In the growing moonlight, Leo could see a woman standing between the corpses of several strange creatures. The woman herself drew his attention, having fox-like ears that sprouted out from the top of her head alongside her orange hair. Even more eye-catching, Leo could see five fox-like tails that swayed behind her. Kitsune, the word came to Leo’s mind after several seconds of watching this woman examine the corpses. What was she doing here, he wondered? She didn’t show any signs of duress, so he found it hard to believe that she killed all of those things, but the way she half-heartedly examined them, lightly kicking the corpses to roll them over showed that she had no love for them at the very least.
He decided to Appraise her.
[Warning! The difference in rank is too high! Some information is restricted.]
Name:
-
Title
-
Class
-
Element
-
Total Rank
A
A couple of things happened immediately after. If his eyes could have gotten any wider at seeing her rank, and that it was the only thing he could see from attempting to Appraise her, they would have. More importantly, a slight movement from her brought his attention from the screen back to her. Her ears twitched, a motion he’d only just gotten used to seeing from Rize, and then she turned to look in his direction.
Leo grew still, he couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of his pounding heartbeat. He hadn’t wanted to make himself known at all, just in case she had anything to do with that horribly gruesome scene they’d come across earlier. For several seconds, the two of them stood in tense silence. Leo could just barely make out her eyes, moving, scanning the brush. As if she searched for something - searched for him, he realized. She hadn’t honed in on his precise location, it seemed like she just grasped the fact that she was being watched, or that she’d been appraised.
Just as Leo began to contemplate the best way to cut and run, something else happened. She grinned, and brought a slender finger to her lips, giving him a gesture to be quiet. She held that pose for a few seconds, long enough for Leo to give the smallest nod in response, before she turned around and walked off. After her departure from the clearing, Leo stayed in place for a few minutes. Mainly to muster up the confidence to move again. He’d had the fight of his life against something that averaged out to C rank not too long ago, and he honestly had a bit of trouble conceptualizing what something with A rank stats felt like.
That preternatural awareness probably came from a high Intuition or something along those lines. Whatever the case, he couldn’t even tell if she was a Laborer, so the best he thought to do was avoid getting involved with her and hope she wasn’t also there for the Oovinas.
A good while after she left, Leo finally found the will to move out into the clearing to inspect the corpses she left behind.
Name
Darkling [Dead]
Element
Dark, Earth
Total Rank
D
He pulled the hood up from his lantern to better illuminate the space. The darkling corpses were quadrupedal, sporting smooth skin, a mix of dark brown and an odd purple color. They varied somewhat in size, but averaged out around the length of a German Shepard. Most strikingly, Leo couldn’t see any eyes on any of their heads. Only maws of long, sharp teeth. They also had fairly long sets of claws on each of their paws. After he used Appraise, Auto Loot activated, only getting things from about a third of the dozen or so bodies around him.
Auto Loot Activated
Items Obtained:
Darkling claws 4x (D-rank, Dark)
He couldn’t see any obvious signs of what killed them, so he could only guess it was some kind of magic. He continued examining the bodies, before the sound of a snapping twig had him whip around to the same area he’d emerged into the clearing from. The lantern’s light lit up the form of Rize, to Leo’s absolute relief. “Leo?” She looked at him, and then around the clearing to the bodies of the darklings all around him. “What’s all this?”
He thought about the gesture the kitsune had given him, but he couldn’t imagine not telling Rize about what he just saw. Quietly, he recounted what he’d just seen, noting that it didn’t seem like she fought the darklings at all, but if she was actually A rank, then any confrontation between them probably couldn’t even be considered a fight.
“Darklings? Is that what these are?”
“According to my Appraise.” Leo answered. “Do you know them?”
“I’m aware of them. They’re creatures who were corrupted by the outsiders and forced underground. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them.” She shifted one onto its back with her foot. “I think these are what might have killed that pangler, just looking at those claws.”
Seeing them, and thinking back to the shredded parts of the body that weren’t protected by the stone-like plating, he had to agree. One thing felt off about the assessment, though. “You might be right, but aren’t these a little too clean?” From how bloody the scene was, he figured the darklings, or at least their corpses, would be covered in blood. These had all the dirt and grime that animals in the woods might, but he didn’t see any blood on them or in the surroundings.
“You’re right.” Rize said, taking another look around. “Still, there might be more of them nearby. We can look into it later, I came to find you because I found the Oovinas, let’s go!” She grabbed his hand, and began to pull him away from the clearing. He took one final look at the space before following behind. Despite the urgency, she made sure to move and lead him quietly, her ears twitching in response to sounds his hearing couldn’t even register. He took a moment to close the hood of his lantern again. The light from two full moons shining down gave enough illumination for even Leo to see decently well, which he guessed was part of why Rize rushed him out of the clearing full of darklings.
Though it felt longer with Leo looking over his shoulder constantly, a relatively short trip across the woodland brought them to the clearing, and the Oovinas had already started to bloom. Large white flowers sprouting out from stalks sticking straight up in response to the moonlight. A solid patch of them - definitely more than the six they were required to gather. They stood at the edge of clearing while more bloomed. To Leo’s amazement, some of them even began to glow softly. Once most of them started to fully show their petals, Rize nodded to Leo and stepped forward to begin to pick the flowers.
Leo glanced around, partly expecting the kitsune from before to come out and lay claim to the flowers, but nothing of the sort happened, so he joined Rize in picking them. “So we only need to submit six, what about the rest of them?” He said, as he decided to look over them with Appraise.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Material
Blooming Oovina (E-rank, Aether)
Material
Moonlit Blooming Oovina (D-rank, Aether)
He paused for a moment to stare at the screens that appeared, as Rize continued to pick the flowers. “I suppose we’re fine to collect the rest for ourselves. Personally I have no use for them, as pretty as they are when they’re in bloom.”
With a grin, Leo helped her finish picking the six they needed, and submitted them to the Labors’ shop according to the quest’s direction.
Quest Complete!
Requisition - Oovina (Urgent)
Reward
E-Rank Unrestricted Karma (2)
After that was done, they went and carefully picked the rest of them that grew in the grove, giving him a good six more. Four of the regular variety, and two of the glowing ‘moonlit’ kind went into Leo’s Storage. A few more grew around the clearing, but they didn’t seem to register as materials in the same way. Probably for the best they left some to leave seeds and such so that another patch of Oovina might grow in the same spot. A fantastic acquisition. Considering how much he’d seen even E rank materials sell for on the Labors’ shop, Leo considered selling them himself briefly, but knowing how hard it was to come across them, he probably wanted to hang on to the Aether material as much as he possibly could.
As they wrapped up and started to figure out where they were going to break and make camp for the night after their job well done, Rize’s ears fell flat against her head. “Do you hear that?” She asked.
At that moment, he didn’t, but seconds later he felt it more than he heard it. A low tremor in the ground, a quiet rumble that gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I really don’t want to, but we should probably check that out.” He said. He definitely didn’t want to sleep nearby without knowing what it was. With a nod between him and Rize, she began to lead him toward the sound with her better sight and hearing. The sounds hadn’t stopped, the rumbling continuing and getting louder and louder to Leo the further they progressed. The closer they got, he could begin to make out the sound better. Rather than a low roar that he couldn’t quite recognize, it sounded like the movement of something, a lot of something, like dozens of things moving all in a massive crowd.
Soon enough, they crept along the edge of another clearing, keeping quiet and low as they could actually see movement beyond. One Leo could get a clear view, he found himself shocked. He didn’t think he’d see anything more surprising than the kitsune that night. The clearing was a large gap in the forest, where next to no trees grew. A small field of grass and hills. Under the moonlight. Leo could see dozens, if not hundreds of darklings moving, shifting around, moving past and over each other like ants over a disturbed anthill, except all of the ants were three to four feet long.
Leo grew very still, he felt like one wrong move or loud enough sound from him and they’d swarm over him like piranhas. Suddenly, the sheer lack of larger animals in the woods made a lot more sense with all of these things running around. He glanced over to Rize, who’d also taken to making herself as small as possible to not be seen or heard. She, however, seemed to be scanning the field to get a better sense of their overall numbers.
He looked back to the horde of darklings. As he looked over them once more, his vision began to blur. Blinking back, he rubbed his eyes, trying to clear away whatever had gotten into them, since now would have been the worst possible time to have any kind of vision problems. He closed his eyes briefly to rub them, and when he did, the sound around him felt muted somehow, diminishing and changing entirely. This caused him to rub his eyes faster to figure out what was happening, and when he opened them, he found his vision clear, but a completely different problem had come up.
He was in an entirely different space.
Name:
Leonell Bolden
Stats
Title
-
Fortitude: E- (0/10)
Class
Mixer
Reflex: E (0/10)
Element
-
Intellect: E (0/10)
Total Rank
E
Intuition: D- (0/10)
Status
Health 100%, Mana 100%
Will: E- (0/10)
Skills
Combine, Auto-Loot, Appraise, Storage
Luck: D (0/10)
Skill: Combine
Mix different raw materials into a new item. You choose the shape of the form. Final form is affected by rank and element of materials.
Store Combine results into a mental guidebook that grows based on Intellect rank.
Skill: Auto-Loot (Mixer)
Automatically separates mixable materials from slain creatures. If the [Storage] skill is active, automatically places loot into storage space.
Skill: Appraise (Mixer)
Look at a creature or material and gain information on them. Information includes: Rank, Element, Class, Statuses, Titles. May have difficulty appraising creatures of higher rank, or creatures hidden by another skill or effect. Skill affect boosted by Intuition Rank.
Skill: Storage (Mixer)
Creates an inter-dimensional storage space that only you can access. Storage increases with Total Rank
Storage
Animated Bone (E-Rank, Dark)
D-Rank Mental Karma 2x, E-Rank Unrestricted Karma 2x
Large Shell (E-Rank, Water)
Basic Short Sword,
Drowned Heart (C-Rank, Water)
Basic Shield
Scorched bone (E-Rank, Fire)
Sigil of the Drowned
Petrified Bone (E-Rank, Earth)
Stone-Plated Pangler Plating (D-rank, Earth)
Deepgold Coin (E-Rank, Metal)
Soul Husk (C-Rank, Aether)
Windblown Feather (E-Rank, Air)
Darkling claws 4x (D-rank, Dark)
Blooming Oovina 4x (E-rank, Aether)
Moonlit Blooming Oovina 2x (D-rank, Aether)
Luminous Mote (E-Rank, Light)