Witnessing the boy’s behavior, Jacob felt his left eyebrow twitch.
Ultimately, he ignored it in favor of retracing his steps and helping his team members. However, halfway there, suspicions reached his mind. Suspicions that were also left for after fellow Adventurers were safe.
Luckily for him, although they were sweating with effort behind their actions, they were, in fact, doing good.
Reaching them, with his help, the rest of the Wolf Pack got sent on their way back to their Mistress to give them new bodies, new forms with which to torment humanity, all while building up those that survived said torment with improved strength, durability, intelligence and so much more.
Once all were gone, the team of Adventures allowed their minds and bodies to relax.
“You guys ok?” Jacob asked, pretty sure they were, but seeing their nods put reassurance on his mind when he heard his Ranger address him.
“We are,” Paul replied to his leader. “I take it the Moon Wolf is dead since you're here? Did the kid help?”
“More than help,” Jacob replied. “He killed it. Easily at that.”
“Hear that, Marty.” Evelyn harrumphed in glee when her words turned true. “He wasn't a coward like you, after all.”
“I've told you already before, bitch, I am not a coward.” Martin retaliated, but seeing the glaring daggers thrown his way by the only woman in the group, he spoke out his thoughts to deflect the incoming verbal attack. “I was sure the boy had run away. You know, considering his tender appearance.”
“Jake, Marty may not be the smartest, but he's not wrong about that one,” Paul added. “The boy's appearance is an anomaly. Considering his… youthfulness and that spear he used.”
Ignoring the laughing Evelyng, the now glaring Martin, and reminded of the spear, Jacob nodded and motioned with his head for them to follow. “Keep this to yourself for now, but I have a feeling the boy had actively gone after the Moon Wolf, or at least its Pack.”
Hearing it, the Adventurers turned silent and slowly walked toward the big corpse. At the same time, their eyes settled on the shiny light right above the corpse, delivering the sensations of Day upon them.
“Is he with the Church?” Evelyn asked, seeing the light.
“Maybe.” Jacob replied but said nothing else because anybody connected to the Church of Ina was automatically above them, a mere Adventurer who sought a living by constantly fighting Nightmares to clear out the infestations around the human lands.
Once the group of four reached the house-sized Moon Wolf lying on the ground and bleeding from its skull and its chest, they found the boy sitting close by with his back leaning on a big root.
“Tell me, boy,” Jacob spoke with an authoritarian tone because a Second Ranked Essence Master was still somebody important in human society, not to mention out here in the middle of Nightmare infested territory. “Where is the rest of your team?”
Seeing the boy look up and tilt his head sideways as if having to ponder about the question, all the Adventurers knew the answer.
At least, they believed it to be so.
The answer they got was not one they expected.
“Well… I can see why you would think that way. But let me assure you that there is nobody else. I've been trekking through these woods all by my lonesome self.” The boy replied slightly nonchalantly.
“So you came out here into this Nightmare-infested world all on your own?” Jacob clarified for himself, his team, and the boy in question.
“Umm… ‘came’ would be the wrong way to explain it, I think.” The boy answered as if there were that many ways to explain something so simple. “More like I was delivered out there… somewhere. In fact, if you could point me to the nearest settlement, it would be much appreciated because I am kinda lost.”
“Lost?” Martin was flabbergasted repeatedly. “Boss, I am not sure how much I should believe of anything leaving that mouth of his.”
That said, even the other three had a slightly hard time believing it.
Turning his head towards the man welding the big longsword, Adam clarified slightly his earlier statement. “Something like that. Yes. Though, I did have a direction upon which to travel. However, lately, I've been pondering that I may have lost my sense of direction because of the increasing numbers of these… Nightmares, as you call them, the further South I traveled. Hence, I was very surprised to meet any humans here.”
As if recognizing something in the boy's words, the Ranger of the group settled his gaze up north. Noticing his behavior, Jacob inferred, though he did have a suspicion. “Paul?”
Noticing the look on Jacob’s face, Paul nodded in agreement. “I believe so, Boss,” Paul affirmed, but just in case the other two did not, he explained. “Weeks of travel up North are the Beast Lands. They keep the Nightmare Spawns in check, so they are very rare up there.”
“You sure?” Evelyn asked.
“I am.” Paul nodded. “Been there last year as a scout for a Guild Quest. Common, I am sure you remember it. It was the one to seek out the truth behind Ina’s Ire.”
“Ah, I remember the Quest,” Martin said. “The pay for it sucked, so nobody wanted it. That one?” Seeing the nod from Paul, Martin frowned.” Why would you take it? It was barely worth the effort to travel so far, much less to earn anything from it?”
“Had my reasons.” Paul answered, but there he stopped, so instead, he looked at the boy. “So how far North are we talking about?”
Thinking about it for a moment, Adam replied. “If you travel only during the Day? I guess it's close to two weeks on foot from here. Yea, something along those lines.”
“Beastlands it is.” Paul affirmed and spoke no more.
“Alright.” Jacob said before inquiring in a different direction. “I will believe it for now. What were you doing so far out there?”
“Surviving mostly,” Adam replied, again slightly nonchalant. “Though, I fail to recognize why that would matter to you. All I asked for was some directions. I can even pay for it.” That said, Adam’s right hand pointed at the dead wolf beside them. “If you don't mind brain juice on your hands, you can dig out your pay by yourself.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Instantly, four heads turned to face said dead wolf, when an idea spawned in their heads.
“It can't be?” Evelyn urgently stated the very first thing that popped into her head. “An Essence Crystal?”
“No way!” Martin immediately refuted his female coworkers' imagination and hopes. “Impossible.” However, before he even had the time to say anything else, Adam interrupted him.
“Yes, way!” Adam said before standing up and making his way to the pointed-out dead giant wolf. Though, the moment he stepped beside these four people, making them unable to witness his face, a tiny frown emerged that showed a slight discrepancy to everything that had been happening thus far for him.
Namely, this giant wolf was not the first Monster he had killed and not gotten the Essence reward for the kill but instead found an Essence Crystal in their head.
Beside the head of the giant wolf, Adam found the entrance point for Sun Bearer after he threw him and stuck his hand inside it. Plunging around for a few moments, his hand found the culprit before grabbing it and bringing it out into the Sun… well, the Moon, to shine.
Still, as Martin and Evelyn stared at the half-pinky-sized white crystal, Jacob and Paul instead gazed at the arm in question, which had just plunged into brain matter but returned perfectly clean. However, despite both seeing the anomaly, one suspected, but the other knew definitely because all this time, Jacob had been able to perceive the tightly gripped Aura around the boy's body and his spear as if his whole existence was ready to explode into action… if required.
Nevertheless, what gripped his mystery buttons was that there was no color to the boy's Aura, which told him of a possibility only he was unsure if he preferred it to be just that or something more… common.
Setting it aside, Jacob observed the boy.
“There.” Adam triumphantly said and smirked before revealing the Essence Crystal for a closer inspection.
“Oh… so pretty.” Evenly noted as she could not take her eyes away from it.
“Has to be a fake.” Martin added as he simply refused to believe that something so rare as an Essence Crystal would just pop up, after all, there was a reason they were so rare to begin with.
“Hmph…” Grunting at being called a liar, Adam threw the tiny crystal to the one obviously in charge of the group. “There, examine it.”
Catching the very crystal with his right hand, Jacob stared at the boy for a second before doing just that. However, even without a closer inspection, Jacob was sure it was real. Why would it not be when just touching it told him it was real?
Still, bringing it closer to his eyes, pouring Essence inside the crystal, he sensed the will hidden deep within, of a Nightmare that had taken many lives and fed off their Spirit to ignite the formation of its own Spirit. Thus, Jacob held in his hand what was also known as a Nightmare Spirit Crystal, a rare and expensive commodity to higher-ranked Essence Mastery, especially those whose Methodologies could make good use of it.
Seeing and sensing what he needed to verify the authenticity, Jacob threw the Essence Crystal back to the boy in question. “It's real.”
“No way.” Martin commented, as his mind still refused to believe the luck of the kid before him, but then he also remembered that the boy in question would easily trade it away for something as banal as directions. Recognizing his own opinions, Martin’s eyes settled on the boy, the backpack on his back, and the spear he wielded. “If you're trading it away as something as banal as direction, either you think it's not worth as much as it is, or you have more so it doesn't matter if you throw one away.”
Hearing it, the other three Adventures stiffened at the accusations.
Evelyn and Paul’s unconscious bodily language displayed their thoughts and desire to reach for their weapons if so much wealth was indeed on the boy before them. However, Jacob, their leader and oldest of them, instantly raised his hand and slapped Martin on the side of his head.
“Open that mouth of yours again, and I will slice it off myself. Understood?” Hearing and feeling the threat, Martin, while still feeling indignant at being treated that way, did claw in his greed. “I am sorry about my coworker and his sharp tongue, but he's not as bad as he seems at first glance. Regarding your inquiry about directions, I can tell you for free. However, before I do that, I have one last question for you.”
“Huh… Alright. If it's nothing too intrusive, I don't mind answering.” Adam replied.
“Sorry, but it will be.” Jacob added before voicing out his suspicions. “If, and I am asking this altruistically for both our sakes. If you were given the chance to kill another Rank 2 Nightmare, what is the chance for another Essence Crystal occurring?”
“Oh…” Adam said before his golden eyes narrowed down to stare at the middle-aged leader of this ragtag group of people. “You're much more wary of me than your coworkers? Ah… I see… So that's how it is… No wonder. No wonder, indeed.”
That said, Adam stretched his Shroud to its full capacity, such that it enveloped all four of the people before him.
The instant it was done, all four of them felt the intrusive, ethereal yet physical sensation of something touching them all over their bodies.
Then, just as their hands went for their weapons, the sensations disappeared.
“What was that?” Evelyn instantly asked. As the only female, she had felt the most affronted, yet in her periphery, she recognized the same in her teammates, only they remained quiet.
Seeing their reactions, Adam crossed another check off his checklist of experiments about his Shroud and Aura. “Unlike your teammates, you can see it? Am I right?”
“Yes!” Jacob replied. “Though, now I am more curious why you would think I wouldn't. I am Rank 2, after all.”
“Ah…” Adam uttered as if he'd been caught with his hand inside the cookie jar. “Yes… Let's just say I am very new to Essence and all that.”
Hearing the word new, Jacob instantly shifted the possibilities in his head to a very probable yes. “Fair enough. How about my previous question? What are the probabilities if you were given the opportunity to kill another Rank 2 Nightmare for another Essence Crystal to form?”
“Trying to recruit me? Are we?”
“Maybe?”
“Then what would be my reward in this endeavor, since obviously I would be the crux of the plan?”
“Depends on the chances versus the risks involved, after all, without us, it will be much harder to kill Rank 2 Nightmares.” Jacob replied honestly. “Your earlier running was an obvious display that you either can't kill one on your own, or you can, but you can't deal with the numbers involved when it comes to their Spawns.”
Staring at one another, Adam and Jacob tried their best to read each other.
One saw only bare flesh as his Shroud was barely extended to cover his body and Sun Bearer, while the other only saw a very tight and dense Aura cladding the boy without any color to display his inadequacies for him to witness.
Breaking the staring contest between the two of them, Adam observed the others for a few moments, though his sight stayed on the man more than on the woman.
Seeing it somehow triggered Evelyn, but she kept quiet in this tense moment.
In the end, Adam relaxed his body somewhat and withdrew his Shourd within him, causing him to refold himself to his base state and thus regain his Aural Vision through his sight.
However, his actions meant two different things to Adam and Jacob.
“So… How about giving us an answer?” Jacob requested after witnessing the Aura withdraw as if it did not exist, as if a simple commoner stood before him.
No. Not simple. Jacob thought since he could read ordinary people as if they were an open book.
“Depends on a few factors.” Adam finally replied. “I have a feeling it has to do with my Methodology, but I've not come across or killed enough… Rank 2 Nightmares, as you call them, to tell you for certain. However, if the conditions are what I assume they have to be, then it's a 100% guarantee of success for an Essence Crystal to form.”
Stunned by the proclamation, all four had flabbergasted expressions.
It was Jacob, the stoic leader, who recovered first. “What are the conditions?”
Making the man wait for a second, Adam spoke his hypothetical answer.
“That I am the sole presence near the Second Ranked Nightmare at the moment of its death.”