The group kept on traveling, going past many towns and cities on the way to the human capital. They stopped at many for a night to get adequate rest before moving out on their way. Due to the number of humans around, they had no choice but to move slower than they would have liked. At the current rate, they would reach the capital a week before the worlds would finally merge. They realized something as they got closer to the capital as well, aside from the humans being all around the same level of power, many also had more classes than they should for a human considering their standard lifespan. It was as if they were gifted a class without having to go through training for it. It was a very strange phenomena, but as there was nothing the group could do about it, they continued on their way to the capital to hopefully stop who Gregory believed would be Sean before the world would get even worse.

Continuing to train while traveling as much as possible, and giving advice, Gregory and Jessica were both improving upon the classes they decided needed to be worked on. Gregory had gotten his Knight class to rank 5, and unlocked a secret class that was previously unshown to him. It was Magic Knight Initiate, it took the power of both classes and combined them into one. It enabled the use of swords as a magic focus, and also gave a new skill regarding unleashing straight mana through a sword to create powerful blasts of magical energy. It was a class that fit him much better individually, as his ability with the knight class, while being nothing to scoff at, was much lower than a person with higher strength than him. Even still, with the added technique he had learned and practiced, he was still incapable of matching the stronger humans they had sparred in terms of physical combat. While his primary profession was a user of magic, it was good to have at least a way to hold his own in close range combat in case it ever came to that.

At a small town just a few days outside the capital, but one that seemed to house a number of very high-level people, Gregory felt a massive magical presence. The gravity of this magical energy was enormous, and heavy enough that the entire group could feel it. The location seemed to be coming from a massive tower, one that had a number of runes on it. From Gregory’s study with the dragons, and raising of his magical classes, he discovered that these were all made to seal massive amounts of magic strength. Even with his own immense resilience to magic, Gregory doubted he could enter without being severely weakened due to the number of people that were combining their power to keep it running. That, and the power of the one inside, and likely connected to it, seemed to be powering it as well. Such a combination of power meant that even his resistance to magic would not hold 100% against it. Despite having fallen for Elise, Gregory knew that she, Atlas, and Jessica would be the best ones to release whoever it was from the binding of that tower.

This mission would be a critical one, as they needed to rescue whoever was locked up in this tower. Even though Gregory could not be directly involved in the breakout attempt, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t do anything. His part was just as important as the actual rescue attempt, he would need to take down the tower as soon as whoever was rescued was removed from it and the seals weakened. It was also his job to work on trying to find where the outside source of this seal was coming from, so that those inside would have a better chance. Already Gregory could feel where the source mana was going; it was however shrouded before the end location, preventing him from knowing exactly where it went. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t find out where it went, but it wouldn’t be as simple as passively feeling the connection. It also meant that he would likely alert them of some kind of attack when they felt the attempt to find them. He would need to wait until the strike group was ready, and then make a brute force attempt to track down the mages and those keeping the tower sealed as quickly as possible.

As the mission began, Gregory began his side quickly, forcing open the pathway to the group powering the tower with his mana. The only thing that surprised Gregory was the distance that his mana was traveling. The people powering this tower were not even inside the city, as his mana had already moved miles outside the city before heading underground. When Gregory’s mana finally reached the destination, he found that it was thirty miles outside the city and a mile underground. Another thing that surprised him was that there were “stations” so to speak where the mana spiked and were marked by runes that were used to transmit mana to a further location.

Gregory quickly used his mana to ping the location before teleporting there. It was a benefit of his True Magic Adept class, he could use it to control mana in far more elaborate ways. It allowed him to ping the location and instantly teleport there, though it took him almost five minutes just to find the location because of the routing that the mana took before it got here. Once he teleported there, he found that there were twenty mages in this outer room alone, and there was a special seal placed upon the next inner room preventing entry until all the mages in this outer chamber had been taken care of. Raw speed and magical might allowed Gregory to quickly take down this outer group with only a few seconds of time, but the next room still did not open, and even an attempt with a burst of his magical energy barely put a scratch on the next chamber. It seemed he would need to resort to killing those out here before he could get in deeper.

‘Whoever created these seals is a very cruel person, using the lives of others to protect his own. That is something only a coward could live with.’

Gregory tried one more thing before killing those here, he tried teleporting them out of this underground base, and once they had all been teleported out, he found that the seal crumbled. It seemed that their mana had gotten far enough away that the seal could not draw enough from them to stay active. Discovering this, Gregory cleared the next two chambers this way until he reached a chamber with just one individual, one who was protected by the seal he was generating. It was almost as if the seal that was placed on the tower that they created and were maintaining was also protecting and empowering this person in turn. Gregory made an assumption, one that he guessed at only because it seemed like this ability was one far behind the standard scope of this world.

“You aren’t from this planet are you? This power you use gives you away in my opinion.”

The man across from Gregory had a momentary look of surprise on his face before he quickly turned it into a sour grin.

“So, you guessed my heritage, what does that mean? I will show you what my power is really capable of.”

At that moment, seals formed above his hands imitating runes. These seals quickly moved in Gregory’s direction, but he avoided them with a quick teleportation. He also swung his sword with a light blast of magic in the direction of this man, only to find that the power protecting him dissipated the mana before it ever reached him. At the same time, Gregory was carefully analyzing the magic this person was using, as he assumed it was from a unique class. One that he could likely acquire himself, and use it to grow his power and also extend what he was capable of. The young man he was facing launched continual assaults, and though his magic power was nothing significant, he definitely possessed great skill in his unique class and was quite capable of using it to the fullest of its potential. Gregory was having a hard time trying to find an opening to attack without killing this young man. Already the man he faced used his seals to shut down his teleportation, and was getting closer to landing an attack on him. Just when he thought that the young man had him cornered, he finally obtained what he was hoping for.

Grand Runic Mage Unlocked

Confirm Purchase for 10 “Gamer” Points?

‘Yes, confirm purchase’

To his surprise, this was a tier 2 unique class, something Gregory had previously thought impossible. It seemed that his focus on advancing his standard classes, while not bad, was also not the only thing he should have been focused on. The more advanced a unique class got, the more power it seemed to have. With how powerful this class had gotten, it seemed that it would be a good idea to improve upon the other unique classes he had obtained. For now though, Gregory used this new unique class to create his own seal that would wipe the brainwashing that Sean had likely placed upon this person. Even though a seal this person had used hit Gregory, he shrugged it off with his draconic resilience to magic. Just as Gregory’s seal hit the man, he fell unconscious, the control of the seal on the tower being lost. Gregory quickly scooped up this man before he teleported back to the city.

‘That took almost ten minutes. I hope that Elise is doing alright, she was hoping for the seal to be released in five minutes at most. Although, I doubt anything bad would happen with Jessica in there.’

At that moment, the group burst through the front door, with a familiar face in tow. Gregory instantly created an inferno at the location of the tower, and detonated it to create a massive explosion in the area. He had to be sure that the tower could not easily be reused again, and also wipe out any possible way of learning of this man’s unique class through actual study and detailed examination, as that was possible for those who lacked a unique class according to Elise and the rest of her original group.

Now it would be time for them to finalize plans on the attack against the capital since they had successfully rescued the prisoner of the tower, and also freed a person from what was likely Sean’s brainwashing.