Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 357: Hydra: Many Heads, No Thoughts

Hmm, just what should he do now? This was a peculiar situation. Also, how should he find those safe zones? There was no map or any clue that would send him in the right direction.That this treasure hunt had a battle royale integrated into it was not something Thalion appreciated. He probably shouldn’t be surprised after the high entrance price, but it still seemed off. If that happened every night, then you had a very good chance to get some extra points by butchering everyone in one of the safe zones.

The question was also whether you could move through the dead zones — like in , where your health ticks down slowly — or if you would instantly die. The first option might even be fine for him, as long as there wasn’t some multiplier installed that raised the DoT damage with every passing minute or so.

A lot of questions needed answering if he wanted to survive. Things were about to get really messy. If a group discovered such a safe zone before them, they probably wouldn’t let anyone else in for free, if at all.

The group before him had already started to discuss what they should do. Thalion just wondered what had gone through their minds to make them join such a system event. Yes, the rewards must be very good, but they weren’t even known yet. They were almost killing themselves for a prize they didn’t even know about.

Kind of funny that Thalion had joined the system event without even caring much about the treasure hunt’s rewards in the first place.

Thalion decided to first get a quick view of the surroundings and shot up into the sky. He dove straight through the dense canopy into the open air. It wasn’t like on any normal planet, where the sun went down on one side and rose on the other. No, here it simply grew dimmer and dimmer.

There was also no moon rising in its place. Thalion rose higher, turning around to get a better picture of his surroundings. He wasn’t the only one doing so. It almost looked like the system message had flushed them all out of hiding.

None of the people he spotted seemed dangerous to him, at least from his estimation. The only two who worried him were the elves, but they should be too weak to be part of a chosen group.

Even as Thalion climbed higher and higher, he couldn’t spot any visible zones they were supposed to move away from. Quite annoying and it almost screamed bad design to him. What was the point of creating safe zones when no one even had an idea where they were?

Maybe that was why the entrance fee had been so high. The randomness made it dangerous and too luck-based.

Good that Thalion had one last resort that would hopefully guide him in the right direction.

He dispelled the Crimson Eidolon and returned to his real body, which was currently sitting on a crimson red flower that had almost grown naturally out of the tree trunk he’d been resting on. The whole tree had been overtaken by the Sanguis Impera. Its bark turned completely crimson, blooming with parasitic flowers.

Thalion closed his eyes and fully focused on his title. The title had never failed him so far, and when big events were on the horizon, he could even sense from which direction the danger came. Zones that would kill him if he stayed too long should fulfill the requirement.

It didn’t take long until Thalion felt the subtle danger emanating from one specific direction. Fine — now at least he knew where to go.

When he opened his eyes and jumped down from the tree, the small group below was looking up at him with puppy eyes.

“Do you know where we need to go?” one of the men asked.

Now he couldn’t even switch to Eagly without killing them first. Otherwise, he’d reveal more of his abilities. Things they’d gladly tell the next party in exchange for favors, or spill before dying.

Thalion thought.

Out loud, he said, “Yes, I have a direction. But this is an exception. After this night, you’re on your own, or I kill you myself.”

His tone was harsh and left no room for argument. He wanted to make that perfectly clear so their constant pleading would finally stop.

“Oh, come on, there’s no need for that! You clearly lost your party. Why else would you enter alone? We can gather materials for you or keep watch while you sleep.” The woman kept trying.

Thalion didn’t like that at all. He wouldn’t feel safe sleeping while these people “watched over” him. The way they looked at his armor rubbed him the wrong way.

He also wondered what their strategy might have been when entering the system event. They weren’t strong enough to survive on their own, and any stronger party that didn’t kill them outright would simply use them as gatherers.

Maybe they came from a weak tutorial and thought themselves far stronger than they actually were? That was the only explanation that made sense to Thalion.

“No, tomorrow will be the last time I see you folk. Now come, I don’t want to waste time,” Thalion said and moved ahead.

He wondered how clearly they could see him with the enchantments on his robe. They had likely followed the red line that connected him and the Crimson Eidolon to find him in the first place, but technically, the runes should still work, making it more difficult to see him.

The forest wasn’t as endless as in the tutorial, and in the direction they were going, it should soon turn into open grassland. Further than that, Thalion couldn’t see without turning into Eagly.

That thought brought his mind in a different direction. Would this be the last system event where he still had Eagly? Would he really turn into a wyvern or even a dragon? Normally, that should be possible, especially with the crystal in his chest, one of the key items needed to change race in that direction.

For most normal beasts, such an evolution happened randomly when they swallowed one, but the way Thalion had done it should be far more effective. Thinking about Eagly, it was likely the form that needed the biggest boost.

The Tidecaller Serpent had the crystal it was still digesting. His human form was fine with the curse and the Sanguis Impera, while the crippled Eclipsari had fused with the Fearpillar. Eagly was definitely hanging a bit behind. Any treasure related to wind or lightning would be perfect.

Thalion moved relatively quickly through the jungle, and it took only about an hour until he left the undergrowth and stepped out onto the open grass. The other humans followed, trying to stay as close as possible. They tried to persuade him into conversation, but Thalion shut down every attempt immediately.

They were lucky he even helped them at all instead of just flying off on his own. As Eagly, he would’ve reached this point in minutes — flying was just so much faster than walking through the forest.

The grasslands looked quite empty, with only a few corpses scattered about. They looked like looted humans or orcs. Burn marks and small craters scarred the ground — clear signs of a recent battle. Maybe this had been another spawn point.

Thalion didn’t stop there and continued moving out of the jungle at a brisk pace. They hadn’t gone far before a voice shouted at them.

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“Hey, you! If you don’t stop, we’ll have to attack you!”

Thalion turned around, visibly annoyed. His title wasn't screaming danger, which meant these people must be quite weak. It was a group of twenty E-grade humans. To Thalion, they didn’t look like a band of criminals or like they enjoyed what they were doing, but they probably didn’t have a choice after paying such a high price to enter the system event.

They were all E-grade and above Thalion on the leaderboard, which wasn’t difficult, though some of them were still below the group he had taken under his wing. The reason was simple. They had sneakily looted the orcs while Thalion had been searching for the zone.

That didn’t mean Thalion was off the hook, as the leader was already eyeing his armor with greed glowing in his eyes. What was wrong with these people? How could they possibly believe someone just such armor by luck?

On the other hand, he hadn’t gathered anything so far, which placed him far below them on the leaderboard. He was also fully hiding his aura and traveling with a bunch of weaklings who acted like he was their leader. So, okay. There might be a few clues pointing in that direction.

Also, why would someone strong refuse to gather items in a system event like this unless there was a reason?

His group reacted quickly, immediately changing allegiance the moment the twenty people arrived.

“Please, don’t kill us! We have nothing of worth to you! We were just traveling with this man to the next safe zone. To join your party would be a great honor!”

Okay, to be fair, they didn’t fully turn their backs on him and he had already announced he wouldn’t help them tomorrow, so their reaction was understandable.

“No, you’re too weak. There’s no reason for us to let you join. You bring nothing to the table. Now give us your items, and then you’ll show us where this safe zone is.”

That was the woman beside the leader who had spoken. She had long blond hair and wore a suit that looked completely out of place here.

Thalion’s group just looked down and slowly moved behind him. Well, Thalion actually didn’t want to kill this other group either. In fact, he just wanted to reach the safe zone so he could practice a bit more.

“Why are you even trying to steal from us?” Thalion asked calmly. “We haven’t found anything good and neither have you. Taking our stuff won’t put you high on the leaderboard. I mean, place one thousand and one already has two hundred points, while your highest has, what, four? Stealing from us won’t give you an edge at all.”

Thalion simply stated the obvious. Why fight when there wasn’t really anything to gain? The rewards for everyone except the very top were probably going to be pretty useless anyway.

“But you have quite the armor, my friend. In fact, it’s even hard to spot you, even when I know where you’re standing. Such an item will make survival much easier and allow us to fight for stronger treasures. We are not barbarians. Just give us your stuff and you can join us in the safe zone. It’s not that we want to rob you. We need the upgrade so we didn’t throw away our longevity for nothing.” The leader explained with an almost helpless shrug. An argument Thalion didn’t buy.

How nice of them to insist they weren’t going to kill him, only take his things. He should be grateful for their generosity.

“Can’t you leave me the armor for today and I’ll give it to you tomorrow? I can’t exactly run from you, and I really worked hard to build this one,” Thalion said, trying to defuse the situation peacefully.

“Ah, a smith. That makes more sense now. Okay, you can keep your armor, but if we encounter a strong party on the way you have to donate it so we can fight them off.”

The leader’s offer surprised Thalion. These people were dumb, weren’t they? They couldn’t be that confident? should he tell them they would actually die if they tried to wear his armor or wield the sword? No, probably not.

So the journey continued with two idiot groups, and Thalion reached a point where he didn’t know which one he disliked more. Now they were asking stupid questions and issuing the dumbest orders. They wanted to keep robbing more humans since their party had grown. The leader even said that if they kept robbing and accepted new members, they would grow fast enough to challenge the real bigshots of the system event.

Then someone suggested they rename the practice “a forced entrance fee” to make it sound respectable. They constantly asked Thalion if he could craft more armors like his. Thalion only replied that it required the right materials.

Next they gave their group a name and called themselves Hydra, because when you cut off one head, two would follow. For them it was a metaphor for the large numbers they expected to reach. It took all of Thalion’s willpower not to openly show his disdain. He was grateful the mask hid his expression.

On the way to the safe zone they somehow managed to have seven more groups join—kinda crazy. It was also annoying because more people kept pestering him about smithing or if they could hold his sword. By the time they reached the safe zone they were over a hundred strong.

The safe zone itself was a massive circle on the ground, easily covering over two kilometers from edge to edge, outlined by glowing red lines. Thalion immediately sat down and focused on meditating while Hydra confiscated everything from the newcomers who wanted a place inside. Thalion was happy to distract himself from all the greedy idiots by sinking into meditation.

What finally shook him out of it was the approaching zone—nothing like in Fortnite, where a wall advances and you take damage outside it. No: this was like a giant disintegrator that annihilated everything. Behind that advancing frontier there was only blackness and a few scattered stars. Everything was erased, the ground, the air, just darkness remained. The void stopped at the red line, but that didn’t mean it was contained there. This system event was massive, and this was only one of many safe zones. It was merely a little circle of safety and the darkness continued beyond it.

They could see the massive cliff from which matter disintegrated, plunging down almost endlessly. As the surroundings grew darker and the annihilation moved faster, it became clear that you could gather more items the closer you were to the middle of the stage. So not taking the first safe zone and pushing inward could be a viable tactic for treasure hunters and for Thalion if he wanted to find the big shots later in the event.

The further the annihilation advanced, the more distant safe zones you could spot, since there was no curvature of the world limiting your view. In the far distance they looked like toothpicks. The earth still dropped away for so long. Hydra naturally wanted to know if they could fly through the darkness to the other safe zones to rob them, or force others to pay a high entrance fee to join their ranks. After the first fool who tried to jump the red line simply disintegrated, no one tried that anymore.

As time passed, the desire within Hydra to meet everyone else in the safe zone grew. They were not exactly pleasant people, and Thalion felt he would probably do everyone a service by just killing them. Still, he restrained his murderous intent and focused on upgrading his blood, keeping four small drops of blood circling around him. His time would come.