First thing in the morning, Dolan came barging into Soma’s mansion bringing with him Soma’s and Marina’s new gear.

“Here they are!! For Soma, an armor made from the materials you gave to me! A fine chainmail made out of the bones you gave me, those bones are stronger than steel and make the perfect material to make fine chains out of them for the chainmail, and over that, a leather armor made out of the blue leather with your chest and joints covered in the blue scales you gave me, and as a final touch, the armor is lined with the wolf fur plus a cape made out of the same fur! The whole armor is stitched together using a metallic thread made out of a special alloy I made myself! As for the miss, a battle-maid uniform with a tight leather under armor made out of the blue leather Soma gave to me, as for the weapons, two white gauntlets, and greaves made out of Mithril and lined with gold! And after making all of this there is still more than half the materials leftover, are you sure I can have all of it?”(Dolan)

“Yeah, you can have it! But what about the payment?”(Soma)

“Don’t need it! I’ll be going now! I want to make new armor and weapons for myself!”(Dolan)

“Once you are done call for me! I’ll enchant them for you for free!”(Soma)

“I’ll leave it to you!!...”(Dolan)

“How excited is he to leave at such a speed?!”(Soma)

“He is having fun as if he is a child who found a new toy”(Marina)

“Well let's go to the workshop for now”(Soma)

“Are you going to enchant the new gear?”(Marina)

“I’ll strengthen it as well”(Soma)

“Strengthen it?”(Marina)

“Come and you’ll see”(Soma)

Soma and Marina headed for the workshop in the mansion and Soma started by strengthening his and Marina’s gear by fusing mana crystals with it, and once that was done he enchanted the gear and embedded Marina’s gauntlets and greaves with Magic Stones like he did to his sword before.

“Soma-kun has a lot of strange abilities! Is it because you are the God of Knowledge?”(Marina)

“No, I had those abilities since before becoming a God! Now I think about it I have never told you about myself…. What do you say? Want to know?”(Soma)

“Yes! I want to know!”(Marina)

“Here …【Book Of Knowledge: The Story Of Kirishima Soma】 this book has my full story up till now, it’s this thick because it contains the stories of other people as well”(Soma)

“… Can I stay home today? I want to spend my time reading it!”(Marina)

“I understand that feeling very well! No problem, you can stay”(Soma)

“Thank you!”(Marina)

“At the end of the book, you’ll find about the enchantment I did to both of our gear, read that part carefully and you’ll be able to learn how to use the enchantments when the time comes for us both to fight together”(Soma)

“Yes!”(Marina)

After that, Soma wore his new armor and went out of his mansion and headed towards the Mercenary guild and found Ren standing in front of the building waiting for someone.

“Soma! You finally came! I was waiting for you!”(Ren)

“Ren, you were waiting for me? Did something happen?”(Soma)

“No that’s not it! It’s just that I wanted you to take a special request”(Ren)

“If so you could have come to my mansion and told me, you wouldn’t have to wait for me”(Soma)

“I thought that if you were busy it would be bad to interrupt you..”(Ren)

“Oh! Soma, you came? Ren came with a personal request for you! It’s a request to accompany him and go as far as you can scouting for the monsters of the Flood, will you take it?”(Ito)

“Yeah, I’ll go!”(Soma)

“Got it!”(Ito)

“Thank you!”(Ren)

“Don’t mind it! I told you I would help you with everything you want”(Soma)

“Got it! Are you ready to go now?”(Ren)

“Yeah”(Soma)

“Let’s go then! Since it’s me and you, I think going by foot is faster than riding horses!”(Ren)

“Yeah, lead the way!”(Soma)

After exiting the town Ren started running at a great speed towards the south of the town and Soma is right behind him, actually, Soma is reading a book as he ran behind Ren and when Ren looked back to check on Soma he was surprised by that scene, Ren was not running at his full speed out of consideration of Soma, but after seeing Soma reading from a book as he ran, Ren decided to run at full speed but the distance between them remained the same and Soma is still reading his book.

“A group of 10 monsters 500m in front of us!”(Soma)

After running for 2 hours, Ren was surprised by Soma’s announcement and was even more surprised when it came true, a group of Ogres wearing armor and holding weapons came into view.

“…War Ogres… it seems the Flood this year is going to be deadlier than ever”(Ren)

“Should we kill these?”(Soma)

“Yeah! It’s always better to have fewer monsters attacking the town!”(Ren)

“Got it! You go from the right and I’ll go from the left!”(Soma)

Ren rushed at the first War Ogre to the right, the Ogre noticed Ren and attacked him with the club it had, Ren dodged that attack and got close to the Ogre’s chest and stabbed it through the heart, Ren moved quickly and tried to move to the next one only to find all the other War Ogres killed with their heads, arms, and legs separated from their bodies and their clubs cut in half, with Soma standing in the center of it all with his sword unsheathed.

“That’s surprising!.... I did think that you might be stronger than me after seeing the way you run, but I didn’t think that it was to this much! really, I’m glad to have you as an ally!”(Ren)

“Is that so…”(Soma)

After that, they both checked the bodies of the War Ogres a took some parts of their bodies and continued their run, after running for more 3 hours they both were able to confirm the existence of a huge army of monsters moving towards the town of Elk, the army consists of War Ogres, Giant Orcs, Harpies, Trolls, Hobgoblins, Orcs, and Goblins, and far by the horizon a black pillar could be seen.

“Ren, Do you know what that black pillar is?”(Soma)

“No! this the first time I was able to scout this far! It must be smoke or something! Anyways we have to go back to town and inform everyone that the Flood will arrive at the town in roughly three days! We have to start preparing right away!”(Ren)

“I see…”(Soma)