Studious

As Blaze walked briskly through the streets of Midseer, she thought about the predicament she had at hand.

People with fates tied to the undead, the lost Ring of Undead Fate, a plausible lunatic thief that may just be Klaris of Thawsore, and the Josuera Clan's rabid resistance.

This was quite a lot to face all at once.

"If only I could just find that damn Klaris of Thawsore." Blaze swore as she waded through the thick crowd.

—Ting!

Something fell onto the ground nearby, attracting the attention of a few people. It was a small object, with a beautiful green hue.

It slipped past Blaze's senses at first, but when the group of people all glanced at it at the same time, she too, gave it a look.

Her eyes shrank in shock.

'The Ring of Undead Fate!' She inwardly exclaimed as she forced her way through the crowd.

Only to see someone bend over and pick the ring up.

'No!' Blaze cried out inside her head.

The person who picked it up was a little girl, perhaps at the age of 9. She wore a dress made out of cotton and linen, and her hair draped over her shoulders.

"Hey little girl," Blaze forced a smile as she approached the girl, "Can I have that ring please?"

The girl looked up at Blaze's seductive features with an innocent gaze. She saw Blaze's green hair and beautiful green eyes and was entranced for a moment.

"Can I have that ring?" Blaze repeated kindly as she pointed at the ring in the girl's hands.

It shook the girl out of her stupor.

The girl then shook her head resolutely.

"No!"

And then she ran into her confused parents' arms.

The parents glanced at the green ring in their daughter's hands and at the green-haired Blaze. They seemed to have made some kind of connection between the similar colours.

"...Might this ring be yours, Miss?" They asked.

"Yes... It was a ring that I lost. Is it alright if I can take it back?" Blaze claimed a half-lie.

Hearing this, the parents nudged their daughter.

"Come on now, you heard her, Angelica." The father said, "Give the lady back her ring. It's important to her."

"...O-okay," Angelica said with hesitation.

But before she could do so, a swift shadow moved past Angelica at that moment.

Fwoosh!

Blaze watched as the Ring of Undead Fate disappeared before her eyes. She instantly flared up. Unlike the little girl, she felt more into beating up an adult.

The target was some thief with a 2-star threat rating.

Vwhoom!

The strength of a 3-star human erupted as she danced between the gaps of the dense crowd. It shocked the parents of the child.

They almost took an item that was important to a 3-star expert.

As for the thief, he panicked upon sensing the speed of his pursuer.

Decisively, he threw the ring out into the crowd, hoping to divide Blaze's attention.

It worked.

Faced with a decision, Blaze chose to secure the Ring of Undead Fate first.

Leaping into the air, Blaze reached out with a specially-gloved hand as she inwardly exclaimed.

'Finally!'

.

.

.

Magnus chuckled as he watched all of that from afar. It had taken a good several minutes before a commotion occurred with the ring. A lot of people had come into contact with it without them knowing.

It was only when the crowd thinned could there be a chance for them to discover the tiny item on the ground.

Who would've expected the green-haired lady to appear? Magnus half did.

'I need to put more faith into these people. They are clearly capable of tracking me down. Now they have two Rings of Undead Fate right?'

Magnus was unaware of the fact that only one Ring of Undead Fate could exist at one time.

'Should I give them more?'

But this ignorance was going to give Blaze a head of white hair from all the stress.

'I'll do it later...' Magnus happily decided that he would give the Emerald Twilight 'more' Rings of Undead Fate.

For now, he had a seal to study.

.

.

.

As Magnus spent the next few days studying, Blaze was allowed to heave a sigh of relief. No more humans were randomly having their fate tampered with.

The problem she had now was the fact there was a whole bunch of humans that she had to 'clean up' and that included children.

Blaze faced a dilemma.

'What do I do... what do I do...' She was growing desperate.

Her goal was to eradicate the undead and stop their spread. Now that there were a couple of thousand people fated to become undead, Blaze did not know what she could do.

'Should I just ignore them for now..?'

She would only act once they became undead.

"It's best you ignore them for now," Liam spoke as if reading her mind. "I assume that Klaris of Thawsore did such a thing so that you would stop chasing after him. So, why don't you do just that? We can make a move on all these people when they turn out to become undead instead of just being affiliated with them somehow."

Blaze sighed, "You're right, you're right. I've been considering that too. I just don't like this feeling..."

"The feeling of defeat?" Liam said with half-closed eyes, "Don't worry, I'm with you."

Blaze gave Liam a deathly glare, but when she saw the bags under his eyes, her expression softened.

"I guess it's time we rest for the following days."

Oh, little did they know that more problems would come up for them when those days end.

.

.

.

After nearly a week of Molecular Text studies, Magnus had burnt himself out. He was exhausted, and his mind was filled with symbols, letters, and numbers. They moved around his brain like a poorly made soup.

"I've had enough..."

He spat out his next sip of coffee just as he made one last sign on a separate piece of paper.

"I'm done!"

He growled as he placed his hand on the tablet and poured Spirit Energy into it.

"Hooooooo," Magnus breathed as he glanced at his 'calculations' if he could even call it that.

It was finally time to break the seal. With the help of Master of the Hivemind, he understood the underlying mechanisms, the parts of the code he needed to decipher and disturb, and the lines he had to cut.

He knew which parts were super important to keep active lest he destroys whatever lay behind the seal.

He had also discovered that the seal was actually super fragile.

If he made one mistake in unsealing the stone tablet, he would face a fierce backlash. It would be like dropping a grenade with glass-sharp shrapnel by his feet and not lobbing it into the distance.

"Thankfully, the seal isn't at the 2-star level." Magnus sighed as he felt his Spirit Energy worm into the Molecular Text of the seal.

If the seal was even a bit more complex, Magnus would have understood nothing about it. He would be reading a science paper without knowing all the jargon if he tried.

Even with the MagiNet and the textbooks he had at hand.

Complex topics had yet to find their way onto the MagiNet. It seemed like the factions were protecting more advanced information.

Whooom!

Magnus felt the tablet vibrate with every line he tinkered with. His Spirit Energy pulsated in a set rhythm like playing a song. He manipulated portions of his Spirit Energy to form certain shapes and certain lines of text as explained by the textbooks he had.

Soon enough, the tablet cracked.

It revealed an orb hidden within its stony shell.

Magnus held the small orb in the palm of his hand. It was crystalline blue, with stars seemingly shining within it. It also felt very brittle.

As if one small action would shatter it.

Sneakily, Magnus left the hotel after storing the orb in his Storage Scroll.

He secretly made his way towards Hellia Park, but he did not enter. He stayed at the edges of the location where he could just barely see the Gate floating in the air.

Magnus then followed his gut and broke the sphere. Energy instantly flooded out of the sphere and coagulated as a glove around his hand.

"Hm?" Magnus wondered what just happened. He wasn't expecting it.

But then the Gate suddenly shook. Its black colour changed into a fierce red at that moment. An alarm went off around Hellia Park, stunning the many adventurous souls who wanted to enter the Gate.

They were instantly given the adventure they wanted as poisonous monsters emerged from the place they so desired to explore.

"It's an Overflow!" Some screamed to their friends, "Run!"

"How? Why is this happening?"

"Are the people inside the Gate right now okay?"

"Everyone run!"

Multitudes of voices rang in Magnus' ears as he stared at the glove in his hand.

On the back of the glove's hand was a gem with a half-green, half-red colour.

Magnus watched as humans were slain, and a red number appeared above the red half of the gem.

Whenever a monster was slain, the green colour would be given a point.

"...What is this supposed to mean?" Magnus asked himself, "Is it measuring me or something else? Clearly, it is..."

As the monster horde surged out of the Gate, the 2-star guards that surrounded Hellia Park moved forward. They engaged the horde in close quarters, doing their jobs to keep the damage to a minimum.

But the number of monsters was overwhelming.

It was as if the entire Pocket World's population of monsters was surging out like a tsunami.

A set of Scrolls then appeared before Magnus' face.

[[ Gatemaker's Scroll x3 ]]

Magnus quickly pocketed those.

[[ Points Notification ]]

[[ You have received 20 Apocalypse of Monsters points. The points have been supplied to your Ring of Chaos. ]]

Magnus nodded upon reading this. Now he knew what the Ring of Chaos was for. He ended up wondering what having 20 AoM points meant, but all he figured out was that it was better than having none of them.

Another Scroll appeared just as Magnus finished reading the Points Notification Scroll.

[[ Event Trial Scroll II ]]

[[ Hello again, [Gatemaker]. Very well done on that Gate Overflow! The next Trial has something to do with the glove on your hand right now. You need to get that red number up to 1000. Good luck! ]]

[[ Reward: Event Rating Points. Access to the Event Shop ]]