The Rise Of A Porter

Arnold quickly arrived at the last known location of Asterios' group, and sure enough the area was covered with blood and lifeless bodies of his undead summons as well as broken parts of his automatons.

Arnold wasn't concerned about the loss of the automatons as he could always salvage and repair them, the thing he was actually worried about was the lost of his undead summons which formed the majority of his combat force. Even though most of them were ranked at C, they were still an important resource that could be used to intimidate his opponents.

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Arnold's first thought was that someone or something might have used some kind of explosive or some similar abilities to destroy all of his summons simultaneously, but the more and more he investigated, lesser the chances of such a thing happening got, as for starters, if they had been obliterated by an explosion, then there should've been at least some kind of a mark around the area to indicate so, but all of the old buildings which surrounded the area were still intact which wouldn't have been possible in case of an explosion, thus Arnold had to let go of that theory.

Right now Arnold was sure about one thing... the one who did this knew that Arnold was coming after them, maybe they even did this to aggravate him, which they failed to do.

Even though Arnold was definitely upset about the loss of thirty or so undead summons, but something like that wasn't enough for him lose his focus. But he knew one thing for sure, he couldn't allow his summons to move around freely anymore as they might get targeted next and thus he had already instructed all of them to assemble at his current location, which they soon did.

"Found anything?" Arnold absentmindedly asked while he checked up on one of his destroyed automatons.

"There's no sign of anyone around master. Maybe it was a large group of mutant that attacked them." Talos replied. All of his remaining summons have already been assembled near the wreckage.

"No. This isn't the job of a few mutants. I highly doubt any creature would have enough strength to simultaneously wipe out so many summons at once, and so far I haven't seen any monsters fighting as a group, apart from goblins that is, but I don't think something like goblins would be able to pull off something on scale, not unless someone was helping them. Not to mention, Asterios wasn't someone who'd to go down so easily." Arnold said and opened a portal to his domain, "Take the broken automatons and go inside, I can't risk losing anymore of you guys. I'll summon you out when the time is right."

"As you wish, master." Talos replied and acknowledged his master's request. Soon Arnold was left alone in the vast wasteland.

"I know you're looking at me... just come out already..." Arnold whispered and started walking towards the base, "If I can't find you, I'll force you to find me instead."

****

From top of a run down building, two people were silently observing their prey. But unlike Arnold they weren't wearing any protective gear, instead their bodies were covered with a weird white clothing, which seemingly protected them from the radiation.

It had been more than an hour since they managed to annihilate around 50 or so of Arnold's summons, however just as they were about to leave, Arnold suddenly appeared at the scene, with a force that was thrice as big as before. They could easily deal with 60 or maybe even a hundred monsters, but the right now the force in front of them was too much for them to handle. They couldn't do anything what than to wait for them to leave first.

"Is he the one?" One of the men asked.

"How would I know? The priestess simply informed us about an intruder. She didn't gave us any description of what the person actually looked like." The other guy replied while looking at the man through his binoculars.

"Something's happening... those monsters are going inside some kind of a portal. Is he retreating?"

"Looks like it. He's headed towards the army base."

At this moment, a voice came through their communicators, "Capture him... alive... bring him here..."

It was oddly satisfying to hear the feminine voice. It felt as if a guardian angel was talking to her subjects. Even though the order was too cautious someone, the voice was full of motherly love and care.

"It will be done, your holiness." Both the men simultaneously got to their knees and bowed their head down as if they were paying respect to... the air? There wasn't anything else in front of them, so that must have been the case.

After a momentary silence they got back on their feet, "You got your answer. Now let's capture the bastard."

"You're a fool. You just saw the army he has right? Let's just wait for him to get exhausted first. We'll pounce on him once he's out of mana to summon them anymore." The person slyly smiled and turned around, "And once he's out of breath... we'll overwhelm him with the strength of these tamed monsters."

"Just like we handled that minotaur." The other guy approved the plan of his subordinate.

****

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER...

Arnold was fighting against the seventh group of goblins by himself. But rather than finishing them off with one hit, he was only defending himself while attacking the goblins every once in a while.

'These idiots don't even know how to hide their aura.' Arnold thought and 'accidentally' got hit by a goblin's punch. His new armour was holding up pretty well, even though he had been hit numerous times his HP barely went down by 50 points.

He had been acting like this ever since he felt the strange aura that followed him. This entire time he was trying to force the ones who had been following him, out of hiding. He knew that they were looking for an opportunity to jump him, and so the ever generous Arnold was giving them every opportunity to do so.

'Maybe they're not sure whether I can still use my summons or not... well, I can easily take care of that can't I?'

"Damn it! Why does my summoning skill has such a huge Cooldown! I can't summon anyone to help me out." Arnold cursed himself again and again, his voice was barely loud enough so that his pursuers could hear him.

He knew his plan was childish but it was the only thing he could do for now. He could have easily attacked them along with his summons and torture them until they have him the information he wanted, but he was 90% sure the church would've placed some failsafe measures to keep that from happening, thus he didn't wanted to risk it all. The only thing he could do right now was to let them capture him and hope they'll take him to the church themselves, and maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to find this bogus priestess there as well.