The Insider System

Chapter 29: Akal the Betrayer

Around 2 hours later, Lake hadn't really made any progress; he had thought he was about to get a bunch of new spells, but in the end he was only able to make a defense spell called Light screen. After a while he had given up on defense and moved on to attack spells, but no matter what he tried it always became Light Blade.

Deciding to give up until he leveled Light Mage up a few times, Lake looked around his room for something to do, but there really wasn't much in the room other than the bed and the table that had the sundial on it.

Looking closely at the table Lake noticed it had a drawer in it. Sliding it open Lake saw a book that said Light goddess on the cover. Picking it up Lake opened it and looked through a few pages. Lake found that it told the history of the goddess up until the point where she was killed by the Demon Lord. Lake guessed this was here because these rooms were usually used by Holy Magic users, but seeing he had some time this was a great opportunity to get some more information on the history of this world.

Skipping to the end, Lake started looking for pictures, because any good book would have some. Not finding any Lake was disappointed and almost put it back in the drawer but stopped because one of the names in the book had caught his attention. "Akal."

"You mean the betrayer, no one calls him Akal anymore." Looking up Lake saw the Temple head was standing in the hallway, but she wasn't looking into his room. This made him smile. He loved when people knew how to act. "I'm here to get you for breakfast, It's about to be served." Lake stood up and walked into the hallway.

"It's good to see you've taken an interest in the goddess." The fact she was here was an obvious sign that they planned to ask him for something before he left. Lake had been a little worried yesterday when he guessed Laka had been the betrayer, because The temple head had said they had an oracle that seemed to be in contact with the god of light.

If fate was real there was no way his wouldn't be intertwined with the Light temple. It had not escaped his notice that the Temple head seemed to know about him before he even walked through the door, or the fact that they put him down here with Mimi even though they could have put him somewhere he would of never seen her, or found out about her secret.

It was starting to feel like he was intertwined in their grand plan before he even walked through the door; or maybe his massive brain was overthinking things and this was all a coincidence. Either way they didn't seem hostile so he was fine eating their breakfast.

Realizing he was beside the best person to ask about Light magic, Lake asked, " How do I learn more spells? I've only been able to Learn one defense and one attack and since then it always becomes them no matter how I try to make something new."

"That's how every branch of magic is. You can learn the two basic spells but to go any further you have to actually understand the element's properties. Every branch has its strengths and weaknesses, if they all had the same exact spells there would be no point in there being more than one." This kind of made sense to Lake he didn't really even understand what he was doing.

"So what makes Light special? Can you show me some of your spells, so I can see what I need to do?" He was hoping he could just copy what she did.

"I can show you but you won't understand." The Temple head put her hand up and said "Bright Flash" Lake saw the world turn white. 30 seconds later the light faded and lake saw they were still in the hallway. "What was that?"

"A low grade spell it's one of the next ones you'll learn if you decide to focus on Light magic." If Lake understood this correctly, low grade was the one after basic which was where he was. The amount of difference between them seemed quite large. "You were right, I have no idea what you did." He did feel he would have been able to understand something if she hadn't blinded him though. It seemed she was messing with him.

"Ok pick any seat that's open." They had just arrived in a big open dining room. Lake kept being surprised at how big this place was; it felt like it went on forever. Yesterday when he had first walked into the temple he thought it was some kind of greenhouse but there was a staircase that led underground. At this point he wouldn't be surprised if the temple ran under the whole town.

Lake picked the seat at the head of the table as revenge for her messing with him earlier, but to his surprise the Temple head just smiled and sat at one of the normal chairs. After a while some more people showed up. Most of them were older, and came to sit near him at the head of the table, but he also saw Mimi and a few other people his age who all sat near the temple head.

He understood why she had smiled now he had unknowingly put himself in the middle of a graveyard. For some reason one of the older women was giving him the stink eye, and started to walk over to him. "Young man, why are you in the temple head's seat?"

"She said I could sit anywhere, and this seemed to be the best seat."

"You know you should have asked before you sat down. Breakfast is when we go over Important temple business."

"You can still go and talk to her."

"No, that end of the table is for the younger members, and the guests. It's disrespectful for the temple head to have to sit down there." Lake looked at the Temple head, and saw she was talking and laughing with the people who had sat by her. She seemed to really be enjoying herself. He bet being away from the woman currently yelling at him was making her breakfast much better than usual.

If this woman had asked nicely this problem could have been solved but now it was too late. Lake knew how to deal with people like her. You couldn't win in a normal way, you just had to make them mad with logic, and once they lost their cool they would yell for a while then storm off. That's when the good part started everyone would have seen what had happened, and would come up to you to secretly talk shit behind their back. This was a type of moral victory.

Right when he was about to ask about what rules he was breaking, he felt a tap on his shoulder. "Lake, it's a good time for us to switch seats, our little joke should end now." The temple head had come up behind him and seemed to want her seat.

As Lake walked to the other end of the table he saw the older woman had started to give the temple head an ear full. Lake started to smirk his revenge had worked just in a way he didn't expect.

Walking up to where the temple head had been sitting, Lake saw he was about to sit in the middle of a group of 5 people his age and foresaw that he was about to get to know each and every one if he didn't do something about it. Thankfully, he already knew Mimi and she would've already prepped the introductions, so he could seamlessly integrate into the group with a small introduction. "Hello I'm Lake, I'll be here for the next few days."

After Lake said this Mimi stepped up to the plate, and said. "This is Lia, Maky, And Tims. They are members of the Temple. And this is Cas she's like us, and only here for protection." Lake didn't want to beat around the bush. The first three were boring, they just worked here, so he forgot about them. He wanted to know more about Cas, he bet she had an interesting story. "Why are you being protected?" She had taken the words out of his mouth, but at least after he answered she would reciprocate.

"The dark guild alliance attacked me after they discovered I had a legendary skill. I also killed a member of the Assassins guild during the fight, so I guess there's more than one reason" All of them looked shocked when he said he killed someone from the Assassins guild. It must be a well known rule to just let them kill you.

"You don't have to go into detail about the skill, but would you mind telling us what job it's from."

"Alchemist, I got it at level one so I really didn't know how big of a deal it was going to be, so I handled myself in a dumb way, I just walked into the guild. If I knew what I did now I would have traveled to the capital first."

"I bet they were going to use you for poison production." Said Lia. "You're probably right." This was probably exactly what he would have been doing for the Dark Guild Alliance.

"I'm in a similar situation I received a Legendary skill for hunter and stupidly told someone what it did. The next day the temple came and got me before the Assassins guild could kidnap me, apparently the skill I got is well known for being one of the best for Assassins because it lets me erase my presence. They planned to force me into becoming an assassin." Lake had to agree this skill would be helpful for Assassins. He could see why they wanted her. "So do you just have to stay here forever?"

"No, but since the Assassins guild has said that for them to leave me alone I'd have to pay what they will lose if I don't work for them." This sounded crazy; it was like they could do whatever they wanted, and people just had to put up with it.

After being annoyed at the Assassins guild for a moment Lake started to feel weird. He felt like something in his core was saying if he joined the light temple he could not only destroy the Assassins guild, but also make a large profit in the process.

Lake felt it was maybe the natural instinct of The Insider to side with weaklings with no concern over right and wrong, and it was probably a similar choice that Laka had made when he had been in Lake's position. Laka had also sided with the underdogs; it just happened to be the Dark guild alliance at the time, but he had made off like a bandit for doing so. Updated from nov𝒆lbIn.(c)om

It was like the Insider had a nose for profit and it was showing him how to kill two birds with one stone. Lake guessed this was a result of its massive experience. There wasn't much of a point not to target the stronger side they probably had better stuff to steal anyway.

Lake heard a bell ding, and saw that food was starting to be brought and placed onto the table. "We'll talk more later, enjoy your food." Lake saw that everyone had stopped talking to eat and wondered if this was something the Temple head used to make the woman next to her leave her alone during breakfast.