Three men sat in a circle around a small campfire and chatted happily in the night. Each of these people came to this part of the land not long ago and they only barely reached the six hundredth level. All of them were only two to three levels beyond and even that took them about five years, but they couldn’t wait any longer. As three brothers coming from the outskirts of Ketarn, they always dreamed of coming to the Trigon Kingdom.

Since they all came from the western parts, they only knew of the Trigon Kingdom. It was only natural that neither the elves nor the demons would accept common humans in their territories, much less the undead. The Shikanai Dynasty was a human-filled place which despised every other race, but naturally, these three brothers came from too far away and didn’t even know of its existence. Although they’ve finally reached the capital city of Trigon, they didn’t want to enter in the middle of the night.

They knew that they’d have to have ID cards to enjoy the safety of the city and didn’t wish to run into someone dangerous in the middle of the night. After all, in the capital city, they’d be happy if they could serve a smaller organisation with their current power. But the possibility of living their lives in a peaceful city and even earning a few world crystals was a great opportunity for them.

On the outskirts of Ketarn were many smaller villages and cities, controlled by smaller forces, though these ‘weak’ leaders could be invincible kings and emperors on Dink or Dunk, here, they were nothing but trash.

“This place is indeed incredible. Even most of the common folk are at the level of our village chief,” the black haired man shook his head, the fire lighting up his face in the dark. Naturally, they didn’t light it because they felt cold. But even if one left behind their mortal shells and reached this high level, they’d still want to enjoy the warmth of the fire, the taste of delicious food and fine drinks.

“Indeed, brother Boulei,” his twin brother sighed in exasperation. The difference was about twenty to fifty levels compared to the common folk of the capital city. Generally speaking, most of them were at the six hundred and twentieth or fiftieth level which meant that they were twice or even five times as strong as these brothers. In a battle, even a tiny bit of difference could tip the scale, much less if someone had twice your power.

Boulei was about to continue speaking when he heard a crack and turned towards the origin of the sound. There stood next to a tree, her hand on its bark, a long and black haired beauty. Her green eyes shone with a dim light in the dark and her thick and rosy lips seemed to invite these men for a kiss as they parted ways, “How careless of me,” her voice like an angel, she laughed.

Boulei’s eyes ran down on her sexy body and he couldn’t help but lick his dry lips without his notice. Although the girl didn’t show off any skin since she wore a light leather armour, it fit her body perfectly and revealed every curve of her body. As the fire gave some light to the edges, it only accentuated her beauty even more. Seeing her fair and unblemished skin, Boulei felt as if he was struck by a thunder. Even if taken literally, it wouldn’t cause any damage to him since he reached the sixth realm.

“This is love at first sight,” he muttered in an inaudible voice. Despite being experts, not even his brothers understood what he said since he clustered the words way too much into a single breath.

Inspect, Boulei thought while looking at the woman, curious to see her level, but all he got was a black screen, stating that he couldn’t read her stats due to a skill. Biting his lower lips, he looked to the side a bit disappointed. After a bit of hesitation, he gathered all his courage and said, “Who could this beautiful Miss be?”

Hearing their brother’s question and the words he picked, they guessed what he mumbled before. They were very talented in their village for reaching this level in just forty thousand years and although they had seen and bed beautiful women, they never held either of them in high regard. Still, the fact that somebody was walking around in a forest, at night, alerted these brothers and made them feel a bit cautious. After all, why would somebody stroll in the dark forest?

“My name is Elena,” the girl replied with a smile.

Boulei felt his heart pick up its pace and beat a bit quicker than before. He never thought that after having a fulfilling life with everyone praising him for his talent on the outskirts, as soon as he came to the capital city, he’d fall for some random girl in the forest on the first sight. Realising this, even he felt ridiculous, but he couldn’t change the way his heart felt.

Seeing that she was looking at him expectantly, he came to his senses and said, “Ah! I’m sorry for my rudeness. My name is Boulei Warton of the Warton family!” He introduced himself as if his family was a big clan, but he shortly came to his senses and realised that he wasn’t in his village anymore. He was a nobody here and his family would be no more than a regular one here.

Pointing at his twin brother, he said, “His name is Gin Warton, my second brother” - and after pointing at his brown-haired man, he said - “and he is our youngest brother, Han Warton.”

Elena raised her brows, a bit surprised to hear Boulei say even his family name since it wasn’t a common thing unless one had a strong background and wanted to show it off. Seeing her reaction, Boulai raised his hands, “Oh, I just wanted to properly introduce myself to the Miss. My family is just a common one.”

He was looking at Elena the whole time and considering her reactions, she seemed to be a rather friendly woman who didn’t really care about something like background.

She’s either strong and doesn’t care about background or she has a powerful background. Or maybe she’s just different than the girls in my village? Boulei thought to himself, not sure what to think about Elena. Either way, she excited him even more with those reactions.

“Haha, it’s alright. How come you three brothers are here, all alone in the forest?” she frowned.

At this time, Han, the youngest brother replied in the same manner, “We could ask the same.”

Elena turned to look at him and nodded her head, “That’s true. But I’m hunting beasts and I was just curious why would you not sleep in the city instead.” She stepped forth, revealing a long dagger in her left hand, dripping with crimson blood. With a thought, some water appeared and washed off the blade and then she sheathed her dagger, her hand like lightning. Despite being at a similar level, these brothers could barely perceive her hand and they weren’t sure if it was her full speed.

They didn’t know that Elena was trying to fool them and make them think that the latter was the truth. Boulei looked at Han with displeasure before turning towards Elena, “Miss, we’re just camping out before entering the capital city. I imagine nobody would hand out ID cards in the middle of the night,” Boulei laughed.

“Hmm- certainly, but why would you need ID cards to enter the city?” she tilted her head to the side. At that, Boulei realised that he just made it sound as if they were afraid of entering without the guards’ protection. Although that was the case, he didn’t want to make Elena think that they were cowards, but it was too late since he couldn’t turn back time and make his words unspoken.

“Why the long face? You don’t need to feel ashamed. I imagine you come from a far away place and you just want to make sure. In my opinion, it’s a clever move,” Elena consoled him with a smile. Hearing her reply, even the other two brothers felt less suspicious of Elena and saw her in a much better light.

“Well, I should be on my way. We’ll probably meet again, sooner or later,” she turned around and disappeared from their sight. They all sensed that she didn’t teleport anywhere, she just simply disappeared from their scope of senses. To them, this meant that she was much stronger than them since they couldn’t even see her movements. They didn’t know that since it was night, Elena could teleport even without using the laws of space. ‘Shadows’ were everywhere, after all.

“Brothers, I fell in love,” Boulei broke the silence with a loud sigh a few seconds later.

“Are you for real? You don’t even know her…” Han frowned.

“I don’t, but she seems to be a nice person and her smile, ah, how beautiful. I wouldn’t mind giving up on other women to be with her!”

“Uwah, big brother had been smitten with the love hammer, it seems,” Gin used their local phrase, said exactly in these sorts of moments.

“I was!” Boulei laughed without reservation. Sensing a monster run towards them, they stood up and quickly took care of it together by attacking it frontally. As the wolf fell to the ground, its head missing, they noticed its hind legs and tail corroded and turned black. Furrowing his brows, Gin poked its leg and it simply fell apart and turned into black dust. As Gin raised his head, he saw a pair of green eyes shining with a bright light staring back at him from far away. He immediately reached for his weapon as a sense of fear filled his whole body.

“Bro, what’s wrong? Why are you shaking?” Boulei made him face him. Gin turned towards his big brother only for a moment before turning back towards the eyes, but that pair of eyes were nowhere to be seen by then.

“Did you see something?” Boulei pressed on.

Remembering Elena’s smiling face and her strange eyes, Gin connected the dots. “Brother… If you aren’t out of your mind, please forget about that woman. I don’t think she’s someone you could ever hope to attain,” Gin grabbed Boulei’s clothes as he stood up and looked into his eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Boulei raised his brows.

“Brother, just heed my words, please. I don’t know who she is, but I’m certain now that I don’t want to find out,” he said through gritted teeth, recalling those cold eyes that seemed to penetrate his very being. He felt as if he had been judged by a god, but what was the judgment?

---

A black panther moved around in the camp built around the mountain without anyone’s notice. Hearing footsteps, it turned into a shadow and hid its presence completely. A moment later a man passed by with a lantern in his hand, whistling happily. When he disappeared from sight, the shadow flickered and moved deeper into the mountain through the tunnels. This panther was naturally Dred and this was the eighth tunnel he entered.

Upon reaching its end, he found a woman at the end of it who closed her eyes and tapped the rock in front of her. The rock disintegrated and turned into dust and revealed thirty world crystals, the size of an acorn. The woman used wind magic to make them move towards her and when they got within a range of five meters, the crystals disappeared. Five meters was the boundary of spatial rings, so Dred now understood where the world crystals were stored.

The side of the Dwarf Mountain was riddled with thousands of tunnels and there were still new holes made while in others, Dred just found people picking up the world crystals. He felt that a large amount of mana and space energy was clustered up in the mountain and these crystals kept forming out of thin air. Seeing the number of tunnels, Dred estimated that in a single day, at least a million world crystals would form, adding to that the new tunnels.

A rich mine like this was surely in the hands of the three kings, he thought to himself. After all, why would people over the nine hundredth level let some nobles be in possession of a mine like this? Dred spent a whole night and day doing nothing but observing the movements of people in the camp. Every time the workers shifted, they pulled off their rings and gave them to a much stronger person in the main building located at the foot of the mountain. Surely, nobody here cared about such a short distance, a mountain could be passed in the blink of an eye, after all.

The next day, Dred decided to finally act. The workers in the tunnels weren’t strong and some of them weren’t even at the six hundredth level, but then again, Dred didn’t want to kill random people for world crystals without knowing anything about them. He was no bandit, after all. That being the case, he targeted those who were beneath the sixth realm. When felt they collected enough, he struck the back of their neck and made them fall unconscious and robbed them of their spatial rings.

He soon found out that these rings weren’t blood-bonded, so he could freely wear them and remove them and even gift them to other people. Although this meant that protecting one’s possession would be hard, these rings were perfect for collecting world crystals and then giving them all to one person.

The people in the tunnel had great luck since Dred didn’t have to kill them this way. Logically speaking, why would someone bother to hold back when they tried to rob? Even if the kingdom handed out valuable blood-bonded rings to these simple workers, once they got killed, the rings could be taken anyway. But who would dare to attack the mine of the Trigon Kingdom and who could sneak in without anyone’s notice? The answer was obvious, only someone at the Kings’ level, but people of that calibre wouldn’t play small-time robbers.

Dred took both the rings and the world crystals and stored the crystals in his own spatial ring. He dashed through many tunnels, knowing which tunnel had weak and which tunnel had strong people in it. Naturally, where he knocked out the worker, he also finished their job for the day… Pulling off something like this was impossible for common people and races. Hiding one’s presence was one thing, but to hide even the soul was another. But thanks to Dred’s stealth specialisation and legendary class, not to mention cosmological constant, he was basically invisible. Maybe not even the three kings could sense his presence once he hid completely.

Only a few hours later when the shifts finished did the person in charge of the mine realised, that many of the workers weren’t returning for some reason. Leaving his house at the foot of the mountain, he teleported into one of the tunnels and used his senses. Realising that many of the weaker workers were knocked out, the man stomped on the ground in anger and fear as well. How could he not notice someone appear here and knock out the weaker ones and even leave? Surely, the defense wasn’t too high since nobody dared to cause trouble here and even if they attacked the mine, the kings would appear and kill the attacker.

Wiping his wet forehead, the man pondered on how to make his report… without losing his head. When he returned to his cabin at the foot of the mountain and picked up a few things to get ready to teleport back to the capital city, he noticed a piece of paper on the table. Furrowing his brows, he walked over and read the text aloud.

“These crystals will be better off in the hands of the elves. Only elves should possess important things!”

As he finished reading, he felt like tearing the paper into tiny pieces, but he held back his wrath and took it with him instead. Maybe his life would be spared if he served with some information about their offender.

“But for it to be these damned elves,” the man sighed. People of Trigon hated the elves because long ago, the elves enslaved the same people who are now nobles of Trigon. Only when the three ninth realm experts - the current kings emerged - were they freed and that was the time when they formed the Trigon Kingdom. The elves haven’t attacked the kingdom openly before, but this was definitely a direct provocation!

What would become of this? The man could only sigh and guess. But he was sure that the future would be a rough one.

“Times are changing,” he shook his head and looked up at the peaceful blue sky. Maybe it wouldn’t be so peaceful for long.

Little did he know that the elves had nothing to do with this and Dred was the one who wanted to ignite a spark of fire to draw their attention away from the devourers. Thanks to Vince’s report not long ago, he came up with a plan instantly. Even if there was only friction or a few skirmishes, it’d be more than enough for them to deal with people secretly.

A few thousand kilometers away, Dred walked through the forest in his demon form, whistling happily. Seeing the other mine Cor found, his eyes lit up.

It was time to rob yet another mine…