cursed road had appeared and was robbing hunters.

Flain was not stupid and knew there was a high chance no one stronger than him was here.

The fact that someone from the cursed road was on the hill did not mean everyone would band together to hunt him—practically, they didn’t care. But if that cursed-road individual started making trouble, things could turn against him. Especially if Flain’s mana was different, it would make him stand out.

Flain needed the adventurers to hand the crystals over willingly. A spatial ring is attuned to its owner’s mana, so an outsider cannot access it except with special devices that are quite expensive.

If they didn’t do it, Flain would gain nothing; so if he wanted the cores and mana crystals, he had to keep them alive. In the panic, they apparently did not realize this.

Of course, it is possible to get into a spatial ring without the owner, but the spell that can do that is very rare and few know it.

For example, in the Empire of Light only the border-guard wardens or high-ranking nobles knew it.

Flain gathered everything he had earned. It totaled 20 mana crystals and 25 mana cores. He felt he had made a good haul that day.

The day continued. Flain took the area at the start of the hill. Aran and Ivy secured the attacks, intercepting and robbing weak hunters whom they killed without mercy.

Flain watched with a smirk as his wealth grew—wealth he could convert into power. The power he so desired.

The reason he concluded during the endless sealing that he had to achieve insane power, that he wanted to become literally an omnipotent god, is simple. He wanted freedom.

Complete freedom without any restraints—what is the point of living if you do not have freedom? If you cannot do what you want? Because of his weakness he had suffered so many harsh restraints, from slavery to sealing.

But as a result, Flain was not angry about any of those restraints — without them he would be nowhere. Without them his mind would not have changed, and he would not have found what he truly wants.

If he had not become a slave, his family would have thrown him out into the street for his weakness and he probably would never have become a soldier anywhere. If Darkness had not sealed him, he would still be possessed by a meaningless vengeance.

Flain sat on a stone and looked at the pale-blue sky.

"Darkness, was this really your intention?" he asked, but as he expected, no answer came. He could have asked the system, but it certainly would not have answered, because this is not a fundamental question about this world or the system.

The reason Darkness gave did not seem convincing to Flain. She said she wanted to know what would happen? That didn’t quite fit for him.

At the same time it was the first time Darkness had appeared, and rather suddenly. While sealed he had already thought about it — practically about everything he had ever seen or heard — and he concluded there was a high chance it was Darkness’s intention to get rid of vengeance.

But Flain could not confirm that, since he did not know her true motive for granting him immortality. If it had been a joke or a show, he would not have been surprised if she had done it for fun.

But there was one catch. When Flain first met Alithry, she told him she did not know Darkness could do something like that, and she also mentioned that the two of them are the only true immortals. So immortality is absolutely not a common thing.

And if Darkness had the opportunity to create it, why would she waste it on amusement? That made no sense at all. Flain doubted that beings as powerful as Darkness would be that stupid.

Flain had not yet reached a definite conclusion, but one of his very likely assumptions was that Flain’s awakening had been Darkness’s intention.

Flain focused on the most productive parts of the slope, where electric tigers hunted hawks and other smaller creatures. But mainly Flain chose it because it was the start of the hill where weak hunters and tigers moved.

The higher up the hill, the stronger the tigers and thus the stronger the hunters. Flain would probably gain more mana crystals and cores there, and the academy would reward more mana crystals for cores with a stage higher than 2.

Still, it wasn’t worth it. Because stronger hunters and tigers were harder to kill, and Flain could run into a group of hunters he couldn’t defeat.

Down in the lower areas it was already spreading that hunters were disappearing. That made others more cautious and unwilling to risk going into areas with fewer hunters, which slightly reduced Flain’s income — but he expected that.

After four hours the pouch was full and Flain put more into the bag. They had gathered 80 cores and 40 mana crystals. Flain smiled. Ten cores meant one hundred mana crystals, so Flain already had 800 mana crystals that he had gained in just four hours...