The Insider System

Chapter 294: Bad Timing

"Do you want to go back to see if it's a problem for them and they need our help?" Tiff didn't think it was a great idea for her to go fight and she needed Lake alive to find the dagger so she didn't want to go. They did need the group alive to open the barrier though so she wouldn't fight against it if Lake said he was going.

...

Lake felt the Demon Worshiper wouldn't be running towards the battle if they were useless so he felt it would be for the best if they went. "I think we should go back but if it looks bad we'll just run. It would be sad if the Metal Domain stays trapped but there's no point in fighting a battle we can't win."

...

Tiff wondered what the Temple Head would say if she was here right now. On one hand some very powerful people that were part of the Temple were in that group and it would hurt if they lost them but she was sure the Temple Head would say she was more important to the Temple of Light now.

"Ok lets go." If the person was as fast as Lake made it sound they needed to go quickly and not waste too much time talking. Around ten minutes later they were back where they had been before she had suggested they move away and she could tell whoever this new person was they had really changed this battle.

"I know the fact the barrier is shaking is a bad sign but it doesn't necessarily mean it will break right?" Lake was right if your barrier got destabilized all you needed to do was restabilize it but the real problem was the amount of time it had taken the new person to shake them. If this continued eventually whoever it was that was in charge of the barrier would lose focus or all their mana and it would fall.

"They're still fine but be ready to act if it goes down." On their way over Tiff hadn't planned to get involved so she was a little surprised at how fast she had made up her mind just now. Her words sounded like they had come from a person who wanted to fight.

...

Hearing Tiff and him might go into a fight together he wished he could just give her the dagger now without it making him seem like a complete lunatic that had just been lying to everyone to make them do what he wanted. With how much the Temple seemed to want the dagger back he was sure it was a powerful weapon to someone like Tiff who had the Holy affinity.

He decided that if this fight got bad enough he would just give it to her not caring how it made him look. At the end of the day his life was worth more than his image, especially since in a world this big he could just move and take a new identity to get away from any problems he had caused.

"That spell just now was probably the new person we followed." Hearing Tiff talk about the giant spell that had just flown towards their allies barrier, Lake had to agree and remembered he could be using this time to try and think of a way for them to win this battle if he did have to get involved.

The most obvious thing was for him to use Wave on the new Demon Worshiper but they seemed kind of fast so he didn't know if it would work. There was also a chance this Demon Worshiper was who the group had been trying to draw out this whole time and if he and Tiff joined the fight they would be messing up their plan to take the Demon Worshiper out.

For all he knew, getting in the way could mess this up entirely and not being able to decide if this was right or not he decided to ask Tiff what she thought. "Tiff do you think this might be what our group is after? I traveled with them for a while and they were going slow on purpose to draw attention."

"It's possible and I don't think we'll have to wait much longer to find out." Seeing what she was pointing at Lake was surprised at how fast the new Demon Worshiper was able to launch these giant spells that were shaking the barrier. It had only been a few seconds since the last one while all the smaller spells the other Demon Worshipers were launching took minutes to fire again.

"Is that a masterwork formation the Demon Worshiper is using to fire the spells?" He had just learned about masterwork spells but if the criteria was efficiency he felt this formation met it. "I would have to say yes even though there's no way to know for sure without studying it for longer."

"So what wins a masterwork attack formation or a masterwork shield formation?" He was sure it would depend on the formations in the matchup but he wanted to know if one had an advantage for some reason. "Shield formations tend to win if the two of them are the same strength unless there's an unfortunate elemental clash."

Lake had figured that would be the case but he wanted to know why. "Why do shield formations win in a clash if the two are equal?"

"Win isn't really the right word, it's more of a draw but since the shield formation was meant to protect you a draw is a win." Lake understood what she meant and decided to go back to what she had said earlier about elemental clashes. "In this case who has the elemental advantage?"

"I don't know, Demon Worshipers tend to use mainly Unholy and Dark mixed in their formations but the person on our side could be mixing any element and I can't tell just by looking at it since color can be changed like any other principle." Lake nodded and understood this was actually in their favor.

If they couldn't tell there was a good chance the Demon Worshiper had no way of telling either. "They got the barrier restabilized." Looking back at the barrier of their allies, Lake saw what Tiff said was true. The barrier had stabilized just in time for the Demon Worshiper to launch their next attack.

The Timing of it made him wonder if it too was a trick like the speed at which they were moving. He could see them pretending to be closer to losing their barrier than they actually were to draw the Demon Worshiper to over committing to an attack. From there he was guessing they would use the few seconds they had to drop their barrier and attempt their first attack on the next group of Demon Worshipers.

Lake didn't know what target they would prioritize though with there still being two of the original groups left in addition to the new Demon worshiper who was all on their own. Realizing that this was still going to take forever with all that had changed was how high the stakes were, Lake could feel himself start to lose interest but didn't let himself look away in case he was wrong and the group would need their help soon.

"They just dropped the barrier." Lakehad been watching this time so he had seen it happen. It seemed his guess on what they planned to do had been extremely close to reality. This wasn't that surprising considering you had to attack for it to be a fight you would win and they really only had a few seconds that they could in between the giant spell from the new Demon Worshipers formation.

"I wonder why they're going for that group, the only one that seems to have an effect on them is the new guy." Lake didn't know the answer but like everything else they were doing he was sure it was for whatever hidden plan they were working off of. "I'm going to go sit down again." Lake was sure at this point that he didn't need to be ready to move so he decided to just go back to where he had been waiting earlier.

...

Tiff was surprised at how fast Lake had lost interest and said. "If we don't need to be here let's move further away." She was even more worried about the fact one of the Demon Worshipers would notice her now that the much stronger one had shown up so if they weren't here for a reason she wanted to leave.

It had also become increasingly clear that where they were going was going to take longer than she could stay outside so she actually felt it would be best for her to go back to the temple at least until the barrier in the Metal Domain was down. "That's fine, lead the way." Hearing he was fine with leaving again Tiff went ahead and said. "I'll be going back to the temple actually. When we set out I didn't know we would be going to the Metal Domain so I wasn't actually ready."

...

Hearing Tiff wanted to call it quits he wasn't surprised, the timing had just been bad and him trying to slow them down so he could keep an eye on the group had been unnecessary. He should have just led them to the Metal Domain and hid the dagger in the first hole in a mountain they passed.

"I'll come with you. There's nothing I can do until they get to the Metal Domain anyway so me being at the Temple will let us leave together to retrieve the dagger when it's time." Lake didn't know what he would do until the barrier came down but he guessed he didn't actually have to wait. In her mind they were chasing after Jon who was the one who had the dagger so he could just tell her he was on the move again in a few hours.

This would make it seem like he had been sleeping and he just happened to be close to the Metal Domain instead of inside of it. Him being close would probably make sense to her since there were probably lots of strong people that would be involved in the Metal Domains crisis.