Chapter 27 26. A Portal!
Shane observed the situation outside the cave carefully for a while as he ignored the stunned host. The radar showed that the red dots were walking away at a slow pace as if they were trying to search for something in the woods. Only when they disappeared completely from the radar did Shane sigh in relief and said, "You're safe for now."
Noah snapped out of his daze and stood up, "What the heck was that just now?"
"I took control of this body temporarily," Shane stated the fact as if he was just saying something casual.
"But how can you do that without my permission? You could have at least given me a heads-up!"
"Didn't I apologize to you?"
"It was too shocking at that moment! How could I react?!"
Shane sighed and said, "Noah, if you don't want me to take control of your body anymore, just keep getting stronger!"
"Show me the stats."
Shane clicked at the stats window of the host in his menu and tapped on the prompt tab as he clicked the options mentioned there by default. He could see the show stats window there at the top. As soon as he clicked it, a stats window appeared in front of the host that showed everything, including his luck being negative twenty.
Noah's eyes widened, "What the f*ck does that mean? How can I be so unlucky?!"
'If I knew what it meant, I would have found a way to increase it already!' Shane grumbled under his breath and made a note to ask his master about it after going out. For now, he could only post a query in the report section and hope that Dirt would answer it quickly.
So he opened the report section in his menu and wrote down his query as he said, "I asked my seniors about this. Don't worry. Let's think about how to get you a weapon and increase Crana for you."
"Yeah, what's Crana though?" Noah sounded genuinely confused as he looked at his stats window.
"It's a heavenly currency system."
Noah said nothing as he continued to study his stats. After half an hour of asking the system questions, he learned everything he needed to in the stats window. When he closed the window, a question suddenly popped up in his head, "Oh yeah, system, you never told me your name. Don't systems usually have those?"
Shane grimaced. If only this stupid host hadn't asked that…. He didn't want to tell the name of the type of job he had been assigned for like eternity. The poor human would probably end up fainting out of fear. He sighed and lied, "I don't have a name."
"Really?" Poor Noah believed him and nodded, "Show me directions. Where should I go?"
Shane got a headache at this time as he pressed his fingers against his forehead. He was merely a system, not some host slave! Why did this youth continue to treat him as such? He opened his mouth and said without changing his expression, "I'm not obliged to answer that. Please, find a weapon on your own. On the contrary, if there's a dungeon nearby, I'll let you know."
Before Noah could even open his mouth, Shane interrupted and added, "Also, I'm calculating the stats. Please, don't disturb me for a while."
Shane didn't want to answer questions anymore and wanted to be quiet. It was already too much hearing the host's thoughts now and then.
After that, he heard the host uttering a series of cusses in his mind, which Shane ignored as usual. He simply opened the radar and stared at it intently.
This window was very helpful. It not only showed the positions of enemies for free but it could also be used to locate dungeons and other treasure hunting places nearby. It was just that a hint could tell him where exactly he should go to find a weapon of a higher grade. If a particular dungeon didn't have anything worthwhile, they would just end up wasting their time.
Since this world was of severe difficulty, Shane could only assume that finding a weapon would itself be a tedious task. So he didn't want to miss out on an opportunity no matter how difficult it may seem.
He could see that Noah had already started to walk outside the cave after taking every step carefully. The youth still seemed to be shocked after facing such a life and death situation. This time, he walked at a slow pace and stopped by a tree. His eyes narrowed at the tree branch.
'A branch could also be a weapon, right?' Noah's thoughts continued to pour into Shane's mind.
At this moment, Shane immediately understood what the host wanted to do, but he didn't stop the young, naive man. He also wanted to know whether picking up a random branch would suffice. If not, he might as well just use the hint option after paying up a fifty Crana. He probably would have gotten enough already from the livestream until now.
He opened the Crana option and was shocked to see his account had close to five thousand Crana. Didn't he have about two thousand last time? How come his income increased so much? Had he become famous already at this moment?
He opened the livestream section and glanced around. After a while, he immediately understood while reading through the comments that people liked the part where he took control of the host, and they especially liked how he managed to shut Noah up just like that.
So in short, they seemed to like when he acted cool.
Shane sneered. They better like it because he would not care even if it was otherwise.
Just then, he heard the host calling him out, "Hey, system, why isn't the task finished? Is there a glitch in you?"
"You didn't find a weapon yet," Shane glanced at the branch and said, "Can you really kill a berserk elf with this branch?"
Nosh pursed his lips and sighed. He threw the branch and continued walking through the forest. Just as he was walking, he heard Shane's voice in his head, "I can locate a dungeon in a nearby cave. Turn to your left."
The young man continued walking in the direction while wearing his tattered robes until he reached the entrance of the cave. A light blue portal appeared there, lightning sparking rapidly, waiting for someone to enter. Noah's eyes lit up at that. He immediately entered the cave without thinking. After glancing at the color of the portal, he understood that the level should be easy.
So even Shane was relaxed as he watched the youth entering through the dungeon portal. What they both didn't know was that as soon as Noah entered, the color of the portal changed into dark blue color as a dark aura poured out of that portal continuously.