I yawned as I lazily slid down my bed with the drone’s alarm ringing nonstop. The digital clock projected by the drone showed exactly seven sharp.
Last night, I sure slept like a log. After spending a couple of weeks diving into the mine filled with mutated monsters, it was finally coming to an end.
In the wake of a moment, I slapped my cheeks with both hands, causing me to jolt awake. There was no time to waste when the mission “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure” kept ticking down.
Mission: One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure
Your airship has become a hunk of junk. You better find someone capable to repair it soon, or else… No one can say what other inhabitants around this area will do once they find this.
Difficulty: C-
Time Limit: 30 days
Remaining Time: 13 days 2 hours 03 minutes
Reward: Repaired airship, a new companion
Failure: Losing the airship, possibly an information leak that will lead to death
Eh… less than two weeks left… Wait, that’s only thirteen days! I wonder if the progress of the airship’s reconstruction has been proceeding smoothly, I thought, rising to my feet.
“Are you going to the crash site today to check on the progress?” asked the drone, or more correctly Lunaria, as it floated toward me.
I nodded my head. “Yup. I fear that if we only leave her to her own device, it will exceed the time limit.”
Who knew what would happen if I exceeded the time limit. Therefore, finding her was of the utmost importance here.
“What time limit?” Uh-oh!
“It’s n-nothing… I must be still goofy from the sleep.” I tried to feign ignorance by laughing it off and said, “Anyway, let’s get ourselves ready and make haste to the ship.”
“That’s reasonable.”
Thus, we made our preparations to go.
***
Walking outside to the surface from the huge cavern where Aquarine was and trekking the bumpy road, the like of forests and hills, didn’t exhaust me as much as I thought — even though I was carrying a lot of stuff with me. I believed that there was an improvement in my overall stats, so I checked my status screen while I was at it.
Maxim Peterson (Raymond Orton)
[…]
Source Level: Tier-1 enhancer | Tier-1 evoker
Source Element(s): All (basic)
Vocation(s): [All Elements] | [The Survivalist]
Stats:
* STR: E (29 → 33)
* AGI: E (30 → 34)
* VIT: E (26 → 30)
* SRC: E (25 → 31)
* SPR: E- (15 → 21)
Accumulation Points: 17 → 21 [E]
If the rate of my improvement kept going like it was so far, I was confident I could become a Tier-2 source user in a month or two at most. Actually, it might be even sooner if I didn’t think twice about absorbing the source crystals in my possession — I had been doing this but at a slower and safer rate.
“Why are you grinding like a stupid person?” asked a voice beside me.
Of course, who else would utter such a cynical question at me but Lunaria?
“I was thinking of how much stronger I have become ever since coming to this place. Look, the creek is already within sight.” I pointed at a place that was too narrow to be called a river, but large enough to support river life.
From afar, fish were seen going with the flow down the stream, some even swam against the current. The water that flowed from the spring on the hill into the huge pond ended up merging halfway with a river that led to the lake underground.
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At the side, the area was filled with foreign vegetation and occasional animals roaming about.
By following through the small path beside the creek, it didn’t take me long to reach the tent that Spitzek had built.
Frankly, I should’ve gone to him when I reached Tier-1 evoker, but a lot of things happened and hindered me from having spare time. I hoped I wasn’t too late to ask his guidance.
“You there… Spitzek?”
I opened the curtain and found no one inside. Well, this wasn’t the first time he was missing, so I didn’t bother to linger much longer and continued my way down.
Minutes later, I finally reached the pond where the airship had crashed. A clear, beautiful pond that lacked any sort of green algae that normally colored places like this, along with a one-story shack just a walk’s distance away. Wait, a shack?!
Surprisingly, the airship had been lifted from the body of water as well and was neatly positioned not far from the shack, like a ship in a shipyard. Further inspection revealed that it had gone through a huge remodeling of its foundation.
Hm, Tuilë should be the one responsible for building the shack, as her steam kite is there… I shook my head and held myself from laughing for some reason.
“’Sup! Maxxy! Over here!” It was a girl resembling a human with a pair of small red horns on her head. The thin long hair which extended down to her hips bounced merrily as she frantically waved at me. Of course, the girl was none other than Tuilë.
Curiously, there was one tall mechanical golem beside her like a loyal butler, carrying piled-up stuff like metal alloys and wood.
“Long time no see!” she added. “Good timing! Have you finished gathering two thousand source crystals?”
Had it been a long time? I was sure that we hadn’t seen each other in only over a week, although if compared to how long we had known each other, it was indeed proportionally large.
While shaking my head inwardly, I strode toward her. “Of course! Two thousand source crystals are nothing for me. Or else, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Eh?!” Her body movements froze momentarily, her eyes bulging as if not believing what I just said. “I was only joking when I asked about that… Right. You sure are funny.”
I looked at Luna-1 floating beside me which also looked back at me and uttered slowly, “If you don’t believe, you can ask Lunaria.”
“Mhm. Yes, I can vouch for this guy; he has truly gathered that much amount in a short time,” Lunaria testified.
“You’re serious?! Oof, I never doubt that you will eventually gather that much amount, but to think that you can do it this soon. There must be some sort of clever trick behind it, no?”
Before I was able to respond to her question, Lunaria preceded me.
“Indeed. A really, really devious scheme it was.”
“What devious scheme?” I rubbed my forehead while closing my eyes in distress, then defended myself, “Remember when I told you about the ant nest I found below the mine and the ant poison? Well…”
I recapped what had happened this past week: How I stumbled upon the mutant ant nest; how I then make a clever plan to use an ant insecticide to poison the whole nest; how I slew their queen with the fire and poison trap; even to how I chanced upon the ancient ruins holding an artifact sword within.
I trusted her almost as much as I trusted Lunaria; I didn’t believe that she would sell me out… Maybe.
“Whoa, whoa. That’s a lot to digest.” She gestured at me to stop and crossed her arms, saying, “Maxim, my dude, I believe you ought to show me the sword that you found.”
As expected, among the things that I told her, the artifact sword would be the one that caught her interest the most. It just so happened that I needed her help to inspect this thing,
“Here it is.” I took out a badge from inside my backpack and handed it to her.
Even to this day, I wasn’t aware of how the sword lost mass when it was in the form of a badge. If even Tuilë didn’t know, then this would be a conundrum that might never be answered. Unless…
“This… is the sword?” She eyed the badge on her hands skeptically, then switched to me as if telling, “This entire story is fabricated, right?”
“Ahem. Let me show you…”
I snatched back the badge and channeled my source energy into the badge while intending to transform it into its original state.
As the badge transformed into a bona fide sword in a process that took no longer than a second, Tuilë’s countenance turned from unconvinced to extremely full of curiosity. Really, the mind of an inventor wasn’t something a common man like me could fathom.
“Ooh, ooh! Such an interesting invention! I wonder who made this thing.” The sword was immediately seized by her before I was able to do anything.
“Even if you ask me, it is beyond my depth. I’m as clueless as you are.” I sighed.
At this moment, her hands were inspecting every inch of the sword, her eyes were red as though she was about to swallow the sword whole, so much so that she even laughed hysterically like a perverted old man meeting a helpless beauty, “Hehe! Hehehe!”
“Ahem! Hello, Tuilë?” I tried to make her come to her senses by artificially coughing a few times, but she didn’t even spare me a look. Seeing that this would go nowhere, I conjured Electro on my right palm, and as lightning crackled on my palm, I zapped her back.
“AH!! Ouch!” Her body convulsed momentarily, but she didn’t let go of the sword. This girl…
Nevertheless, she finally tasted her own medicine. At least one person in my revenge list had been crossed.
“Enough of this. You can tinker with this thing later.” I took back the sword from her hand with a lot of effort and transformed into back into a badge.
Although disappointment flashed on her face, she acquiesced to my request. While I required her help to find out the secret of the sword, there were more pressing matters at hand.
“Oh yeah,” she resumed, “there is one thing I must warn you: In less than two weeks, the red fog will expand to encroach this area.”
“Say what now?! B-But this place isn’t—”
“You guessed it right. This place might not be an interval zone like the one we ventured to before, but it doesn’t mean that the red fog won’t reach this place. There were many occasions in the past where the Divine Mushroom’s protection at areas near the red fog weakened.”
Lunaria suddenly whispered, “She’s right. Just now, I synchronized with my other self and the sensors pick up signs of this happening soon.”
“I see…” No wonder she stayed silent for a while.
This was no coincidence; the time this would happen coincide with the time limit. Perhaps the inhabitants revered in the mission that was eyeing my airship weren’t among the people living in Aquarine…
Upon the realization, cold chills ran down my spine. I couldn’t help but frown, thinking about what I should do.
“Please beware that inside the red fog, the power of mutated monsters will be strengthened, while source users like us will be weakened to the extreme,” she warned.
“Is it that horrible? Then, have you thought of moving the airship away from the fog’s encroachment?” This was the only solution I could think of in a short time.
“For sure! However, it won’t do us much good if we don’t finish rebuilding it.”
“That’s true.” I closed my eyes and faced the sky, clenching my fists. “Alright! Let’s finish the airship at the double! We won’t get anywhere with just thinking, won’t we?”
“Yup! We’ll make the best airship to ever exist!”
At that, our fists bumped into each other as we grinned together, full of passion and enthusiasm. Luna-1, the spherical drone, was floating nearby to act as a witness.