My Roleplay System
Chapter 55: The Battle Begins

Chapter 55: Chapter 55: The Battle Begins

In the Central Area, the Empress and the Wolf King were standing side by side as they looked at the thunderstorm brewing in the sky.

A few days ago, the Empress and the Wolf King had come to a temporary truce after a battle that destroyed almost half of the northern region.

The reason why the Wolf King had decided to work together with the Empress, who was weaker than him, was thanks to the subtle aura that she was now radiating from her body.

If Romero was here, he would have immediately recognized that aura to be the signature ability of Rank Three creatures! This ability was called mana field. When a creature breaks through to Rank Three, they unlock the ability to radiate mana around them. This mana could be used to greatly stifle the power of creatures weaker than them. It was also the ability that the Wolf King used to subdue Romero and his group when it had captured them.

Before the battle with the Wolf King began, the Empress had taken the chance to finally break through to the next rank.

She had long been capable of breaking through for a while now, however, she held off on it and waited for the right time. At the same time, she wasn’t the only one in her nest that was holding back.

Her daughters, the Queen Spiders were also capable of breaking through to Rank Two.

Originally, she wanted to wait for when she started her final battle with the Wolf King in the outside world to catch him off guard. With the support of her Third Rank strength and her Rank Two Queen spiders, she planned to catch him off guard and finish him off once and for all.

However, it seems that luck wasn’t in her favor, as the Wolf King had managed to find a way to enter the Garden, completely throwing her plans off. She knew that if the Wolf King had managed to successfully acquire the fruit in the central area, he would be able to break through to Rank Four and at that point, she wouldn’t be able to win even with the support of her entire nest.

As for the reason why they decided to work together now, it was all related to the big bird that guarded the tree. The Skylark was a Peak Rank Three creature nearing Rank Four. The Empress and the Wolf King wouldn’t be able to defeat it if they worked separately so they called a temporary truce to work together to defeat the Skylark before deciding who would get the fruit after.

"The Fruit of Evolution..." The Empress silently thought as she looked up at the Golden Tree.

The Fruit of Evolution, a mystical fruit with the ability to perfect a creature’s genes, effectively speeding up the evolution process.

She wasn’t aware why, but ever since she was born she had knowledge about the Garden and the fruit implanted in her brain. She never spoke about this information out loud or shared it with anyone else which was also the reason why Lake wasn’t able to find out any information about it from her fate.

Lake’s ability to read fate only allowed him to watch a person’s past from a third person perspective that was limited to only what they had experienced. The details of their thoughts and personal feelings were always kept hidden from him and left up to him to figure out on his own.

Suddenly, the lightning storm above the Empress’ and Wolf King’s head became more sporadic as lightning crashed down into the ground around them.

With a loud cry, the large body of the Skylark emerged from the thunderstorm, lightning crackling off its purple feathers, its fierce eyes glaring daggers at the Wolf King and the Empress.

Ever since the Skylark created its nest on the Golden Tree, any creature that dared to cross the lake and enter the Central Area had been killed by it, with no exception. It had chosen to protect the Golden Tree, preventing any creature from coming near it to steal the fruit. As for the reason why the Skylark never took the fruit for itself, no one knew.

The Empress and the Wolf King had originally wanted to try a stealth approach towards the tree but it seems that the Skylark had a powerful sensory ability as it was able to quickly locate them the moment they stepped foot onto the island.

With another loud shriek, the Skylark dived down as lightning sparked off its body, decimating the ground below. It flew straight for the Wolf King and the Empress.

Seeing the Skylark approaching, the Wolf King and the Empress wasted no time dodging to the side.

*BANG!!*

Accompanied by the sound of thunder, lightning spiked through the air and struck the ground where they previously stood, leaving a large crater of melted earth with a diameter of over 10 meters in the ground.

When the Empress saw the devastating power of the Skylark, she knew she couldn’t afford to be hit even once. It seemed like the Skylark had already touched on the borders of Rank Four with that attack.

Suddenly the Empress felt a heavy force pressing her body down. She instantly knew that it was Skylark’s mana field. Immediately, she used the power of her King’s Aura combined with her own newly developed mana field.

With their combined power, she managed to greatly relieve the suppression effect long enough so that she could move out of the way of the Skylark’s next incoming attack.

*BANG!*

With another sound of thunder resounding through the Garden, the battle for the Fruit of Evolution began.

...

While the battle was quickly progressing on one side of the island, Lake slowly climbed out of the water and walked onto the beach of the other side. As he left the water, not a single ripple spread out on the water surface.

Lake’s control of his body had already reached the level of superhuman with the level two stealth ability to the point where he could control the vibrations of the particles around him. This allowed him to move through the water without making a single ripple or noise that would alert someone of his presence.

Around an hour ago when Lake heard the first crack of thunder, he immediately knew that the battle had begun.

He quickly escorted Romero’s group to Harper before instructing them on where to go to gather the mana fruit. Once he was assured that his two crops would not encounter danger on the way there by looking at their white halos, Lake immediately dashed off in the direction of the Central Region.

He wasn’t sure how long the battle between the two sides would last and that would be his only chance to sneak past the Skylark and steal the fruit.

When Lake saw that the battle between the two groups was still ongoing, he wasted no time before rushing towards the tree.

Lightning was raining down from the sky, searing the ground below. Lake used the trees on the island to take cover as he quickly advanced forward.

As Lake advanced closer to the tree, the lightning strikes became less frequent. It seems that the Skylark didn’t want to risk damaging the Golden Tree and controlled the lightning to strike around it instead.

When Lake was around halfway there, he heard a loud howl erupt from the battlefield as he saw pillars of ice launched into the sky, aimed at the Skylark.

Upon seeing the ice pillars, the Skylark released a cry as it swung its large wings, shattering the ice, causing the shards to go flying across the island.

Some of the shards came flying towards Lake who used his sword to block the flying chunks of ice while he rushed forward.

Soon Lake reached the edge of the Golden Tree. The effects of the Skylark’s battle became less obvious here as Lake could take a small breather.

Looking up, Lake was prepared to start scaling the massive tree. He would have to be extremely careful at this point as even with his amazing stealth abilities, the climb up the tree would leave him in the open and if he was spotted by even one of the creatures, it would all be over.

As Lake walked forward to start climbing however, he quickly spotted something that left him perplexed while looking for a suitable area to climb.

On a small section near the bottom of the tree, Lake could feel something unusual about that piece of bark. The area where the bark was looked the same as any other part of the tree but Lake could instinctively feel something was different about that area.

The reason why Lake felt this was due to his parkour skill. When he was looking for an area to climb, he could instinctively tell if the material he wanted to climb was suitable or not and find the best possible path to climb up or down it.

That was why he was able to notice that something was off with that particular part of the bark as his instincts were telling him that climbing that path would be vastly different than any other part.

Walking closer to the area, Lake observed closer but still didn’t notice anything that would explain why his senses were telling him that it was off.

Curious, Lake stretched his hand out to touch it. Since his sixth sense hadn’t gone off, he didn’t hesitate much longer as his palm landed on the bark.

To Lake’s surprise however, his hand went through the bark as he felt a cold metallic feeling on the other side. Before Lake could pull back his hand however, he felt his arm being locked in place as a clamp emerged from the sides of the hold.

Lake immediately tried to pull back his hand in response but to his shock, he found that the clamp seemed to be able to resist even his strength.

As Lake continued to resist, he suddenly felt a light heat scan his hand from the metallic surface as his finger was lightly pricked, drawing blood. In the next instance, Lake heard a robotic voice sound out in his mind.

"Scanning complete. Unidentified lifeform detected. Access Denied."

Before Lake could even register what he just heard, the voice continued.

"Error. System detected that the facility has been disconnected from the main server. Requesting assistance from the facility management team."

"Error. Management team can’t be reached. System analysis has been judged as necessary. Beginning analysis..."

"Analysis complete. System determines that the facility has not been in use for 436 years. Lifespan of the management team determined to have expired."

"System judges that there are no personnel capable of operating the facility. System has chosen to run the Self Management protocol. Self Management protocol successfully initiated."

"Error, system’s main operation system has been damaged. Origin of damage determined to be due to the deterioration of the system’s hardware overtime."

"Outside assistant judged as required to fix the problem. Initiating a test to judge lifeforms intelligence level..."

Lake was dumbfounded as he heard the system notifications go off in rapid succession. The sounds of the battlefield happening on the other side of the island seem to fade in this moment as Lake was simply too shocked by what he just heard. However, before he could begin to comprehend what was going on. Lake heard the system start the so-called intelligence test.

"Hello. If you can understand what I am saying, please respond."

When Lake heard the system’s request, he paused for a bit before saying yes, curious to what the system would ask next.

However, in the next instant, Lake began to question if he was taken back to school as the system asked multiple questions ranging from simple math to basic communication skills.

After around a minute of testing, the system finished its questions.

"Basic level of intelligence passed. System determines that the lifeform can perform the maintenance required. Limited access granted."

When the final message from the system was heard, Lake was stunned to find that a part of the tree bark had split apart to reveal a tunnel leading into the trunk of the tree as his hand was finally released from the clamp.