Chapter 134: Solo Fortress
Chapter 134: Solo Fortress
After Noah explained to Maggy about her treatment starting tomorrow, she started to cry a lot, which made him, who had been controlling his own crying since before entering the room, also unable to take it and he cried next to her.
As he drove home, Noah remembered one of the phrases that Maggy said that marked him a lot.
"I'm proud of you, and Mom would be too."
When Noah remembered Maggy saying this to him, even though it had been more than three hours since she had said it, it still made Noah cry again and think about everything he went through. All this time without their mother, having to invade Rank F Fortresses just to have the money to survive and not starve, crying almost every night for not being strong enough to get his own sister out of the hospital, finally Noah felt it had all been worth it.
"Calm down Noah. You did it," Lilith said through the mental link they had as soon as she realized that Noah's emotions were becoming unstable again.
Terrence had not noticed anything, after all, he was flying several meters above the ground in the night sky so that no one would notice him.
Noah had already sent a message to Carlos informing him that today he was not feeling well emotionally, which his friend was clearly worried about, but after Noah made sure it was for a good reason, and told him about Maggy's situation, Carlos even cried along with Noah in happiness for the little girl.
Carlos cared about Maggy a lot, so it was also very depressing for him to see the little girl he saw as his little sister admitted to the hospital, so much so that he had offered money a few months ago for Noah to pay for Maggy's treatment, which Noah had decided to wait for the mission that he had received from the system to be completed before determining if he should accept, since he did not want their friendship to become strange because of money. But of course, if Maggy's situation had gotten worse, or he really couldn't have made the money to help her, he would have accepted Carlos's offer without a second thought, since it was better to have an estranged friendship than to leave Maggy in permanent pain.
After talking about Maggy and calming his feelings, Noah asked Carlos to come over to his house the next night for them to discuss something very important in person, which his friend readily accepted.
After hanging up the phone, Noah drove home listening to a quiet song on the radio. It was funny that even after so many years had passed, country and lo-fi songs were still the most relaxing songs to listen to for him while driving.
With the car already in the garage, Noah went into the kitchen to prepare dinner for himself and his two companions, Lilith and Terrence. But while he was cooking, he was using his cell phone to look for an option that he had deprived himself of using for some time, but that he now felt would be necessary.
'To speed up my plans, I will need to take some risks,' Noah thought, as he clicked on a specific button in the GBC application.
[Solo Fortress]
He had thought many times about trying to invade a Fortress on his own, but he didn't feel prepared for it, since he wouldn't know what to do if he suffered an injury and couldn't keep fighting due to it, in the end he would just become a target fragile for the monsters to devour.
But after the friendly reminder he received from the demon today, and mainly because of the new ability that [Hell Flames] had received, of being able to heal from wounds now as well, Noah was much more confident of breaking into a Fortress alone.
But he wouldn't take any chances with a Rank E Fortress. Noah knew that that would be too much for him to take, since the last Rank E Fortress that he invaded had been extremely dangerous even though there were 14 other people with him in there supporting him. There was no way he was going to try to invade a place like that alone.
Once he had a full stomach, Noah set the app to search for a Rank E Fortress that could be invaded by a lone person, and went to sleep.
His plan would be much easier to resolve if he could go alone, without having to notify the government, but in order to avoid the catastrophic number of deaths that happened to the Blessed Ones who invaded the Fortresses freely as soon as the portals had originally appeared, the government had to intervene. At least, that was the policy with the portals that the planet's government had adopted. Noah had never left the planet. Information was hardly transmitted from one planet to another, unless it was something very important. But it was very likely that the government was just withholding certain types of information so as not to make the population angry over something.
But luckily for Noah, as soon as he woke up the next day, his request to invade a Rank E Fortress alone was accepted, mainly because of the perfect record he had achieved in his recent raids, without even having a single teammate killed during any of the various raids he underwent.
The designated Fortress was one of the low-level Fortresses, which were often separated exactly for this type of situation where a Blessed One wanted to invade a Fortress with fewer people than normal: either with a small group of friends, or perhaps a smaller group elite invasion team that did not want to get involved with other people.
Noah was one of the few who had asked to invade a Fortress alone this year, so his request was approved, even though the records of how many Blessed died trying to invade Fortresses alone was rather pessimistic.
'We are probably just government lab mice. I have no doubt that my request was approved only for them to try to find out if it is possible to deal with lower level Fortresses with only one Blessed. If that were possible, they would probably save a lot of money, since they would not have to pay as much money to quite so many people to complete Fortresses anymore. And if it were not possible, at most, many of the Blessed Ones like me who went solo, who in their view were "being very greedy and never knew how to measure their own strength", would die. This often happened, since normally those who would invade Fortresses on their own were people who were looking at the high prize money they gave.'
A normal Rank E Fortress would pay a raid group $1,000 each, while a Rank D Fortress would pay $3,000 to each in the group. But if someone were to invade a Fortress alone, the money earned would increase for them. The user who invaded the Fortress would receive 10x the amount they would receive normally if they had invaded that place with 15 people. The government would keep the remaining 5 parties.
That meant that if a party invaded a low-tier Rank E Fortress, each of the group would receive $700, but alone, a Blessed could receive $7,000, which was more than 2x the payment that someone would receive when invading a Rank D Fortress. But unfortunately, normal Blessed Rank Ds were unable to invade Fortresses alone, even if they were Rank E Fortresses, because of the limitations they had in their strength.
Wizards did not have infinite mana to use spells without stopping to prevent themselves from being attacked by monsters, while warriors would hardly be able to inflict enough damage on monsters to kill them effectively without becoming exhausted or maimed without a healer to help them. Archers need no even comment.
But there was a Blessed person who did not suffer from any of these limitations, someone who could cause high damage, heal, had high mobility, and had no problems with energy reserves. That person was clearly Noah, who was now driving directly to the Fortress he would invade solo. Since he would not invade with a team, instead of sending him a bus, the app just sent the location directly to Noah's phone and he would get to go to the Fortress any way he preferred.
Thinking about what he would gain by invading this Fortress "alone", Noah couldn't help getting excited, thinking that level 04, in fact, would not be as far away as he had initially imagined.
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Please read the author's notes down here! hehe :3 ↓↓↓
We reach 6k votes this week, so we will have 6 extra chapters!
[4/6 Extra chapters this week.] [2/2 Daily Chapter]
Every 900 power stones will be +1 extra chapter for next week beside the 2 daily chapter :)