Born in apocalypse

In the sleeping room...

Naira, one of the tribe’s water mages, was waking everyone from their slumber by sprinkling water on them. After waking up she had learned from Alaric that the spell’s impact was quite potent and even during a raging battle outside, nobody had stirred.

Alaric had personally awakened her. During their mission at the ruins, he had discovered her talent as a water mage and roused her from her sleep. From then on, she had been walking around, waking everyone else from their sleep... or perhaps their dreams, considering the boss’s affinity was more with dreams than simple sleep.

"Ouch!... Who are you?" the woman who had just awakened asked of Naira.

Listening to the question, Naira began to explain as she had been doing with everyone else,

"We’re here to rescue you..."

After explaining to her, she moved on to the other women. In this area, there were mostly women and children, as they were more suitable for extortion cases and the gang has also chosen them.

[Yes, master, from there, you take two left turns, then walk straight for 50 meters, followed by a right turn and another 60 meters straight. After that, the door on the left will be the room,] Alaric explained to Dhruv, giving him directions to reach their location.

After sharing the directions, he patiently waited for their arrival.

Five to six minutes later, a crowd of hundreds of people arrived, eager to reunite with their loved ones. The sleeping room couldn’t accommodate everyone, so some decided to greet their loved ones outside, while others chose to meet inside the room.

Dhruv paid little attention to the emotional reunions around him and instead headed toward Alaric, asking,

[Alaric, where is the armory, and did you kill the boss? I couldn’t find him,] Dhruv inquired through Mark.

Alaric responded, [Yes, Master, I’ve already taken care of the boss. Is there an issue with that?] He didn’t address the question about the armory, assuming he could personally guide Dhruv there. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Dhruv replied, [Yes, there is a problem. Remember, never kill the boss, as they are a valuable source of information.] Dhruv emphasized the importance of preserving the boss’s life for intelligence purposes.

Dhruv had attempted to extract information from Tom, but the man only knew that Danny—The boss, held all the strings and had no idea about the origins of the weapons or how they were being smuggled.

[I am truly sorry, my lord. Please punish me for my incompetence,] Alaric humbly requested.

[No, it’s my responsibility too. I should have informed you earlier, but always bear in mind to keep the boss alive for questioning. However, be sure to assess if you’re capable of restraining him. If you are, then interrogate; if not, eliminate him. Understand?] Dhruv imparted his knowledge on the matter to Alaric.

Alaric nodded.

While Dhruv conversed with Alaric, the rest of the group also engaged in brief discussions with their respective partners, sharing the recent decisions made.

Almost everyone agreed and the very few who were in the disagreement were forced to agree when everyone told the story of how it had gone after they had gone to sleep. That had worked flawlessly as they got so scared that they instantly agreed as well.

Following some conversations with the group, Dhruv informed them, "I’m going ahead to check if there’s anything left there. If everything is safe we will leave this place."

With that, he, along with the trio, proceeded towards the armory. There was no to stop them in their path, allowing the group to loot everything in the armory, which Dhruv had always planned to do.

Upon arriving at the armory, Dhruv began to inspect the array of items inside. The armory was stocked with a wealth of weapons and armor. Realizing there wasn’t enough time to individually assess everything, he simply instructed Alaric to gather them all into his shadow.

As Alaric diligently gathered weapons and armor into his shadow, Dhruv’s attention was drawn to a section of the armory containing a substantial collection of monster cores. While the number of cores didn’t seem extensive, likely no more than a hundred and fifty, it wasn’t these cores that piqued his interest. Instead, it was the items situated beside them that held his attention.

The table held what appeared to be everyday necessities - Goggles, Ropes, Dice, a Bucket, a Tube filled with red liquid, and a Ring. Despite their mundane appearance, Dhruv knew better than to underestimate them. Their placement in the armory indicated that they were rewards from quests, which implied they were anything but ordinary.

Dhruv swiftly approached the items and reached for a pair of goggles. As he held them, he focused on the goggles, and their item description materialized before him. The item description revealed:

[Name: Inspect-or glass

Rank: Special

Tier: III

Type: Jewels]

’Isperc-or glass, what a weird name.’ Dhruv found the name rather unusual but his interest was piqued by the rank and tier of the item.

[Description: A pair of glasses worn by an appraisal. After wearing the glasses for a long time some of his skills got passed to this item.]

[Enchantment: Inspect, Random, Steel]

’Interesting! Is this what am I thinking’ Dhruv thought as he looked at the word appraiser and the name of it’s enchantment.

[Inspect: Allows the wearer to see the information of items up to the rank of Epic and the information of monsters up to Tier 5.]

[Random: Only displays one section of information at a time, and the selection is entirely random.]

[Steel: Carries a very-very slight chance of stealing one of the wearer’s skills.]

Dhruv couldn’t help but be impressed by the goggle’s capabilities, yet he also foresaw the potential frustration that might come with the random nature of its information display.

One more risk was that he needed to repeatedly examine an item for precise information, and doing that would put him at the risk of losing one of his skills. However, despite these risks, he knew where to use this glass.

"Those slimes..." Dhruv thought, his mind set on a particular use. With this in mind, he picked up the dice and focused on it to see it’s description.