Chapter 2089: New Findings

A/N: Thank you for your patience, everyone! I still had limited time, so I haven’t taken a look at the notifications (comments, reviews, etc) yet as I’m catching up on writing. I will reply to your lovely messages and gifts soon! MWAH!

Btw, this one chap today, but it’s long! As mentioned, it’s much more cost-effective for y’all!

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The two level 15 half-orcs with Althea in this mission were called Tak and Hiss. Tak was a half-orc with animalistic traits similar to the red panda (very cute). On the other hand, Tamon was a full-blooded Orc. He looked a lot like a giant spiritual meerkat with longer appendages.

When she asked them to wear vine bracelets, they didn’t think too much of it. They just thought that since she was a wood user, perhaps she had a way to detect the plants’ presence, allowing her to know whenever they were nearby.

It was, in fact, true; the vines did indeed have this function. However, after Althea awakened the potential of the wood element, a lot of other things became instinctual to her.

It began with vines and plants physically in contact with her. For example, vines hidden underneath her sleeves. She could control it with increasing proficiency, and in ways other wood users wouldn’t be able to do.

For example, most wood users could control their vines and branches to wrap an enemy’s leg. Althea, after some practice, could use them to open jars.

The limitation for this technique was proximity. Once it was detached from her, the difficulty of control rose exponentially.

It was much like trying to draw with one’s non-dominant hand, except the graphite tip was detached from the pencil’s main body, and you had to balance that, too.

And when it was too far, it was like drawing with a paintbrush on a stick, making it even more impossible to write anything. Fortunately, the other two were in the crowd, close enough for her to write something.

Still, frankly, she was not sure they’d understand her message at all. Luckily, they really did understand, though technically the [I caused this] she wanted to write looked more like [A cosh wis].

The two of them headed out to follow the priest’s movements. It was already implied that what happened to the women was due to her, and she had already sent an aether letter, so it would be up to the others to coordinate things.

She had secretly climbed a tree and sent an aether letter, telling the others that the slaves were about to be taken out, not to be scared of their appearances, and be warned that there’d be enemies with them.

As for the maximum number of plants she could control at a time, she could control more as long as it was within a few meters distance from her. After all, when she was on berserk, her plants could even suck vitality out of enemies.

Anyway, the priest made a decision to pull the women outside the territory in the end. He ordered the others to build a corral within a hundred meters of the territory’s edge and they’d put the women there for observation.

It was not a stupid idea, and when the effect of the medicine expired, they’d find out that it was fake. However, even if they set up a dozen orcs to camp out, Altheaa wasn’t too worried.

Once they were outside the territory, they’d be without the protection of the Rules, and they’d be easier to deal with.

In any case, there had indeed been suspicions, especially among the intelligent half-orcs, but the group had no choice but to throw them out.

Some smarter half-orcs didn’t forget to give commands, however. "If you find anything suspicious outside other than monsters, alert us immediately."

Of course, to alert others was probably just to yell at the top of their lungs. Not many territories had flares or the equivalent of it.

As for the women’s slavery status, Warrior City would have its ways. As for whether they’d attack this place was unknown. After all, wars were just the way of the world.

Many human territories had done a lot of evil too, some were worse and more disgusting, so there was no reason to target orc villages specifically. They simply wanted to discourage the practice of kidnapping women to impregnate them. It was no good for the entire race.

Besides, she had seen that—like any other place—this village had the good and the bad citizens. How Warrior City would handle this place after that was none of her business.

After this would be out of her hands, she just hoped the people they wanted to rescue were rescued.

While people were busy gathering the ill and pushing them out (they were so disgusted they used several layers of tanned fabric to carry them), the confused women could only follow along or be dragged. Althea took this chance to check a few other areas.

She started with areas she knew the Lord frequented, like areas near the Center. She couldn’t access most floors of the center, but she reckoned there might be some clues about the whole elementalist half-orc thing. She had a feeling there was more to it than just a mutation.

When she saw no changes, she was a bit disappointed. Things changed when, at some point, her aether letter heated up and she went up another tree to take a look.

It was a message from Virion’s side, who had already met up with Tamon, who did not have his own aether letter. Tamon’s fingers were short, and he wasn’t very good at writing (there was also a learning limitation for some orcs), so they didn’t find a point for it.

After reuniting with the others and consolidating data, only then did they send a message to Althea, who was still willingly inside the village.

While Althea was with the women slaves, the other two were naturally not idle. Tamon, in particular, followed the location that the local orcs brought the captured elementalists.

Althea followed the instructions and found herself in a community with large villas. Althea sent a message back, telling them she would investigate.

And she would appreciate it if they could continue harassing the locals, concentrating most of the forces away from the central areas. As for how Virion and the others would do this, she didn’t really care. At their levels, it wouldn’t be a problem.

With that, Althea could focus on her investigation. It was just that the territory had its rules, even the basic ones, so strangers could not casually head inside private structures outside of wars.

However, this rule—like everything else—had the default version and the detailed version. The default was that residential system buildings would only be accessible—outside of wars—to their direct owners and a certain number of guests registered.

Any additional costs incurred. The area controlled was also just the structures themselves.

In fact, in Alterra, the reason they could assign uniform accessibility rules to the lot assigned to Villas was only that that ’lot’ was a farm. A blank lot wouldn’t have been able to receive extra protection without extra (and excessive) costs.

It so happened that outside of the default, the lots in this village were accessible to all.

It was likely because this place went to war whenever it could. Places like these generally had minimal investments in Rules and Regulations—there was no point; they’d be broken most of the time, anyway.

Now, Althea could take advantage.

Althea used her stealth skills to head deeper into the garden areas. There were a number of guards, but there weren’t as many because a lot had been mobilized to handle the events outside.

She used her earth skills to sense the vibration around the structure to map out some areas to hide. Ideally, she could find out more about what was behind the door and, if needed, an alternate access to the inside.

This wouldn’t work well with system buildings, but she got lucky—there was actually a manual construction in this lot!

She could even use her ability to have a rough outline of the place. Generally speaking, even the most advanced ’scanning’ couldn’t go through system buildings.

At the same time, even if it was manual construction, there would still be plenty of passive interference to her prying because raw materials were also infused with aether.

It was why even manual buildings had their own strengths. As long as they were built properly and the quality and function of the raw materials were maximized, their durability wouldn’t be much inferior to system buildings. Most system buildings didn’t have the wall’s defense arrays, after all.

But who told Althea to have the weird amplifying metal found all the way in the desert?

It wasn’t so magical that she could suddenly see through walls, but it was enough for her to have a more detailed view of its exteriors—i.e. The area touching the ground underneath her feet—as well as get a glimpse or shadow some meters into the interior.

So far, she surmised that the room behind the door was rather large and there seemed to be some life inside. She couldn’t sense anything more, however.

She soon found the hidden entrance to the tunnel, but it was closed. She wasn’t stupid to force it open, so she could only wait for it to open on its own, and then she’d sneak inside with her skills.

Fortunately, she did not have to wait too long. About ten minutes later, the door opened, revealing a human strutting around, heading to the villa like he owned the place.

Althea narrowed her eyes. A human? A full human? In a hostile ’extremist’ orc territory?