Mitch and another party member tugged the rope tied to a makeshift sled carrying two goblin carcasses. Once they crossed over the checkpoint gate, Mitch handed the rope over to the guard and wiped the sweat from his face. As a habit, Mitch turned on his phone. Twelve unread messages displayed on the messaging app. It was typical to see many unread notifications after an excursion, but it was unusual to see so many, especially coming from Carla, Hogan, and Marnie. His expression changed as he scanned through the messages. It appeared that Ian had jumped off a bridge. Mitch immediately called, but it was Ian’s dad, Hogan, who answered. Much to his chagrin, only relatives were allowed to visit. The following morning, Mitch paid him a visit.
“Gee, I went on one excursion without you and this is how you end up? You look worse than a trip to Beacon,” said Mitch, but his body language was jittery despite his joking tone. He dropped off a box of biscuits by Ian’s bedside. “How are you?”
“Good, you don’t have to worry about me,” said Ian. “I’ve never felt better.”
“Are you sure? I heard you have been sleeping the entire time you’re here. That’s not like you.” If Ian was feeling better, he would be on his laptop or phone researching something. “You don’t have to pretend to be tough.”
“When do I ever pretend?”
“When Luke left for Anatolia, your eyes were all red and watery.”
“Shut up, they were not,” Ian swore to this day that there was dust in his eyes. Ian removed the dress gown and put on his shirt near the bed. “Help me get out of here.”
“Are you allowed to leave?” asked Mitch. “Your dad said the doctor planned on keeping you here for another day.”
“Yeah, I signed the release waiver.” Ian threw the last of his belongings into his backpack. “I need to check up on something. Can you drive me to the library?”
Mitch frowned, but knowing Ian, he would probably take a taxi. It was better to watch over him than to let him leave on his own. On the way to the library, Ian explained to Mitch what had happened to him.
“You should really stop eating random things you find in the otherworld realm,” said Mitch. “You’re lucky you’re not already dead.”
“It’s not like I haven’t tested most of those plants. I don’t know why I would react so differently. Who knows, I might have been drugged.”
“You think you have been drugged?” asked Mitch. “Why would they do that? You may be an ass, but not enough to have people wanting you dead.”
“It’s just a speculation,” said Ian. “They don’t have to be targeting me directly. Could be anyone from the pharmacy or even the factory tampering with the drug. I also haven’t ruled out the possibility that the drug is something from the otherworld realm.”
Mitch nodded, but then tilted his head to the side. Nothing was impossible in the otherworld realm, but he had never heard of an item appearing in a specific location. “If you’re a random target, then what sort of lunatic would do that?”
“How would I know?” Ian replied. There were a lot of things on Ian’s mind. It would make life easier if it was something he ate, but life wasn’t easy.
“Is the police going to investigate it as a criminal case?” Mitch asked.
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“I’m not sure. It will depend on what they can gather from the toxicology report.” Whatever it was, it was out of his hands. He had something more important to investigate. “Can you get me into a party?”
Ian had looked up several realm excursions, but none of the parties needed a porter or wanted to hire him as a porter.
“I’ll try,” said Mitch as he pulled by the entrance of the library. “Are you sure you will be fine alone?”
“Yeah, I need some time to research something.” He needed a quiet location to think. His parents would be all over him if he headed home.
Mitch internally sighed in relief. As long as Ian was researching, everything was fine with the world. After dropping Ian at the library, he left for another excursion into the otherworld realm. Mitch was obsessed with improving his tanking ability and he needed to keep his training regime, even without his usual partner.
Inside a small computer area, Ian sat on a cozy gaming chair with a large monitor beside it. He closed his eyes and re-examined the glyph inside his head. While in the hospital, he had uncovered some interesting properties regarding the glyph. If he zoomed out of the chaotic strings of lines and shapes, the glyph itself looked like a cube. By mentally pressing on the cube, five other cubes appeared. Each cube icon was created by complex lines and shapes like the main glyph, but they all felt different.
Of the five cubes, only one was spinning and “pressable.” Ian pressed on the spinning cube. Immediately, his mind entered an open space filled with image cards of plant illustrations he had drawn throughout the years. Even without instructions, Ian was fully aware of the capabilities and limitations of the space, as though an instruction manual had been crammed into his memory.
The cards reorganized itself into several rows and columns. Just by looking at the cards, Ian could immediately discern their spiritual powers. The majority of native plants had less than 20 SP. Native plants within the otherworld and exoplants, plants that originally came from the otherworld, ranged from 15-40 SP. The more detailed the illustration and data he had on the plant, the higher the chance of the card retaining the original SP.
The best way to describe the space was item creation. With item creation, he could combine different plants to create new plants. He selected the card of a white clover (12 SP) and a spearmint (14 SP). The cards floated out, merged together, and then disappeared. In its place was a lifelike spearmint (13 SP) with several blades of leaves on a ten-inch long stalk and fibrous roots.
Ian, or rather, an avatar of himself, reached out to touch the spearmint. The grooves of the vein and soft texturing of the leaves felt real. Unfortunately, the plant couldn’t be taken out into the real world.
With his eyes kept closed, Ian drew the spearmint inside a notebook. The fountain pen flowed smoothly over the surface of a heavy weight paper. The strokes were purposeful when drawing shadows of the stems and wispy when drawing the veins. Ian zoomed in closer to inspect the spearmint, but he could only zoom in far enough to see the reticulate veining of the leaves. As he completed the illustration, the card of the spearmint (10SP) appeared inside the item creation space. He copied more illustrations of the spearmint, but every proceeding card had less and less SP.
He had at least a dozen other cards of white clovers and peppermints to use as he repeated his experiment. Out of ten attempts, the white clover appeared three times, the peppermint appeared six times, and an exoplant, the minort clover (12 SP), appeared once on the seventh attempt. The life-like 2-foot rooted specimen with jagged leaves floated around in space.
Ian quickly used up all the white clover and peppermint cards. While he was in the hospital, Ian was limited by reference images on his phone. With the large monitor in the library, Ian copied more spearmint and clovers.
On his 21st, 30th, and 42nd attempt, different variations of the minort clover appeared. The specimen varied in height, ranging from ten inches to thirty-six inches. On the 67th attempt, a flowering minort clover appeared.
After drawing the whole plant, Ian experimented with illustrations of the roots, leaves, and different parts of the plants. The results were still similar, but one attempt yielded a small three-inches tall seedling with 12 SP. It was the youngest minort clover that had appeared.
As more minort clovers appeared in the item creation space, Ian knew more about the plant, such as other combinations of plants that could be used to create it. His attempt at fusing more than two plants always resulted in failure. Ian continued researching throughout the day until a notification request on the ORA app appeared.
[You have been invited to join a party as a Porter into the Gremlin Field realm.]