The Author's POV

"Hm."

My brows furrowed as I took a step out of the room.

Turning my head and staring towards the right, a scene of carnage appeared in my vision. Holding onto an enormous axe, an orc swung it horizontally, in wild abandon. As the axe moved, it tore the air apart and a whistling sound arose. What followed after was a fountain of blood as the axe split the bodies of several duergars in two.

"Is he the one you brought along with you?" I asked as I turned to face Waylan again.

Taking a closer look at him, my brows jumped up lightly, "That aside, what in the world happened to you?"

Now that I had taken a closer look at Waylan, his complexion seemed to be quite pale. His breathing was rough, and with both of his hands on his knees, he looked to be having a rough time.

"Haaa…haa… Don't worry too much. In order to get rid of the elder, I was forced to use my strongest move. I already drank a potion, I should be good in a bit. What about you? You don't seem to be in optimal shape as well."

Waylan said as he pointed at my right arm. Lowering my head and staring at my arm, I helplessly shrugged, "It happened because of my inexperience."

"…Ah."

At my words, Waylan had a sudden look of understanding.

He then patted me on the shoulder.

"Don't worry about it. I've been through it too. If you think duergars and dwarves are easy to fight just because of their small statures, you're damn wrong. Those bastards could become one hell of a tough opponent. Especially since they seem to have an endless amount of tricks up in their arsenal."

"…I learned this the hard way."

I replied with a bitter smile.

Just as Waylan said, duergars were very tricky opponents. Possessing an arsenal packed with a multitude of different artifacts, their attack pattern was almost unpredictable.

Unlike when fighting other opponents, I couldn't properly gauge what they would do next, making them that much harder to fight.

Furthermore, their cunning tactics that were aimed at my weak points made things even more annoying.

"By the way, what's that? I've never seen you with that before."

Disrupting me out of my thoughts was Waylan who pointed at my hand.

Leaning forward to get a closer look, he silently muttered, "It looks like a regular metal pole. Anything special about it?"

"Oh, this?"

Raising my left hand, revealing the long metal stuff, I swung it around.

Swiiish—

With each swing, the air split apart, and a crackling sound similar to that of a whiplash would arise.

It was pretty good.

Putting the bottom end of the metal rod on the ground, I leaned on it slightly.

"Just something I looted from the place. Since I can't use my arm I figured that this would do for now."

Another reason why I chose to go to the artifact testing room was obviously because of the artifacts.

That was a no-brainer.

Since my right hand was currently out of action, I took the liberty of taking the metal staff artifact that the duergar used against me.

Although there were other artifacts, I did not choose them since they were either far too high in rank and would rapidly consume my mana or were utility-based. Which meant that they had no use in my current situation.

"Now that you've reminded me, take this."

Remembering something, taking out a glove from my dimensional space, I handed it to Waylan.

"What's this?" He asked with a pointed look.

ranked artifact that I picked up. I thought that it might be useful

take care of the dampening system, communicating

I think

all frequencies and other methods that connected to

managed to destroy it, we'd essentially be removing the restrictions on communications and thus be able to communicate with Douglas, who was outside, as well as with the

go now. Ultruk just finished as well," Waylan said as he saw that

slightly, I briefly glanced in the orc's direction to make sure

seemed to have the same idea as me as he waited

"I'm here."

"Good. Let's go."

before Waylan, turning his head to

touched my face

I did not want

wanted to save mana, the mask I wore was just a regular skin mask. I had also removed the effects of the

better to be

"Ren!" Waylan hissed.

I answered while moving to

followed Waylan and Ultruk deep into the hall. The dampening system's location awaited

***

air as thunderous explosions rang

multitude of colors flashed in the air as two different forces clashed

wind gales emerging from the point of collision between the two forces shot

persisted for over ten minutes as both sides mercilessly attacked each

"Khh…"

blonde youth pushed his shield forward and blocked the wind gale that shot in his

stood rooted on

after a whole minute had passed that the youth could finally relax. Lowering his shield slightly, he thought back at the attack

from one of the