Chapter 88: Oh, the things I’d do for Sashimi …
“The Red Planet” was no longer an apt descriptor for Mars. Not most of it, anyway.
From space, it looked like a slightly off-color version of Earth, with an atmosphere and surface material the World Item that had transformed the planet had “designed” to capture enough heat to make it habitable despite being outside the Goldilocks zone.
And yet, in this crater Isaac had brought him to was made up entirely of the reddish-orange rock that had defined Mars for millions of years before the [System] … if it weren’t for the snow-covered slopes of Olympus Mons rising in the distance, Derek could have easily thought the portal had taken the two of them through time as well as space. Oh, and the massive lake in the center of the “arena” would have been frozen solid back then.
“So, where are we, exactly?” he asked. The rough location wasn’t hard to guess, but everything beyond that was very much up in the air.
“Raid Boss summoning arena of Akashic Academy’s Mars campus,” Isaac declared, spreading his arms wide. “The one for the Salmon of Wisdom, to be specific. You’re at a Level where you can earn the boon, and a Raid Boss makes for a good punching bag.”
“You want me to kill a Raid Boss on my own?” Derek asked, aghast. With his ship, that may be in the cards, but all on his own? No chance.
“Nope,” Isaac announced. “I figured you could try out your new spell, or whatever it is you wanted to see out in the field, then either finish it off yourself or get some help for that. The academy is right outside the arena, and there is an entire raid group’s worth of students around Level 50 waiting to test themselves against a Raid Boss under supervision.”
“And if I don’t want the help, are they just sitting around waiting on me?”
Isaac pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Then they get to fight the Salmon of Wisdom in the other aquatic arena. Whatever happens, you’re not going to inconvenience anyone.”