— Rumors —

He fell out of the fountain. No one saw his face. He was just a faceless person coming back from death. The only strange thing was he was able to get out of the fountain by himself. He was still broken, reforming, healing, and unmoving. Some passerby took pity and placed a black cloak over the man, to cover his nakedness. Once the cloak fell over him he began to stir.

The woman noticed and began to approach to help until a crystal began to glow. Instinctively the woman let out a loud roar “SHADOW!!” without thinking. It was a mistake.

The newly cloaked figure sprang at her knocking the woman over, finding his wallet gone. The cost of calling out a shadow, some say.

The cloaked man moved fast, locating the one man who could stop him. An officer moved to grab him only for the thief to role away with the officer handcuffed to himself. The people in the square were incensed and tried to catch the shadow. They only found thin air every time, sometimes brushing the cloak. The thief’s movements were unpredictable going in all directions.

Then all of a sudden he became like a specter moving in a blur all around the square, and everywhere he moved people would fall to the ground. A wizard began to channel something to stop him, taking his time to build up energy. In an effort to slow the shadow down net that covered half the square was thrown he rolled over a fallen person away from the net taking his knife.

The wizard released his spell at the shadow. He spun and cut the spell in half causing energy to dissipate all around him. The thief ran into the alley. Knowing the alley was a dead-end many thought it was their chance to catch him. The alley became crowded with a mob who wanted to catch the shadow.

The thief now cornered turned and rushed toward the crowd. Thinking they now had him, the crowd prepared to block his passage. They did not expect to find a wave of force knocking everyone over. No one saw what happened after the thief was gone and in his place was a knife and a cloak blade first in the ground.

The whole thing happened so fast it took time for the story to come full circle. The story passed between everyone between the squares. The story grew and grew until the man had spectacularly killed the 20 guards. Then disappeared into his own cloak that was left behind in the middle of the square.

— Aster —

Luckily my phone was undamaged. Unluckily the battery was dead, and my group was most likely still in the wilds where there is no signal. I still couldn’t believe my phone showed up at the end of training. It was in a box with a letter from my parents, and I still wasn’t ready to read it.

I began to make my way to the place we agreed to meet if we didn’t make it or got separated.

I wasn't sure how long it took for me to revive but I knew it could have been a couple of days or weeks since the drakes corpses were still there. Although they were still in states of decay, which I always found odd since they disappear pretty quickly if someone skins them. I knew the distance to the crystal caused revival to take longer. I was lucky when I came to someone who threw a cloak over my naked body. Whoever did that saved me more than they would ever know.

I made my way to the Traveler’s Rest and rented a room. I was dangerously low on money but I had just enough to stay at the hotel for a few days. I needed to get the rest of my stuff back. I could feel where my sword and chakram were but knew it was dangerous to go there. I focused on using the return function of the gems by focusing on the connection to the sword until its existence began to grow in my consciousness. I had done this once before as a test, with success but it had taken hours to recall the weapon. With an unknown amount of time, its existence grew large enough for me to send energy to it. When I did the sword began to form in my lap.

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The surprise of the weight through my concentration. Causing the sword to not be pulled through. Looking outside I noticed the sun was starting to set. That was a lot of time to waste. I needed my weapons so I focused. This time when the weight appeared I was able to maintain focus as the sword appeared. As soon as I felt the sword was fully in my lap I stopped to look down to see my sword and the sun rising. Just one left. I will be in time for dinner. True enough it was dinner when I was finished summoning my Chakrams.

Hungry, I made my way downstairs to the restaurant to get a meal. I was halfway into my meal when I overheard a very important conversation. From the next table over.

“So you figure it out yet?”

“No will you just help me out?”

“Seeing as you’ve been at this for a couple days I’ll explain.”

“Finally!”

“All Words are based on belief. What matters the most is what you believe.”

“So all I have to do is believe?”

“Yes and no. Each word serves as a conduit for the person’s belief and the world’s belief in the word. You use that word to channel your energy and belief in the word giving form to the skill they wish to do.”

“OK, now you’re quoting something.”

“Yes but that’s what the guild tells you at level five. They want you to try to figure it out on your own.”

I tuned out after that and grabbed onto what I just heard. After finishing my meal I made my way back to my room to focus on this new information. First I focused on what happened when I used my skill and died. I was in extreme distress and spoke the word “fall” feeling my energy flow out of me.

That description didn't quite feel right. I also focused with all my will on what I wanted to be done. I needed to test it. I visualized the lamp on the other side of the room falling over. Focusing my energy on the word I spoke "Falling" and I felt nothing.

Nothing happened.

“Why didn't it fall?”

I began to flow my energy into the meaning of the word. I was focusing on what I wanted my energy to do. Letting the power course through the word and spoke “Falling”

This time I felt the power flow out of me everything in the room shook.

"That was not expected." I looked around and looked at the lamp it was still standing but a lot of smaller stuff had fallen over

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!"

"Testing a word" I replied without out thought

"Your one of the newbies right?"

"Yes."

"Go outside and practice. We have training grounds over there for this sort of thing."

A practice ground for skills?

I got up and went downstairs and asked the bar staff "Where is the training ground?"

"Through this door." he pointed to the door that was outback.

I went through the door and found myself in a large room filled with targets, scarecrows, and various other training equipment.

It was huge for such a small building.

“Where should I start??

I went in and grabbed something that would easily be pushed over and placed it on the uneven ground. I began to focus on knocking over the scarecrow. I did this for a while as nothing happened. Why did this work on Delilah and the wyverns but not the scarecrow?

After a while, a man who was in the yard seemed to pity me and came over.

“Do you need help?”

I was tired and had no time to care about pride. “Yes.”

“Little hint, skills are always passive but can also become active through the correct stimuli, belief, and visualization. In this case” Gesturing towards the scarecrow “Maybe you’re not thinking of the correct stimuli. It’s an inanimate object and maybe something keeps you from believing it could do it on its own. So think of something else that could cause whatever to happen to it.”

I thought about this, instead of focusing on the scarecrow falling, I focused on what would cause the scarecrow to fall. This time it fell as though someone fell over on it.

“I think you got it.” The man went back to his own training, while I focused on mastering this.

After successfully learning how to use the fall skill, and practicing for a while.

“Aster!” Someone yelled.

Looking up I saw James “James!” finally they must have finished. “So how did it go?”

James seemed proud as he told of how they had killed the ten wyverns and an elite. Rowan had nearly died during the fight and James had barely survived the fight with the elite. But they successfully won and finished the mission, without anyone else dying. He spoke on how the hives started to melt as the last drake was taken out. That was how they were able to tell that all the drakes have been killed.

“Now we are just waiting for you to open the egg. Since you lost all your built-up experience you’ll really like this.”

“?”

“Don’t you know all accumulated experience dissipates after death and can’t be used to level up? Also, you weren’t with us when we took down the wyverns so you’ll be getting plenty.”

“That’s true.”

“But before that how about a spar. I would like to see your skills since you got knocked away like a baseball."

‘This is not good.’ but what came out was. "Might be fun."