The Insider System

Chapter 211: Imprisonment Barrier

Lake had been fighting gargoyles and undead for over an hour now and he was starting to think it was time for him to go back and rest. He had been using Crunch all day and even if his Stamina was able to replenish itself over time it was starting to do a number on him. He needed to get some sleep and since he could and still get up before the others did he was free to do so.

Plus he had kind of killed all the monsters already, his plan to run around in circles had been way more effective than he had expected and while he was sure there were still some out here there weren\'t enough to matter. He wouldn\'t be surprised if the group of Fighters he had saved could clear the rest of the city on their own since they didn\'t have to worry about being surrounded.

He would be afraid of them getting tricked by the undead though. He had been spoken to by a few while he had been working on clearing the city and if he didn\'t have Detector to tell him the truth he wouldn\'t know unless the undead said something that wasn\'t true that triggered his lie detection.

Lake wasn\'t far from their base so he was able to run back in less than a minute. Walking inside he saw the guard had changed again. Lake made a small wave to the man before going to lay down. Right when he didn\'t he wondered if he could have just picked an empty house to sleep in but decided he would be in more danger by himself since he had already used Detector to see if he was in danger from any of the people he was with.

...

Opening his eyes because he heard people moving around Lake saw that the guards were changing again. He wasn\'t sure how much time had passed but he felt rested so it didn\'t really matter. Getting up he walked over to the guard that was up when he came in and asked. "How long did I sleep?"

"Less than 40 minutes." Hearing this, Lake decided he would be better off trying to get more rest and wished the guard goodnight. Going back to his spot on the floor, Lake closed his eyes again. After about ten minutes of trying to sleep and finding he couldn\'t he opened his stats to see if his Stamina was full.

If it was it would mean there was no reason other than passing time in going back to bed. He was pretty sure the fact that his Endurance had risen so much in the past few days, which had risen the rate that he regained stamina, had made him need even less rest and he had just not noticed that this was the fact till now cause he hadn\'t really been timing his sleep.

To him sleeping one or two hours felt no different to getting a normal amount of sleep now or at least he didn\'t think it did. He had only slept one or two hours yesterday as well but he had never felt the effects of this and had been able to go non stop for much longer than normal people.

Only having to sleep for an hour was a great thing in his book so he hoped he was right and it stayed like this forever because it would give him more hours in a day to work on stuff and if he was ever on the run from something he would only need a short nap to get back up and go.

Of course it might be a bit of a burden on him if he was ever with other people while traveling because he would still need to wait for them to finish sleeping but he didn\'t plan to ever have a group of people he took everywhere with him so it wouldn\'t be too much of an issue. He guessed it was what he was doing now though he was doing this so the guild would pay him more.

Getting up Lake walked over to the guard and said. "I\'m going to check outside again. I\'ll be back in an hour. Yell if you need me I\'ll be close." The guard nodded and Lake walked outside. The street was clear so he didn\'t bother checking before he had opened the door like he usually did.

Walking towards the place where he had helped the dwarves place a formation on the flesh yesterday, Lake saw the scab that had taken its place was now gone and there was no sign that it had ever happened. This meant that the formation could heal from any damage if given enough time but it did make him wonder if it would eventually just die on its own.

He knew it was probably some kind of undead so age wasn\'t really a thing for it but surely the Demon Worshipers would need it gone eventually and if so maybe they had built in some way to make it disappear when they were done with it. Right after he thought this he remembered there was a job that allowed you to control undead so they were probably just going to have someone with that job tell the formation it was time to deactivate.

It was kind of wishful thinking that there would be some type of in-built weakness he could use to defeat this thing. In all reality no one would ever make something with a kill switch if they knew they could control it with 100% certainty; kill switches were for things that could go out of control.

Lake was pretty sure this thing understood what was happening or at least was smart enough to know what side it was on. Seeing that there was nothing else here for him to see, Lake decided it was time for him to see the Imprisonment formations effects because that was what was keeping him here.

All he needed to do to find the barrier was to go to the edge of the city. Using Mana Vision Lake saw there was an invisible wall all the way around the city. Taking a rock off the ground and throwing it he saw it collide with the barrier and fall to the ground.

He didn\'t want to try and touch it because he felt like it might have some type of shock or something designed to keep the people inside from trying to leave so he took out his sword and decided to give it a few hits with some of his skills like Crunch or Ripped to see if he could break it.

He decided to just start with Crunch even though he had seen it didn\'t really work very well on Barriers because it still made his strength sextuple whenever he used it so if he swung as hard as he could the effect on the barrier should be massive. He did worry about his sword though and it made him think he could go get some spare ones from some of the undead he had killed earlier.

Doing that real quick Lake brought a small pile of every weapon he felt he could swing at the barrier. This gave him more than enough tries to get this barrier down so he could leave. With the fact that he had already been able to kill most of the monsters down here he was sure the other people in the other tiers were probably making good progress on theirs as well.

That meant all that was standing in his way of getting paid was this barrier and the few things he would have to help clean up once he got to the Metal Temple because he was sure they would have one or two things they needed him to help them with.

Gripping the sword he had picked to go first, Lake used Crunch and swung as hard as he could towards the barrier. Unsurprisingly all that happened when the sword started to move was he ripped the handle off and missed his swing since the blade fell to the ground. He had kind of expected something like this to happen if he swung as hard as he could so it looked like he needed to find how hard he could swing and actually hit something.

Grabbing the next sword, Lake tried again but at half strength. He was able to make contact this time but sadly the sword bent while he was swinging it so there wasn\'t much strength behind his hit. Seeing that this hit wasn\'t enough to do anything to the barrier, Lake started to think he should just use his hand.

The odds of there being a deterrence that would kill him was really low and with his hand he didn\'t have to stop with just Crunch, he could also activate Ripped to see what would happen. He would rather just have one of the other people touch it with their hand though so he decided he could just wait until they got up. No point in taking a risk when one of the others would be stupid enough to do it for him.