The Challenger's Return: Rebirth of the Rainbow Mage
Chapter 35: The First Floor (3)

Otto looked satisfied as he gazed at the small clearing in the forest in front of him.

He had been wandering the forest for a few hours now.

His main task was collecting coins.

His side task was using 'Sense Life' to find more enemies to kill, then collect more coins.

His second side task was to find a good area to build a small shelter for himself.

It would be used for various purposes.

With four walls and a ceiling above him, it would be easier to defend against attacks.

At the very least, he wouldn't have to have his guard up so high, since he would notice any out of place noise that came from Throskarts attacking his residence.

His audience had only grown quieter with each successive Throskart killed.

Otto idly wondered if they had given up.

Then he scoffed at himself.

They were only watching this 'game' show for entertainment.

He, coincidentally, fought all the time.

Thus, his 'stream' was very entertaining.

Even better, he was already an enemy.

Otto was sure that his audience would never give up trying to dig pits for him!

He smirked.

He silently hoped that his next plan would see a lot of coins walk over by themselves…

His stomach rumbled, and Otto rolled his eyes.

Earlier in the day, he had firmly decided not to spend any of his hard earned points to buy food.

Which meant he had two options.

One, use Analyze on the surrounding plants, determine which are edible, and cook them as appropriate with tools he could make, likely from stone.

It was a pity Otto hadn't seen any animals in this forest ring, whether in his past life or now.

So that option wasn't great.

Otto kept it as a last resort, and still decided to use his Analyze as much as he could in case he got into a bad situation.

Two, use Sense Life to find others around dinner time, and steal their food.

This was exactly what Otto would normally do.

He obviously had no moral qualms about the situation, either, since the Throskarts would be dead when they met him either way.

It was just…this option felt no different than spending his own points to buy food.

Since the points these folks had would end up going into Otto's pocket when they died.

And the more food they bought, the fewer points Otto would receive for his kills.

He sighed and looked helplessly at the sky.

Life was a little arduous…

Otto decided to put off the food situation for now. It would probably be solved when he enacted his next scheme, in any case.

If he truly became unbearably hungry, he would simply give up and buy points from the 'store.'

It wasn't like food cost more than ten or twenty points in total, and Otto indeed had thousands of points to his name.

To be exact…

[Current Rank: 856,443]

[Top 2%]

[Total Points: 7,565]

Instead, Otto's first task was to create a building for himself.

Humans felt more secure when they were not out in the open.

Otto was no exception.

He thought for a bit before he decided to use a combination of spells to craft a building from stone.

He first decided to cast Tunnel.

[Tunnel: Unlimited]

Earth Element

Level 13

Continuously tunnel up to 650 meters below the earth. Become immune to all non-magical and minor magical earth-related negative status.

Mana Cost: 25/second

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

Otto briefly debated making a fully underground space for his abode.

Then, it would be well-hidden and would feel very secure.

The drawback was that it would be cumbersome to get in and out.

Only, he realized that because of his audience and the omni-present watchers in the forest, being well hidden was only a dream.

So he decided to make a two part structure, with one part above ground and one underground.

Actually, Otto also didn't know why he was suddenly so drawn to being underground.

He had a vague feeling that he was forgetting something…

Well, he was old. Since he couldn't remember, let it rest.

He cast 'Tunnel: Unlimited' and burrowed out a large space five meters deep underground.

After he arduously worked his way back up to the surface, he took a glance at the large pile of black, oddly textured dirt on the ground.

Then, he cast another spell.

[Condense Earth: Unlimited]

Earth Element

Level 10

Turns soft or loose earth into condensed rock under heavy magic pressure.

Mana Cost: Variable

Duration: Permanent

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

With the spell at level 10, it was really easy to compress the dirt into stones.

It was also very mana-efficient, as the spell actually allowed him to draw the mana used in the compression back into his body.

There was only a small ten mana maintenance cost to keep using the spell every minute.

Within ten minutes, Otto had a pile of black stone blocks in front of him.

He tested one with his hand, and grinned.

Very sturdy.

The final spell Otto needed to build his abode was a rather rare spell of the Earth element.

Otto was very surprised to find that Aeselvell got her hands on it, too.

It required 23 intuition to learn directly, which meant it had taken Otto a few months in the casting space to study it naturally.

[Stone Molding: Unlimited]

Earth Element

Level 10

Grants the caster the power to mold stone.

Mana Cost: Variable

Duration: 1 hour

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

He quickly cast the spell on himself.

A new sense vaguely appeared in his brain.

Otto was relatively familiar with it from leveling his spell.

His mana poured out in rivulets and started, for lack of a better word, guiding the stone to shape itself differently.

The stone behaved as if it were bread dough in Otto's ministrations.

He worked quietly to build his new abode out of stone, not forgetting to occasionally cast a 'Sense Life' to ensure enemies weren't able to sneak up on him.

This time, it took a full hour for him to be satisfied.

He wiped the slight sweat off of his forehead and looked at the building he'd created.

And grimaced.

Otto was no designer. Nor was he an architect. He also had very little sense for art in general.

It could be imagined that the final shape didn't look as great as he'd hoped.

This time, the audience also couldn't help but comment on it.

[What is he making?]

[How many magics does this human have?]

[Err…]

[Is that supposed to be…a house?]

[Hahahaha! Human aesthetics are weird.]

[Maybe this human is also ugly in human culture?]

[It's really too bad he isn't a Throskart…]

The audience talked about humans as if they were some deeply primitive and backward race.

This was indeed how Throskarts generally viewed humans.

Because the level of technological development of humans was comparatively lower, most Throskarts saw them as un-evolved monkeys.

Of course, Otto paid the chatter no mind.

He simply entered his bare stone house calmly.

One benefit of building a house completely made of stone was that the prying eyes weren't able to observe.

These prying eyes were literally 'eyes' that functioned like cameras did back on Earth.

The eyes captured a scene and transmitted it back to the mage who controlled them.

This image would then be broadcast by other magical means that Otto didn't understand to the general populace of this world.

The biggest difference between them and cameras was that these eyes were made with magic and invisible.

Otto could detect them with his mana.

Actually, he could shoot them down with spells if he wanted.

It was just that such an action might dock him a decent amount of points.

Plus, it wouldn't have any meaningful effect; there were literally millions of these eyes scattered throughout the forest as a whole.

But even if he couldn't destroy them, couldn't he still hide?

Otto instantly wore a devilish smirk as he entered his new 'house.'

Now that the audience couldn't see him, he could start preparing…

****************************************************************

Otto sat in his stone house and calmed himself down.

His lips quirked upwards and the dim light revealed his gleaming eyes.

He cast a spell.

[Sense Life]

Light Element

Level 10

Send a light pulse around caster to detect: life forms, intelligent life forms, enemy life forms, or specific life forms.

Mana Cost: Depends on distance

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

Sense Life's big upgrade once it reached level 10 was that its maximum distance no longer applied.

Otto was planning on taking advantage of this in a big way.

He sent out a gargantuan pulse of mana into his surroundings.

It was so large that Otto felt the air faintly shimmer with the intense feedback it received.

The surroundings stilled for a moment. Everything was quiet.

Then, the mana shot outward faster than the speed of sound.

A small boom echoed in Otto's ears as the density of mana emitted almost granted it tangible form.

It even created a sonic boom!

Otto's hair stood on end as the mana passed by. The feeling was exhilarating.

Otto had put 10,000 mana into [Sense Life].

His eyes lit up as he started to receive the feedback.

1km, 2km, 5km, 10km, 20km, 30km.

It slowed down after it reached 30km.

A veritable torrent of information flooded into Otto's brain.

He calmly activated his [Multitask] trait to sift through it all.

The curl of his lips widened.

Otto could now sense the positions of all the Throskarts in a radius of 34 kilometers.

There were dozens of thousands of them.

They would do perfectly to participate in his next scheme.

Otto calmly waited for his mana to regenerate before a fog settled in a 200m radius surrounding his makeshift stone house.

It was the spell [Foggy Mystique]. It created a large radius of fog surrounding the caster.

Normally, it was meant to hide Otto's figure if he wanted to act like an assassin to attack the enemy.

But today, Otto would be using it to obscure the watchful eyes in the surrounding forest.

Ideally, the 'audience' would not be aware of what he was doing.

Otto began to cast 'Tunnel' over and over again underneath the ground.

Ten minutes later, the ground underneath his stone house was hollowed out.

His house was surrounded by a massive underground space created by using 'Tunnel' repeatedly under the earth.

He still kept a tiny layer of soil over the area.

On first glance, it looked no different than normal ground.

Magic eyes shouldn't be able to tell the difference once the fog cleared.

The only difference was that when stepped on, it would completely cave in.

Moreover, Otto had specifically set it so that it caved in small sections.

Otto once again waited for his mana to recover.

Then, he started casting 'Swamp Ground' over every inch of the underground space.

He turned the area over 2km in every direction into a complete underground swamp.

Since he couldn't cover such a large area in fog to obscure the watchful eyes, Otto resolved to make his spells as covert as possible.

Another ten minutes flew past as Otto painstakingly continued to convert the underground into a gigantic trap.

He then looked over at his handiwork with glee.

He rubbed his palms together, carefully avoiding inhaling the green miasma emitted from the giant underground swamp.

Fortunately, most of the miasma was still trapped underground.

It wouldn't be worth it if the creator himself was poisoned by his creation, right?

After recovering his mana, Otto quickly sealed any minuscule gaps in his stone house.

Then, he recast 'Foggy Mystique' which was fading.

This time, he wanted to obscure his figure.

For good measure, he also cast one of his favorite spells:

[Shadow Stealth]

Dark Element

Level 10

Surrounds the target in shadow, completely obscuring the figure. 2x spell effectiveness where shadow already exists. Stealth doesn't break in combat.

Mana Cost: 271

Duration: 2 hours

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

When 'Shadow Stealth' ascended to Level 10, its numbers didn't undergo the usual large upgrade.

Instead, a feature was added.

'Stealth doesn't break in combat.'

It meant Otto could fight while his figure was still hidden.

The benefit was similar to Jeremy's 'Flexible Stealth' which allowed attacks not to break his cover.

Otto loved it.

He could flit in and out, massacring everyone nearby without ever revealing his figure or breaking a sweat.

Though for now, that wasn't his goal.

At the moment, Otto needed to move fast.

The fog still covered the clearing, but as an extra precaution, Otto cloaked himself in his spell before exiting the stone house.

He dared not touch the ground directly.

Instead, as soon as he left the stone house, he cast 'Wind Jump' and walked on wind platforms that hovered millimeters above the exposed ground.

The ground wouldn't feel any pressure from his footsteps, and on the off chance a magic eye did manage to catch his stealthed figure, they would still think he was walking normally, unaware of the deadly trap that lay beneath.

Now, Otto had to move quickly and precisely for the next step of the plan.

As he moved under stealth, his brain whirred as he did his best to calculate all the potential variables he might face.

Otto was no god.

He couldn't calculate everything.

But being prepared for unforeseen circumstances often allowed him greater leeway in the execution stage.

Meanwhile, after a full five minutes of all-out sprinting on the air under stealth, he finally exited the range of his own trap and canceled the cast of 'Wind Jump.'

Otto's five minutes of all out sprinting was no joke.

As his agility had breached '70,' his speed was explosive.

Moreover, his body was still enhanced in all aspects by the points from his token.

He could easily move faster than a car back on earth. That is, 70 to 80 miles per hour.

Plus, because his attribute was not speed, but agility, Otto also had the freedom to use his absolute top speed without worrying about being unable to react to obstacles in the forest.

He felt the wind in his hair as he ran through the forest, by hopping on branches and treetops, still stealthed.

It made him feel like a bonafide ninja.

After nary a minute of running, he reached his first destination.

It was campsite where a gang of Throskarts were gathered.

All of them were sitting around a fire, listening to a large, burly looking man who seemed to be their leader, discuss something.

Three giant pots of stew simmered over the fire. It was evident that the camp had decided to buy food from the store.

A few people looked at the pots hungrily, though they didn't dare to eat while their leader was still talking.

Four scouts patrolled the campsite in case of enemies.

They weren't lax, though neither were they particularly alert.

This particular campsite was rather close to Otto's stone house.

Otto immediately started to enact his plan.

There were no comments from the audience so far.

Otto was pretty confident that they still couldn't see his silhouette.

Perhaps they even believed that Otto hadn't left the stone house.

Even after the fog cleared, revealing the area around the house entirely, that still might be the case.

Since his stone house was sealed on purpose.

But he would soon dispel the doubts of the audience.

After a minute or so of watching, Otto counted the number of people gathered at this campsite.

It was around a hundred, give or take a few.

From what Otto had seen under his [Sense Life] spell, most Throskarts were gathered like this in numbers of around 100 each.

Every gang also had its own leader, who was always the strongest among them.

Otto didn't need much time to plan his method of attack.

Since he needed to move quickly and quietly as possible, he only used the spell 'Lesser Fireball' which was more efficient in regards to mana.

Four fireballs quietly shot out of his hands one after another.

Otto snickered.

Sure enough, his stealth hadn't yet been broken.

In an instant, the four men out for patrol had been burned to ashes.

They didn't have time to let out a single scream.

Otto's eyes moved. He approached the campsite.

Surprisingly, his goal was not actually to massacre the entire camp.

No, it was a bit more sinister.

When it seemed that no one was looking, Otto waltzed right up to the three pots of food simmering on the fire.

One directly entered his spatial storage.

Then, two [Poison Bullets] emerged from his hand at the lowest power and entered the soup.

A man looked over, thinking he'd heard a splash of something.

His eyes widened when he saw that there were only two pots of stew left!