While coming out of the Employment agency, with his new bounty mission - Orsted sensed a few searing gazes on his back.
Hatred and apprehension.
The more they came in contact with Orsted's curse, the more their fear turned into hatred. Due to this, some local police even came to check up on Orsted sometime ago.
Even with his rising reputation, besides the Lizard men, not a single person held a good impression of him. Hence, his reputation twisted him more and more into the image of a monster.
Fortunately, the system didn't care whether Orsted made a good or bad name, providing him dragon points without discrimination.
'I don't like their gazes....' Controlling the urge to slap them away, Orsted moved towards his goal, by directly flying into the sky with wind magic. A thin layer of wind acted like a barrier as his body zoomed into the distant sky.
Now was the perfect time to get started with Zarestia, since Halibel left for a mission recently. Which meant there wouldn't be any unknown variable in his plan.
Halibel in the end was like an freelancer. With his unmatched skill as a shinobi, he offered his services to those who are able to afford him, often working for clients such as the League of Cities, his own tribe, or even Anastasia Hoshin of the Hoshin Company.
Being careful with Halibel was a must in Orsted's eyes. After all, he was the strongest person in the whole Kararagi, a fact accepted by all other nations
'I have prepared the best I can now. I have even left all the alcohol I collected from dozens of bandits in my inventory for precaution.'
Though underhanded, alcohol was very effective against Zarestia.
Zarestia has a deep trauma and hatred towards alcohol, and coming into contact with it was enough to put her into shock.
This trauma originated from Zarestia's experience in ancient times. Where she was offered alcohol for the first time by her followers and fell asleep away from her nest for the first time.
While she slept, the people removed her limbs, stripping her of all elemental powers besides wind. After accusing her, They bathed her in alcohol and lit her ablaze in flame. Realizing she still had her head and power over wind, she resolved to kill them all and slew each and every one of them.
Since then, Zarestia has been filled with bloodlust, and to express her freedom she would kill anything and everything. She took for herself the title of the Most Beautiful Reaper (shinigami).
Of course, not many knew of her self proclaimed title. Due to her compulsory murder mindset, everyone knew her as the slasher, Zarestia.
'To even have hope of communicating with Zarestia - First, I need to deal with her bloodlust. Or I wouldn't even get a chance to speak before getting sliced in half.'
To that purpose, Orsted deduced that stealing Zarestia's light sphere was most effective method.
When stripped of her Light Sphere, which contained the bulk of her power, her bloodlust leaves her as well. Without it, which acted like her anchor, Zarestia would only be able to exhibit less than 50% of her strength.
Even with just that, Zarestia was able to wreck Banan up in the 'Shinigami incident', Defeating Ricardo Welkins easily and lifting up all the residents of Banan into the sky simultaneously as hostages. Her physical prowess was very strong too from her feats.
Without the light sphere - At her core, Zarestia was childish and temperamental despite both her apparent and actual age.
The only problem was that - Zarestia would try her best to reclaim the light sphere once lost - angrily at that, apparently seeking retribution.
[Arcane dragon's light wing!]
After travelling a good distance from Banan, Two golden wings grew behind Orsted, boosting his speed instantly. He appeared like a streak of light passing by to the strangers on ground.
His body shifted towards Zarestia's bed rapidly.
Orsted realized an problem with [Arcane dragon slayer magic] in the past two months. It allowed the wielder to use every element in existence, but there was a pre-condition to it.
Orsted had to eat that particular element atleast once, before he could use it. He failed dozens of time while trying to use lightning element before realising such a condition.
Light, darkness or shadow were present everywhere, so they weren't a problem to collect in the end. But lightning was a little harder.
'System, will a spirit be affected by my [dragon tribe's curse] too?' Orsted inquired curiously.
[No.]
A simple and machine-like answer as always, but it's answer relieved Orsted. He wanted to save up his lifespan for emergency as much as possible.
With his speed enhanced dozens of time over, Orsted covered two days worth of normal travelling in 4 hours.
Orsted could see Reize's village right below him and just after that was Zarestia's bed - it was a place similar to the Pleiades Watchtower, both where located at the end of the world, near the great waterfall.
However, Zarestia's bed was an land that existed even before 400 years, the time of great disaster. It was an mysterious place in its own right.
Zarestia's bed wasn't really mentioned much in the novel, so Orsted had to collect information from Crane and other Lizard mens subtly.
'It was just like they said...'
There stood a long arrays of small hills before Orsted, while a single mountain towered over them as the largest. The largest mountain was were Zarestia slumbered as per the rumor.
Without hesitation, Orsted activated one of his new bracelet's abilities - [Presence obscuring]. He had already swapped his scent with one of his lizard Men followers too beforehand.
Zarestia used her enhanced smelling ability to find out the culprit in the original plotline and she was quite depended on it too. To fool her, he had to use such a method.
As for why he chose a lizard man in particular?
Simply because Orsted wanted an reason to obstruct her, as she tried to kill one of his 'friend'.
In the original timeline, a normal oni was able to steal Zarestia's light sphere - which would occur almost 11 years from now. So the difficulty of his task was quite low overall right now.
Still, Orsted prepared extensively just in case.
Using shadow element with Arcane dragon slayer magic, Orsted had connected his shadow to his new house's shadow. He could immediately transfer himself there if needed.
'Since my mana capacity has increased now, even at this distance, it should work just fine....' Orsted hoped so.
Orsted had tried very hard to create dozens of magic that he knew from other world's, but it was just too hard to make his imagination into reality. Even with his genius level talent in magic, he could only create a few versatile sub-spells used alongside his dragon slayer magic.
With his presences erased, Orsted floated down and quickly changed his clothes and wore a mask before flying towards the biggest mountain as silently as possible.
'As I expected, I can't see a single living being in the area. I thought it would be like this.'
Zarestia thinks of nothing but killing and has a constant desire to kill anything and everything. Everything leads back to murderous intent, regardless of target, mood, time, reason, or circumstance. Even when she doesn't want to kill, she wants to kill.
Therefore, it would be weird if something survived in her dwelling area.