Ti simply shook his head as he left the grounds of the vampire manor, the ‘Princess’ had been very short with him, essentially ordering him to check on the village nearby, apparently the village he’d thought was a human one was actually a village of monsters under the rule of the Vampire family that lived here.

The walk through the dark woods wasn’t as harrowing as Ti might have thought at first, it was peaceful if a bit dreary it didn’t take more than twenty minutes though before he was standing in the archway of a little town, surrounded on all sides by a sleek black walls like obsidian. “Wow, nice walls…”

“Of course they’re nice, they were given to us by the Lords of our fine town!” He heard from atop the wall, where there sat a stout Draconic creature with a crossbow in his arms. Most people looked at Goblin and Kobold type creatures and saw them as stupid, brainless cannon fodder but this Kobold had an air of confidence and intelligence about him. “Greetings, I am Falmouth the resident town elder.” he jumped from the wall and a pair of leathery dragon like wings extended from his back and he floated calmly to the ground before Ti.

[Your true status has been revealed Due to the ‘Eye of Gavarenth’]

Well., that probably wasn’t good… “Ah i see, you’re one of the travelers? We were not expecting your kind to appear for several days yet and we did not dare hope one of you would appear here so early…” he crossed his arms over his chest, wings folding back as he stood before Ti, looking up at him, looking very much like a miniature dragon. “Well it's good you’re here now we have some problems we could use your help with.”

[You have been granted permissions to get quests in the town of Basa]

“Normally we’d only give you permission to take on quests after you’d joined a guild and completed a specific number of quests but it’s a bit of an emergency at the moment and if we wait for that then we might not be here.” The gates opened and Ti just stared at the Kobold, this was rather sudden, yea he knew he should be questing but he didn’t even know anything at this point, the state of the world, where he was…

“Could you answer a few questions for me? I’m not sure exactly what’s going on…” Falmouth simply nodded and the two began walking through the town, the heavy black stone gate closing behind them. While walking through the streets Ti saw a great many kinds of monsters all working together in harmony to create a thriving village, and Falmut explained everything Ti might have needed to know.

They were currently deep inside of the dark half of the continent, a place where monsters spawned in greater variety and difficulty, but dungeons and raw materials were also in abundance and of higher quality thanks to the mana rich air. The people he had killed in the Vampire’s estate had in fact been from a ‘Holy’ Faction called The Sons of the Sun from the light side of the continent, who constantly said that all monsters should be destroyed, even peaceful and intelligent ones like the people from the town of Basa, they sounded like they would probably be a pain as Falmouth had absolutely nothing bad to say about the other holy orders on the continent.

They passed by a blacksmith shop and Ti spotted an Oni woman hammering a large piece of blazing hot metal. “That’s Ide, she came here from one of the other continents years ago, didn’t even speak the language but she fits in well now, is even the town’s main blacksmith.” Ti saw no fire nearby her he wondered how she would heat the blade once again but he heard her let out a grunt and a large draconic head snaked it’s way around the building and breathed a jet of flame down directly onto the blade. “And that’s Xorvu, her wyvern companion and mobile forge… Ide is the only blacksmith on the continent save the dragon cult that makes weapons and armor using Draconian Fired Metal. Speaking of which, that should be your first quest.”

The two took a few steps closer to the oni woman, her red muscles flexed as she brought the hammer down upon the blazing hot metal, not a waver in her gaze, every hammer strike made with absolute precision. “Ide, I found someone who is willing to go get you some ore.” Another strike of her hammer and a grunt later she spared a moment and glanced at her visitors.

“Good, need metal from the mountain.” Her voice was rough and intimidating, and her gaze wasn’t any less so, Ti felt like she was sizing him up from the moment she laid eyes on him, intent on devouring him.

“Sorry about her…” Falmouth sighed, leading Ti to the gate once more and pointing towards a mountain in the distance. “That’s the Claw of Rezati, it’s a normal enough mountain, has a nice big mine in it but recently our workers haven’t been coming back, were gonna send you in to find out why, and we’ll pay you for any ore you manage to bring back as well, before you go though for the love of god spend your ability points… I saw your status with my magic and it’s been bugging me ever since.” Falmouth turned and left Ti standing at the gate, looking a bit sheepish.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He dumped all of his skill points into intelligence, from the tooltips he looked at it was what decided his Maximum MP, while Wisdom decided his regeneration of mana, so having more Maximum would no doubt help him survive longer if he were to be hit with magic outside of his armor. His walk to the mountain began after his status screen disappeared, he trudged through the dense, dark wooded area, pushing vines out his vision and stumbling through bramble patches that dealt minimal damage to him, about one damage every 5 steps or so through the larger patches.

His first indication that something wasn’t right at the mine, other than Falmouth telling him so, was the distinct lack of monsters and animals around the entrance, there were abandoned monster nests, the birds he’d heard cawing on the walk over were gone, there wasn’t even the sound of a cricket to fill to void of silence that permeated the air around the yawning mouth of the dark cave. The first step into the cave was the worst, a sense of dread had rooted itself in Ti’s stomach he expected something to jump out of the darkness and kill him at any moment, but a few steps in he calmed himself, though his heart still beat fiercely in his chest. “Falmouth wouldn’t give me a quest I couldn’t complete right? I’m just supposed to look around and get some ore…”

[Quest! | Investigate The Claw of Rezati | Difficulty: Deathwish | Investigate the mine in the Claw of Rezati where workers have been disappearing and no living thing dares tread.]

Investigate: 0/1

Optional

Collect Ore: 0/25

He stared blankly at the window that appeared… Alright so he was likely to die immediately if anything so much as scratched him, good to know, he’d have to be careful. His eyes fell on a pickaxe leaning against the wall and he picked it up.

[Mining(CommonTongue [https://www.royalroadcdn.com/public/smilies/tongue.png]assive) Lv. 1 | Lowers the time it takes to mine, Raises the chances to get better materials from mining.]

Pretty standard fare, nothing special about that but he was sure it would be useful if he ever wanted to get into crafting his own weapons and armor. He cautiously moved deeper into the mine, there were lamps lining the walls every so often, letting off a dim flickering light but once he got deep enough into the roughly hewn stone hall things began to get more suspicious, There were no signs of struggle, it just seemed like everyone in the mine disappeared. Spotting a glint in the wall he stopped and swung his pick at the wall, after several swings he felt he’d gotten a bit more used to the motion and even found himself enjoying it a bit.

Ti got lost in the movement for several long minutes and he saw a pile of metal chunks laying at his feet, they shined dully, and were streaked with rock but he had mined them all himself and he felt oddly proud of that fact. Picking the metal up and storing it in his Hoard he saw he had grabbed more than he’d actually needed, a good 48 chunks of Iron ore and 3 pieces of Infused iron re, a good haul, and if he brought back the extra perhaps he could ask Ide to teach him how to smith things!

But he had other things to worry about at the moment, he had to investigate, so he slipped into a more stealthy mindset and began creeping further into the dimly lit cavern. After about twenty minutes of walking he had come across something bright in the distance, a speck of almost blindingly white light peaking through down the hall and he pushed forward, getting closer and closer until he found himself before a large scar in the stone, a jagged hole that he would barely be able to slip through.

It was a tight squeeze, and the belts and pouches on his armor kept catching on rocks, but eventually he slipped through the hole in triumph, throwing his hands in the air right before he head a loud crack and his body fell to the floor dead. He floated above a pile of bodies, the miners apparently had found this place and decided to try and explore it, only to walk single file into their death, he heard another crack and he flinched when he felt a tickle in his ghostly chest area, no damage… Which gave him a chance to actually look around.

The area he was in was brightly lit, and seemingly made out of shiny white metal tiles, which made it look very surgical and clean, almost antiseptically so. He floated forward and was hit with another shot from a turret pointed straight at him above a nearby door. “Well that’s way more technologically advanced than I thought this world would be…” Ti wondered, floating forward and through the firmly shut door, through it was the same brightly lit white tiled room, but this one wasn’t empty, instead there were plans and tables of scientific material, this was a lab of some sort, obviously.

He looked around on the tables, and through the plans but everything was in awful condition, so he moved on to the next room, this room was dark though, that wasn’t really a problem for him once his darkvision kicked in, letting him see through the dank blackness in shades of grey, but it was better than being completely blind.

Before him in the room stood something he hadn’t expected to see, it was a bare bones mecha from Lunar Flare but this one was shrunk down to just slightly bigger than human size, and when he reached a hand out and touched it he almost jumped.

[Would you like to Ride Nano Armor(Lunarian)?]

“That explains it…” Back in lunar flare it had been a point of contention between the moon colony and earth when earth found out that the controls were different between the two. Earth got the normal control scheme, with a cockpit and the steep learning curve of getting the mech to move how you wanted it to, while the Lunar colony controlled mechas like they controlled their bodies, a lot of the world called them cheaters for that, and it seemed like they were cheating again…

Well at least this time he had a chance to even the odds right? He didn’t hit yes, instead he put the armor into his inventory, it would be better to get out of here in dullahan form rather than leave in any armor that could get killed by the turret near the exit. On his way out he saw that the vampire armor he had entered riding no longer had a body in it, instead it was just a broken mess of leather armor, a shame because he hadn’t kept the Vampire Claw skill.

As soon as he left the cave he turned towards the town and began his slow float towards it, apparently Dullahans only had one speed… Slow.

[https://puu.sh/C1x0r/338b7bbe74.png]