The Insider System

Chapter 253: Determined

Walking outside Lake saw people start to glow and knew he needed to find a better thing to set Detector to to exclude things like socks. Setting detector to look for things that would cover his upper body that he could wear, Lake saw the corpses of the demon worshipers start to glow as Detector picked up their robes.

Lake decided this was fine and left Detector set to this as he lifted into the air heading for the nice part of town. He figured the nice houses would have the kind of jacket he would want to wear. One house should have more clothes to go through than an entire street in a poorer area.

Not to mention the quality would probably be a lot higher as well. Hopefully he could find something that wouldn't look too bad with a few holes in it. Stopping at the first house on the street, Lake saw three separate locations light up like they were places where the people that lived inside kept their clothes and broke in after making sure it wasn't dangerous.

Finding the first bedroom Lake saw it was pretty bare and wondered if maybe it was a guest room. If he was right the stuff in this closet would probably be on the older side but he didn't really care about the current fashion of the metal domain and just wanted something to fix the way he looked and sounded.

Dragging the three items that met his requirements out of the closet and tossing them on the bed, Lake Took the one he liked the best and moved towards the next room that held clothes. Seeing the wide bed Lake knew this room would probably have a large amount of clothes not in his size since they would most likely belong to the woman of the house and fished out what he felt he could fit into.

Once he dragged out the five things that looked to be his size, Lake grabbed the only thing that didn't have any shiny metal bits and tried it on. Spinning until he found the mirror, Lake liked how he looked better now that his mixed gear was covered but he still needed to see if it helped with the noise so he ran to the next room in the house that had clothes in it.

It was a short distance but it was long enough to see that the new coat muffled the noise so that it was about the same amount as his last two sets of armor. He could live with that and opened the door to the last room. Seeing toys Lake still went in but guessed he was unlikely to find anything better in a kids closet.

Opening the door, Lake saw the size of the clothes and went ahead and closed the door again. Heading for the door, Lake grabbed the other coat he had found in the first room and put it in the special space for stolen items in case he ever needed it. He really had no way of knowing how long these two coats would last so taking two would save him some time later.

Walking back outside Lake was about to head for the base again when he figured he could go check on the barrier that was protecting the guy with the nice armor. Stopping once he was passing over Lake lowered himself down to see if he could step on the top of the invisible barrier.

Feeling his foot hit the top of the barrier Lake lifted off again after standing there for a second. At this point he had touched the barrier a few times so he knew it was safe but he didn't want to attack it in an attempt to break it and find that it was capable of hurting him. Thinking this, Lake stopped because he remembered he could solve almost any problem that involved him lacking information with Detector if he just worded what he wanted to find right.

Setting it to look for barriers just to make sure he had the name for what it was right, Lake was happy to find it starting to glow and switched it to look for barriers he could break with his sword. With the barrier still glowing, Lake switched it to look for barriers he could safely break.

When he saw it glowing still he knew he had been right about it only being a shield with no other abilities. Taking out his short sword Lake swung once to see if it could take even a normal attack from him. When it was able to take a normal attack Lake decided he should switch to using his fist so he didn't damage the sword when he swung it harder than it could take.

Using Burst and Fast Hands Lake did a small smack on the side of the barrier and felt it pop like a bubble. With how easy that had been, Lake wondered if maybe he could break the barrier to the surface after all and decided he would check before he went to look at his tunnel again. Wondering why he hadn't ever thought to use Detector to figure out how to break a barrier safely, Lake thought maybe he had overestimated how strong they were after one had been able to stop Crunch. That being said there wasn't really a reason to think the small barrier was anywhere near as strong as the one covering the surface.

The one he had just broken was also clear which made it a lot less menacing compared to the one he was thinking of breaking now because he was sure the color meant it was dangerous to those that touched it and deadly to those who broke it. With the barrier gone Lake walked towards the guy to see if he could finally figure out what had caused their death.

At this point he wanted to know that more than he wanted the armor. It was too thick for him anyway so really all he was going to do with it was bring it back to the base to see if anyone wanted to wear it. It would have been nice if he could take it to sell but he didn't have the room for it in his bag and with the owner dead him taking it wasn't stealing so he couldn't stash it in the space created by Booster Bag.

Flipping the guy over Lake saw he was completely devoid of any injuries and started to think of ways that could kill you that didn't leave a mark as he took the helmet off. Seeing the older man's face Lake wondered if he had just dropped dead from the excitement and used Detector to look for someone who died of natural causes.

Seeing the guy start to glow, Lake realized he could have figured this out before taking the barrier down if he had just played with Detector for a few seconds but he would have still probably taken it out so he could get the armor and bring it to Wezz. Finishing undressing the man of his armor, Lake could tell every piece was enchanted.

He wasn't surprised about this since he had figured it had been what made the barrier but it made the fact he wouldn't be able to keep it a little harder since this was the first time he had seen enchanted armor. He guessed it just made it a nicer gift to whoever it ended up with. Picking it up, Lake headed for the base.

Once inside Lake set the armor in front of Wezz and asked. "Are you interested?" Wezz took one look at what he had brought him and dropped his cup of water. Lake wasn't expecting such an exaggerated response but he was happy Wezz liked it and was about to ask if he liked it when Wezz asked. "Where'd you get this?"

"It was on a dead guy. Why?" The way Wezz asked made it seem he wasn't just asking for no reason. "Because I know who it belonged to. You said he was dead?" Nodding Lake asked. "Who was he?"

"He used to be the oracles guard, he's been retired for a while but I didn't think he would die so easily." Lake wondered if he should tell Wezz the man had died from something like a heart attack or if he should just let him continue to think he had died in battle. After thinking about it some more he decided to do something in between. "I'm actually not sure what got him. The armor is in perfect condition so it had to be something weird that he couldn't defend against."

Right after he said this, Lake could tell he had accidentally made it seem like the Demon Worshipers had a new sinister way to kill someone and was about to fix it when Wezz said. "We have to get out of here soon." After he said this he started to change his armor to the set Lake had just brought him with a determined look so Lake decided it was fine.

"I'll go see if I can dig yet. It should be done raining by now so I'll try to get us to the surface by tomorrow." Lake could tell Wezz wasn't really listening but didn't repeat himself and just went towards the door. Wezz had unlocked a new source of determination and Lake didn't want to get in the way of that by continuing to talk at him.