Online Game: I Started with Max Charisma and Caught the Goddess's Eye

Luca quickly grabbed the information provided by Bloody Knight Anwar and hurried back to his quarters.

The place now felt eerily empty. A residence originally meant for ten people was down to just him and Lucas. That at least gave him the quiet he needed to plan his next move.

When Luca returned, Lucas didn’t press him with questions. He simply said,

“If you need my help, just say the word. Whatever I can do, I’ll do it.”

Luca smiled and nodded.

Then he retreated to his room.

For him, the most important thing right now was to read through every bit of the material. Only after finishing all of it could he gain a rough understanding of the mission as a whole.

It took him an entire day, but at last he made it through every page.

The information provided by Bloody Knight Anwar confirmed that the Dragon King’s subordinates were indeed active around the Black Forest camp. The area where they were most likely to appear was the densest part of the woods.

For that reason, the report speculated that the secret base established by the Dragon King’s followers was hidden deep in that thick forest.

But to Luca, that felt like a surface-level clue.

The base might be somewhere in the dense woods—or it could all be a deliberate illusion crafted by the Dragon King’s subordinates.

He felt he had to go investigate personally.

“Do you think we can still find any important leads if we go investigate now?”

After finishing the material and mulling it over for a while, Luca turned to Sophia and asked. This update is available on noᴠelfire.net

Sophia had been studying the documents as well. She hesitated for a moment before answering.

“I think it’s going to be very hard to uncover any key leads now.”

“Why? Do you believe the Dragon King’s people have already fled?”

Luca seemed to have anticipated this response. He stayed calm and pressed further.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I think. Just two days ago, the dragon-man assassin launched a strike on the Black Forest camp, and he failed. The Dragon King’s subordinates must know by now.

They’ll definitely believe that staying around the Black Forest camp is extremely risky. So I think they’ve all left. That secret base is probably already abandoned as well.”

Sophia’s answer overlapped almost perfectly with Luca’s own thoughts.

Luca slowly nodded.

“If that’s the case, then as long as we can find the abandoned secret base, our mission will be considered complete.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

With that, Luca set out immediately.

He didn’t even stop to rest—despite having just spent an entire day reading through documents.

As he passed by Lucas, the older man called out loudly,

“You’re just heading out like this? Haven’t you taken a break? I really think you should rest before taking on the mission.”

“Thank you for your concern! I’m feeling great; I don’t need any rest.”

Luca’s voice came drifting back from a distance.

He was moving so fast that Lucas had no chance to say anything more.

Lucas shook his head helplessly.

“Young people are too reckless. There’s a good chance he’s going to run into serious trouble during this mission. But… that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Going through setbacks can be good for the young.”

Lucas believed it would be very difficult for Luca to complete this mission smoothly.

He didn’t know exactly what the task was, but in his mind, anything personally assigned by Bloody Knight Anwar had to be extremely challenging.

After leaving the Black Forest camp, Luca went straight to the area where the Dragon King’s subordinates most frequently appeared—the dense forest.

At the forest’s edge, he first spread out his Perception ability.

Wanting to avoid an ambush inside, he decided to get a rough sense of the forest’s overall situation before venturing deeper.

“There are only some monsters in the forest. I haven’t detected any enemies. But that doesn’t mean anything—they could all be hiding.”

After finishing his initial scan, Luca spoke quickly.

Then he stepped straight into the forest.

Perhaps because of the season, the entire woodland felt bleak.

Though the trees hadn’t yet shed all their leaves, there was little sign or sound of animal life. It felt as if the whole forest was inhabited only by plants.

After walking for quite a while, Luca suddenly stopped.

He scanned his surroundings warily, then activated his flame magic runes.

A wall of fire erupted around him.

His move left Sophia utterly shocked.

“What’s happening? Why did you suddenly summon a wall of fire? Did you sense an enemy?” Sophia asked quickly.

All along the way she had been scanning their surroundings as well, but she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

Luca’s sudden move left her completely puzzled.

“Don’t speak. Stay quiet,” Luca said in a low voice.

Sophia still didn’t understand what was going on, but she fell silent anyway.

Seconds ticked by. Just as her patience was about to run out, she suddenly sensed something moving stealthily outside the wall of fire.

Through the flames, she could feel the slow, flickering presence of figures gliding about.

At last Sophia understood why Luca had acted this way.

She immediately focused, ready to unleash her frost magic at any moment.

The shifting shapes around the fire wall grew more and more numerous, and Sophia’s tension rose with them.

She felt as though those flickering presences could spring an attack on her and Luca at any second.

Luca, however, was not as tense as she was.

He only watched the flickering figures cautiously.

He couldn’t yet determine exactly who or what they were.

They didn’t seem to be enemies—if they were, they would have attacked already.

But at the same time, there was something threatening about them.

Just as Luca hesitated, the sound of arrows cutting through the air came from the distance.

It was a sound he knew well—he instantly remembered hearing the same whistling of arrows at the abandoned manor.

The newcomers were the real enemies, and they were clearly subordinates of the Dragon King.

That meant the flickering figures at least were not Luca’s absolute foes.

As the arrow-whistle echoed and one by one the shifting silhouettes outside the fire wall fell, Luca sprang through the flames.

He had decided to fight alongside those mysterious figures.

His action made Sophia furious.

“What on earth are you doing?! Do you even realize how dangerous this is?”

Luca gave her no reply at all.

Because he believed that what needed to be done now was to wipe out all of the Dragon King’s subordinates.

Luca’s sudden appearance stunned both sides of the battle.

The Dragon King’s subordinates grew somewhat flustered.

They had already learned of the failed attack on the Black Forest camp, so they were on high alert to begin with. Their move here to eliminate the flickering figures had been nothing more than an attempt to secure their own safety.

The flickering figures, on the other hand, seemed very curious about Luca’s arrival—after all, he was helping them fight.

Because of Luca’s intervention, the battle between the two sides quickly ended.

The Dragon King’s subordinates were either killed or fled.

Luca had originally hoped to capture a few alive.

But every time one of the Dragon King’s subordinates was about to fall into his hands, the others would prioritize striking down that soon-to-be-captured comrade first.

When the fight was over, Luca couldn’t help but remark,

“Dragon King’s control over his subordinates is truly strict. His men would rather kill their own to prevent them from being captured.

It’s clear Dragon King is an utterly ruthless man. I’ll have to be extremely careful from here on out. If Dragon King is that ruthless, then his subordinates must be cut from the same cloth.”

As he muttered to himself, the flickering figures surrounded him.

Yet Luca felt no tension at all—he could sense no hostility from them.

“I came here to look for the secret base belonging to those people who just appeared. I hold no hostility toward you,” he said gently to the flickering figures.

No sooner had he spoken than one of the wavering figures glided forward a bit.

“The Dragon King’s subordinates’ secret base isn’t here. You’re looking in the wrong place. This forest is the territory of the Shadow of the Spiritual Creature. Leave at once. If you don’t want to become one of us, you must escape immediately.”

The moment Sophia heard the term “Shadow of the Spiritual Creature,” her emotions surged.

She quickly turned to Luca.

“Listen to it—we have to leave right now! We absolutely cannot become Shadow of the Spiritual Creature!”

Although Luca still wanted to ask more questions, Sophia’s emotions were far too agitated.

Luca also realized that becoming a Shadow of the Spiritual Creature might be an extremely terrible fate. So he quickly followed the direction indicated by the Shadow of the Spiritual Creature and hurried out of the dense forest.

A few minutes later, he burst out from the other side of the woods.

At that moment, he suddenly discovered that right in front of him stood the abandoned manor.