Masteria Online: Shattering the Dark God's Grand Scheme-Chapter 175 - Day 2

Lumi began explaining the situation to Lumi.. "There’s a vault. It’s protected by the spirits of pixie ancestors."

A small grin appeared on Lena’s face. "A vault! There must be loot! Now, what are we talking about when we say ancestral spirits? Like ghosts?"

"Something like that," Lumi confirmed. "Inside the vault, allegedly, there’s a great treasure. It’s not confirmed what it is, but it could be artifacts, ancient knowledge, powerful magical items, or allegedly something like that."

Lena nodded. It couldn’t be that easy. "Okay, so why haven’t people just raided it already?

"Because only pixies can get in," Lumi explained. "The ancestral spirits guard the entrance. They judge anyone who approaches. And it’s not just any pixie who can enter either."

Lena lightly furrowed her brows. "What do you mean?"

"The spirits have to recognize you," Lumi said. "They have to believe you’re capable of leading the pixie race to new heights. You have to convince them that you’re worthy of accessing their accumulated treasures."

Lena tilted her head. "And if they don’t think you’re worthy?"

Lumi let out a singular chuckle as he responded. "They reject you. Quite violently, from what I’ve heard. Plenty of ambitious pixies have tried over the years. Most of them died on the spot. The few who survived were left crippled."

Lena’s mind immediately started running through countless possible approaches.

She just had to look a bit more like a pixie. Maybe. That was the physical side of things, which they’d already discussed wouldn’t fully work.

But more importantly, she had to be very, very good at saying bullshit.

Luckily, she was excellent at that! It was one of her core talents, actually. She was very proud of her ability to lie convincingly under pressure.

And more than just her natural talent, she’d been learning from Lumi himself! She’d watched him do it multiple times now. Sometimes he just started speaking with the enemy, completely confident, and it just worked. The key seemed to be sounding confident and, apparently, a little bit evil. She wasn’t sure why everyone responded well to blatant evil, but sure!

What would pixie ancestors even want? What would appeal to them?

Perhaps she could pretend to be a new, superior breed of pixie? That could also explain why she looked different! She could claim she was the result of some kind of evolution or magical enhancement?

Or perhaps she could claim she’d invented a powerful spell that transformed her appearance to infiltrate human society, and now she was returning with vital intelligence?

Or maybe she could go with something more ambitious.

"Something something something... uhm..." Lena trailed off. "Something..."

"Huh." Lumi wasn’t sure what she was muttering about.

Lena furrowed her brows deep in thought.

Something about demons.

Something about genocide.

Something about evolving the pixie race through eugenics.

Her smile grew wider as the ideas formed.

That sounded exactly like something a pixie would enthusiastically support. Pixies were fundamentally insane by human standards, and frankly just evil. It had been exceedingly obvious thus far, as even random pixies would talk about torture as something fun.

Reusing the talking points of historical tyrants and dictators from Earth would probably sound very, very appealing to pixie ancestral spirits. They’d eat that stuff up.

She could talk about the superiority of the pixie race. Perhaps add in a little something about how other species were inferior and needed to be eliminated or enslaved. Perhaps how weakness within their own ranks needed to be purged to create a stronger, purer bloodline.

Lena thought about it for a moment. Would it work? She was almost certain it would work.

Lena turned to Lumi excitedly. "So where is this vault? Let’s go!"

Lumi shook his head. "I don’t actually know the exact location."

Lena jumped back in surprise. "What? But you just told me about it!"

"I know it exists," Lumi clarified. "I know the general region it’s supposed to be in. But I don’t know the specifics."

Lena’s excitement deflated slightly. "Oh."

"Also," Lumi continued, "we’re here to fight in the war. Powerful items are everywhere, but opportunities like this are rare. The vault can wait."

Lena felt mildly disappointed, her shoulders slumping a bit. But then she perked up again when she processed the implication. "Wait, so there’s a possibility we could go later?"

"Yes. Once we’ve accomplished what we need to here, we can try to locate it."

Lena’s grin returned in full force. "Perfect! I’ll be cooking up tricks in the meantime! I’ll practice my evil speech! I’ll talk about the demons! THE DEMONS!" She threw her hands up dramatically.

..

Together, they made their way back toward where Seyen’s forces were gathering. It was time for yet another day of war.

The battlefield had changed since yesterday. There were plenty of new faces on both sides. More pixies had joined Seyen overnight, drawn by the promise of a viable rebellion. Meanwhile, the queen’s forces had also been reinforced as loyalists from other regions arrived to put down the uprising.

But the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

The fundamental dynamics of the conflict hadn’t shifted. It was still chaos. It was still a massive, disorganized brawl where individual skill and opportunism mattered more than grand strategy.

Lumi took note of his current state. After he’d exited Convergence mode yesterday, he’d automatically defaulted to Dark mode. To switch back to Light mode, he’d need to spam dark spells to fill up the Light meter, then go through Convergence again to end up back in Light mode..

He ignored all of that strategic consideration for now.

Because right now, what actually mattered was getting assists. The raw power of his individual Lance of Light spells didn’t really matter much. What mattered was volume, frequency, and hitting as many targets as possible to rack up contribution credit.

In fact, being in Dark mode was almost beneficial for his current strategy. If he was forced to defend himself in close combat, Void Sphere would be significantly stronger while in Dark mode. It was a devastating spell at close range.

Lena, once again, positioned herself to serve as his guard.

Obviously, plenty of the stronger pixies on the battlefield had noticed Lumi’s lances. Some saw him yesterday, and some were newly seeing him. Even the Queen herself noticed him, but there was a fundamental flaw in how the pixies viewed him.

He was viewed as an annoyance. Someone who caused them to take a hit or a bad teleport while they were locked in a different battle. No pixie had yet realized the grand effect he had on the overall battlefield.

Still, he attracted attention, so several pixies tried to kill him.