I sat there sweating like mad trying to think of a way out of the current situation, but the elder talked before I could get a good story ready. He stared at me with piercing eyes and said "Zane Northwood, what do you know about the Twiity forest massacre?" Several other moon elves had stopped eating food and stared at me, with a few hovering their hands over their weapons. I was in some deep shit it seemed. All the while Ronia sat there munching her food with a massive grin, unaware of the situation.

Eventually she noticed something was wrong and swallowed her food, then spoke up, "Hm? Why're you all mad at Zane? What'd he do?" She sat there and looked quizzically at the elder and Ornal. With the few seconds she bought me I managed to get my story straight. I cleared my throat and said "Yes I was there during the Twiity forest massacre, and before you even ask how, I'm a grand archmage. That should answer any questions of my capabilities. Or rather, was a grand archmage." I spat the last line out with venom, silently praying my acting was up to par.

The moon elves seemed to have bought it though, but not before Ronia saying she saw my status at a guild hall. I thanked my lucky stars that the eves didn't see through my shoddy acting skills and do god knows what to me. The elder stroked his beard for a second and then spoke in a slow voice.

"What do you mean was? To my knowledge it is impossible to lose your class or levels. So what happened?" His voice had suspicion in it and he looked at me slightly warily.

I stared at him for a second then clenched my fist and spoke "I would rather not speak of what happened, but all I can reveal is that blasted traitor... He used several forbidden spells and ancient artifacts during our battle, which culminated in casting a great curse that stripped me of all of my levels and spells, down to level 1. While I was suffering from the effects I was teleported into some wayside field far from civilization to die..If I ever meet that traitorous bastard I swear I'll grand smite him into oblivion!"

You have gained the skill [Acting lvl 1]!

I was a bit surprised about the sudden system notification but I took it in stride and kept up the act. It was slightly easier to keep my composure while acting now which helped a decent bit. I stared at the ground and grit my teeth while clenching my fists as hard as I could, trying to look frustrated but I probably looked more like I was constipated than anything. Several moon elves eyed me with suspicion when I looked up again, causing me to panic inwardly slightly but the elder seemed to have believed me, at least enough not to arrest me and question me for information, but a victory is a victory.

Ornal seemed to be standing there confused, wondering what to do while Ronia just sat there looking at everyone confused and then spoke up, "Isn't anyone going to eat? More for me then!" There was a slight silence as the only sounds coming were her munching on some chicken but eventually the elder sighed and said "I'll discuss this with you in private Zane, but for now let us rest and eat! We have escaped and should make merry not lay in gloom over the past."

That settled things and everyone went back to eating or talking, some people even started to dance around a lit campfire when someone played some tunes. I sat there taking deep breaths and took a peek at the elder while getting up to go to Ronia. I saw that he was also looking at me and we stopped moving, staring at each other. I don't know how long we stared but by the time we both realized it Ornal tugged at the elders sleeve as if to ask a question, snapping us out of it. I coughed and turned towards Ronia and co before I was caught up on some other mess. The elder just coughed once into his sleeve, with what looked like blood staining it a bit. He hid it and spoke to Ornal right after.

As I was sitting down with Ronia and co I felt sudden pain in my body and mind. I sat ramrod straight for a second before it subsided and I quickly checked my status. I had lost 532 health and was rapidly regenerating it. I closed my status and sighed before realizing something. "Wait, regenerating? Right! That!" I decided to check my Nercon Heart quickly and brought it from my inventory into my pocket, and checked it quickly. I coughed and sputtered once I noticed it had lost 2850 health, leaving it with 820 health left. Holy shit!

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I would have straight up died without this thing! Why did I freaking lose health all of a sudden?! I quickly looked around to check for monsters and used mana sense quickly but sensed nothing. I then remembered the elder coughing blood into his sleeve. Did our staring contest have something to do with that?? Wait, he wasn't trying to silently kill me was he?! I took a deep breath and calmed myself down with a big gulp of water and took a bite out of a chicken leg. I didn't know whether it was actually chicken but I mean it looked like a chicken leg and tasted like chicken so It might as well be chicken.

I had calmed down now and listened to Ronia talk about various things, mostly inconsequential things like how scary the beams of light were and how she nearly died from an exploding arrow of light she deflected with an arrow. Ray laughed and competed with her saying he was more badass and described how he had reflected several arrows back at the priests. I continued thinking on why I lost health in some staring contest. I thought back to game lore but came out blank. There was no spell or attack that locked characters into some staring contest so it probably was something unique to this world. Great, another thing I don't know that might kill me. Fun.

I snuck a peak at the elder and he looked fine, just rather tired, showing some signs of lost mana. So it could have been a spell, but he also cast that massive teleport. "Aargh this is getting me nowhere!" I said in frustration aloud, startling the group.

Herald looked at me questioningly and said "Whats up Zane? What's getting you nowhere?"

I hadn't meant to say that out loud and felt rather embarrassed about it and tried to play it off, saying something along the lines of "Just thinking about some new spell and I couldn't fix some of the problems with it." This sparked a conversation with some mage's nearby who energetically spoke about the problem and helped me out with it. Truth be told I was having problems with recreating several spells from the game and they helped out quite a bit with some logic issues I had overlooked in the spell matrixes.

~~~

I had spent the rest of the dinner talking with the mages, much to the boredom of Ronia and the others, who had ignored me and my 'boring mage buddies'. It was morning now and I stretched my arms as I woke up, getting rid of the sleepiness. I quickly got ready and went about my preparations and saw Ornal slightly far away watching my every move. I looked over at him questioningly and he quickly avoided my eyes with what looked like a bit of fear. Strange, why the hell was he afraid of me now for no reason?

I ignored him and just finished getting ready and thought about what to do now. Well, first we needed to head to Modran and I needed to recharge my Nercon Heart as well. The thing had saved my life once already. I had tried to figure out how I had pulled health from it from my inventory and last night I had gone off into the woods to do some experimentation. With that I realized that it came out of my inventory and forcibly melded into my chest once I was in mortal danger or when I willed it.

It had been really creepy because I just felt something come out out of my inventory. It then appeared under my clothes and like a living creature it burrowed into my chest and nestled where my heart usually is, replacing it, while sending tendrils up my neck and digging into my brain. I felt really scared once that happened. What if the thing ate my heart and somehow replaced it? Would I die if the thing ran out of mana or health?!

The answer to that was a big fat nope. Once I felt like getting the thing out of me as fast as possible the Nercon Heart quickly removed its tendrils from my brain and they retreated from all over my body back into it. The thing then floated to the surface of my chest and promptly returned to my inventory without me doing anything. I was both scared and very curious about what had happened. I kept thinking back to that incident as I finished eating breakfast. As scary as it had been I wanted to do more experimentation with the Nercon Heart. When I had fuzed with it I felt far more powerful than I currently felt. It was like my power had suddenly skyrocketed and I was able to do far more. I just felt like I was more. It was like I had gained a part of me that I didn't know was missing.

That was the only way to describe the feeling, and once the Nercon was removed and back into my inventory I felt like I had weakened considerably. I wanted to have the Nercon return back and almost ordered the thing to but my rational portion of my brain kicked in and said 'No, a potentially sentient necromantic thing entering my body,  replacing my heart and doing whatever else inside my body wasn't a good thing.'

I was going to have a lot of fun experimenting once we got to Modran. Plus, I now knew that the Nercon would save my life without any prompting, as long as it was in my inventory. That was very useful information to know. I looked towards the direction of where Modran was and sighed once more. Those dungeon monsters were going to fuel my Nercon Heart and make me effectively immortal in the process. With that goal in mind I got to waking the rest of the group up to prepare for several days of long walking.