Chapter 16 - The Study

Oliver was coming up to the tunnel when he heard a loud bang deeper inside the cave.

It was a sound that came from a bullet being fired. Oliver ran even faster, leaving the two girls behind. He kept running till he saw a light at the end of the tunnel and saw Jack with a sniper rifle laying prone on the ground.

Oliver ran straight into the young soldier, dagger once again held in a reverse grip. Jack didn't even notice the person that was coming behind him because of the passive, [One with Darkness] that made Oliver nearly invisible. The speed made Oliver run like the wind and grabbed the young soldier's clothes to throw him down on the ground below.

The young soldier groaned in response to the attack and laid down on the ground, face down. Oliver's knee was pushing on Jack's head, too angry to actually look up to what happened to his best friend in the battle.

"When I'm done with you, you're gonna wish you were dead!" Oliver yelled in anger.

"Oi!" A familiar voice was heard, "calm down, man. Nothing happened."

Oliver looked up to find his old friend still alive and relatively unscathed. Rynold looked tired and exhausted from the time that he spent fighting the giant spider that dissolved into dust.

"The shot completely missed me," Rynold continued. "Although, I really DIDN'T appreciate that he shot me. He should at least have a good reason to."

Oliver eased his knee from the young soldier's head and pulled him up from the ground. Rynold approached them and got close to Jack's disfigured face and said with a serious tone.

"You better have a good reason or things will not go well for you," he threatened.

Jack, meanwhile, was terrified beyond belief and it certainly didn't help that Oliver was standing behind him with a dagger ready to puncture his heart.

Stammering, Jack spoke in a shaky tone.

"M-my finger just slipped! I didn't mean to shoot you and I even missed, right?! No harm done at all!"

Oliver tightened his grip on the dagger and lightly stabbed the young man, making him drip out some blood from the flesh wound. "Liar!" he yelled with unexpected gusto.

Skye and Elle finally managed to catch up to the three of them and looked at what was happening, confused expressions on their faces. All the while, Rynold was just simply standing there waiting for Jack to say something worthwhile.

"Who are the other two soldiers that were looking for you? Huh? What excuse do you have for that?!" Oliver continued to threaten Jack for answers.

Jack hesitated in surprise, his mouth was agape. "I have no idea who those guys are! I told you guys before that I left on my own before and those guys must be people that were looking for me. It's not exactly ideal for a soldier to abandon his post."

"Right, like I'm supposed to believe that!" Oliver said angrily, "those guys said you were scheming some sort of damn plot!"

"Oliver, calm down. Those guys probably don't even know what Jack was doing. He did, after all, leave the military," Rynold tried to reason with the angry Oliver. "What the hell were you planning then?"

Jack's disfigured face let out a frown only to think that maybe it was time for him to come clean. He opened his mouth and came up with something instead, "what I told you before was the truth. I want to get stronger but the reason for that is something personal. I won't get in your way and help you in any way I can."

Satisfied, Rynold let out a sigh at the answer and nodded at Oliver. Oliver eased the dagger off of Jack's back and let him go.

Jack was scared to death from that encounter and definitely didn't want to fight Oliver in any scenario. Regardless, he lightly dusted off his clothes while Rynold and Oliver talked to the side.

Oliver whispered to Rynold and asked, "how the hell did you survive from the shot?"

Rynold chuckled at the question and quietly responded, "the shot definitely missed me so it wasn't a problem. Definitely was a misunderstanding. Look, I still don't trust him. Considering what he's done so far, I'm not sure if we should even keep him alive at this point but for right now I think we should just leave him be."

"Hmm... Alright, I guess you have a point there but if he so much as crosses a single line, it's bye bye for him," Oliver sensed that time was running out and had no choice but to leave the matter to the future.

Rynold kept to himself that the shot didn't really miss but hit X instead. Whether it was deliberately shot to the Mech Knight or the shot was meant for him and Jack only missed, Rynold wasn't really harmed.

Keeping what actually happened to himself, Rynold decided to check the loot from the Spider Queen. The EXP from the fight didn't really level him up but it was certainly close. He opened his inventory and was just about to check what were the drops, that was until...

"Uhh... guys, they're coming!" Skye shouted from the cave tunnel and jumped down to go to the rest of the group along with Elle. "The cluster of spiders are coming here. They probably sensed that their Queen died so maybe these spiders are a little bit more aggressive than usual."

"Right," Rynold closed his inventory and called the group to come together to consider what it is they needed to do. "The only way to actually go out is from the skylight up there," he pointed at the sky.

Looking around, there aren't any other paths for them to escape to and the only way in was actually the only way out, making the only way to leave is to kill these spiders.

"Cave in!" Jack suddenly shouted.

"What?" Rynold was startled and stood on guard, readying his stance.

Jack further explained, "no, I mean we force a cave in of the tunnel. That way, they won't get to us and we won't die."

"Are you nuts? We won't be able to leave this cave then if we do that!" Elle snarked in response. Rynold chuckled at the thought that Elle could be like that to people other than himself.

Checking the cave for a way out, Rynold only managed to spot a few crevices on the wall of the cave. Instead of what looked like a natural forming cave, the cave seemed to be a lot more in the shape of a giant dome that the only way in was through the tunnel.

Rynold decided to dash to the wall opposite of the tunnel and knock ever so lightly on it, checking to see if the wall was actually hollow or not.

It was then that Rynold's suspicions were correct. This was no cave, it was actually a man-made structure. With no idea how this place came to be, Rynold decided to punch directly onto the hollow wall, making a hole that leads to another connected tunnel.

Signaling the rest of the group to follow him while at the same time dispelling his summon, Rynold and the group went into the tunnel that was comparatively different from the one that they came from. Instead of the tunnel being entirely dark, it was illuminated by what looked like some sort of translucent stone dotted on the walls of the cave. However, instead of these stones looking like they formed naturally, they actually looked a lot more systematically placed.

The group hurriedly ran deeper and deeper into the tunnel and didn't bother noticing that the tunnel was more like a pathway than an actual cave tunnel. They kept running until they reached what looked like a door, but not one that any of them could recognize.

Regardless, Rynold tried to open the door with good force only for the door to swing open easily. In fact, instead of pushing the door open, the door activated on its own as soon as Rynold made contact with it and slid open.

Instead of questioning how the door opened, Rynold jumped straight into what looked like a room out of fear that the spider cluster would catch up to them. The rest followed Rynold into the room and the door closed behind them, automatically.

[You have entered ______'s Study]

The words from the windows were blank as to whoever actually owns this place. Regardless, the group felt relieved that they were safe from the spider cluster that amounted to hundreds of them in the swarm.

Looking around, the room was circular in shape with what looked like inventions made from magic constructs that X was made out of. In the middle of the room was a giant mana crystal.

While the rest were relaxing and regaining their senses, Rynold was scavenging, the standard thing for him to do since the New World began.

There were notes scattered on top of desks and there were some solid metal frames that held numerous inventions in place. The texts didn't appear to be a language that any of them had recognized before but they looked ancient in nature.