Sorry for the extended absence. I went through renovating my house and had all sorts of troubles doing so, leaving me close to a month without a proper home till I was done.

Since I couldn't find WHAT wasn't right on either iteration of the chapter, I sat down and reread the whole thing, just to get me back in the "feeling" of the story.

And then it clicked. I do have planned how the story will evolve, how the character will grow, what are the unique things that will happen, as well as what the motivation of the protagonist will be.

BUT. I messed up. The way I have planned the story to continue, and the way I have sketched the character to grow... don't match. To be honest, the way he is set up, I don't see a single reason why he would actually CARE enough and not simply take the least effort approach.

THAT was what was hindering me in writing this chapter (since this+the next were supposed to introduce the drive)

I'm putting this story on Hiatus for now. Maybe I'll rewrite it better in the future, or maybe I'll figure a way to fix the story (in my head) and then I'll pick it up again.

Sorry.

And thank all of you who read so far, who commented, who joined me in this journey to writing which was a first for me. (we even temporarily managed to break top 500 which was astonishing for me!)

So, THANK YOU again guys and girls, and SORRY (again)

(Below is part of the 3rd iteration of the chapter to complete the word count.)

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I tried to phase out the incessant buzzing of Spitha nagging me to finish as I gulped down the food as fast as I could, exterminating any and all enjoyment I would otherwise get out of eating and just going for sating my hunger. In the meantime, I made a dozen or so mental notes to never, ever, go on a quest spree without having enjoyed a plate of food beforehand.

In the meantime, I did manage to check out my new level 10 inscription talent, elemental inscription. To my surprise, it seemed that it was a ten-in-the-box talent. Basically, there were four different inscriptions, one for each element, and if you put them on a piece of armor, it would increase the resistance to the relevant elements, and if you put it on a weapon, it would add an element component to each attack corresponding to the inscription. Fire one seemed to be the most damaging one, but all others had some extra form of utility. Water did ice damage and slowed opponents reflexes, earth did acid damage and damaged metallic and organic armors, and air did lightning and had increased chance to interrupt an opponent.

Without even the chance for an after-meal nap, I was forced to stand up and continue forward.

The humidity kept rising as we marched deeper until, eventually, puddles of stale water started to appear, and with them, the familiar stink that usually accompanies them. The stench of the mire, the thinning vegetation, the low underbrush, all making it painfully obvious that we were deep in the swamp by now.

As we moved, a few lizardmen warriors started taking the place of the normal ones, until we reached the point where the whole squad of 3-4 we comprised of just them.

Unlike the normal lizardmen, their warriors had even darker hides, sturdy enough to cause half of Keros' arrows bounce harmlessly off it. Despite their muscles being quite bigger than their lesser counterparts they had amazing agility and speed, easily surpassing even me as they beelined towards Spitha.

Our fights stopped being the cakewalk they were just an hour ago, requiring proper positioning, strategy, and even consumable usage. I usually opened on the group from stealth, drawing initial aggro and using the acid inscription on my dagger to lower their armor so that Keros could immobilize them before Spitha started her bombardment.

The good thing was that an hour had passed since I've sent the elf away with my elementals, meaning their duration over there had expired and allowing me to summon them for my use. Unfortunately, Knight-kun could only keep one of them occupied, which didn't really helped much, and so I've chosen to instead go with a full pack composed out of four Aqua-chans and four Dirt-kuns for maximum damage output.

Since I lacked any aoe skill, I had to resort to making normal firebombs with infusion to try to keep aggro on me, since I was the only one who had even a miniscule amount of defense in between the three of us. Dirt-kuns' immobilizes and provoke were almost spammed to try to keep them grouped on me.

The biggest problem seemed to be our total lack of healing support. Even with ample usage of CC, my new armor, and my high dodge chance, every hit that managed to land left a gaping wound, forcing us to spend extended time resting. Of course, this gave the opportunity to both me and Spitha to go overboard with our mana usage, since we were usually forced to rest every two packs or so either way.

Of course, all those troublesome stuff came alongside plenty of blessings as well. Experience, both soul and skill, was pouring like rain. In addition, not only did the lizardmen warriors carried huge steel greatswords instead of tridents, but they also carried pouches filled with copper and silver. And last but not least, I seemed to be able to harvest their thick hide after we killed them, producing both a much sturdier base material, but also a few of their tail scales I'm the process.

The most annoying thing was that the time was ticking against us. Since there was also a return trip we had to make before the end of the day to actually complete the quest.

Slowly, the swamp gave way to greener plains, and the stale puddles of water started to be replaced by thin streams, moving lazily towards the east. And soon, the soft sound of a river echoed from somewhere in front, the old area of the Undines, and the border that separated the lizardmen and the elves, clearly being just in front of us.

Like the scout had already told us, the river was devoid of Undines. Usually, the water spirits would play and dance above the slow-moving surface of the river, but now, the only thing with life nearby seemed to be some sort of jumping fishes that disrupted the calm water and caused ripples to splash here and there.

We spent quite a few minutes with me scanning the banks of the river for anything out of order, but even with Dirt-kuns helping with the tracking, we couldn't find anything except scarce footprints of small packs of lizardmen. Certainly, nothing large enough that could have caused such widescale disappearance.

As we were getting ready to move forwards, towards the other side of the river and the marsh that was the original lizardmen territory, I finally caught something on my minimap. Unexpectedly, it wasn't something that procc-ed through tracking, but rather through pathfinder. I would have never given a second glance on the tiny path that started on the edge of the river and winded towards the mountains in the distance if it wasn't clearly shown on my map as a road.

Looking closer, it suddenly dawned on me that the stray, white, stones that dotted the path were not actually simple rocks. Examining one over it became painfully obvious that those, at some point in the past, were actually carved flat to pave a road.

Now, randomly scattered around and half-buried, they were hard to notice. But at some point, those faded white rocks were part of something grand, something like an antiquated highway traveling towards the mountains in the far distance.

The most curious thing was that, according to my map, there wasn't a road on the opposite side of the riverbed. Like it ended here.

Just to be certain, I dived in it once more to swim back and check closely for signs of the ancient road. But as I passed beneath the water surface my extraordinary senses picked where the road used to lead towards. An intricate stairway was carved on the side of the rock deep within the river.

While in general the river wasn't that deep, maybe just a few meters, on that particular spot where the steps ended, a deep black, seemingly bottomless pit, laid.

Spitha's shout interrupted my thoughts "Are you done? We don't have that much time to spare. It's ok if you haven't found anything..." She shouted from the back while impatiently tapping her foot.

"Shut your mouth! The amazing me found an underwater tunnel!"

"What?! No way. Show me!"

As the three of us mulled over the hole, trying to find a way to circumvent the fact that no one had a way to breathe underwater, I sent two aqua-chans to investigate further in and report back to me. After a few short minutes, the little elementals came back with cheat-like news. The passage leveled and curved towards the side, and after just a bit it raised enough to enter a space that was filled with air.

Not wanting to take a chance with mine, and I guess Spitha's, crappy strength stat, I had the water elementals ferry us through the tunnel, using the same trick that had saved my life once already in the well, and after a few more minutes, we were standing, dripping wet, inside a dry tunnel.

Spitha summoned a fiery little ball in her hand, shedding plenty of light around, and all of us took a deep breath as we found ourselves not in a cave, but in a beautiful, marble, corridor, filled with faded murals.