Earthling in Uncharted Dimensions

Chapter 241: Ruin Expedition (5)

The daylight had mostly disappeared and only a faint sliver of illumination remained in the atmosphere. From a distance, the shadowy outlines of the 14 human beings could be seen walking towards the setting stars.

To not have obscurity in vision, Lee condensed Lightning into a thick bright rod. With Lee Shen hands clasped behind his back, the illuminating rod suspended above their heads and shed light 360 degrees around them.

While walking, Lee was careful to regulate the Mana distribution to both the Lightning rod and envelope. But the process proved highly effortless as D and Hudson took control of the operations to the System Space.

[Illumination output at 95%. Stabilised at the moment. Over.]

*beep*

[Roger. Mana distribution maintaining at 450 per second. Perimeter secure. Over.]

*blip* *blip*

'...'

After accessing some of the memories of Lee, D and Hudson were playing a spaceship simulator inside the System Space. It would not have been a headache if both of them could keep their mouth shut. Instead, they purposefully projected their voice to Lee and made him abnormally irritated.

'Knock it off, will you two?!'

The beep and blip noises began to cloud his mind and Lee shouted at both.

[Come on boy. We are trying to lighten up our dull life.]

'Then do it in silence.'

[...]

The brief silence followed by Lee's words were slowly scratched away by the annoying murmuring of the two. Something had gotten into these two fellows which discomforted Lee beyond reason.

'I am asking for the last time. Will you both shut up or should I sew your mouths shut?'

The cold words hinted them that he is ready to jump into the System Space right away to fulfil his words. Hopefully, nothing followed after these words and Lee regained his composure.

------

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6 PM.

5,976,530 Essence harvested.

=====

"..."

"..."

"Professor, how did you know that man?"

Lee, who was leading the party towards the Ruin glanced over his shoulders for a second and continued his pace.

"Shortly after winning the tournament, I was going to the Ora Coastal Plains for training when I met Timur. He demanded a duel."

The eyes of the students were widened in disbelief.

"And?"

Zona expressed her curiosity.

"And, it was a draw."

If he was to tell that he pushed the High Orc Brigadier to stick to defence, it would only be considered as boasting. But with Lee's expertise and performance, saying that it ended in a draw was much more convincing.

Unbeknownst to him, the decision to tell that the duel was a draw was found acceptable by the 13 students. They did not probe further as they wondered how the professor could have held toe-to-toe with that monstrous High Orc.

Before they knew, they had stepped into the grasslands. The scarcely seen trees became non-existent. Only plain and empty area surrounded them as they walked through the brown patch of path dividing the grass to the sides.

Surprisingly, the brownish path was made up of hardened soil. The path was wide enough for two carriages to go side-by-side and still have space for a pedestrian to walk. For a brief amount of time, only the rhythmic sounds of footwear with a background of crickets' noises could be heard. Soon a sliver of flickering light was caught up in Lee Shen's sight.

[We are almost two kilometres away from the Ruin.]

Lee did not reply to D's comment and took a peek over his shoulder. He saw the students constantly observing their surroundings with their eyes and ears. Somehow, this sight made Lee feel happy and proud.

After walking for a minute, Lee slowed his pace and came to a halt. The students could not see the light at a distance and wondered why the professor had abruptly stopped.

'Lower the brightness to 20%.'

With a command, D lowered the bright Lightning rod to only 20% of its brightness. It was dim but enough bright to shed light on the faces of the 14 humans. As some wore a puzzled expression while glancing at others and upwards, Lee turned around and asked-

"Does anyone feel saturated at the moment?"

Lee was asking about Mana Saturation and the students did not take any more than a fraction of a second to recognise his query. Two boys and a girl raised their hands.

"Good.

We will not enter the Ruin vicinity at the night but will camp here on the grasslands. The place around the Ruin is probably filled with Qi and cultivators and that could harm your skills and morale.

And I am not interested in sheltering you all at hostile territory."

Lee's words were precise and concise and solved the budding question in their minds. But one question still floated inside the students' minds.

When Lee saw the boys and girls clueless and confused alike, he extended his left arm to his side. Something shot out of his palm and it looked like a giant roll of fabric.

When 13 pairs of eyes focused on the palm of Lee, they saw the spatial ring. They assumed that the object whatsoever came out was stored inside the ring, but their assumption was wrong.

The roll of fabric fell on the grassy ground and unrolled itself. It was at least 10 metres in length and had a breadth of 4 metres. With a cross-section of an equilateral triangle, its deep green colour was one with the grass at night.

Lee had designed this peculiar tent in the Workshop when he came to realise that the stars are setting and it would be troublesome to make the students stay near Qi abundant area. His eyes skimmed over the green grass and lit a bulb in his head.

Though the process of designing and producing this abrasion-resistant, elemental-resistant and automatic temperature adjusting tent cost a little more than twenty million and five thousand Essence, he still had about three hundred and thirty million Essence left in his reserve.

Unlike the students' guess, it was not stored in the spatial ring, but in the System Storage. And it had some surprises to the students!