I hate mudspawns.
Zayne chanted those words as his gleaming sword pierced mud, persistently missing its weak point by an inch. Those mudspawns never spoke, never uttered a sigh or a cry of pain, never blinked, never showed as much as a single expression. It had the silhouette of a man, sure; a man with the stench of rancid dirt and whatever else the marsh soil trapped within. In terms of offense, the mudspawns moved at a sluggish pace, unable to harm those aware of their intent, but they served as fantastic bodies to form a defensive line.
“A little bit higher!” Oswul said, “The books told that the core should be perpendicular to a small indent in their bodies, can you see it?”
Indent… there? Zayne noted a tiny, pebble-like bulge on the center of its chest. With a swift, accurate thrust, he felt a crack as his blade slid past its muddied body. The mudspawn shuddered, limped, then melted into the somewhat firm soil beneath.
“What do you think? Can you deal with them reliably now?” Oswul asked, approaching him as he extracted its monster gem. He had a mind to consume it right away but opted to keep it in his satchel, for now.
[You obtained a monster gem : [White - mudspawn]]
“I think so.” Zayne said, “I had some difficulties finding the right angle to strike, dealing with them without any pressure is easy, but once we’re in a dangerous situation…” He shrugged, “I don’t know. The angle has to be precise. Its core is pretty small.”
Zayne turned his attention to Gilbert and Wyne, they each dealt with the mudspawns with much ease; Gilbert’s large blade allowed him to strike with less thought into it, and Wyne had access to magic bolts, something he’d never thought seeing this early in his adventuring days. He spotted more mudspawns approaching, gritting his teeth as he pushed forward, determined to improve. It took another hour before he got the hang of it, and his once clumsy attempt at jabbing their cores turned to a competent blitz of snagging their lives away.
A few steps deeper into the marsh and they began encountering mudsharks. Digging through the wet soil, their fins cambered the ground as they waded through the semi-hard flooring toward them. Zayne kept his blade steady as they burst forth, revealing their shocking looks; a large circular mouth being their primary feature, packed with four humanoid limbs. They had the color of dark mud, darker than most barks, but not as dark as the night sky, with a layer of persistent oil-like texture above their fleshy skin. From a glance, Zayne spotted no eyes.
“[Taunt]” Gilbert shouted a skill. “COME AT ME!” He chose to be a tank; someone whose job was to hold the attention away from the others, and the mudsharks were happy to oblige. Zayne rushed in with Oswul as their support, and Wyne blasted her magic bolts every once in a while, keeping her mana up for emergency healing. An ear-piercing wail nigh shredded his eardrums as one of them roared, displaying their haphazardly placed teeth inside their mouths and deeper inside their gullets.
Gilbert’s steel met their weirdly flexed jaw. An arrow made its way into their throats, eliciting a pained response as it recoiled, then Zayne swerved from the side and let his frustrations loose. His brawn had matched most beginner adventurers before they participated in the license test; all of his slashes hurt. Goo splattered as he carved his mark into the midsection of his target before it curled backward, recoiling in pain. Air bent toward its mouth as Zayne attempted to follow, but another shark came into his path.
“Taunt’s over,” Gilbert gasped, sucking air as he swung.
Zayne shifted aside, splashed by dirt as he avoided a mudshark’s frenzied charge, then slashed under its stomach. More white-ish goo draped his shirt as he pursued the other, wounded shark. It shrieked in a language he couldn’t understand.
The mudsharks proved to be an easier fight than the mudspawns, but Gilbert swore otherwise. Yet, both agreed that the moth proved to be the most challenging out of the bunch. It hovered just past Zayne’s reach when standing and swerved away whenever he jumped. Thankfully, Oswul and Wyne ranged attacks caught it with ease, and its attacks from their stinger, while threatening if it struck, were predictable. Zayne regarded the utility of ranged options and kept it in his mind.
Ruddied sky bathed the marshes as they hunted the outskirts of the marshes, stopping once the trees walled the mystery within. The once gray trees turned orange from the ambient lights, their occasional waving shadowed the wet soil beneath, looking more like fingers than actual branches, as if beckoning them to approach. Soon, the horn would blare, bellowing the unlicensed to return, or suffer the wrath of urgently made law.
“Shall we head back?” Wyne said, “My mana’s running low. And…” She smiled genuinely, “I leveled up!”
Gilbert and Oswul’s eyes lit with honest happiness. “Wow! That means you’re level ten! What did you get?”
“It’s [Capacity], adds my mana pool by 5. Pretty sweet.” She kept her grin, then fist pumped. An uncommon trait.
“So the three of us are all level 10 now. Our odds are looking better.” Gilbert said, stretching, peeking at Zayne. “What about you, Zayne?”
Zayne shrugged, his core worked too differently to be compared in the same way as theirs. “Well… I’m about the same level. I’m just wondering, how much brawn do you have, Gilbert?”
“Me? Well, I got sweet options at level 10. My role necessitated a focus on Brawn and Endurance so both are at 15 and 12 respectively.”
Pretty high, I think he’s four points higher than mine in Brawn, if I take my level into account. Zayne regarded his remark, recalling the fight with the wargs yesterday. Gilbert was hit a lot, tanked most bites from the wargs, yet his legs never wavered. It made sense he carried such an ponderous weapon too. “I see… Mine’s a degree lower than yours.”
“Oswul focuses mostly on accuracy and sense, both are uncommon traits,” He pointed at Oswul, who responded with a timid shrug, “And you know Wyne, I said she had a rare trait before, do you want to know what it is?”
“It’s [Mana Efficiency],” She answered before Gilbert finished talking, “Each point slashes my mana cost by five percent; a sweet thing to have at a higher level, I say.”
“And there you go.” Gilbert grinned for a moment, then his expression sobered to a neutral agitation, “But well… I still don’t think we’re ever touching the top spots.”
Zayne sheathed his blade, listening to its light rasping against the scabbard. “Come on. Let’s hunt a little more, at least until the horn blares.” He said, egging the others to continue, hoping that’d sate their thirst for power. “We still had two full days of hunting, how about we tackle the goblins tomorrow? Is it about time?”
The siblings grinned with an excited glee.
###
Sparrow’s inn was noticeably crowded today; the fast-approaching license test and the next monolith opening poured Basin with aspiring adventurers, then the merchants and others that typically trailed along with them.
The old-grumpy grandma hovered beside their table, eye-ing their somewhat dirty apparel from top to bottom, but she kept her prim lips shut today, opting to finish their meal to let in other customers. “What do you want?”
“The usual,” Gilbert said, and Zayne followed the nods of others. She left them to their business as the cacophony of arguments and guffaws flooded their ears, paired with the bombastic and boisterous inn that boomed every once in a while either from laughter or from an intense discussion.
“I heard the adventurer’s hall hired special adventurers from Heirlund to supervise the next test.” Gilbert said, “C-ranked adventurers. Special stuff.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The siblings nodded, with Oswul leading the conversation. “There are three of them. One of them is a famous adventurer that rose through the ranks at an insane pace, even faster than Brenhart.” He added, “-the other two aren’t shabby either, one is known to be a ranger, and the other one a popular tank over there.”
Zayne listened well, but his mind ran to the three individuals who stayed in his room two days prior. Danya and Bernard. That can’t be… It must be a coincidence, right? So what if they were the instructors for the test? Nothing had changed in terms of what he had to do.
Zayne felt around his satchel, vying for his potential growth later; today’s hunt proved fruitful, he’d extracted about 20 gems from the kills they tallied, the siblings reaped half of the kills, shared between the three of them, while Zayne kept half for himself. With no essence gem obtained; evident from their uniform sizes, he’d do his usual of using half for coins and the other half for himself.
Once dinner was over, he ran toward the hall.
[White - mudspawn] [White - mudshark] [White - Mudmoth]
Pherey noted his adventures from the labels on the gems as her eyes fell upon them, shooting a proud smile at him. The more difficult enemies gave him an extra 3 silvers today; Zayne packed five silvers and 46 coppers in his satchel—he’d spend a few coppers for the food—and headed to his room, which was again, empty.
An arduous gulping of gems later, Zayne ended up 215 essences richer. He spent 250 to level up, expecting tiny changes in his body, but something happened that surpassed his hopes and dreams.
[Level 5 reached. Essence upgrade unlocked.]
[Essence upgrade you can use essence to upgrade an essence gem into a higher grade. Cost varies.]
“How do I-“
A list of messages shot into his view. He eyed all of them from the top to bottom:
[White gems]
[Plains warg - Grade 1] - 150 essence
[Plains warg alpha - Grade 1] - 300 essence
[Red gems]
[Violet-eyes panther - Grade 2] - 1000 essence
Expensive… A mere plains warg essence upgrade cost him 150 essences, an extravagant cost for a possibility of low returns, especially when essences were hard to come by, and not when coins grew in importance after the night gave way to the daybreak. Tomorrow, he’d have to fend for himself fully. Zayne plopped onto the bed, thinking of his plans for the morrow. Sleeping in the tents outside seemed to allure him more with every passing second.
His eyes drifted into his inner core.
CORE
Core.Level
5
To next level
350
Max. Essence
500
Race
Human
Mana
7/7
Essence
65
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
Not good enough. He told himself that as he shut his eyes, relishing the comfort of the soft, fluffy pillows and clean bed for one last day. He had a mind to sneak out and eek a few more gems to improve himself further, and his prudent side realized how foolish that thought was.
Sleep cuddled him under its alluring embrace. He dreamed of many things, but none seemed to latch on long enough for his conscious mind to remember. A flash of lightning struck, shaking him awake, panting, sweating from his head to his toe. A clangor of steel rang beside his bed. His eyes squinted from the utter darkness in his room; the only source of light being the calm midnight outside. With a grunt, he reached over to the key-shaped object, no bigger than his middle finger, grasping the cold in his palm.
[Special condition unlocked: Reached level 5. You gained the key of Eternity - floor one]
[Once used, this key will be bound to you.]
What? Where did this come from? The man said I’ll get something special if I get stronger, is this it?
It appeared black, splattered by the usual grains of steel, and while it was faint, Zayne studied the tiny, periodic hums it produced. He sat up from his bed, shaking the key to see if contained anything within. Nothing. How do I use it? No, Where do I use it? Thoughts rolled into his mind as he stared at the impossible object. He noted its glimmering, reflective surface; on its reflection was his face, blurry and muddy, staring at himself with his intense eyes. A message appeared as Zayne recoiled at his cloudy image; somehow, someway, the man greeting him on the other side wasn’t quite Zayne himself.
[Enter the Tower of Eternity[1]? This key can only be used once a day from outside, if you’re not in combat.]
Tower of Eternity? Zayne’s eyes scrutinized the darkness of his room in an attempt to spot any curious eyes, but what he saw was black upon black, layered with the spilling shades of colors from outside. He gulped, clenched the key under his grip, then willed an answer.
The blackness of his room expanded, flooding the room under its chilling embrace. Zayne suffocated, nearly drowned from the sudden burst of otherworldly sensations, he rasped, grasping air as he felt a lightness of his body, then-
He sat amid a dark, expansive corridor.
###
Zayne’s eyes took a few calm minutes to adjust to the darkness. Once the walls turned from dark shades of brown into a clear picture of what appeared to be massive slabs of stones, he got up and patted himself off the dust collecting on the grains of his shoddy shirt. The dingy smell of his surroundings; an amalgamation of old stone and rancid dirt permeated as padded a few steps ahead, attempting to peer further into the black, misty corridor.
Calling this space big would be an understatement, Zayne couldn’t see the ceiling from where he stood, and his steps didn’t echo—an indication of its extreme size and length.
[Tower of Eternity - First floor]
[You can use the key again to leave anytime.]
He felt around his pockets whence he realized the key had disappeared. Yet, the mere thought of it generated a flash of light on his right palm, and following that, the key materialized, clasped safely under his grasp. With a dismissive thought, the key went away as if it never existed. So that’s how this works… Zayne breathed relief.
A sense of urgency pushed him to continue. First floor? He gazed upon the invisible roofs above, attempting to imagine how humongous this structure had to be to support multiple floors. Chill ran down his spine when he entertained the idea of this tower being bigger than a monolith. Apprehension turned to worry, worry turned to wonder as his eyes searched the ever-increasing darkness.
It was after a few minutes of idle walking that he heard the steps of another. He clutched the handles of his blade, squinting and focusing on his hearing to detect its direction, pausing in his steps. The air felt heavier; less... malleable.
A light glint sparked. Zayne sensed something coming his way; a blur so fast his eyes nigh missed it. He tilted his head sideways, just far enough to avoid a fatal strike, but a shove sent him careening toward the stone floor, gashing his cheeks as his body slid.
Zayne turned his head up, his eyes revealing his assailant. A humanoid knight, clad in a set of worn, dilapidated armor with torn black capes and a hollow helmet. Its shield had rusted from ages of disrepair—its sword nicked and chipped on both edges. It turned its head toward him, convulsing, writhing in what he assumed to be pain.