Page 25

I watched Valentyn disappear into the forest from the sheer force of my push, and I think I saw a human... possibly male but it could've been a woman hiding behind some few bushes. That human is probably the cause of the bushes rustling as he entered those bushes to hide from whatever was chasing him down. 

Ughh. I don't wanna deal with humans anymore. They're all a bit "weird" in their heads. I think the last time I dealt with a human was... around three hundred years ago—when I was on a paid vacation. I went to a place (R5-M1-U11-G182,583-W881) where violence and bloodshed were nonexistent. It was a peaceful world, where humans lived alongside three other major species, and the only reason why they were living in harmony and unison was because they had to. 

Well, to be more specific, as humans consume energy, they naturally release something known as "mana". Now, that "mana" is what one of the three other major species consumes; the Urks, basically a larger version of a human; naturally produce "hyperwater", a better version of water, essentially. Other major species consume hyperwater, and so forth. 

But it was only the humans that had secretly developed technology to remove their ability to release mana, which gives them an upper hand against the Urks, and yeah. Their greed is unmatched, I must say. 

But enough about that. Greed is a natural thing, and I can't blame humans for being unable to control their greed. 

However, it could sometimes get overwhelming, so I wouldn't like to involve myself with a human unless necessary. 

Anyway! As Valentyn had said, he wanted to investigate the "mysterious" rustling of the nearby bushes, and while he's doing that, I have other plans in mind. I only have a few hours at most, so I should get started on making contracts with monsters and beings that are guardian-level in strength. 

I think the easiest thing to complete is to find the nine other... wait... no, eight other guardians that will serve as the guardians for every floor apart from the tenth and third floors. I could finally go to the third and final large source of energy I saw on the top of that large mountain. 

The first one was the holy sword that eventually gave me Valentyn, and the second one was Hestia. Based on these two examples, I think the third option should be another powerful and ancient being, which I don't mind, but it's not particularly useful to me right now. I'm not going for powerful beings, the strongest of the strong, and all that stuff. 

What I need is a strong individual, but not someone who's too strong compared to this world's standards. So I might start my search in this forest. It's a large forest, maybe half of the size of Orth itself, at around ~200,000 km2, stretching from the southern half of Orth to the eastern half of Kylin. It's one of the world's largest forests, and it provides Orth and its fellow neighbouring nations with immense natural resources, like wildlife, monsters, food, wood, and all that good stuff. 

In fact, it's the reason why Orth and Kylin are major powers in the first place. The sheer amount of valuable and rare resources located in this forest is truly "endless". Orth and Kylin control and total of sixty per cent of the entire forest, with the remainder forty per cent being shared by thirty smaller and more minor nations. 

Oh, right. I could also get something for Iona in this forest too. Maybe a flower or something. There are plenty of beautiful flowers and plants in this forest. Maybe I'll do that. 

I flew into the sky, flying... actually, more like gliding from tree to tree to avoid anyone spotting me and of course, to get a better view of the forest floor, to check if there were monsters or not. 

This continued for around ten minutes until I saw a village of small, green... humans? No, they're not humans. They're too small and disfigured to be humans, let alone their skin colour. So, are they goblins? Most likely. Goblins are similar to fiends, and fairies—yuck, ahem, dwarfs (not dwarves, by the way! Referring to a subspecies of humans. Dwarves are different species), and imps, so they should be suitable to be monsters in my dungeon. 

I'll mark them with some of my energy so I can find them later, as finding guardians comes first. I was about to leave when a loud and powerful roar originating from the goblin camp got ahold of my attention. I was divided—on the one hand, I wanted to see what was going on to satisfy my curiosity, but on the other hand, the amount of time and such I had planned for guardian and monster contracts was limited. Even a minute is quite valuable. 

"Ugh! Fine, I'll go and check what's the origin of the noise..." I mumbled. I thought it might have been a conflict with some larger and more powerful monster—such as a... hmm. Now you mention it, I don't know many monsters in Arula. But, hey, I'll make it work somehow. 

Besides, I can just measure their energy and that would tell me what kind of being they were—weak or strong. 

In the middle of my decedent, a large piece of rock had nearly hit me. And no! It wasn't because I was "careless" and didn't see what was in front of me. The rock, well, boulder, flew into the air, and I just had to be in the flight path of the rock. 

I dodged the flying rock easily, but that made me even more curious about what was happening down on the forest floor. 

I soon landed without anyone noticing and slowly and quietly sneaked through bushes and small trees, popping my head out of a bush to see what was going on when I arrived in an optimal spot. 

"Haaa!!" someone yelled out. A bright flash of light appeared and engulfed the entire area and then condensed into the form of a sword... no wait, the light had coated itself around a blade that the boy was using. "Everyone! Make way! I'll defeat the Goblin Warrior with this strike!" he announced. 

""Roger!"" I heard several voices reply in sync. I turned my head around to see several humans with weapons in hand and fairly well-equipped all creating distance between them and this "Goblin Warrior". I didn't know what they were talking about, but I quickly understood. 

They were facing a slightly stronger version of goblin, known as the "Stronger Goblin"... I'm not even joking. That's its name. Well, I know, the name kinda sucks and isn't good... but "Goblin Warrior" is a much better name for this goblin variant. Okay, so, goblin warriors are these taller and much more muscular versions of normal goblins, usually in some kind of armour, and in rare cases, a full set of armour. 

Now, this goblin warrior unfortunately had a full set of armour, probably made out of iron or steel. He also had these massive, bulky and thick muscles that looked like they were completely immune to sword slashes and arrows. Maybe human magic could work, but I think it's unlikely. The goblin warrior held a large, 2.5-metre-long longsword that he wielded in one hand. He's a beast! Wow! 

That's quite impressive. Anyway, I saw the goblin warrior had this faint greenish skin through the exposed areas of his armour; such as the helmet area (the eye area), armpit area, and kneecap area. Apart from those areas. he was completely protected. 

Yeah. Anyway, the battle ended when the boy with the light-infused sword ran towards the goblin warrior, jumped high into the air, and then with a powerful downward strike, cleanly cut the goblin warrior into two halves like he was a cloud. It was amazing. 

The goblin warrior collapsed onto the forest floor, and after that came a barrage of celebration in the form of cheers, high-fives and hugs. As they were celebrating, one small female member of the group of six broke off from celebrating and using a small knife, she inspected the corpse of the goblin warrior and started to search for something. 

In the end, she had found a small blue-coloured stone, that was no more than a pebble in size. After retrieving that mysterious stone, other members of her team grabbed the warrior's sword and some pieces of usable armour, before heading off deeper into the forest, in the direction of Orth's capital. In the future, I learnt that the stone was actually something called a "mana stone", something that every living thing has. It's formed because living things cannot process mana when it's in its "vapour" state and because the atmosphere contains mana in its vapour state, living things naturally breathe it in, it kinda just stays in the body and over time before it condenses into its "solid" state over time, and that's when it's known as a mana stone.

But! Don't worry. Since the vapour mana condenses so slowly, it takes well over a century for the mana stone to get large enough to pose any harm to humans or other living creatures. As for vampires, like Valentyn and the Guardian of the Third Floor, they don't have any vital organs that the mana stone could threaten, so they're safe. 

Once I had confirmed that it was safe to reveal myself, I did so and walked towards the corpse of the goblin warrior. It sat in a pool of its blood, with pieces of flesh, internal organs and other organic substances exposed to the elements. 

I stared at the corpse, before taking a step into the pool of blood with my bare feet. It felt slimy, but it's bearable. I crouched down, taking care so that my white dress wouldn't get stained by the blood (even though I had a barrier on), and placed my palm on one half of the goblin warrior's forehead. 

I then used the power of time to see the goblin's memories. I saw the time he was born, to the time he had hunted his first prey, to this battle, and to his eventual death at the hands of the boy, I saw it all. 

I grinned a little. "You're not bad," I said to the lifeless corpse. "You are lacking in some areas, but with a little training by yours truly, Blanoir, you'll be the perfect candidate for the Guardian of the First Floor!" 

I nodded my head. I'm going to revive the goblin warrior. And to do that, I would get permission from Lord Raphael for me to retrieve his soul from the Demons before he gets reincarnated. 

Luckily, the goblin warrior had just died, so his soul should be drifting around the area where he'd died, but I needed to contact Lord Raphael first before I could do anything.

Closing my eyes and focusing my divine energy into a singular point in space, then speeding it up as fast as I could, I sent a short but brief spark of my energy through the fabric of reality, into the Imaginary Realm, and to the Overworld, where it hopefully gets noticed by Lord Raphael. 

I waited for ten seconds before getting a reply. It felt like getting a sudden jolt of energy or being electrocuted for a very short period of time. I've received a reply from Lord Raphael. 

[Go ahead.] He wrote. 

Thank you, Lord Raphael! Now, since I have the permission of an Archangel, I can materialise more of my angel powers in the Middle World. Yes. When we are sent to the Middle World for work or vacation, our powers are restricted to a fraction of what it is compared to the Overworld, to prevent us from interfering too much with mortals and such. However, if we get the permission of the Arch-rank superiors, then we are allowed to exercise more of our powers within the mortal realm. 

For this case, I must interfere with the Reincarnation Cycle, and I cannot do that without the permission of an Archangel or Archdemon; the only two Arch-ranked superiors that could allow me to do that. 

With permission granted, I immediately put up a barrier to prevent the soul of the goblin warrior from leaving this area, so I could search and identify the soul and shove it back into his dead body. 

I think he would need a new body... but I can worry about that stuff later. For now, I should recover his body to its prime, and make his soul go into there. Once I arrive back at my dungeon, I ask Miriel to create a body for me. Sounds good!