Chapter 8 – Disappointing landing
Rich headed for the beast and began cutting it up as he began explaining. “The artifact I use for storing has limited uses, whether it’s putting things in or taking things out. So, I try to keep the usage of it as minimal as possible.”
Taking in the explanation, I remained silent while Rich continued dissecting the ghoul.
Out of nowhere, Rich asked, “By any chance, you don’t know how to dissect a ghoul, do you?”
Raising an eyebrow, I answered, “What do you think?”
“I will take that as a no.” He said, “So as I dissect this ghoul alone, why don’t you entertain me with something, since there’s something about your traits I am curious about.”
“How guileful,” I mocked. “Fine, what do you want to know?”
“The howl that you used; According to what I know, there’s no faith trait that you can currently produce that employs such a howl.”
“It’s a trait of a title I got when I met the guide,” I answered.
Rich stopped dissecting, and he turned around with an intrigued look. “You have another title other than [Versed Multilingual]?”
“I think I just insinuated that.” I continued, “Since we’re on the subject, the title seemed to implicitly imply something that happened to me back in my world. I want to know how the hell did the guide know that.”
Returning back to dissecting, Rich said, “I was just surprised. Earthlings earning initial titles before entering another world means that they have done or achieved something in their world that the conductor found worthy enough to be rewarded a title. As for how it knew, something with its capability could easily track all of your life's work in a few seconds. For how it does that, I don’t know. Also, a piece of advice, don't use traits with wide-area effect such as the one with your title if your allies are around, because since you have no control over your mana, you might affect them too.”
While Rich resumed dissecting, and as I felt a bit of relief from the current safety, a sense of exhaustion struck me. It wasn’t a lack of breath or sore muscles but something else. Something was seeping the energy inside me. It became somewhat intense that I had to lean on the wall to stand properly, and slowly, I flopped to the ground.
“I was wondering how strong your initiate mana was since you were conjuring weapons left and right.” Rich commented, “You have a pretty decent amount. Just rest for a bit, and you should feel better in no time.”
I grasped what he said to a certain extent; I just felt I was missing something. I asked, “What exactly is mana?”
“Right. You’re a newbie.” Rich said, “Mana is the thing you use to activate your traits. Without it, traits would be a decoration in your body. There’s a lot more explanation to that, but this should suffice for now since I don’t think this isn’t the time nor the place to explain fundamentals.”
Nodding in agreement, I rested my back against the wall while rich continued his task.
After a dozen minutes, Rich announced a little loudly, “Done.”
Turning my head, I looked at where the beast's body supposedly was. Laid on the ground were bones, a few muscle fibers, a heart, and a small red-blood bead, and the rest of the carapace.
Walking towards the loot, I picked up the bead. “What is this?”
The rest of the stuff, I recognized them. Although I didn’t know their uses, I understood what they were. But the bead I had absolutely what Idea what it was.
Actually, I didn’t even need to ask Rich. The moment I concentrated on the bead, a screen popped up.
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Core
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Core: Blood
Type: Monster
[The core is unprocessed.]
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“It’s the ghoul’s core. It’s very valuable. Do you want it to be a part of your share?” I heard Rich answering my previous question
“How do you normally split the loot. And do all beasts have cores inside them?”
“In such a situation, the loot is normally split in half. No, certain conditions need to be fulfilled for a lifeform to manifest a physical core when it dies. These conditions apply to all species.” Rich said, “I think we have wasted enough time. We should be going.”
Rich crouched down and put his hand on the loot, and with a shimmer on the ring, all the loot disappeared.
“I will hold on to the loot for now and give you your share later, or do you want some other arrangement?” He said.
I answered, “I am fine with this.”
Rich nodded, then began to prepare to climb up the aperture. He tied the rope around his waist and pocketed the metal spikes inside his armor.
He handed me the end of the rope and two axes. “Tie the rope around your waist and fasten one axe on your body while keeping the other in one hand.”
Following his instructions, I tied the rope around my waist and fastened one axe around my body.
“Let’s begin then,” he said.
Standing next to the wall connected to the aperture, Rich struck his axe against the wall and lifted himself up to began to climb. After there was some distance between us, I followed suit.
As we climbed, we would use the cracks we inflicted on the wall with the axe to hold on to, and when we found a rough area, Rich would strike a metal spike into the wall to act as leverage.
Eventually, after roughly 30-40 minutes, we began to see the end of the aperture. When we approached the opening, we heard sounds of talking.
“It’s has had definitely been more than an hour since things got quiet. Are you sure it’s coming out of this hole?”
“I am sure. I recognized the growls coming from here.”
“But that was an hour ago. Maybe it went to another one. Shouldn’t we look at other entrances?”
“We can, but will you handle the responsibility if it does come out of this one and we don’t feed it? According to my experience, It usually comes out from this one, so just be patient.”
The second grunted. “Patient? We have been here for more than an hour. I always hate this about you, Mark. You try to sound capable, but in the end, we are quite the same terrible type of people.”
While the two voices we heard outside began to bicker, I locked eyes with Rich. He put his index on his mouth. When he saw me nod in response, he untied the rope on his waist and pushed into the wall two metal spikes adjacently. He then proceeded to stand on them.
Although Rich wasn’t that far away from me, in my vision, his figure started to blur bit by bit as if he and the air were vibrating together. When these vibrations seemed to reach their culmination, Rich leaped and launched himself towards the opposite wall. Reaching the other wall, he readjusted his body to face back to the metal spikes and pushed his feet against the wall to ricocheted off.
In a repeated fashion, Rich continued to bounce off from one wall to the other, and in a matter of seconds, he reached the top, exiting the aperture.
The moment Rich got out, I heard a shout, “God damn Ingrates. How did an Otherworlder come here? Catch him!”
Following the shout were multiple grunts and sounds of metal clashing. I wanted to do the same and copy Rich, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the capability to go out in the same fashion.
Looking around, I tried to brainstorm my way out quickly, and my eyes locked on the metal spikes Rich had used. The conjuring trait that I have seemed to be able to replicate the characteristics of some materials, like fiber for the rope and steel for the sword.
Then maybe, I could use the trait to conjure something more elastic. Using my trait, I began to concentrate on something that could be considered a weapon and at the same time useful for this kind of task. My first attempt was a rubber band that could be used for constrictions.
As I felt the mana gather around my hand, my trait didn’t disappoint, and a giant rubber band materialized around my hand. Holding the rubber band, I climbed towards the metal spikes and spun it around them.
I didn’t let go of the band even when I was sure it was fastened around the spikes, and the spikes themselves were held tightly against the wall. Instead, I continued holding it as I climbed upwards. When I felt the band couldn’t stretch out anymore, I stopped, turned to face the downwards, and then let go of the wall.
As I let go of my body to free fall, I conjured the heaviest weapons I could think of in my free hand, a hammer. I didn’t want to gamble with some other conjuration that might not work, and I had no time to test beforehand.
With a heavy weapon increasing my weight, I could feel the gravity pull me down faster. Thanks to the increased weight, I reached the spikes where the rubber band was tied to in no time. While gravity still pulled down on me as I fell, the tension in the rubber increased, and eventually, I came to a complete stop. At that moment, I let go of the hammer before I would be launched up towards the aperture entrance with tremendous speed.
My body cutting through the wind, I was launched out of the hole. To my luck, I wasn’t thrown far off the ground and dropped on it relatively safe.
Finally outside, I hastily scanned the area to have a general understanding of the situation, which ended in me being frustrated. There were seven humans around, six on the ground and one standing. The one standing turned to face, and usurpingly for me, it was Rich.
He looked at me bewilderedly. “How did you get up here?”
“You know how I feel right now?” I asked. “I am like a launched catapult that found that the gates were already breached.”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what, nevermind. I just launched myself up here, don’t bother with it.” I pointed at the six unconscious humans. “More importantly, what happened here?”