Novaris. Sax (June). 905. AGC.
Nodel. Waning Gibbous🌖. Day 20.
Alyx woke up feeling like a new gnome. He had really pushed himself the day before, and though it had sucked, now his body felt fresh and newly forged as the mana reinforced it. The feeling was always amazing, and it truly made anyone feel like a brand new person. He could tell his mana regeneration, purification, and soul storage had increased slightly.
Flexing his mana to cast a simple light spell through his will, the mana moved through him just a bit faster while feeling slightly more refined. It wouldn’t seem like a lot to many, but Alyx knew that slight differences mattered in the later ranks. If your opponent could cast faster than you and their mana was a bit more refined than yours, it would slowly show in the magic and concepts deployed. This would then slowly wear you down until a breaking point was reached and you were brought down.
Feeling refreshed, Alyx went through his morning routine. He checked on the various tasks happening all the way in the empire for his experiment. Everything was still moving forward, a bit slow, but nothing too concerning. After eating and showering, Alyx was looking to leave but was approached by a fellow clergy. His name was Pibb, and he was a goblin. A refined goblin born in the city for the city and not like the wild and untamed ones. He wore the usual blue outfit used by the clergy, unlike Alyx’s own custom robes, which he got to wear because of his chosen status. Pibb looked disheveled, his black hair a mess and dark bags under his dark eyes.
“Pibb, you okay? You don’t look too good.”
“No, I am not okay, and that's why I am coming to you.” The goblin answered, sounding tired and on the edge of exhaustion.
“What's wrong, Pibb? Your experiment went wrong?” Alyx asked, more curious than worried. He knew the goblin and doubted anything truly bad was actually happening; otherwise, he would be freaking out way more.
“In a way, yes, it has gone wrong.” The goblin answered, not wanting to meet Alyx’s eyes.
“Really? How so? And why do you think I can do something about it?”
“Well, the experiment itself is fine. It's more like the subject of the experiments is not.”
“All right, Pibb. I have other things to do. Just give it to me straight,” Alyx said, getting a bit exasperated.
“The spirit I had trapped in the cave has escaped. After the first mission I originally placed, I had another mission made a few days ago to return the orb back to the cave. However, I think the adventurers messed up the ritual while subduing the elemental, and it was able to break free after they left.”
“Alright, I don’t see what the issue is other than you wasting the church's resources.”
“The problem is that it took the orb. I tracked the thing to the Mushroom Grove, where it used the orb as some sort of core to merge with mushrooms and some sort of cheese-like substance.” Pibb answered, a bit of anger leaking into his voice.
“So it has become a-,” Alyx began but never finished as he got lost in thought.
“Exactly, Alyx, it has become a food elemental.”
“That's… interesting. A food elemental. Those are rather rare, well, depending on a few things, but more importantly, where did it get this cheese?”
“I don’t know where it got access to cheese. Cheese has no magic, at least not the easily available one. And yes, I know food elementals are rare. Which is why I am here.”
“Have you told anyone else?” Alyx asked, already knowing the answer.
“No.”
“Good. This is going to be one interesting soul. Where was its last location?”
Alyx walked out of the temple with a pep in his step. After meeting Tesilim, all sorts of interesting souls have been popping up. The twins, Lili’s, which he still didn’t know much about, and now this elemental. He would have to get the team moving early tomorrow to go catch it. However, first, he needed to sell a rock.
----------------------------------------
Lili hadn't felt so drained in a while. She had been so exhausted that she hadn’t bothered to go out and refill. Instead, she had chosen to pass out and wait for her soul to fill itself back up just a small amount as it consumed the air throughout the night.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Waking up early, she felt better, and after eating something, taking off her leather armor, showering, and putting on some of her normal clothes, she took off to the forest. After hunting around for an hour and killing a few D-rank beasts, she was feeling much better headed back to the city.
Lili planned to spend the day relaxing. She didn’t want to do alchemy since it drained her, even if it wasn’t a lot. Instead, she would pick up Tesilim and spend the day showing him around the city. She didn’t think the elf had done any of the fun activities found within, and it was time he did.
----------------------------------------
Tesilim groaned as he felt something smack the back of his head. Half asleep, he swatted behind him, and feeling nothing, he decided he had just dreamt it. Well, until he felt it again, this time much harder, and his eyes shot open, thinking the worst. He shot up only to realize that he was still alone in his room in the inn except for the grinning Lili standing by his bedside.
“Hey, sleepyhead, come on, get ready. We're going to go out and have some fun today.” She said sweetly, the smile on her face stopping him from retaliating. Grumbling, he went to the bathroom while looking around for Drex. Surprisingly, no one in the city really batted an eye at their new companion. Apparently, summons were just a thing, and if someone had an extra special one because of some Innate Magic, then you gave them a thumbs up and moved on. On top of that and as a nice addition, the drake could use the inn tokens to travel as if he were Tesilim. It made sense since Drex was part Tesilim, very literally.
After getting ready and throwing on some basic clothing, he and Lili searched the inn for Drex and found him in the dining hall. Tesilim asked the drake if he wanted to join in their adventure through the city, but the drake declined. He had run into the dryads, and they promised him a bath. One thing the drake did ask for was to be resummoned, and considering Tesilim wasn’t planning to do any fighting, he accepted the request. So, they headed back to the room, and a few minutes later, Drex was as good as new.
With Drex resummoned, they finally left the inn. First, they went to a restaurant called Audrey's Dash and Dine. A young gnome woman operated the place, and it was basically a breakfast taco truck type of establishment. She drove a rather elaborate large carriage around the city, selling quick breakfast sandwiches filled with unknown meats and eggs. Pushing them down with deliciously tasting pink mango juice, Lili dragged him to their next stop.
They went to what was essentially an ongoing fair game area. It was a bit odd to see so many different rides that he had seen back on earth except operated with magic and with better safety features, but at the same, it was nice and comforting. The place was meant to be for non-ranking individuals, but a good amount of rankers came in anyway. To that extent, there were rules that did not permit them to use their power to win at various mini-games, while some games outright banned rankers or, at the very least, charged them extra to play. And that was without saying that if they broke something, they paid for it.
They spent a couple of hours there with Tesilim oohing and aahing at things. Many rides were ridden, but nothing gave them a rush since everything was kept rather earthbound. Still, it was still nice to see the magical equivalent of bumper cars and laser tag. Sadly, they couldn't participate in the laser tag one because their basic enhanced bodies without any magic were far beyond the usual for most commoners.
In Tesilim's opinion, the most interesting thing about the carnival was the fact that everyone who ran the rides was ranked. None of them were higher than C rank, but it was still interesting to see.
After the carnival, Lili took him to the arena, which confused Tesilim. He didn't really see the point of the arena if you could just go out there and fight monsters. However, he was reminded that there were others who couldn't fight monsters but wanted to have some of the experience.
The place was huge, and though he had never visited Italy, the arena was definitely much larger than their Colosseum. In fact, there were multiple arenas inside the arena. Each capable of holding many different types of fights. They had rankers fighting rankers, rankers fighting monsters, and monsters fighting monsters. It was awe-striking since Tesilim didn't think monsters were captured in such high numbers. There were enough monster fights that he asked Lili if ranking up in the arena was a thing. And it turned out that it was. However, these fighters never really made it past Low B Rank unless they went out and fought in the wilds. The main reason for this was that containing monsters past that grade was very hard and not worth the investment.
In the arena, they watched a multitude of fights. The fight between rankers was rarely to the death, but sometimes things got a little bit far, or the fight was simply to the death from the very beginning. Tesilim did not see what the point of that was, but to each their own, he supposed.
When it came to fights between monsters, things got a bit more interesting, though they truly depended on the type of monsters fighting. For example, a bramble-like plant monster against a group of raptors was not much of a fight; it was simply a slaughter as vines consumed the dinosaurs. That had also surprised Tesilim since he didn’t expect to see dinosaurs, but it was hard to be truly in awe after coming face to face with wererabbits and a freaking griffon. And even if it was a slaughter, the crowd loved seeing a good slaughter, something Tesilim couldn’t disagree with.
Finally, the most popular fights were between rankers and monsters, which came in two different flavors. The most popular ones were ones that usually led to the ranker being bashed around, even if they ended up winning. Even if the wins were solely based on the fact that they had prepared to fight said monster beforehand. The other type was a group of rankers against a usually higher-ranked monster. These fights could swing two ways: either the group completely wiped the floor with the monster, or the monster wiped the floor with them, making someone else intervene and save their lives.
Tesilim’s favorite fight was one where some ranker fought a large flaming lion. The only reason for that being his favorite fight was that the ranker was a well-endowed elf chick, and the lion burned her armor off. Apparently, monsters tearing through armor and clothes and leaving rankers naked was common. Still, that didn’t stop Tesilim and Lili from cheering extra hard at seeing the elf's fun bags. Luckily, the ranker didn’t die; she was some sort of fire elf who was resistant to flames. Something Tesilim realized made sense based on the whole hair coloration elves had going on.