Erika, the wandering Paladin.

It has been about half a day since the time Erika and Pioneer traded their first words to each other, most of the time was spent observing the machine and taking note of its odd but fascinating actions.

The girl scratches her head and straightens her short, golden hair as she lies down on the ground and rests her head on her magic book, the Ethereal Grimoire. It has been a long day for her, the girl is tired and feels a bit restless at the moment.

Erika shakes her head slightly as she takes a sip of water from the waterskin while thinking about Pioneer, she has not figured out what the creature is yet, and its 'magic' is although not entirely new, the way the machine 'casts' its magic is quite odd, there have no chant and at the same time there have no trace of magical power amassing to create a magical circle or at least a rune, objects just start appearing left and right as the thing moves its arm around. The thing is like a dungeon master shaping the world around it.

Erika looks up slightly as she moves her eyes away from the machine for a moment to think about the past events happened one day ago, the female knight sorts out her memories for a moment before falling asleep quickly as her tiredness takes over her body.

Early morning, 1st day of the 48th week, Dragon year.

'This place does not seem as promising as rumored'

The black knight thought to herself as she slowly approaches Mythgar, a thriving village located in the Dark Land of Arcanis, the place is rumored to be sitting right next to cave full of resources and monsters of many levels, the unexplored forest surrounding the place is also a suitable place for hunting animals and foraging rare herbs. A paradise for nomads who looking for a job and a place to settle down, and a perfect arena for mercenaries to horn their skills too.

However, the black knight is not looking for fame nor a place to live a normal carefree life, she is on a quest to search for the hidden dungeon in the forsaken land in hope to recover lost knowledge that may still exist in the dungeon. The quest was given to her by her mother, who also took the same quest as it passed down by her grandmother, a long family line of dungeon explorers wouldn't be an overstatement for Erika's house.

As the black knight stops in front of the village's entrance, Erika notices that reason behind the village's lack of appealing sight is not because the village is simply plain, however, it because a large part of the village is half destroyed and deserted, it seemed like the place just got hit by a monster raid or something.

"What happened?"

Erika approaches an elderly man who is standing in front of two newly dug graves and asks him a simple question.

"Waaat?"

The old man whimpers weakly as he turns to his side to face the black knight while cleaning his snob with the sleeve of his shirt. It seems like the dead have some connection to the old man or something.

"Pardon, I'm an adventurer looking for a job. And I was a bit curious about this place, rumor said that the place is more active and lively...Yet the first thing I see here is an elderly man mourning the dead this early in the morning...Quite a curious thing to see, don't you agree?"

Erika replies as she looks over at the graves for a moment before returning her attention to the old man as he speaks

"An adventurer huh...Come to the guild...They know things better than old me..."

The elderly man replies as he raises up his shaky hand and points at the general direction of the adventure guild before coughing loudly a few times. Seeing this the black knight takes a few steps closer to the man to help him by casting a basic heal spell on him.

"Ug....Thanks...I shouldn't stay outside like this...young adventurer, go to the guild if you need a job...And don't die early..."

The old man whispers weakly before he slowly walks back to his house with the help of a cane. At this point, Erika's dream ends abruptly as she wakes up to the sound of the machine crushing something loudly.

"..."

The sleepy knight rolls her eyes around as she tries to figure out what was the noise and remembers why she is here in such a dark place.

"What...is..."

Erika mumbles as she looks at the silhouette of a 4 legged half man half spider creature breaking the hard limbs and carapace of dead Evolved Hivewarriors and putting the crushed objects into a big transparent tube, the confused knight jumps a bit as she quickly reaches down to grab the hilt of the sword, but she can't draw it as she sees the odd looking creature's head makes 180 turns and stares at the knight with its green glowing vision slit.

"Ah...Yes...It's you..."

Erika mumbles again as she moves her hand away from her sword and lies down on the ground again, Pioneer seeing that the knight probably just had a nightmare or something and assuming the girl need no help with that, it just goes back to its body crushing and stuffing work.

As Erika covers her ears to block the eerie creaking and fracturing sound, the knight decides to cast a sleep spell on her tired body and drifts away to the dreamland again.

"Spirit of darkness, feast on my magical power, gather and reinforce, answer my calling and aid me in battle, Illusion blade!"

The black knight delivers the killing blow to finish off the Hiveravager after she done fighting the Evolved Hivewarriors protecting it and accidentally killing a few Earth Dragon that got caught in the fight. The frenzy beast is finally subdued and slain by the Black Knight.

[Erika the Ethereal Paladin (Lv 114) defeated Hiveravager (Lv 82) | +36000 XP]

"Not too bad. But not enough either."

Erika smirks pridefully as she cleans her bloody sword before sliding it into the sheath, the black knight has completed her S rank quest with flying colors, however, it is far from flawless as the knight took a lot of time to chase down the big bug and she didn't get a nice clean kill, it was an ultra messy kill with all the blood and guts scattered around the tunnel for quite a distance.

"Hmm?. Someone is coming?...Better not let them see this..."

Erika quickly casts illusion spell on the area around her to hide all the gory scene as she thought someone is coming toward her, or rather some group is coming toward her as the light on the other side of the tunnel is a bit too bright to be normal mid-rank light orb and the heaviness feeling of the footstep is not of a single person, unless that person is like 2 meters tall fatass, that is.

"Just a little more...There!"

Erika finishes her spell as she quickly turns around to greet the group approaching her, however by the second she done turning around and having a good look at the thing in front of her, Erika just freezes in place.

The thing she sees is not a normal member of the Race nor a demon, it also neither a monster nor a spirit, but rather it is something else more terrifying and atrocious, what she sees is a tall, lifeless half man, half bug creature clad in black armour, the thing has a bright white-light emitting eye and a series of smaller eerie green glowing 'slit eye cluster' below, it has no mouth nor nose, the thing is as if it has no face to begin with. Erika can feel no aura coming out from the creature, and the thing does not seem to be part of the living nor the dead, it just feels completely out of place and time as if the thing is a god expelled from heaven and deported from hell, only to live in the world of mortal anonymously and now seeking out Erika for some reasons.

"G...Greater Appr...Greater Appraisal..."

Erika secretly casts a high ranking appraisal skill on the creature as she stands in place motionlessly, she does not dare to move in front of such a mysterious force of superpower which is also standing and staring back at her without a sound.

[Greater Appraisal casted]

[Appraisal Status]

Name: [email protected]#%[email protected]%^

Race: @#$%!^

Profession: [email protected]#$%[email protected]#!%$%

Level: 16

Statistic points:

HP: 4200/----

MP: 1000/1000

SP: Invalid

Defense: 334

Vitality: Invalid

Attack: 724

Intelligence: 834

Mind: Invalid

Perception: 5671

Dexterity: 9746

Agility: 152

Charisma: 1

Luck: 100

Skills: Lesser Magic Sense

Title: Last Survivor, The Ancient, Ghost of Alsatar, Tesla Proof, The Revenant, The Constructor, The Founder.

Core: Lesser Evolution Core

Erika tries her best to hold back her shocked voice as she slowly reads the Appraisal result and swallow them down bits by bits, right now the thing in front of her is still a 'newborn' of some sort judging on its low-level figure, and the level part is probably the only thing 'normal' in its status as the rest is simply 'atrocious', uncapped HP limit and nonexistent stamina to go with average MP pool suggest the thing is a brawler, however, its stats suggests a different story. For an average stat point for a human is around 100, Dragons to be around 450, and Emperor Hito, the god-emperor of Azuria, has average stat point of around 1500. The creature would fall in between the strongest of all man and the most average of all dragons, but the thing would be quite wonky due to it unbalanced stats, perhaps it's because the thing is still a 'newborn'

A newborn with The Ancient title and highly skilled builder and leader title sound odd, however. But what even more odd is Erika and the creature has been staring at each other for a while now, she knows this because her eyes is getting very irritated

and she is getting out of breath, seems like the young knight forgot to blink and breath while thinking about the thing's present and its odd status.

'...Maybe.'

Erika tries to play the oldest, yet most effective 'Hey look!' trick on the thing as she raises her hand up and points at the wall to her left. And it worked!. The thing perhaps is not that experienced in dealing with tricks after all, and perhaps Erika can uses 'Mind tap' skill to get into the thing's head to see what is it exactly. Erika is interested with the idea as she casts 'Ethereal' on herself to become invisible and starts hiding out of direct sight, this causes the illusion spell she casted earlier to expire however as the blood and guts return to the scene.

As the thing moves into the path that she accidentally pointed at, Erika casts a short term illusion spell and 'Mind Tap' on Pioneer.

"Let see what you have to offer~."

Erika mumbles as she feels her astral projection appears in front of her and flies toward the walking Pioneer. A second later the girl is now inside Pioneer's 'head'.

However instead of pulling as much information as she could, the girl instead is presented with multiple neatly sorted file cabinets, and as she pulls a cabinet open, another mini set cabinets appear, and upon opening the smaller cabinet another even smaller series of cabinet pops up inside it.

"What the..."

Erika scratches her head as she tries pulling other cabinets open until something different happen, a memory playback happened. The girl has successfully entered a fragment of Pioneer's memory.

"So t-"

But before the girl can explore anything, Erika got forced out of the memory and her astral projection ejected from the thing's body, something has locked and kicked her out of the thing's head.

"WHY YOU LITTLE SHIT?!!, I WAS SO CLOSE!"

Erika shouts loudly as her body props up from the ground, the girl is very frustrated as she looks around quickly to find Pioneer's body to try entering it again, but as she moves her eyes around to scan her surrounding, the young knight notices she is no longer in the dark tunnel anymore, but she is in a lit chamber that has many weird contraptions laying around and the machine looking at her while standing near a vat full of murky red liquid.

"...So it was another dream..."

Erika mumbles quietly as she sits down on the ground while scratching her head as the machine returns to its work, a new day to start the day, maybe. The machine gets to listen to random shouting and the young knight gets to see odd stuff in a cave.

"Uh...I want fresh meat..."

As Erika grumbles, while putting her hand into her bottomless satchel to get herself some chicken and bacon jerky for breakfast. Today gonna be a long day for the young knight.