The Insider System

Chapter 301: Pretending To Sleep

Looking down at his new ring Lake asked. "Does it do anything other than tell someone I'm a member of the temple?" Lake could have just inspected the ring but with the Temple Head here he figured he might as well talk to her about it. "No, you could have a better one if you want though. It will just take a while to get it to you."

Lake thought about it and said. "No, that's alright. Knowing me it will get destroyed soon anyway." Lake had lost everything including his Fighters guild badge and all the stuff from the Alchemist guild like his scroll and badge when he had broken the barrier so something like that would probably happen again.

"Well if that happens just find me and I'll help you prove who you are." Lake had been through a test to prove who he was before so he knew it was supposed to be done by someone who knew you, which here in the temple could really only mean the Temple Head. "Alright."

With this done Lake was about to ask if there was anything he could do for the Temple Head while he was waiting for the time to leave with Tiff again when he realized he should probably just leave it up to the Temple Head to ask. If he was constantly offering to help he wouldn't have any free time. He also needed to be here when the barrier fell in the Metal Domain.

If he was off doing something else when that happened he could lose his chance to be paid. Thinking of a way to leave where he wouldn't say anything that could lead to him getting an assignment Lake said. "Alright I'm going to go to my room to sleep." Everyone needed to do this so there was no way the Temple Head wouldn't believe him.

"Alright come see me when you wake up." As he was walking away Lake wondered if he had failed and now all that was going to happen was he would waste time in his room before being asked to go out on a mission. It was too bad he hadn't just asked the Temple Head what she wanted from him before he walked away.

As he was stepping into his room he then remembered the fact the Temple Head was supposed to talk to Lucas about him joining before they allowed him to. Seeing this as an opportunity to go back and talk to the Temple Head instead of pretending to sleep, Lake went back towards the Temple Heads office.

As he was walking in he heard the Temple Head say. "That was fast." Not wanting her to actually think he had slept in that small amount of time he got right to the point. "Lucas once told me other guilds were supposed to check with him before I was allowed to join. Does that not affect people joining temples?"

"I'm sure he would like us to check with him but I really don't have time for that. If he has a problem with it I'll just tell him you had already told me you wanted to be a member before you joined the Alchemist guild." Hearing the Temple Head's plan was just to say she had actually been first, Lake thought back to how different countries back in his world had dealt with each other.

As long as the situation wasn't that serious the explanation they gave was always lackluster because they knew the other country wouldn't declare war over something so small. "Ok in that case I'll be going to sleep. Oh actually I was also wondering why you wanted me to come talk to you after I woke up. I don't think I'll be able to sleep if I don't know what you need."

"I was just going to walk you around and explain things you couldn't know before you were a member for safety reasons. It shouldn't take too long so I can do it instead of passing it off to someone else." Hearing he had been wrong about her needing him to do something, Lake was relieved. "Ok I'll see you in a few hours then."

Walking back out into the hallway, Lake wondered if he could leave and go sleep in the alchemist guild instead of the room he had here. He hadn't used this bed yet but by the looks of it it wasn't going to be close to the quality of the one he had in the spire. The Temple Head had said he lived here now but the Alchemist guild was just a minute away.

Deciding to leave asking if he could leave till after he had been a member for more than an hour, Lake walked to his room. Closing his door as he entered the door, Lake locked it even though he doubted a lock like this could ever stop someone in this world if there wasn't more to it like magic of some kind.

Taking his helmet off, Lake got into bed then remembered he wasn't actually tired. He had come to his room because he had lied to get away from the Temple Head before she gave him a mission which turned out to be completely unnecessary. Getting out of his bed, Lake wondered what he should do to pass the time.

The easiest thing would be to tell the Temple Head about the fact he only slept for a few minutes if she ever asked but he was pretty sure he could do what he was going to do here just as good as he could somewhere else. It was time for him to start training magic again with him having some time before he and Tiff had to leave to go to the Metal Domain.

This was a great chance for him to train in the solid principle again so he didn't plan to waste it. Getting his Wind mana into a cube shape Lake started to run the drill while he thought about the war. The situation in the Metal Domain didn't have an explanation at the moment but he was probably the only person who had as much information as he did who wasn't on the side of the Demon Lord.

This meant he had a good chance of figuring it out if he spent enough time trying to put the facts together. Trying to think back to the day he had gotten to the Metal Domain, Lake remembered the spy he had gone to meet. They had been dressed as a Demon Worshiper and they had handed them an amount of time before something bad happened before jumping out of a window for some reason.

After that they had rushed back to the Fighters guild and given the information to Masters. Thinking of Master lake couldn't help but think about who was dead and who was alive out of the people that had been in the Fighters guild then. It had to be an extremely small number of them that were still alive.

Feeling the cube got to a point that he had started to struggle he stopped thinking and focused on compressing the cube. Once he got it to the starting size he started the expanding phase and wondered what round of this he was on. The first few times had been so easy that he hadn't even had to think about it so he hadn't counted.

He didn't think this cube would last much longer though so he could just count on the next cube. Starting the compression again Lake didn't think he was going to be able to do it with his current internal design so he started to add another layer when it started to deform. Knowing there wasn't a reason to not try to save it, Lake did his best to get its shape back to a cube.

Once it was back to being a cube Lake went back to what he had been doing to add another layer to the compression. Lake could feel the strain on his ability to control the cube once the new layer was formed but still tried to shrink the cube. A few seconds after this slow process started the cube finally popped and he went into making the next cube so he could count how many rounds he could do before he struggled.

Flying through the first ten rounds Lake tried to remember how many he had been able to do back when he had first started training. He knew there were other factors like how much mana was in the cube when you first formed it but he was pretty sure he had only been able to do it to six or seven before he failed.

He still wasn't done though because he still kept going at a good pace until he got to the fifteenth round. This was the point where he had probably failed last time so he got ready to try as hard as he could so he could make progress. If he didn't try as hard as he could there was no reason to be pretending to sleep.