It's a good thing that I spoke with Bobby today.
His insight was very good since he is a man who manages projects at large scales, while Blue and Solomon are used to small teams.
Blue and Solomon had good ideas as well, but they didn't have the same experience as Bobby who got himself a into a lot of responsibilities.
It's a good thing that I didn't want to be a king, otherwise I don't think I'll ever be able to leave the office.
Bobby told me I could use the same room I used last time since it was designated for my personal use, which I greatly appreciated.
I decided ill be staying here for a week to get some rest since for the past few months I was either fighting for my life, grinding nonstop, or getting bored on a ship.
Of course, I wouldn't drop all my plans for sightseeing, I would do some preparation for afterwards where I'll be working from my home base.
Since I was the only human in this dimension who could do the enchantments necessary for the new Nether Base, I had to do some preparations before starting.
The enchantments that I had to do were costume enchants, and not only that, they were more difficult to work with than normal ones since I couldn't use books or pages for this.
I had to enchant the block itself for this to work.
And I had to make a few hundreds blocks like this.
I didn't have the manpower the ancient civilization did, nor was I crazy enough to think I could do it all on my own perfectly, so I had to be more clever.
Unlike them, I could still use the printing press method to quickly enchant the blocks.
I'll have to adjust the size of the device to cover one face of the cube instead of a page.
Unfortunately once it is done, the blocks won't be stackable anymore.
So that means that I'll have to do the work at the location of the Nether Base, which would would be very dangerous.
But that didn't mean I wasn't going to work at my base, there were still other enchantments that I could put on books that would help with the construction.
My final goal is to reach the MAX level in Enchanting and see if I can meet with the System to get a reward.
I knew it's a huge risk for me to get in contact with the System, but Alexa assured me that once a law was created it couldn't be changed, only limited, so I shouldn't worry about being harmed while I was with the System, only that I'll be ripped off with my reward.
I had in mind an enchantment that would help me get back home and surprisingly no engineer in the past seemed to request it.
But there was still time until I got it, and I should make a few safe files in case something went wrong.
I just hope that my extra lives will still be available in the System's domain.
With everything planned, and the sun already down, I was prepared to get back to my room and get some sleep.
But just as I was walking silently on the hallways I saw an unexpected face, the Hero herself Merry Paper.
"Hi Marry, how was the hunt?"
That brings back memories of my old name.
"Who's there, who are you and how did you sneak up in here!"
The stealth of the armor wore off making me visible and more menacing, which promptly made the hero take her sword ourlt ready for a fight.
"Is that how you greet your teacher?"
"Teacher? Don't tell me...Trader is that you? Where did you get that creepy armor, are you a Demon Lord now?"
With how powerful the armor was, I wouldn't say it's too far off.
"Ahh, my master plan was discovered. Indeed I wanted to befriend the hero so I could defeat her when she least expected. And today is the day you shall pay the price of your foolishness."
I quickly put the black robe on me to make my speech more menacing and suddenly Merry turned serious
"I knew you were too good to be true. Today I shall save the world by defeating you once and for all."
She suddenly took a fighting stance, and I started to panic a little.
She knew I was joking right?
There's no need to take it this far....right?
The hero leaped toward me and I quickly jumped away before taking out my shield and blocking the upcoming attack.
She clearly has more battle experience than me at this point and I wasn't going to play on an even field.
I took out a black potion and threw it at Merry who quickly dodged but was still in the range of the splash potion.
Then she placed two blocks in front of her as a shield and checked her status page.
"Seriously! Where did you even get a sleep potion, do you know how illegal those are?"
There are quirks with having alchemist friends, and I was going to use them whenever necessary.
Before she could do anything else, I took out my crossbow and shot it right besides her feet.
The firework blew off and she used the momentum of the explosion to move at great speeds.
She took out her crossbow but I blocked her attack with my own tower, feeling the rest of the blast beeing absorbed by the armor.
"I give up, the sleepiness is getting to me and I'll soon unconscious. Can you please give me some milk since I don't have any on me right now?"
That ended quicker then anicipated, but I wasn't going to complain.
I took the last bucket from my inventory and gave it to her to wash off the potion effects.
A few glups later, she looked at me with a smile on her face.
"Where did you get that armor Trader, and can I also have one?"
"Does this armor look heroic to you?"
"That's true, there's a higher chance the Zombie Lord would think I'm on his side then than System's."
"Didn't you kill the Zombie Lord?"
"Well...about that."
Merry then proceeded to tell me what happened in the past few weeks when she felt the Zombie Lord respawn, how she destroyed it while ha was distracted and how he run away when he realized he was going to lose.
I was shocked at first how much the Hero grew to be able to scare the Monster Lord.
She was very smug about that as well, which made me a little suspicious, but results don't lie.
What followed after was a running and hiding game, where the Zombie Lord was hiding, getting found out by the Hero and went back to running.
The holy army was left behind to kill the normal zombies, and Merry was on the run for a few days.
No matter what she tried, she couldn't catch the Zombie Lord off guard, always running away out of her reach.
That continued for a few days until Merry realized that he was heading towards the Sandstone kingdom.
Then she decided to stop, sice the army would most likely be able to hold the Monster Lord for a few days until she got some rest.
While she was still in the Stone Kingdome, she decided to visit Bobby and request a few potions since she run out and normal people couldn't do the special potions that she wanted.
That's why she was here, taken by surprise that I was back as well.
"Do you want to help me trap the Zombie Lord?"
Merry asked with hopeful eyes.
"I don't think you'll be staying here for too long unfortunately."
"What do you mean?"
Then I told her about the new Monster Lord that was terrorising the the towns in the desert, and soon her face turned pale.
"S-so your saying that the Zombie Lord was running towards the new Monster Lord?"
"There's a high chance that would happen."
"I have to leave as soon as possible then! I can't just stay here while the world is getting destroyed by those two monsters. Where's Bobby?!"
The Hero started to panic, making me feel bad that I wasn't as worried as her about the problem.
Maybe I should help her after all.
If not to kill the monsters, at least to trap them.
"Calm down Merry, he's having dinner with the princess. We can visit him tomorrow after we got some rest."
"How can I get some rest when there's a catastrophe about to happen!"
She was loosing it, I had to calm her down.
"Merry stop! Take deep breaths and let's think about this. You came here for a few potions, even if you get them this instance it would take you weeks to get back to the capital. But there's a solution, we can travel through the Nether to get 8 times faster then in the Overworld."
We just need to know the rough direction of where we should go.
And luckily I have a place in mind that would bring us pretty close.
The Skeleton fortress.
The hero took a few deep breaths and soon she was back to normal.
"You're right Trader, we can get some rest tonight and tomorrow we would go back to the Sandstone Kindome."
Well this means that my vacation is over before it even started.
But it wasn't such a bad thing in the end.
While I'll prefere to not visit that desert if possible, that doesn't mean there's nothing I could do in there.
There's actually a very important person that I should meet, someone that Solomon told me after some serios interrogation with Blue.
The nobleman who had an infected wife which I cured had a servant named Jeremiah.
Apparently that was a Iliger with heavy makeup sent as a spy.
There's a high chance that he's the one to infect the wife in the first place, which is pretty mest up.
But I wasn't someone that would seek revenge for someone else, no, that man was also one of the lead Iligers in the Sandstone kingdome who leaked secrets of the country to the outpost.
Worst of all, since they had the help of the Prince, they managed to get power and wealth that their sending it back home to make the invasion easier.
Their were very smart about this, and planed this invasion way before I came to this world, so I have to be careful how I'll approach them, since Jeremiah is one of the few people who has a compass that would lead to the current location of the general.
That's right, I was planning on robing that man and attack the forces in the Coral kingdom before they would reach the port.
There's no need to lay a trap If you could surprise your enemy while their sleeping.
That's why I had to visit the place I hate the most.
Not becouse I wanted to defet the Monster Lords, but becouse I wanted to stop the Iligers from getting to my super computer.
In the end Merry went to get a room, while I had to do some final preparations.
Just like the Fletcher in the Sand Palace, there was one man with the same job here.
Unfortunately the man was already asleep when I found his workshop, so I had no choice but to leave a note with all the instruction needed for the printing press.
At the end I wrote to send it to Bobby after he was done, and left it on his workshop desk.
Next I cleaned my inventory a little and took a few other items from the Ender chest.
I planned on finishing this mission as fast as possible, since I didn't want to miss Bobby's wedding.
He was my first friend, my best friend in this world, and I wouldn't miss it for anything.
I looked at the moon outside the window, sayed goodnight to Violet and went to sleep.