My memory was hazy and I couldn't remember what I was doing. I was hearing sounds all around me, people talking and someone using mana on me. At one point I felt a liquid dumped into my mouth. I was having a hard time hearing what was being said and couldn't move. Moving or doing anything hurt, especially thinking, so I just let the darkness consume me once more

"-ng to be alright? He used a lot of mana and then that weird attack that happened while we were on our way back, what i-" The voice of Ronia came and left. She sounded like she was talking to someone but I couldn't hear who. I slipped back into the darkness before I could do anything.

~~~

I tried to move and managed to open my eyes a bit. I was hearing more voices but the damn headache made it hard to focus on any one thought for longer than a few seconds. "My throat felt dry and I tried speaking as I got up, cutting off the voices nearby. "W-here ar-Aghh" I started coughing up a storm and my throat started to feel like I was dying, I could barely breathe. All of a sudden I heard a lot of shouting and voices followed by rushing footsteps. I was passed a drink which I gladly chugged. It soothed my throat and tasted sweet. After finishing the entire glass of liquid I could actually think straight and my splitting headache was subsiding. I tried to speak again, and this time I didn't feel like I was dying.

"Where the hell am I? And who the hell are you?" was the first thing out of my mouth as some old priest looking guy was standing next to me in full white priest robes with a blue trim along with some odd ornament draped around his neck on a necklace. I couldn't get a good look at it because other people burst in front. I was crushed in a hug by Ronia and was swamped by questions by Herald and Ray simply looked relieved while grabbing another glass of the murky gray drink I had chugged earlier from the priest.

More importantly..."Ronia...I-I can't brea-the!" She was literally suffocating me in her crushing hug using her breasts. Sure I was happy to get a close up on them, but this wasn't what I had in mind. I preferred to live through my encounter with them. She looked down at me and let go instantly and went "Sorry! I just got too excited because you woke up after 5 days. Don't scare us like that, passing out and not-" I tuned her out after hearing the first portion. I was out for 5 days? Seriously? "What the hell happened back there?". Herald's question snapped me out of my thoughts and I saw that everyone was looking at me for an explanation. I looked at the priest, who got the hint and left the room after gathering his things and handing Ray the murky drink he was preparing.

Once he left and closed the door I took a deep breath and got to explaining. "Someone in the city had used some skills to scan for people nearby the location of the crystals we were securing. It was a powerful signature and I didn't think it was a coincidence that they started looking when we started taking all of the Monster summoning crystals." I took the glass from Ray as my headache was starting to come back and gratefully drank about half of the glass before the headache subsided again and I could continue. "The thing that I did was create a basic cloaking barrier with mana, but I'm not supposed to be able to make one at the moment due to my extremely low level. You would usually learn that naturally around level 50 to 80 ish so there was quite a lot of backlash. It worked and the person didn't find us at least. More importantly did you tell the adventurers guild about the crystals?"

I kept drinking the murky liquid as I listened to Herald speak. "We rushed to the city after you passed out and found 1 more crystal on the way. We instantly hired a healer, who couldn't help so we got a priest from the church to check you out. They managed to find a medicine that would work for your extreme mana deficiency and charred mana veins. Seriously, you were so messed up the priest was surprised you could still circulate mana at that point. You were lucky to be able to even sense mana at that point was what the priest said. We did tell the guild and handed the 1 crystal we found on the way back. We couldn't exactly hand the rest over since you had them stored away."

I then remembered the monster summoning crystals were in my inventory and then saw my status. My health was less than half health and my mana was at -5302. I spat out my drink and started coughing when I saw the number. "How the hell is my mana in the negatives?! That makes no damn sense! I didn't even know they COULD drop into the negatives!' I practically shouted to myself. The others looked confused and worried as I shouted. "Zane, you are probably seeing the effects of the severe mana deficiency you have at the moment. You should be unable to use mana but since you woke up the deficiency should clear up within 24 hours." I looked at Ray who had said this but he continued before I could say anything. "You really need to calm down and rest. You still just woke up. Oh right! You haven't eaten any real food for several days so why don't we get you some food? Y'know Ronia cooks a real great meal right?" He smiled evilly at Ronia.

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"Ray! What's that for! You know I just learned how to cook proper meals only 27 years ago! I'm still scared I might make another one of my poisonous blobs of doom!" Ronia yelled at Ray while smacking him with her fists with a red face. So she did have a 'i'm terrible at cooking' phase. I'm just lucky it ended way before I arrived. My stomach then started to growl loudly and garnered the attention of everyone here. Ray laughed and said "There you have it! Zane's stomach hath proclaimed that it desires food, so get to it madame." Ray then ducked a book that was tossed at him and ran off with Ronia hot on his heels screaming that she would obliterate his entire family line for embarrassing her like that. I was just glad that I get to eat real food. My stomach felt like it was going to eat itself.

~~~

It had been another day since I woke up and Ronia's cooking was pretty good. She didn't create a 'poisonous blob of doom' as she dubbed her cooking failures. I was wondering if her past failures looked like purple blobs with skulls floating out of it and burned holes in the plates. I laughed at the thought of Ronia making something like that. While I was ruminating over that thought and other such thoughts our group arrived at the adventurers guild. I was healthy enough to actually walk properly and could now use mana again. Yesterday was scary. My mana was in the negatives all day but slowly regenerated back up. I had tried drinking a mana potion I found near the bed but it didn't help at all. The numbers had refused to budge and would only go up via natural regeneration or when I drank that murky medicine.

We walked into the guild hall and head towards the receptionists. I was met with the same receptionist from before when I registered. I waved at her and said "Hey hows it going. We wanted to follow up with a report made by Ronia, Herald and Ray over here." I said to her and she then pulled out a folder from under the desk and pulled out a file from which she took a paper out and read, before responding. Ah right, about the monster summoning crystals. Alright, lets hear it." She had pulled another paper out and was holding a pen. I took out the 3 crystals and put them on the desk. She looked at me with a very surprised expression and seemed to contemplate something before scribbling a bunch of things on the paper and asking me some questions while writing notes the entire time.

After a long questioning period we ended the conversation and everyone here got paid 1 silver each. The receptionist just laughed and said "Getting these dangerous things out of the wild and into custody where we can dispose of them properly without them flooding monsters into the environment constantly is rather welcome. It is also pay for all of the information you have provided us. If your party hadn't informed us of these crystals then who knows how long it would have taken before we found them. By then it might have been too late." She then gathered the small stack of papers she had written on and put them into the folder and back under the desk. She said goodbye but not before saying "We also posted a request on the notice board asking for people to hand in more of the crystals and are paying 1 silver per crystal so do keep a lookout for more of them! " We said we would and left to head back to the inn.

We talked more about the situation and what we would do. We decided to head to the dungeon tomorrow after preparing for the rest of the day and would keep a lookout for any summoning crystals we found along the way. It happened while we were talking and laughing. The presense scanned the city and zoned in on us faster than I could react. The others also seemed to feel it. The feeling of someone staring at you from every angle while staring into your soul. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. After a few seconds the gaze seemed to had enough and vanished into thin air, but I swear I heard a laugh off in the distance.

I looked at where I thought I heard the laugh and felt the gaze from. The others did the same and we all knew what this meant. We had been found out and had garnered some attention we would rather not have. We decided we would stay in the city for the next few days to play it safe. I mean who would want to leave and head to a dungeon where death happens constantly. It was practically begging to be killed if we left now. No one would question our deaths if they happened at a dungeon. Regardless I knew I had to be prepared more than ever now that the entity had realized who we were and we didn't know who it was, or what it was. It could be a demon for all I know. I laughed at that last thought. Demons had been eradicated a long, long time ago and had fled to the demon realm 3 years ago in my time so that would have been god knows how many years ago in this game-like world. "Yeah, theres no way that demons could still be alive" I shook my head and chuckled as we continued to walk into the inn, none of us noticing the gaze of someone perched on a roof nearby, staring us down.