After being escorted out of the tower I hurriedly made my way back to the inn, where I asked Finch for a few minutes of privacy whilst I took a closer look at my rewards. He looked a little annoyed but acquiesced, so I rushed into my room and placed the box on my bed and carefully opened it.
To be completely truthful, I initially planned to just open it as soon as I left the tower, but Captain Ironheart noticed and immediately put a stop to that. Apparently this whole situation wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge so it would be best to not draw attention to myself and just open it at home.
The chest itself was made out of some kind of dark wood, which made the ornate carvings a little hard to actually see but clearly accentuated the iron filigree that formed all kinds of swirls and patterns along the edges. I hardly paid any attention to this despite using it to open the chest, but it was held shut by a clasp designed to look like an iron shield, which was probably made out of iron itself.
The Lord of Ironhold likes to use iron, who would've guessed?
Finally, I opened the chest and looked at the two objects sitting atop the silk. They’d been jostled quite heavily in my hasty speed walking, but they didn’t appear to be fragile at all so that was probably fine.
I picked up the golden medal and looked it over, it was shaped like a shield (the same as the clasp on the chest) and had an intricately carved sword pointed downwards in the centre. Looking closely, I could even see tiny details on the handle and a few scuffs along the blade itself, as though someone had copied a real sword to design it. On the other side of the medal was a faintly glowing rune, it was shaped kind of like a spiral and seemed to pull in my finger when I reached close to touch it.
Experimentally, I placed it along the inside of my cloak and found that it was firmly stuck. Not knowing how to remove it without damaging either it or the cloak, I opted to ignore it until further notice.
I was much more interested in the satchel anyway. It looked to be made out of hard brown leather with additional grey sections along the edges and in the centre (this time in the shape of a sword with no shield in sight), though after touching it I noticed that it felt soft like cloth.
Weird.
The flap that hung over the top was held closed by a string that was tied around a small iron peg sticking out of the sword design, so I untied it and finally checked what was inside.
“Huh?”
At the bottom of the bag was what looked like a full gold coin, which was far more money than I’d ever had all at once, and also made me wonder how I was going to be able to spend it. I highly doubted that most vendors would carry enough money to give me any change if I buy something cheap.
That wasn’t what confused me though, rather, the coin looked like it was… small. It was like half the size that it should be, or at least that’s how it looked. When I actually reached my hand in to check, I found out that I was slightly off in my assumption.
Instead of being small, it was actually far away. The bag extended nearly twice as far as I would have expected it to, so I could fit my entire forearm inside with no trouble.
What the hell is this? It’s bigger on the inside?
I guess that whole cult leader situation must have been a bigger deal than I thought, because this was some kind of enchanted item. The medal was too, but that didn’t feel as impactful as something like this, so I barely counted it.
As I moved my hand in and out of the bag a grin grew onto my face.
This is gonna be awesome.
----------------------------------------
After spending the next few minutes moving everything I owned from my original pack to my new satchel (which was just barely big enough to fit everything if I left behind one of the blankets) I headed back downstairs to greet Finch.
“Hey, Finch. Check out the new bag.” He looked at it sceptically before looking me in my eyes.
“So tha captain of tha guard personally came t’ escort ye so th’t ye could be given a fancy bag?” Well, when you put it that way it sounds kinda stupid.
“I think it probably has something to do with this cult guy that was, like, mind controlling people and stuff.” He stared at me blankly for a few seconds and then sighed.
“I though’ ye were huntin’ Gian’ Crabs, wha’ ‘appened ta tha’?”
“I don’t know, I think he put that Job up to lure adventurers in for some reason.”
“Righ’ whatever. I’ve go’ more important stuff ta be doin’ righ’ now.”
I looked around the room, seeing that it was completely empty, and shot Finch a confused look.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“No, it’s,“ He sighed- again- and motioned to the kitchen behind him, “Alright, may as well ge’ it over with. I migh’ need yer ‘elp to finish this one off anyway. Come on.”
Hm? Is he cooking something big?
He led me into the kitchen and I realised that it was my first time here, so I took a look around for any ongoing projects or whatever it was he needed help with, but there didn’t seem to be anything of the sort. Without sparing a glance for anything else in the room Finch walked up to a cupboard and, instead of opening it like a normal person, picked it up off the ground (I guess it wasn’t nailed down or anything) and place it to the side, revealing a wooden hatch that must’ve led to some kind of basement.
“What’s this?”
“You’ll see.” He paused in thought, “Or ye won’t. It won’t ma’er either way.”
He pulled open the hatch then climbed down, and after a moment of hesitation I followed him.
I feel like someone told me something about not following people down suspicious holes, but that probably doesn’t apply here anyway.
As I reached the bottom, a dozen torches burst into flame, momentarily blinding me as I adjusted to the unexpected light. The room itself was a little cramped, probably on account of how short it was, but still not too bad. If I had to choose a creepy underground place to live, it would probably still be here because I destroyed the only other one I know about. But it’s a close one.
In front of me, the room was filled with dozens upon dozens of strange devices. I walked up to one at random and picked it up, fiddling with it a little to find its purpose. At first glance it appeared to be a regular knife, but after a bit of forceful pushing to help it along the hilt rolled over to the end to become the prongs of a fork.
Huh, neat.
Finch coughed and I looked over to see him carefully examining and adjusting some kind of fancy chair. Its base was made out of what looked like regular wood, but it was absolutely covered in various monster parts. Most of them I didn’t recognise at a glance, but up near where the shoulders would be I found the wolf fangs that I traded to Finch when I first arrived in Ironhold. After walking around it a little, I also found the Rat King’s Crown tied onto that back of it as well.
Uhm, this is a little creepy.
“What… is this?”
“It’s ma life’s work is wha’ it is, so stop gawking at it and we can finally pu’ it to use.”
“I don’t know if that exactly answers my question.”
Finch looked conflicted about something but, after a short yet awkward silence, he came to some kind of decision and just looked slightly hesitant.
“I ain’t got a name fer it yet, but it should be able ta rese’ my Path. If it works I’ll be able to do something other than Innkeeping with what’s left o’ my life, the only problem is tha’ I can’t figure ou’ this one last problem.”
“How would I be able to help with that though? I don’t know anything about crafting.” He barked out a laugh at that before having mercy and kind of explaining.
“I won’ bother with the details, bu’ basically I need some Mana down ‘ere,“ He pointed to an area in between the bottom of the chair and the Crown at the back, “to be able ta get to the Crown up ‘ere. Only problem is tha’ it can’t get past the Crowns Inheren’ Resistance, so it needs a little more power. Ye can ‘andle tha’, right?”
I grinned and nodded, if I had one thing it was power. Or Willpower, specifically, but that’s basically the same thing for a Mage.
Without saying another word, Finch sat down in the chair and immediately began to strap himself in, telling me to push the mana up to the Crown when he gave the signal.
“Wait, isn’t this a little too sudden? Shouldn’t we, like, prepare or something?”
“Boy, I’ve been preparin’ for decades! I ain’t waitin’ a second longer, we’re doing this now.”
Ok, I can probably manage this, right? If I needed to do anything specific then he'd probably tell me so it must be pretty simple. Alright, let’s do this.
Whilst I was siking myself up, Finch had been doing something to the chair that caused lines of Runes to light up throughout the body of the chair. Quickly, I scrambled to check the line that led to the Crown.
At first, it seemed to be going fine, but after a minute or so I noticed that the glow began to grow slower and slower as it got closer to the Crown, until it didn’t seem to increase at all.
I see, Channel Mana should be good for this then. Did Finch somehow know I had it, or was I just his only option?
Regardless, my concerns vanished and I began to form channels along the line of Runes. I wasn’t confident that I could perfectly trace them, so instead I just formed the channel so that it covered the entire thing and slowly began to push Mana up through it. At first it worked perfectly, but the Crown was pretty good at rebuking Mana when it wasn’t trying to use it, so the movement quickly began to slow down.
The only thing I could think to use was Breath Of Mana, so I watched the Channel carefully and Breathed. The effect was immediately noticeable, such that I almost cancelled the Channel for fear that I’d done something wrong. But after looking at the other lines, I realised that this was what it was supposed to look like.
Without an actual Mana Sense it was difficult to tell, but it looked like the effects of Breath Of Mana somehow caused the push back from the Crown to recede, and it simply allowed the affinity to pass right through.
Wait, so did I actually do it? Is this thing going to work?
I watched the Mana rushing along my Channel for a while longer, but was startled when it all of a sudden seemed to stop entirely, like the source it was pulling out of had completely run out.
“Hey Finch-”
Incredible Feat Accomplished
You Have Earned The Feat [Affinity Scorcher]
Choose A Stat To Increase Willpower Wisdom Strength Agility
What? But I barely did anything, and I don’t think any scorching was involved.
The point was put into Willpower seemingly automatically, but I guess the System just knew where I’d end up putting it in the end so I didn’t mind too much.
You Have Gained The Path Skill [Scorch Affinity]
I feel like I may be repeating myself, but what? Why didn’t King Slayer do that?
Path Skills Lightning Generator 15 Lightning Bolt 14 Lightning Cloak 5 Charge 12 Chain Lightning 1 Grand Skewer 1 Scorch Affinity
I thought that was just in the notifications, but yeah that’s a blue skill I guess. It’s even the same colour as my Lightning, is that just the colour of Lightning Affinity? Is that what this is?
My confusion was moved to a completely different subject when Finch whooped and cheered before rushing over to wrap me in a bone crushing hug.