"Huh?" With Valyr swiftly changing the previous topic of their conversation to another one, it was not surprising for the former to obtain a reply from Arcenne just a few seconds later. From how she phrased her message, Valyr could already imagine her putting more pressure on the person she was testing.
"Are we seriously just going to move on from that topic? You really don't have anything else to tell me about your involvement with the inheritance?" Nevertheless, after reading through the question Arcenne had sent him, Valyr pondered once more over whether or not he had something more to add.
At the very moment the five Level 23 spiders had appeared to try and kill him, he eventually thought that what Aster told Arcenne was probably more or less what he would have told her, so he sent a message back to her with this train of thought in mind.
"Well, there's not really anything else I could say that your father has already told you so," Valyr said through his message. "After all, he's the reason why I knew I became a candidate for the Four Pillars' Inheritance in the first place."
Whoosh!
Waiting for a response from Arcenne after that, he swept out with his spear once more as he took a look at the stats of one of the spiders. Though the spiders he was now up obviously had better stats compared to the Level 22 spiders he fought earlier, the difficulty of fighting them was still more or less the same, with him being able to kill the entire group within a similar amount of time.
'Should I just bump their levels up to the peak of Rank 1?' Briefly taking at the notifications he received from killing the spiders, it was only then did he receive another response from Arcenne, informing him first that she was now unoccupied since she had just finish her testing. Of course, after that message was the response Valyr was somewhat expecting to receive from her.
"Really? He only told me that you became a candidate for the Four Pillars' Inheritance and that the group of five that came from the Imperial Production Guild are truly there to escort you to the kingdom."
"Surely there must be more to that, right? After all, how did you become a candidate for the inheritance in the first place?"
"As someone from a noble clan, I'm sure you already know how they choose candidates for the inheritance." As Valyr sent this message to Arcenne, he notified the staff above the pit to increase the monsters' levels to the peak of Rank 1, to which the staff swiftly followed.
Seeing as there was time before the new wave of monsters began to appear, he continued with his message. "The higher the class, the more of the inheritance they could explore. With that, you could easily infer that I became a candidate because of my high class… though it was actually more like the Blacksmith Guild deeming me a suitable candidate now that I think about it."
"That's what I was talking about earlier." Surprisingly, Arcenne quickly sent a reply back. "As someone who dabbles more in the realm of combat, I didn't even know about the requirements to become a candidate for the inheritance. All I knew was that being able to explore the inheritance in its entirety would mean a lot to the human race."
"Hopefully that's more than enough to satisfy you." Being notified by the staff that the new wave was about to start soon, Valyr slightly hastened the sending of his message, the end result making him put on a slightly weird expression as he realized his message could be understood in multiple ways.
"Oh, definitely. Far much more than you'd think." Though, just as he received Arcenne's message the moment the new wave had begun, a weird expression appeared on Valyr's face once more as he read through it, only for his expression to turn neutral as he felt like he was thinking too much into it.
Activating [Analysis] on one of the spiders, only to see that his stats were still roughly double theirs in various areas, Valyr charged forward once more, using basic movements with the spear to take care of all the spiders as the thought of fighting against five Level 35 spiders at once not seeming impossible anymore popped up in his head.
Nevertheless, he placed this thought at the side for now as he read the next message Arcenne had sent him, which was a response to his tangential question from earlier. "Speaking of which, were you serious about your question earlier? The one about the mage specializing in spatial compression?"
"I wouldn't have brought it up in the first place if I wasn't," Valyr replied back, deciding to finish the entire conversation for now as he stood at the center of the pit. After that, he allowed his muscle memory to take over as he deftly dodged all of the attacks the spiders threw him, sometimes even retaliating with a swift thrust to the face.
Unlike the previous responses Arcenne sent before, the next message took a while to arrive, prompting Valyr to think that she had pondered over the question for a bit. "I do know quite a few mages that do specialize in that thanks to my father, but all of them cost a lot to hire. And by a lot, I really mean a lot."
"In fact, the price they charge is so high that you'd actually save money learning spatial compression magic instead." Reading this part of Arcenne's message, Valyr inwardly nodded with her words, recalling the amount of money he'd have to fork over back then just to imbue spatial compression magic into a single piece of equipment.
The amount of money he had forked over to mages in total had reached such an obscene amount that he eventually decided to learn how to cast it on his own at some point in the past. Though Valyr could also choose to pick up spatial compression magic to save himself the hassle of losing a ton of money, he decided not to.
As to why, it all came down to one resource.
Technology Points.
By picking up magic on the side, he was effectively doubling the number of advancements he had to unlock in the Innovation branch of the Technology Tree. With the amount of Technology Points he could obtain at the moment already being limited, he did not want to hamper his progress any further by splitting his focus between two branches of innovation. Aside from that, in the latter stages of both paths, the two would be indistinguishable from one another, in fact even overlapping at some points.
With that, he told Arcenne through a message that he was fine with paying the fee, he just needed to know where he could find one.
Fortunately, after persuading Valyr to think about it once, Arcenne did not persuade Valyr any further, instead deciding to help out as she gave him a list of mages she knew through her father that specialized in spatial compression. Feeling that it would be a while before he could come to a decision on which mage to hire, Valyr decided to end the conversation between the two for now, returning all of his attention towards the spiders before swiftly killing them soon after.
"Increase their level by one." Informing the staff above the pit to increase the difficulty even further, Valyr took this brief moment of silence to rest his body up before contacting another person through the chat function.
