Defiance of the Fall

ed was the huge tiles currently, and they were neatly ordered in a corner.
There were also assortments of low-grade weapons with some basic equipment like tents and bandages, and Zac guessed that was the things from the sacks he had stolen so far.

There was also another corner that was filled with a respectable pile of Nexus Crystals and a few crystals.
They actually looked like skill crystals, and he took one out.
But as soon as he tried to glance at its contents he was blocked.

It was as though the information was protected by a password, or rather a riddle.
He received a stream of information that essentially told him that he needed to gain a certain understanding of arrays in order to get past the protection.
It was something like the trials that they would have Brazla perform to gain access to the Repository skills in the future.

’

There were also a couple of normal notepads and vials with pills inside.
Finally, there was a densely inscribed metal ball inside, and Zac curiously took it out.
The moment he held it in his hand he couldn ’t help grunting because he was barely able to hold on to it.
It was extremely heavy, making it feel like he was carrying one of those stones for strongman competitions.
That was saying something with his monstrous attributes, and Zac figured it must be made from some Spiritual Grade metals.

He had no idea what it was, and it provided no information for it either.
After looking it over he put it back.
For all he knew it could be a bomb, and he didn’t want to carry it in his arms.
Zac looked through all drawers on the desk afterward but found nothing interesting besides a large feather that might have been used as a pencil before.

There was also a door that led to an inner room, and after stripping the paintings from the wall he walked inside.
It was a meditation chamber with a beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding mountains.
There was also a similar mat as the one he had already taken, and he quickly snatched that one as well.
Unfortunately, there were no hidden treasures beneath it as with the other one.

He was about to head back but some change in the periphery of his vision made him curiously look over.
Something was happening on another mountain.
A huge fire had flashed into existence in an instance, spreading over a hundred meters.
Zac could even hear the explosion two mountains over.

Looked like someone with pretty decent power was flexing his or her muscles.
As Zac was looking more closely at the mountains he actually saw a little bit of movement here and there.
Things were really kicking into motion, filling Zac with some eagerness to move on to the next place.

Zac scoured the palace for anything else of value, but he couldn’t find it.
He did find some exquisite furniture in a dining room though, and unceremoniously threw everything inside the pouch.
There was no need to be discerning with the gargantuan space inside, and anything that caught his eye went into the sack.

Since he was done he exited the same way he came, but to his surprise two people stood outside carefully looking at the entrance.
However, when they saw Zac emerging their brows rose and they quickly used some sort of escape skill without hesitation, making Zac unable to guess where they went.

Zac tried to figure out their tracks for a bit, but that wasn’t his strong suit.
Instead, he headed down the mountain in the opposite direction from the one he came from.
If that duo wanted to they were welcome to follow so that he could loot their pouches as well.

’

The direction Zac walked was partly chosen due to not wanting double-track, but also that one of the mountains in this direction looked caught his eyes earlier.
It was extremely steep, with a modest mansion on top.
The thing that drew his attention though was the hidden hanging fields that seemed to be cut inside the mountain itself, and apparently only accessible from the palace above.

He couldn’t really tell from the distance, but it truly looked like fields made for growing Spiritual herbs.
Perhaps the fields were holding untold treasures since Spiritual Herbs generally grew stronger the higher their age was.
Herbs that had absorbed Cosmic Energy for thousands of years would each be worth a fortune, and he couldn’t stop a creepy smile from appearing on his face as he thought about looting a whole field of them.

That very smile seemed to have an astounding effect since he ran into a young girl who was furtively climbing toward the peak he just left.
The moment he saw Zac with his grin she flinched in fright, and unhesitantly crushed the token in her hands.

Zac didn’t even have time to react before the girl winked out of existence.
Her sudden disappearance made Zac more certain about his hypothesis that the delay was dependent on power or wealth, as the girl seemed to be a real weakling, to the point she actually walked with her token in hand.

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As he descended the mountain there wasn’t really anything really worth noting.
There was another temple at the mid-way point, but it was reduced to only rubble.
Zac briefly tried to look through the ruins for some more treasure, but the hanging gardens were beckoning him, and he quickly gave up the idea of a proper excavation.

Finally, after a mad dash he found himself at the foot of the mountain, and to his delight it was teeming with beasts.
He saw tens of the black rats frenziedly rip apart the carcass of a large bear, and the next moment he was attacked by a pack of wolves.

It was as though the crevices between the mountains were made out of natural barriers of beasts.
Unless one had decent power or a larger group it would be suicide to try to change mountain to explore.
Seeing this many targets for grinding his ladder position he wanted to just go on a rampage, but he stopped himself.

Getting a high position on the Hunter ladder this early wasn ’t necessarily a good thing.
People would run for the hills if they spotted him, making it harder for him to liberate people from their cosmos sacks.
Instead, his eyes turned up toward the gardens that were no longer visible from this vantage.

Zac had his axe in his hand and greed in his eyes, so a corridor of carnage was quickly carved toward the neighboring mountain.