Chapter 131: Causal Dinner (2)
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POV Swap - 3rd Person

Whilst Tobias felt entangled by the dinner held by Amara and merely annoyed at her suggest to leave. With barely any interaction with her, Tobias obviously had no trouble refusing her as he could barely understand her point of view. Tobias merely looked at the cause-and-effect of the action, a trait left over from his time as an author.

On the other hand, Stanley wasn’t nearly as decisive and looked at the situation from the princesses’ point of view. He had trouble refusing so decisively.

Whilst Stanley previously had consoled himself by saying it was for the map, after Tobias’ retort, the internal debate returned to his mind. However, Stanley wasn’t the same as Tobias who merely looked at the cause-and-effect of the action.

Glancing toward Amara across the table, who merely looked at him with a quizzical expression. She had politely waited for him to stop speaking with Tobias.

Stanley expression turned complicated.

Hesitating, Stanley spoke up trying to convince her against leaving. “I don’t think traveling out to see the universe is a good idea... why do you need to leave? Even if you dislike this place, it is basically a paradise.”

This place fulfilled all her needs and the maids made the living experience extremely convenient.

Far as Stanley could tell, Amara had no reason to leave.

“I could ask the same of you. Why are you going to leave?” The princess retorted, glancing toward Tobias with a slightly annoyed glare. Amara had basically already convinced Stanley to take her with him before he argued against it.

“There are things I need to do. I don’t belong here.” Explained Stanley, thinking about the various regrets he had and people that needed his help.

“Neither do I.” The draconian princess snorted out a small azure-colored flame, lighting the table cloth on fire. A gem atop the table reacted and the fire quickly disappeared.

Stanley watched the process whilst thinking about her words.

The princess took advantage of his silence to continue speaking, “You’ve only see the upsides of this place without any of the problems. It’s certainly a beautiful prison, but a prison all the same.”

“Lets say we help you leave…” Stanley stood up and began to pace around the room, “Where in the universe would you even go? What would you do?”

“I told you already off-world, I want to see the entire universe. ” The princess stated after thinking about it. “It’ll cost some credits, but I should be able to attract a ship.”

“Leaving is not worth it.” Stanley hesitantly and quietly whispered.

“I want to see them.” The princesses’ eyes turned distant with a shine hidden beneath them. “Planets with more water the eyes can see. Green grassy fields that stretch for miles into the distance. Frozen continents brimming with life.”

Pausing his pacing, Stanley glanced toward her. “Why don’t you talk to your parents about this?”

The princesses’ tail smacked the ground and the sound echoed throughout the dinning room. She stood up and pointed to the doorway with a glare. “Do you think there’s any chance they would let me leave? After the last time I ran away, they won’t even let me leave the palace.”

“They are just trying to keep you safe.” Stanley calmly pointed out. “That gigantic lizard would’ve eaten you whole if I hadn’t intervened.”

“I seem to remember that immediately afterward I saved you and your girlfriend’s lives from heat stroke.” The princess snorted out another small azure-colored fire. “If anything, you’re the one who was lucky I was there.”

Maybe she was a naïve princesses that heard stories of, and wanted to see the universe in turn, but she didn’t care. Amara felt imprisoned by her current life... it was challenging to even move around freely in this surrounding hell-scape.

Planets with more water the eyes can see. Green grassy fields that stretch for miles into the distance. Frozen continents and worlds brimming with life.

Amara wanted to see everything.

Yet… she was trapped in this small palace on a small planet.

She hated it.

While Stanley certainly didn’t agree with her parents idea of trapping her down here in the palace... if he helped her leave and she died afterward, the guilt would live on in his heart forever. He honestly didn’t wish for any others deaths and guilt to hang over his head.

Stanley already had the death of the twins and the many other people who died due to his careless reactivation of the map setting. Even if the vast majority of people in the Residential Zone believed it a good thing, the result was a large amount of deaths because of his carelessness.

“Sorry, I know you want my help… but I cannot deal with another person’s death on my head.” Stanley lowered his eyes and quietly refused.

He had been reminded that her actions were extremely risky with zero guarantees. Even if she desired to see the universe, helping her out in this situation could make the situation worse and only cause her death.

“That’s fine.” The princess closed her eyes and accepted his decision. If she was disappointed, her voice didn’t show it.

Stanley didn’t speak.

He knew that she was disappointed… but to be honest, he felt relieved after refusing her request.

Standing up and performing a short curtsy, the princess informed them that she was leaving. “Thank you for joining me. It’s getting late, so I’ll be going to bed.”

Turning around, the princess pushed open the door and left the dinning room. When out of view the princess several tears could be seen dripping down her cheeks. Despite keeping face in front of her guest, Stanley’s rejection had clearly a hurt her.

After leaving the room, a voice spoke up from the table. “Dinner is over, then?”

Tobias had spoke, whilst Stanley barely noticed his presence in the room until that point. Even knowing he was there, he was inclined to forget about him when not close paying attention. Tobias really needed to speak up more often or do something to make himself more noticeable, it seemed to only be getting worse with time.

At the ending of the dinner and his statement, Stanley simply sighed and nodded, “Yeah.”

Tobias was visibly relieved at the knowledge. “Good riddance. You rejected her, right?”

“I did. Although, I’m worried she’ll do something rash without our help.” Stanley absentminded nodded.

“That’s her own decision, she’s an adult. You cannot save people from their own idiocy.” Tobias coldly and rationally commented.

Stanley glanced toward the door that the princess had left through. “I can try.”

“How the hell did you survive back on earth?” Tobias asked with seemingly genuine curiosity. “If you tried to save everyone from their idiocy there, you would’ve died from overworking.”

“It’s different.” Stanley shook his head.

Tobias blinked and was clearly confused as to how the analogy was different. “How?”

“I don’t know it just is.”

Tobias spent several seconds thinking to himself before laughing. “Do you think you’re a hero or something? Teleporting to another universe doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a hobo.”

“I already know I’m not a hero.” Stanley responded with sadness and quietly mumbled. “Heroes can actually save people.”

Tobias stood up and shrugged preparing to leave the room. Before stepping through the exit, in an extremely serious voice, Tobias stated. “Heroes only exist in novels.”

Chuckling at the thought and relaxing, Stanley tried to drag his mind away from sadness and joked back. “Don’t forget TV, anime, and comics.”

True heroes as seen in those fictional mediums couldn’t exist in real life. People always acted with selfish motivations and other motivates. That didn’t make people inherently bad, or did anything to change a good deed.

A good deed was a good deed… but it did make them something other than a true hero.

“Maybe its arrogant or idiotic, but I think that only novels can have true heroes.” Tobias said with a laugh and left the room.

While the trio's dinner underground had finished, the wheels of destiny were slowly turning.

Gromit, the dull-grey dragon, had arrived in the solar system and descended upon the planet. Still completely furious at having been given this task, and more than willing to harm others to display his rage. In his mind, the fault lay partially on these half-breeds for relaying information that caused this humiliation. Their continued existence was a sin.

Meanwhile Rin had arrived in the Third Zone. She planned to search out the remaining relics in the extremely limited amount of time left… but the teleportation array random destination had caused her arrival to land near the volcano where the Draconian’s lived. Whether that outcome was lucky or unlucky, only time would tell…

Unlike the others in Hell Difficulty who seemingly had been fooling around in other places, Hansoo had been training and utilizing his knowledge to keep growing more powerful. He had since picked up his pace of collecting the various relics needed to deal with the monster guarding the teleportation beacon’s exit. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that the others weren’t collection their portion of the relics, which had forcing him to speed up his pace.

As a result, Hansoo had been traveling through the burning fields to the west to collect the necessary result to melt the ice immortal before sealing him... and the dragon’s appearance in the solar system was immediately noticed by him.

The dragon hadn’t exactly been hiding its mana signature and was extremely arrogant. Thinking that nothing on this world could possibly hurt him, which was partially correct… had Hansoo not been collecting artifacts specifically to kill an immortal beforehand.

While Hansoo noticed the dragon’s arrival, he didn’t particularly care about arrogant dragon’s arrival. The artifacts he’d been collecting were one time-usage. Hansoo definitely wouldn’t waste on them on an opponent if it wasn’t necessary.

Firstly, Hansoo thought that the dragon had been there in his previously life and disappeared without causing a problem. Meaning that nobody noticed its existence.

Secondly, if the dragon chose to harm anyone from the intelligent races without provocation, the system’s countermeasures would activate. The Redeemers had effectively changed goal of the system provide a relatively safe area for the trial takers to grow up. Having them slaughtered by an opponent far above their level violated that goal.

Any monster who violated the treaty and attack them would be retaliated against.

The countermeasures might not kill a being at the dragon’s level, but they would definitely teach the arrogant monster a lesson that it wouldn’t forget. Of course, that wouldn’t help the person who was killed… but it was enough of a deterrent to prevent random slaughter as long as it wasn’t provoked.

Thus, Hansoo only became alert because of the dragon’s presence... he had a deep understanding of dragons and their power level.

This was an elder dragon, which were only sent out on extremely rare occasions. Even though Hansoo thought it was impossible, his usage of their time artifact to travel back in time might’ve somehow been noticed upon inspection and attracted their attention.

At this point in time, an elder dragon would be extremely difficult to deal with. Relying on artifacts made it possible to deal with the elder dragon, but that was only a small possibility and effectively ruined their chances of them leaving this zone.

When the dragon descended toward a random volcano in the distance, Hansoo was relieved.

Nearby the volcano, Rin frowned upon seeing the dragon’s presence descending from the sky toward the volcano near her location and moved to hide her presence. The power-level of the dragon was approaching deity-level, while it hadn’t quite reached it… the dragon wasn’t a monster she could deal with.

Rin didn’t know the reason for the dragon descent toward the volcano and she didn’t want to be around when it landed.

Unlike deity-levels from the intelligent races, a deity-level of the monster races might just kill her for merely noticing her existence and being slightly annoyed. If Rin needed to reload several weeks because it randomly breathed in her direction, she wouldn’t be happy.

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