###
“Let’s hunt together.” Gilbert spoke, placing his knife beside his empty plate gently, “With four of us, we can proceed deeper into the plains. Then we’d gain more levels.”
Zayne’s eyebrow frowned; he’d desired a party, and they all matched his shortcomings well, but his… unique status necessitated careful thought and consideration. Zayne, unlike the others, only grew from monster gems—meaning if he wanted his time to not be a waste, he needed to negotiate a larger share of gems for himself.
“-and since we owe you one, how about we let you get half of the gems?” He continued, earning a few nods from Oswul and Wyne.
Half? “Are you sure?” Zayne asked again, disbelief clear in his eyes, “Isn’t that a big deal?”
“It’s okay.” Wyne said, “Besides, you needed the gems the most.” She placed her warm cup on the table, glancing at the rowdy scene around them, smiling, “We talked about this last night, the day we met. We’ve been deliberating to include a fourth member into our party for a long time, but finding someone we can trust isn’t as simple as we think it will be.”
“You heard her.” Gilbert chimed in, “So… What do you think, Zayne?” His lips curled, almost too comically.
“Not when you’re showing me that face.” Zayne laughed, “But I’ll keep it in mind.”
Gilbert sighed. “Okay… Well, how about this? We’ll wait outside the west gate tomorrow before the sun fully shines. Give us your answer then.” He held a terse gaze for a moment, then yawned. “Man, I’m anxious as all hell…”
Wyne kept her gaze straight onto her cup. Oswul idled, staring into nowhere. They each held their own thoughts and worries.
“Alright… I think it’s nigh time for us to rest…” Gilbert said as he stood up, then glanced over at Zayne. “Come with me, I have a cool sword to show you.”
Zayne’s trek back to the Adventurer’s hall was one filled with deliberations. The sibling’s invitation intrigued him, and no doubt he found a semblance of camaraderie with them—but a dark cloud of uncertainty lingered within him. His origins; his possible connections with the Death wraiths through the mysterious man might put the siblings in danger if his past rampaged back to haunt him.
A new longsword jingled as it swayed with Zayne’s uneasy steps; Gilbert’s sword, made of strong metal, and one of his favorite swords. Zayne refused adamantly at first, but Gilbert insisted—also quite adamantly—and Zayne settled in the end.
He kept a hand inside his satchel, groping his giant white gem, eager to see how much one such gem could net him. Pherey welcomed him with her trademark forced smile, and they headed to the appraisal room after exchanging hello’s.
Inside, Zayne tapped the alpha gem on the table, “I just wanted to know how much this is worth.” He studied Pherey’s appalled face, however, she kept her wits to herself after a few seconds of unabashed gawking.
“This is… the warg Alpha’s gem.” She said, “How did you get it?”
“A long story,” Zayne shrugged, “I came across a party surrounded by these wargs, and one thing led to another. In the end, I came back with this gem, and I lost most of my weapons as the price.”
She glanced at the lavish longsword strapped on his waist, “Okay… Well, it’s not unheard of for an unlicensed party to fight the warg alphas, so…” With a timid pinch, she lifted the pebble and hovered it below the intense light, “As usual, all your extracted gems are-” She gulped, “-of high quality. This one isn’t an exception.”
“I thought it looked… murky.” Zayne followed her eyes, tracing the imperfections of the alpha’s gems. “Am I wrong?”
“The larger gems coming from the elites worked differently.” She said, releasing the gem on the appraisal bowl. Tiny trills of clangors jingled as it settled, “It’s nigh impossible to find a perfectly clear gem from elites.”
The machine spurred to life, rocking slightly before halting to a pause. The clerk’s eyes lit up, “Wow… You can sell these at 10 silver a piece. Fantastic.”
10 silver… “Really? That’s so much more than I expected…”
She nodded. “That’s how special this thing is… Do you want to sell it?” There was a slight over-eagerness in her tone, a tone a touch too high.
Zayne kept silent. While 10 silver meant a lot to him, he recognized the possibility of a white essence gem contained within, and with how rare that essence gem was… “I’ll keep it.” He spoke, somewhat unsure, “I’ll sell these instead.”
Pherey shot an instant quizzical look, but she kept her lips shut as Zayne poured the rest of the gems he’d earned today. In the end, Zayne walked out one silver richer. Zooming past the crowd bickering near the noticeboard, he headed back to his room, dousing the fire in his heart as impatience gnawed at his chest. Thank goodness his room was empty; he gulped the large gem down like it was steak, tasting the abnormal flavors—he thought he was swallowing dirt at some point—then sat as a message appeared.
[A monster gem is consumed, [White - plains warg alpha]. You gained 90 essences.]
[You obtained an essence gem: White-plains warg alpha - grade 0, slot required: 2, +3 Brawn, +3 Endurance, +3 Agility.]
Cool. A dark smile crept on his lips, one filled with a dearth of avarice. To use this gem, he needed to open two slots—a first, and a sign that other gems might require a lot of investment in the future. The second white-gem slot set him back by 20 essences, and the next was 30; each additional slot opened compounded the cost by its original price. All in all, he spent 50 essences to open two more white gems, then felt the same cavity inside his chest sucking in darkness, before his newfound essence gem sealed it shut.
He felt stronger. Faster. More durable than ever.
CORE
Core.Level
4
To next level
250
Max. Essence
350
Race
Human
Mana
6/6
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Essence
100
Class
-
SLOTS
Required ess.
Open slots
Required ess.
Open slots
White
40
0/3
Red
200
0/1
Blue
100
-
Green
100
-
Violet
500
-
Black
1000
-
TRAITS
NAME
NAME
NAME
Brawn
+7
Endurance
+7
Magic
+3
Agility
+5
Tomorrow marked the last day he was allowed a free stay. The day after he’d have to sleep outside, and whence the fifth day came, the test would begin. With some amount of money saved up, he looked up to the coming days with an air of hope and purpose, unlike the bleak void he used to see every day he woke up back in Basin. A sense of burning urgency steamed his heart; he had desired to achieve much with his increased strength.
He slept, his body clean—for once, he smelled great before approaching the realm of slumber.
###
“The marshes? Are you sure?”
Two caped men gazed upon Basin from the peak, their limbs hung on the monolith reflecting their figures. One was caped from top to bottom with flowing darkness. The other wore dilapidated armor and a hood shadowing the visage on his ever-shifting face.
“About as sure as I can be.” The armored man shrugged. “Speaking of the new kid, his core is… well, it’s different than ours; the death wraiths are up to something, lucky we stole it before they put their plans into action. You’ve seen him, right? What do you think of him?”
His cape fell on the glass-like surface of the monolith. “I’d say he’s average. He’s too young, Mordred. Why did you-”
“It’s because he is a kid he had the chance to outgrow all of us. And boy, I had never seen that core react so strongly with a person before.” The other guy answered, holding a sinister laughter back. “I suspect his held an ability we’d never seen before, but time will tell. So…”
Dawn crept past the wall of the horizon, smearing sunlight into darkness, washing the black with its white radiance. The light faded the armored man’s figure along with the day, “Keep watch over the kid in the test—if you’re able. And…” his voice trailed with the passing brightness, “I found traces of the death wraith we’re looking for in the marshes. You know what to do.” With his final words, he disappeared, evaporating into thin air.
###
“I’m glad you chose to join us!”
The siblings hollered the next morning outside the western gate, each holding an optimistic smile on their lips, but he sensed a trace of relief upon witnessing his figure approaching. Zayne felt the same way too, but he kept his worries buried in his chest; the notion of them in peril because of his circumstances hadn’t quite left his mind just yet. Perhaps he was being paranoid, and he very well might be, but he agonized over losing people he cared about more than anything else, especially so if it was his fault.
Zayne noted the dark circles and bags under their eyes, “Didn’t sleep much?” Of course, they didn’t, not after everything. He reminded himself. Yet he found respect when they found the will to continue without a shred of hesitancy in their ardent gaze; in fact, he sensed a seething desire to prove themselves that they could be better.
“Where are we headed?” Zayne asked as they walked in the opposite direction, “We aren’t going to the same spot again?”
“Nope.” Gilbert said, turning toward Wyne, “The monsters won’t come back again until the next time the monolith opens, so we all needed to find somewhere new, and since most of the outer Vienna plains has been wiped clean by people like us, we needed to go deeper.”
“And that means the Vienna marshes.” Wyne took over, “Most of the stronger monsters resided in there.”
“And the goblins too?” Zayne interrupted, grasping the handle of his new sword, “Isn’t it too hasty? After all that happened yesterday…” He turned to Gilbert with a flash of unease washing his face.
“It’s precisely because of that we have to keep pushing forward. We’ll take things slow, and deal with the stray ones outside the marsh before advancing deeper.” He answered, watching his siblings from the corner of his eyes, “We can’t sleep knowing how weak we are, Zayne. And the license test is looming closer every sunrise. Our goal isn’t to just pass the license test, we wanted to excel, to be… impressive.” Gilbert kicked a tiny pebble away from the path, “I’ve heard about the other candidates, not just from Basin, but from the other cities too. They’re monsters, Zayne. Way, way too strong for most academy graduates to contend with, and people talked about them as if they are certain to reach the apex of the next license test. I heard a red-haired prodigy came packing with an epic-rarity trait, do you know how… uncommon that is?”
The kingdom—and by extension, the adventurer’s hall—rewarded the best-performing adventurers with coins and stones, those were mere adornments to the true purpose of achieving great feats in the test; it was the recognition people sought after, not the coins or stones. Stronger guilds paid closer attention to the strong, to the most guile and adept of the bunch, not the middling adventurers barely able to keep themselves together.
Zayne chewed on his underlip. He wished to say he’d be in contention for excellence in the next test, but not when he started so much later than the others. A part of him dreamed of it, fawned upon it, the name, the recognition, the easier life—who in their right mind wouldn’t? But those were a privilege exclusive to the fortunate.
“I know we’re so far away from such simple goals,” Gilbert continued as the trees ran their rounds between the path, “But we wanted to strive toward it regardless.”
Zayne sneaked a peek at their agitated violet eyes; each held the same resolved look in their faces. Looking at them was akin to having his old life flashing at him. The sheer effort he put forth to keep up with his friends, the innumerable amount of times his mind begged him to stop and allow fate to decide his future, the pain of loss, the pain of never being able to catch up with his dearest companions… Just another hurdle to step over. He spoke to himself. I’ll do whatever I can, and the rest will be in God’s hands.
They took a slight detour, entering the plains and browsing through the tall grasses. Zayne traced a few adventurers roaming about as they skimmed the plains, noted a few monsters on the way and Oswul dealt with them swiftly. He retrieved his arrows once they were dead. They extracted the gems and tried to hand them to Zayne, but he swiftly refused. He knew how little use normal monster gems were to him, “I’ll only keep the gems I extracted myself,” He said, earning a few questioning looks from the siblings, Wyne being the most puzzled.
Oswul watched the distant horizon for the signs of the marsh as they paced their way with Gilbert in the lead. “There.” His hand pointed to his left, and Zayne’s eyes trailed in its direction, noting the bent, bony trees, pallid as ash, with no leaves on their branches. Monsters of different kinds prowled near its entrance. He noted a human-like fluxing creature made of mud, “mudspawns,” Oswul called them such. Then the moths came, the sporadic humongous flying things the size of a warg, its abdomen brown and hairy, housing a stinger, with its singular orb posing as eyes. Then the mudsharks, man-sized creatures roaming the region underneath, their fins akin to the sea monsters roaming the sea between the Lower-western region and the Southern continent.
The occasional goblins peeking from way, way further into the marshes, their green marred with gray and brown; marsh goblins, a subset of goblins thriving in muddy regions. Their large nose sniffed as they stirred. Their ears, almost as wide as their faces, flapped upon hearing nearby prey. Deep abyss black eyes capable of sensing more than just sight, webbings from each of their slick, wet limbs, allowing them to navigate with ease above nonrigid surfaces.
“Here we are…” Wyne said, unwrapping her staff, “We’ll go as planned. Let’s take on the mudspawns and the mudsharks first.” She planted her staff on the floor, her eyes gawking at the sea of monsters awaiting them.
“Are blades effective against them? The mudsharks?” Zayne asked after studying their slick, melting bodies, “I don’t feel like my swords will do much.” The sharks had more or less solid skeletal structures with real flesh any man could cut, but the mudspawns were… almost too water-like for his tastes. The academy had prepared him against the most basic of monsters, but not these. Burg lacked the marshes and the swamps most other cities had.
“It is…” Oswul answered, “There’s a core hidden in the middle of their chest. Once crushed or destroyed, they will die. Water spells are terrible against them, and fire even more so.” He said as if rechanting a book. “Thrusting weapons are best against them, but with enough strength, well, anything works, really.”
I can stab. Zayne kept his word in mind, sealing slashing away as a method of dealing with the mudspawns. “What about the sharks and the moths?”
“Nothing special about them.” Oswul replied, brushing his bow and inspecting his arrows, “They’re just monsters with mud. So, everything works.”
Zayne nodded, then watched the siblings go through their usual routine. He drew his blade and squinted—its faint violet glinted the harsh sun above, reflecting perfectly into his eyes—then performed a few slashes to get himself comfortable with the blade. Balanced and weighty, yet it handles great. He smiled as Gilbert watched his movements from his back.
Once ready, they strode to the marsh, part anxious, part hopeful.