Prologue: the artefact

I look back at the cave with a smile of regret. To leave behind such a great artefact, even though it was in the contract... It feels like a real waste.

I've had the artefact for 25 years, just like my father. My grandfather was the one who acquired it and made the contract. It was a 50 year length contract, excluding the years he used it on his own. He didn't use it for long since he was already 34 when he had acquired it and he wanted enjoy the time with his family a bit more.

The power of this artefact is to tell you the knowledge of monsters and animals you encounter, it only works in dungeons though.

It's a really precious artefact for us adventures and I've heard this is the only one of it's kind. There are crystals similar to this, but they only contain limited information, this one is learning.

To absorb new information, all I have, or more like had to do, was placing the artefact on the defeated monster or animal in the dungeon, but since my father and grandfather had already done that a lot of times, there haven't been lots of monsters that I didn't have information on.

There are also crystals that display your own status and not that of enemies, but once again, this one is better. To give you your status or tell you the information it has, it needs to be in direct contact with your skin, that's why it is a necklace, with the front of the gem protected by a layer of iron and on the backside is a small opening with the gem touching the skin of the wearer.

I'm calling it a gem and not a crystal, because even though it's covered in worthless looking iron, the opening shows the most vibrant colour.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

As you might understand, it's a truly wonderful artefact to have, so why am I leaving it behind you're probably wondering? It's about that damn contract. Honestly I want to give it to my son, but I can't, for a very simple reason.

If I don't leave it, it'll feed me wrong information, like telling the monster is weaker than it actually is, not telling certain skills or even not telling me anything at all. Information is a adventurers best friend, but incorrect information is his worst enemy.

My grandfather told me this, after he asked the artefact what would happen if we were to break the contract...

Nevertheless, I still regret it, leaving the artefact behind, glued to the ceiling of such a small and ordinary cave. I don't know why that was part of the contract either, I just hope that it's not destroyed by wild animal or something.

I purposely picked out an abandoned cave in the hope that one time another adventurer just like my grandfather will pick it up instead of it getting destroyed and lost.

That's another part of the contract, not telling anyone about where I've left it. It's the easiest rule to break, after all who's gonna stop me after I've left it behind, but who will I tell it to? I've no real enemies except for the monsters I battle and I don't want my son or my friends to gain it and die from the misinformation.

Looking back a last time, I walk away from this cave, back to my family