Anton was walking beside Linda, the level two wizard who was part of the newbie group that he just joined, when he thought of the fact that he hadn’t truly learn anything about the kingdom of Ormunda. He had barely met any powerful wizards, and the guild staffer that he had been close to, like Tobias and Elianah, admitted that they were still on the fringes of the kingdom.
It was unlike when he and his family arrived in Zalnothel. They were immediately in the center of things. More than likely, it was because Zalnothel was extremely small compared to Ormunda, and the news that he had attained the rank of an archmage at a young age was not announced to many people.
Anton also thought that maybe his achievements weren’t that rare in this kingdom, but the fact of the matter was, he preferred his current circumstances. His being one of the mage adventurers that littered the kingdom gave him the chance to grow strong quietly. He also thought that his father, Anders, and his sister, Anna, now shared his belief that someday, they would have to fight to the end with the Undead Coalition, so the best thing that they could do was to grow as powerful as they could.
To be honest, Anton didn’t know if Anna being groomed by the wizards of Ormunda through the mage academy would allow her to learn the true power of the kingdom. He wanted to learn that knowledge because ultimately, it would affect his opinion regarding truly staying in this kingdom. Could this kingdom be the last bastion that he theorized?
He knew that his theories were wild, but he believed that his father and sister probably believed the same thing already, but there’s a chance that Anna would change her mind. It didn’t matter since the only important thing was for everyone to grow as powerful as they could.
That was also the main reason why he was wasting his time joining newbie groups. He wanted the newbies to have the fighting power they would need to fight off the undead if it came to something like a last stand. Anton knew that this type of project of helping newbies to get a hold of themselves, was ultimately too inconsequential to affect anything important, but he was also having fun using a Smurf account to play the game.
If he was being honest, that was probably the true reason why he was joining newbie groups. Playing Smurf accounts with newbies. All those pretend deep reason was just that, justification on why he was wasting his time. He liked feeling powerful and feeling that he was helping people. It was an immature behavior, but considering that he was only eighteen in this world, he had the right to behave immaturely.
Anton promised himself that he would only play , probably once or twice every month.
The next group of monsters that Anton and the others encountered were ghouls, and there were ten of them. If Anton were not there, the fight would have been extremely difficult for Roki and his group. Because of the buff spell that Anton gave the men, Montu and Roki moved forward without fear.
Linda didn’t hold back and attacked using her spells, but Anton could see that the mage’s damage was miniscule compared to what Montu and Roki’s damage was to the ghouls.
The combat was dangerous, so Anton killed four of the ghouls using his Holy Bolt spell. He also had to hit Montu and Roki with Holy Bolt to heal them since they received large damage from the ghouls.
When all of the ghouls were dead, Anton saw that Roki had tagged the ghouls.
“Can you harvest anything from the ghouls?” Anton asked.
Anton didn’t bother to get the Adventurers Guild booklet on what valuable loot they could get from the beginner dungeon since he considered the loot from the dungeon worthless, except for the mana stones.
“The tongues of the ghouls are valuable alchemist ingredients,” Roki said.
The group would only need to harvest from six ghouls since the undead that were hit by Anton’s Holy Bolt exploded. Thankfully, Roki and the others didn’t require Anton to harvest the body parts like them. He felt a little nauseated just thinking of harvesting the tongue of the undead.
While Roki and the others were busy harvesting, Anton activated his Cleansing Aura, and then the Vigor Aura after that, before switching back to the Fanaticism Aura, to make sure that everyone was in their peak condition for their next fight. The problem was, Linda admitted that she had very few spells left.
“I have a wand of Ice bolt you can use. It has twenty charges, so you can shoot twenty Ice Bolts before the charges run out. To recharge the wand, you just need to cast a few spells on the wand’s mana battery, but if the wand’s charges run out, you can just return it to me.”
Anton handed one of the wands of Ice Bolt remaining in his inventory to Linda. The mage gaped at him.
“I can’t use your wand. It must be expensive!”
“Just use it. The wand is just growing mold inside my spatial item. Don’t hold back on using the charges. I have a mana battery that I can use to recharge it.”
“What’s a mana battery?”
“It’s an item that will let you recharge the wand.”
Roki and Montu joined them, and the two melee fighters noticed the wand that Linda was holding. She explained to her party mates that the wand was lent to her by Anton since she had few spells remaining.
Linda didn’t even need to join the battle. Roki and Montu, with a lot of help from Anton, would be able to deal with the undead, but he didn’t want the lady mage to feel useless, so he lent her the Wand of Ice Bolt.
Surprisingly, the ten ghouls also produced another small mana stone.
“Flint did say that having you at the party was extremely lucky. He said that when you delved with them, they received an abnormal high amount of loot,” Roki said.
Anton just shrugged and asked the group to move forward, and they did. When noon arrived, the portal indicated that half of the monsters had already been killed, to the amazement of Roki, Montu, and Linda.
The fact that they didn’t get tired and didn’t have to stop contributed to the speed at which they killed the monsters. Additionally, almost half of the monsters were killed by Anton alone. The monsters they encountered were skeletons, ghouls, zombies, ghosts, and wraiths. They hadn’t encountered any high-level undead like vampires or liches, and to be honest, even though Roki said that there’s a chance that lower floors with an undead environment had a small chance to spawn those powerful monsters, it was a little hard to believe it.
Before they ate lunch, Anton didn’t want to eat somewhere where they could smell corpses, so he offered to clean their campsite, including themselves and everything they owned, using his Cleaning spell, and after a few castings of the said spell by Anton, everything was squeaky clean.
Anton ate one of his ready-made meals, but the fact that Roki, Montu, and Linda stared at him eating delicious hot food while they were eating dried meat and bread made Anton offer some of his meals to the group, which the three shamelessly accepted.