I could fairly easily block the first shot because it was shot towards me from the front, the place where screens appeared. A screen would always move with the user's vision, so as long as I looked straight ahead and summoned a fairly big one with [Grand Appraisal], it would cover the when front of my body.

But if the shot came from behind, I would have to first turn around to make it appear in the right place, and as I mentioned before, my body had no hope of keeping up with the speed of my mind, more so after my recent spike in Intelligence.

So, there was only one option.

I called forth all my mana, and distributed it to the enchantments all around my core.

The next moment, an almost solid shield of compressed Mana surrounded my fragile core, and a dagger flying at an almost supersonic speed crashed into it.

And the dagger was stopped, only sinking in a couple of centimeters into the metal and causing a few ripples in the shield.

'Fuck, those enchantments are OP. They could probably stop something with five times the force, given enough mana.'

I turned around to face the stupefied woman as I put another 80 points into Capacity. That hit right there had drained 60% of my mana, despite having been stopped seamessly.

A look of disbelief manage to break to her facade and show on her face, but it was quickly suppressed as she, not without effort, regained her trademark amused look. Somehow, she still hadn't lost her composure.

"Oh wow~, it seems you have quite a good armor, and a tough body too... how manly~. Well, you could withstand hundreds of bolts of lightning withthout much problem, so this much was to be expected, right?."

She put a hand on her mouth and laughed lightly, but I could see she was more surprised than she let on, slightly panicked even. If my speculation was right, she had managed to get behind me with the help of [Backstab], and combined it with her ultimate skill, [Surehit Throw], meaning she probably wouldn't be able to use it again—

While I was distracted in my ponderings, she grabbed the chance and lunged at me, or more accurately [Lunge]'d at me, pointing her dagger at my neck. Thankfully, that was the place screens appeared, and I managed to block her attack by crystallizing a brief description of her dagger, incurring minimal costs, although still making my soul strain increase further.

She rapidly backed away, faster than my eyes could follow, then threw yet another dagger at my leg.

This one was clearly slower than the previous ones, which made me wonder if she was running out of juice. In fact, I managed to dodge it, the blade barely clashing against my metallic surface.

I was glad that the sense of touch in this body filtered out almost all the pain, leaving only a trace to remind me I had been hit.

But, as I was feeling good with myself, I suddenly noticed a dagger appear less than a meter in front of me, going as fast as the one aimed for my chest earlier.

'Did she hide the shot with shadow mana!?'

I had no time to wonder, as I mentally scrambled to put a screen in between the dagger and my forehead.

Unfortunately, I was too late, and the screen couldn't appear before the dagger cut through my wooden mask and sunk deep into my forehead, ignoring all resistance as only the hilt was left exposed.

Ahead of me, that darned woman looked at me with an expectant expression, as if waiting for me to fall down in order to strip me of my secrets.

I wouldn't let her have that pleasure.

Because, luckily, other than the sensing and voice enchantments, practically nothing else of importance went on in my head, meaning the dagger just now had sliced through nothing but useless metal. It made me wonder why the head was even there in the first place, instead of putting eyes and ears to the torso. It would look weird as hell, but it would surely be more efficient, right?

In any case, under her disbelieving gaze, I flew off into the night sky, constantly throwing 'air' screens at her out of spite, despite being fully aware that none of them would hit true.

She soon got out of my view, but that didn't stop me from frantically flying away from her. Who knows, she might have an extremely sharp vision that could see me even now and extreme speed that could keep up with my flight. While I flew north, keeping check on my mana levels to prevent running out in mid-air, I explained what had just happened to Flora, who hadn't been able to glimpse much from what she saw, due to lacking hearing and her very limited vision. We really needed to fool some people into being 'repelled'.

She became extremely worried when I finished explaining, demanding that I took care of my injuries, but I calmed her down, hammering the point that nothing critical had been hit. Honestly, half the reason I did that was to calm myself down.

After my mana started running dangerously low, I landed on a small cave in a rocky region, and use the downtime to wrack my brains trying to analyse how and why this happened, and what it could entail.

'Alright, so the Shadow Emporium must have installed some kind of magical device to tell them who murdered their people or something, because there definitely weren't any witnesses back then.

But she only seemed to know of my appearance, and not my status, my Status or my nature as a metal golem, since she thought that my mythril exterior was some kind of armor and the enchantments in my legs were artifacts, also, she aimed for the head when she tried to kill me...'

I slumped back onto the cold, rocky wall, my hand running through my forehead, a habit from back when I had hair over it to pull back.

'Then how did she know I didn't have a class when I killed the rogues? Oh yeah, they must've been spying on me back when I participated in the tournament... but why did they wait until now to take action in that case? I'm also pretty sure nobody followed me throughout my treck through the desert...'

I decided to forego the endeavor of deducing why things happened as they did, and instead focused on what consequences they would have.

'It's a good thing I wasn't able to even harm the Section Leader, since it means the Emporium won't go all out to hunt me... but they will probably be on the lookout for any sightings of me. Damn. In fact, maybe they're watching me through some kind of magical surveillance even now...'

Out of caution, I thoroughly checked my surroundings for any external mana signatures, something I'd only recently become able to do after improving my Intelligence, and sighed in relief as I found nothing.

I had never been the cautious type, but it seemed like it might be necessary to make a conscious effort to change that from now on.

'The only reason I'm in the damn Hearthen Empire in the first place is to meet that Tonnas guy and see if he can install my right arm, or maybe refer me to an alchemist or healer capable of restoring my human body, why did it all have to get so complicated!?

Hey, [Olden Knowledge], where did Tonnas go after completing that project for the royal family?'

...as always, there was no response. I expected of course, as I had, through extensive testing, found out more or less where the limits of the skill lay.

It would tell me anything stored within my memories, along with anything that I could find out by asking the right questions to the right people, and paying the right price. Also, it would only tell me things I would be able to otherwise find out within a limited period, most likely around one or two days.

This made the Skill extremely good in cities, where information brokers were commonplace, but fairly useless in the middle of the desert, where I'd spent the past few weeks.

But now, I was surrounded by villages and towns within walking distance in a day. And yet the question still wasn't answered. But, out of pure unwillingness, this time, I decided to go for a different question.

'Is there some way for me to know where Tonnas is right now?'

I did not expect anything, but to my pleasant surprise, my query was answered.

On the foot of Mount Hearth, there is an intricate labrinth of caves. Legend says that, at the very bottom, lies an old creature that can see the past and the future, and that knows the answers to all the questions.

'Wait wait wait, is this for real? I have to go there now!'

'Hmmm? Go where?'

'Oh, sorry Flora, didn't mean to send that thought over. But, to answer your question, we're going to the place where I'll finally get the answers I've been looking for!'

I sprung up from my sitting position, skipped my way out of the cave and then started making my towards—

'Wait, in what direction is the mountain at?'

At the realisation, my shoulders slumped, and I begrudgingly went back into the cave, to wait for [Olden Knowledge] to recharge.

'She really is quite a quirky one, to only deign to talk to me once a day. Unfortunately, she's just too damn good for me to ignore her or knock her down a peg.'