Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6) by Dakota Krout (best romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

wait, wait. That many illusions…? There has to be a permanent structure supporting something that powerful. I can do something about that.”

The entire area was a series of lava flows that had hardened, and drifting ash had settled in thick drifts. There were plenty of niches where Joe could go to hide and get off the main path. As long as he avoided any actual lava… or was it magma? He was technically underground, so he felt that it would be magma, but it was on the surface… “What am I doing?”

Illusion Breaker (Ring) has come into effect!

Illusion broken through: Fae Beckoning.

“So there are defenses, even in here.” Joe realized that he was standing up and staring at the lava in the distance, so he tossed himself back to the ground and started trying to blend in. His bright white clothing and reflective head wasn’t helping him, so Joe did the only reasonable thing he could do: he turned off Neutrality Aura and rolled around in the volcanic ash that was covering everything. Sweat started to run down his body right away, and he began to itch terribly. “Whoo, boy. I’ve gotten really spoiled from being clean at all times.”

Joe started to creep along a low patch, sliding forward using only his elbows and knees to maintain the lowest profile possible. The wall of the fort wasn’t too terribly far away, maybe a tenth of a kilometer? The fort itself was roughly a kilometer from the stone wall in all directions, but the travel point was luckily far closer. His path couldn’t be straight, as that would stand out to anyone that happened to be on guard. An hour into his snail-paced scuttling, he started hearing voices and the heavy grinding of stone that signified Earth Elementals in the distance.

“How could they think that a Dwarf saw through the grand illusion? I refuse to put those mongrels in my eyes!” A high-pitched, arrogant voice echoed over the empty space. “Even if they had broken through into the tunnels, there’s no way they could have come through here. They’d have been caught staring at the shifting patterns of the lava on the ceiling by now!”

“The Lady Elfreeda is gnashing her teeth over this failure, Journeyman.” Another voice cut off the first. “We should have closed the way to the caves a week ago. We have plenty of test subjects, and the illusions have proven to be perfect. The only reason they stayed open is the rank lethargy of the ‘Helper’ she found. Who forgets to close the abyssal door when we are this close to a successful strike at the heart of the short ones?”

“I still say that the Dwarf in that cave must have incinerated itself. The entire room was practically melted, as was the opening and path in a straight line. The wall to escape was still closed, and the Dwarves have no idea how to use any travel system other than the option provided by the fortresses; that Dwarf is long dead,” the first voice petulantly complained.

“Still, her orders aren’t something we can ignore.”

There was more to the conversation, but they had been moving fast enough that Joe had needed to strain his ears just to hear everything that he had. His progress had come to a complete stop; he wasn’t sure if the earth elementals would be able to detect him if he was moving and causing vibrations. Eventually, Joe had no choice but to start crawling again and hope the thick coating of ash prevented the elementals from detecting him. He was close enough to the unmanned wall at this point that he doubted anyone would expect him to be here, but if they were searching carefully… they would eventually find him.

Issue resolved!

The human had to grab his mouth and throat to prevent a scream from spilling out when the random fanfare and bugles started playing in his head.

Your complaint about the new ‘intent’ system factoring into kills has been resolved in your favor! After extensive review, it was shown that the deadly rituals you use instead of commonplace effects are more similar to a trapmaker or rogue’s ability to use environmental effects. No longer will you need to worry about variation rituals; just clean or murder, all in one, to your heart’s content!

While future actions—or wide-scale devastation released upon a Zone—may result in a different outcome or secondary analysis, you will be rewarded for finding and reporting this issue upon completing any future quest.

So long as the reward meets the certain criteria, it will be applied multiple times. For instance, a quest rewarding you with a thousand experience may also give you a thousand class experience!

Breathing heavily, he dismissed the notification as quickly as possible. There was nothing he could do with that information right now, but it still gave him a small thrill to see something resolve in his favor when it came to the system. Looking up at the wall he was practically huddled against, Joe raised himself to a crouching position and shifted around until he was fairly certain that no one would see him.

The gate was a solid distance away, and he hadn’t seen a single Elf walking the walls. That may have changed since they had gone on alert, but he was going to have to chance it at some point. Now was as good a time as any. Eyeing the wall, he got into the proper position and jumped. He blew out nearly a hundred mana in an attempt to make a smooth landing, but he ended up only reaching a third of the way up the forty foot wall.

He fell and landed in an ignoble pile, kicking up a cloud of ash with his impact. “Well… plan B. Been wanting to try this for a while, so why not now?”

Joe pulled a single Ritual Orb out of his ring, and tossed it into the air. Up, up… he stopped it about five feet under the height he had