The Great Crestmaster

That whole ordeal still irked Aldrich. At some point he thought that he could identify how strong a husk was by their armor. The better the armor the stronger the husk, or so he thought.

But that was actually illogical, it made no sense in reality, he became sure of that when he cleared the first tower of the barracks.

When Aldrich first saw the half-plate of the level two husk he thought it it was stronger than the armored husk that occupied the second floor of his base. But of course, after Aldrich exchange blows with it he realized that it was weaker.

How much weaker? He had no idea because he didn't really fight much with the armored husk it was just an execution.

Aldrich then elevated his own assessment of the armored husk upstairs, it should be a level three monster. It could even be a special case.

One tower and two houses remained to be cleared before he cleared the entire neighborhood, this meant that the day of confrontation wasn't far.

If his calculations weren't wrong then it was probably going to happen four days later. In three days he would have enough essence orbs to upgrade most of, if not all of his attributes to level four.

Suddenly a realization dawned on him, this was the right way to take revenge, by biding one's time and making all the preparations. Finally when the time is right one must strike without hesitation.

Aldrich came up with this is idea that his experience with the armored husk was a miniature version of his real world issue. So what is he was not strong enough now? As long as he kept growing he would eventually be able to walk sides ways in the world.

Even if it was the deputy governor so what? even if it was someone even higher up, one day his blade will reach them when they least expect it. One day he would take everything from them. Everything.

Whatever it was that they wanted to accomplish he would stand on the opposing end of that no matter what. He was not only going to kill them but also put and end to their evil ambitions, clearly something was extremely important to them if they were willing to go that far.

Aldrich grinned that's right, they too had things that they cared about, he wanted to see what their expressions would look like when they lost these things.

Aldrich spent a good minute observing the gate hoping to uncover the secret it concealed but it still eluded him despite his best efforts.

As for why he didn't try to break it with force, that was obviously because he didn't want to break the wheel by accident. What if that sealed the gate for good? That would be such a waste.

Breaking things should be a last resort, it might indeed be the solution to the problem at hand but it could easily destroy any hope of opening that gate too.

That was why Aldrich was apprehensive about using force to pry it open.

Besides if his experience with the nearby shelves had taught him anything it was that this place was more than meets the eye.

He looked at the four shelfs of mysterious potions in huge flasks, the northern wall of the basement was basically stacked with them.

Unfortunately the borderline magical defense or something allowed him to only be able to look at the goods without being able to touch anything.

This was a frustrating feeling so he decided to just vent out these feelings on today's hunt.

Aldrich fixed his armor and cleaned his weapons carefully before he proceeded to the barracks that took much of his time recently. He still recalled that he had not looted the central area but he decided to leave it until later.

Aldrich opened the gate to the last tower of the barracks, there he encountered a total of thirteen husks all well armed and worked together to enhance each other's strengths.

Aldrich had guessed that thirteen units must make up a squad, if so then the level two husks must be squad leaders.

This time half of the squad was stationed at the first floor where they patrolled and caught sight of him. The battle that ensued was not very long. Despite their numbers, Aldrich was already familiar with their tactics and and superior in everything else over them so it wasn't much of a fight.

In the last floor he found the rest of the squad with their squad leader, that was a much harder fight that forced Aldrich beyond his limits. The squad leader was a swordsman and he was level two, a dangerous foe on his own and this time he was backed by six husks to boot.

Aldrich fought tooth and nail, at last he won the battle but he also lost his left arm and right leg. If it wasn't for his superior vitality that stopped the bleeding quickly he might have died of blood loss.

Aldrich couldn't crawl back to the base even if he wanted to so after a long enough time he returned back to the real world having gained another twenty eight essence orbs.

After the first battle in the last tower Aldrich kept a close eye on his attribute panel and figured out what's needed to upgrade an attribute to level five. He saw the exact moment when the plus sign appeared after the level four attributes.

He needed forty eight orbs, so that was actually triple the last upgrade. Fortunately he remembered to look out for that otherwise he would have missed his chance to know the exact number.

Knowing these kind of things was important as he could keep track of his spending that way. The way Aldrich thought about it was like he dealt with money, if he didn't know the cost and value of money then it would be troublesome to use it to the greatest benefit.

Understanding the attribute panel was absolutely important to Aldrich, after all it was his greatest asset and a grave secret.