Chapter 15: Back to Town |
When the bus returned to the town, Noah had already received notification on his cell phone that payment had been made. In total he received $1,000. For a moment a small smile broke out on his face. That money was what the Blessed Ones who normally raided Rank E Fortresses received, which was several times more than the $200 he normally received in Rank F Fortresses.
If he went on raids every day, he would surely earn some satisfactory money at the end of the month, but due to the amount of Blessed Rank F, there were not enough Fortresses for a person to be able to invade every day, and even if there were, the chance of a tragedy to happen in one of these Fortresses would be high. So at the end of the month, the Blessed Ones did not go on so many invasions, causing Rank F to have a low salary.
Returning to the town, Noah could not help but be enchanted once again by the beauty of the place. After Earth was invaded by monsters, the technology of mankind skyrocketed at an astronomical speed. As an old thinker who lived before Fortresses called Plato used to say, "Necessity is the mother of invention," and that's exactly what happened.
When Fortresses began to emerge, humanity strived through technology to fight these monsters. Weapons could hurt some weaker F-rank monsters, but monsters with higher rank... nothing could stop them. So, desperate, humanity once again sought [through] technology to find a way out, and this time, the way they sought was to go to other planets.
The space race this time was not between two nations, but all of humanity running against death to survive long enough to escape the planet. After a few years, mankind finally managed to find another habitable planet, however, just a few months after mankind settled on that planet, Fortresses also began to emerge there.
Regardless of which planet humanity was installed on, in a short time Fortresses full of monsters started to appear and attack humanity. In the midst of despair in science, some people began to place the faith that they had lost in gods, who, with the exception of the Catholic god, other lesser gods actually heard the prayers of mankind and went on to grant Blessings to them.
With the Blessings, little by little the humans managed to reconquer their space on the conquered planets, making humanity, which before had difficulty even going to the moon (the satellite closest to their home planet), now able to inhabit several planets across the galaxy.
Noah was looking out the bus window at the town he lived in, the town of Eyrin. Compared to other cities on his planet, this was a great town. It wasn't really a big metropolis, but it had the comfort and convenience that any good medium-sized town could provide.
With a somewhat futuristic design, the houses and the few buildings in the town had rounded shapes, characteristic of Planet E. As humanity had overcome the problem of overcrowding cities with the alternative of terraforming several planets, people here could build houses freely, and only those with little money would have to live in apartments.
The trip back was smooth. Noah had already put on his headphones since Wendy left and enjoyed the calm music until they arrived at the headquarters of GBC (Government Blessing Control), which was the organization who controlled the distribution of Fortresses to the Blessed. They were the reason that only licensed people could invade Fortresses.
After the bus stopped, Noah got up from his seat and started to get off the bus. When he was passing by Harry and Wendy, Harry looked at him and said in a serious voice, "I will remember what you put me through in there."
Noah knew that Harry was saying this to him and momentarily stopped, looking at Harry out of the corner of his eye as he thought, 'I should have killed him,' before walking back towards the exit without even answering Harry.
Harry saw that and didn't know if Noah had been afraid of the threat and didn't have the courage to answer or if he hadn't taken his threat seriously. Regardless of what Noah thought, Harry was sure that since he was a Blessed Rank D, it was only a matter of time before he became much stronger than Noah. Until then, it wouldn't be difficult for him to find an opportunity to take revenge on a mere Blessed Rank F.
Harry threatening Noah at that moment was not so bad for Noah, since after that threat, he remembered how cold the world truly was. The world after the Fortresses has become a world where the strong eat the weak. If a Blessed Rank C kills a Blessed Rank E inside a Fortress, even if it went public, nobody would do anything about it, since a Blessed Rank C could defeat a Rank E Fortress very easily, but the opposite wasn't true. If the opposite had to happen, a Blessed Rank E would definitely be killed inside a Rank C Fortress.
Noah had spent 16 years as a normal person and 4 years as a Blessed Rank F, the lowest type of Blessed person in society, even in a town like Eyrin where the Fortresses that emerged were not so powerful.
After all this time, Noah already knew how important it was to have power. If he had power now, he certainly wouldn't have to go through everything which he was being forced to submit. As he had finally received a power, Noah's first goal was to grow that power: train his [Hell Flames] and make it stronger.
As he did not live far from the GBC headquarters, Noah walked home while making his own plans. First of all, he didn't need to go to Rank F Fortresses anymore. From now on he could start going to Rank E Fortresses without worry.
Firstly, he planned on doing this because he had a theory that the stronger the monster he consumed with [Hell Flames], the more experience he would gain, both in skill and in his level.
Second, raiding Rank E Fortresses would yield far more money than raiding Rank F Fortresses, which at the moment was crucial for Noah.
Most Blessed were terrified when they thought of breaking into top-ranking Fortresses, but that was not the case for Noah. He had already studied everything he could study from Rank F Fortresses and even without any Blessing he was always able to get out of any situation he had come across alive. Now that he had a Blessing at his disposal, Noah knew that the only thing he lacked was knowledge about Rank E Fortresses so to be better than the average Blessed Ones who invaded them.
Lost in his thoughts, Noah had turned the corner that led home, however, when he looked at the gate, he saw the "reason" for which he needed the Rank E Fortress money most badly.
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