*Ding*
Would you like to open Loot Chest (Uncommon)?
Yes | No
Ted looked at the notification and felt a pit open in his stomach.
His father had never even given him a full set of equipment when he was still home, saying that he had never earned it, that he had been too lazy to deserve even wielding his own sword until he got a Class for himself.
Augustus Deadbane, his father, had him train in all manner of weapons since the age of five, expecting his son to become the greatest warrior of the Royal Academy. Ted, however, had left home when he was fourteen, deciding he would rather be a homeless man on the streets of a random village than have to look his father in the face one more time.
And since then, he had received the kindness of many, including people who fed him, gave him a few coins for entertaining them in a tavern, and kind old women who had washed his clothes when he stunk like a latrine.
Now, though, he was on the other end of the greatest care he had ever received, perhaps much more than he had ever deserved.
If the redhead, Monica, truly understood the value and rarity of a Loot Chest, something so magical and sought after in the System, she would have probably never given him to him.
Loot Chests were considered by many, including his very knowledgeable father, to be Wishes. Not even in the Capital’s Auction Houses, which he had frequented with his father until he left, one could find many Loot Chests.
Looking at the one in front of him, an Uncommon one, no less, he felt squeamish.
A Common Loot Chest would be valued at around fifty gold coins, around what a peasant could hope to earn in a lifetime.
An Uncommon Loot Chest, instead, was valued anywhere between two to five hundred gold coins, based on how desperately a noble needed to outfit their prole.
August Deadbane had promised his son that he would have gotten him an Uncommon Loot Chest the day he accepted his Class—which would have also been the day his father would have shipped him into a Dungeon.
Since he had left home several years ago, Ted had probably not made more than two gold coins altogether by singing in taverns, begging, and doing odd jobs here and there.
That had been about eight years ago since he was now twenty-two.
Does she even know how much a gold coin is worth? Ted wondered as he reached for the chest.
A gold coin was worth ten silver coins. One silver coin was worth ten bronze coins. Most commoners dealt with iron coins, and it took ten of those to make a bronze.
The common saying was that beggars dealt in iron, farmers, and workers in bronze, merchants in silver and gold, and adventurers in platinum, which went for about a hundred gold coins per platinum, given how rare and valuable for magic platinum was.
Twenty platinum coins for a Rare Loot Chest, Ted thought. Only career adventurers purchase those, hoping to find equipment that will save their lives in their next dive.
And so, Ted wondered what he would get.
Was he about to receive a powerful sword, or maybe a shining armor, or even a wand?
He had put off choosing a Class forever since the death of his mother.
He had never found the courage to even summon the System most days, sometimes even completely forgetting about it.
To his shame, Ted had drunk himself to sleep on cheap ale more times than he cared to remember. He suspected that if he hadn’t been so lucky, he would have died a hundred times over, considering how stupid he had been on a daily basis.
And a few days ago, when he had joined the cultists, drunk off his mind, he had truly believed his time had come. He would have never killed an innocent just to survive among these monsters.
He would have just let them kill him, honestly. He had almost looked forward to it.
That was until he had found Monica.
Now, he remembered how he felt as a young teen, when his mother was still alive when she promised him he would have gotten the best Class, one even better than the one she had been obsessing over for so long.
When Ted opened the Loot Chest and took out its contents, however, he almost had a seizure.
*Ding*
You have opened Loot Chest (Uncommon)!
*Ding*
You obtained ‘Defected Dwarven Mandolin (Uncommon)’
Ted read the name of the instrument and almost immediately tossed it to the ground. Two things kept him from doing so.
First, courtesy. He was extremely grateful that Monica had given him such a gift and didn’t want to spit on her kindness. Second, he looked at the second part of the instrument’s name.
Dwarven? This isn’t possible. No one gets any Dwarven tools in Uncommon Loot Chests. They’re barely found in Rare ones. It usually takes an Epic Loot Chest, and those are so rare that adventurers abandon their dives to rush the auction houses if they hear one is about to be on sale.
He used one of his Skills on it, the one his father had him train relentlessly before he could even learn to fully form sentences, [Inspect - Lv. 87].
*Ding*
You have successfully inspected Defected Dwarven Mandolin (Uncommon)!
Defected Dwarven Mandolin (Uncommon)
Durability: 13/100
Enhancement Slots Available: 2/7
The Defected Dwarven Mandolin Enchantments are not active due to the state of disrepair of your instrument.
Forged inside Viscera, the great Dwarven Capital, this mandolin belonged to a famous Bard. The mandolin was damaged during an ill-fated performance for the Elven King’s court and fell further apart due to the passage of time. Ever since it was damaged, it hasn’t sounded the same.
Tip: Bring it to a high-level Blacksmith in order to repair it.
Ted got not only the general description and the number of enchantments that would have been active if the mandolin wasn’t damaged, but also an overview of its lore thanks to his Inspect Skill.
He looked at the old, weathered instrument. The steel body had a rich, dark finish, marred by scratches and dents. The strings, made from what looked like silver, were slightly tarnished, and one was even frayed.
He looked closely at them and inhaled sharply.
This can’t be Mithril, can it?
It didn’t actually look like silver, but it could certainly not be the legendary material that no one was presently able to craft, much less mine.
“Is that a mandolin?” Monica asked from the side.
“Yeah,” Ted cleared his voice. “Huh, yeah. Thanks, by the way.”
“Interesting that you would get one. Can you play it?” Monica asked excitedly. “I’d love some music. It’ll help pass the time.”
“I—I have not played in a long time,” Ted said, looking away.
He could feel that Monica immediately understood something was wrong with him and stopped prying.
“Well, you do you,” the redhead said, ambling toward the children. “Do you guys want to play a game while we wait for the floor to be clean?”
Ted heard an excited shout from the boy and stared at the mandolin again.
The body was large, far larger than a common mandolin. About the size of a guitar, give or take.
I can’t believe this, Ted shook his head. Why an instrument? Why?
He gently laid it down and tried to ignore it as best as he could.
* * *
Monica had sent Ted and Heidi to fetch food while she stayed with the children. Even in her weakened state, she was confident that if a lone Cultist returned, she’d be able to handle it.
She felt extremely protective toward the two for some reason, some deeper instinct that lingered right below her skin.
After they slept on the mattresses that had been dragged to the basement and bolted the access to it, they woke up, and, finally, the countdown wore off.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
*Ding!*
Fury of the Phoenix has been reset.
Monica flexed her muscles and cracked her neck.
“Let’s get going.”
They rounded up three novice Cultists who hadn’t yet received the Class, tied their wrists up, and Monica gave them a brief speech that had Heidi barely contain herself.
“You haven’t killed anyone yet, so you’ll be allowed to live,” the redhead told the three. “If I see as much as one weird glance toward me, the children, or Ted, I will burn you alive.”
“Are you really letting us live?” The pudgier of the three asked in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“How will you know we won’t go back to them?” He also asked.
“I don’t care what you do once you’re free again. That’s on you. You’ve been given one more life before turning into scum. If you want to go back to Cultists, go ahead.”
The three looked at each other incredulously and then just fell silent, deciding to follow Monica.
“Dotty, if they try anything, please stab them,” Monica said to the child who had been given, again to Heidi’s displeasure, Sandoval’s sword.
“You can’t give a child a Rare Sword!” The Healer had complained.
Dotty nodded seriously as she rested her hand on the hilt of the sword in her scabbard.
“Now,” Monica said, “is there any place in the temple we haven’t visited?”
Ted tapped his chin a few times and then nodded.
“This way.”
He led them down a few corridors and then inside a large, majestic hall.
Monica saw a giant sigil of stone carved into the wall—it was a phoenix with four wings.
“I wonder why the Cultists thought they were summoning the Avatar of the Goddess of Fire,” Monica frowned.
“Oh, right,” Ted smacked his head and ruffled through a backpack he had gotten from a storage room alongside other supplies. “I forgot to give you this. I can’t read a word, but I think that’s where they got the ritual.”
Monica looked over the cover, and the letters readjusted right in front of their eyes from weird, runic scribbles to plain, normal language.
“The Book of the Twin Flame,” Monica frowned, turning a few pages.
It mostly talked about the Obsidian Flame usage in its first chapter. She stored it away in her Inventory.
This will probably help me out understand my powers.
“The ‘Twin Flame’ probably confused whoever was trying to translate it and thought it was about the Goddess of Fire, which the Cultists seemed to worship.”
“An Old God,” Ted nodded.
“What’s an Old God?” Monica asked.
“Monsters,” Heidi spat the word out with abject hate.
“Huh,” Ted tapped his chin, not really knowing how to differentiate between Old and New Gods.
“Old Gods are being of absolute power that used to live outside the System,” the chubby guy said.
Monica turned to him and narrowed her eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Lucas.”
“What do you know about Old Gods, Lucas? Also, Heidi shut your mouth.”
Lucas was the tallest and biggest of the three novices and clearly the most knowledgeable.
“New Gods are common people who rose to Godhood through the System,” the young man stated matter-of-factly. “They are patrons of a certain Class and usually represent the most common Class there is. There are exceptions, of course: the Thief God and the Rogue God both exist even though Thief is a specialization of the Rogue Class.”
“And Old Gods?”
“Old Gods pre-date the System and wield powers outside of it. The System follows the rules—the Old Gods don’t.”
“Heretic,” Heidi snarled, crossing her arms.
“Give me an example,” Monica frowned, ignoring the blonde.
“The followers of the Goddess of Fire,” Lucas started explaining, “were trying to summon her Avatar—which was stupid, of course, since the Old Gods don’t have Avatars. However, in principle, rituals like that one can only function outside of the System. Even though they require sacrifice, the interesting thing about them is that they summon powers much greater than their offerings. That pretty much sums up the difference between Old and New Gods.
“New Gods,” he continued, “can only give as much as they take. While there are cases where rituals have catalysts, they have to be tangible. Old Gods work without rules. Sacrifice three virgins under a blood moon and bestow someone with a never-heard-before Class or summon a tsunami that will wipe out an entire city on the right day of the year. They work in alignment with greater powers that make little to no sense to mortals.”
Even the other two novices listened to Lucas with their mouth hanging open.
“And their followers eat people,” Heidi spat.
“Which is totally unnecessary to the worship of Old Gods,” Lucas said, wrinkling his nose. “Sacrifices are customary offers to the Old Gods. Eating people is just… foolish.”
“Don’t Cultists get stronger by eating people?” Monica frowned.
“A Knight has probably more buffs to their Attributes by simply donning a chestpiece. The Cultist Class is aligned with ancient practices, therefore you can elicit certain effects by, yes, eating people. But believing that the Old Gods’ ways are just eating people is because chapters of the Old Gods like the one that inhabited this temple are led by idiots.”
Monica looked at Lucas up and down and pondered a very important matter.
He knows a lot. He’s clearly very serious about this. I probably need to kill him, or he’ll become a problem.
“You said that Old Gods don’t have Avatars,” Monica said, ready to unleash the Obsidian Flame and tear him apart after his answer. “Where are Avatars from, then?”
Lucas seemed to perk up.
“Avatars are the manifestations of Titans. Titans are the customary enemies of old for the Old Gods. New Gods keep up their battle with the Old Gods’ remnants on behalf of the System, but their true nemeses are Titans. While Old Gods accrue their power by having followers, not unlike the New Gods, a Titan is the personification of a Divine Beast. If legends are to be believed - and sadly, we don’t have really any credible source about this - Titans were the real scheme of checks and balances against the Old Gods. A Divine Beast’s power can only be passed down to one person, one divinely infused person whose powers can rival an Old God’s entire following.”
Monica had summoned a wisp of Obsidian Flame in her palm but now dispersed it.
“Theoretically speaking,” Monica frowned, “could the Cultists have summoned an Avatar by killing thirty-three virgins?”
“Yesterday’s thing?” Lucas asked, clearly disgusted by the idea. “I told those idiots it wouldn’t work, but they said I’m a Novice, and I know nothing about Old Gods... Idiots.”
“Would it work, though?” Monica reiterated the question.
“Theoretically, yes. You can become a stronger Cultist and access greater rituals, but, strictly in theory, the Old Gods’ ways are not precluded behind Classes. Those are the New Gods, like the Healer, who only passes superior healing knowledge intrinsic to her powers to her followers. An Old God doesn’t pick. They only receive and can, at times, bestow something back.”
“Why, exactly, did you join the Cultists, then?” Monica asked, weighing the life of the man.
“I am a Scholar,” Lucas said, straightening his spine. “I don’t care for petty idiots killing someone. The New Gods have been behind wars, like their followers alongside them. People die every day. I just wanted to have closer access to the materials and resources accumulated by Cultists.”
Only now, it occurred to Monica to check Lucas’s tag.
[Scholar - Lv. 21]
He was pretty high-level, but it was likely that the Scholar Class gave him virtually no fighting ability.
“I’ll cut you a deal, Lucas,” Monica said, knowing that if this man was left alone, he would surely go on to create trouble in his quest for knowledge. “I would like to know more about myself, about my powers, and about these Old Gods. I will help you seek knowledge and information. You saw the book that Ted just gave me, right?” Monica took it out of her Inventory and tossed it to Lucas, who looked at it with wide eyes.
“The Book of the Twin Flame?” Lucas frowned. “How did they get this? Wait.”
He turned to the sigil in the room and smacked his head.
“This is the Temple of the Twin Phoenix! The Divine Beast!”
“Right,” Monica smiled. “And you have her Avatar in front of you.”
She summoned the Obsidian Flame in one hand and the Golden Flame in the other.
“Fuck,” Lucas, for the first time, slipped into his demeanor and crudely swore out loud. “Oh my. I have so many, so many questions!”
“And I’ll answer them gladly,” Monica smiled, knowing that the knowledge-obsessed guy in front of her would be relatively easy to keep in check if she had him on her side. Most importantly, he could become a very useful resource instead of a burned corpse.
“So, the idiots actually did it!” Lucas said. “They summoned you with their ritual! They thought this was the Temple of the Goddess of Fire because of all the damn murals depicting flames. But it wasn’t! Right, it’s customary for the Twin Phoenix temples not to have representations of Her Flames! It makes so much sense why they would be mistaken! They probably had no idea what an Ancient Beast even was! This chapter of the Goddess of Fire’s Cult is too small to know anything like that!”
“I was summoned, but I have no memories of my past life, Lucas. I would love to have your collaboration in finding out more about myself.”
Lucas, with his hands still bound, fell on his knees.
“Yes, milady. Please, I will do anything to find out more about you.”
“Dude, weird,” Ted said, looking at Lucas.
In the meanwhile, unlike Ted, Heidi and two the novices were stunned by what Monica had just revealed.
“You’re an Old God?!” Heidi screeched.
“Ignorant swine,” Lucas said, still on his knees, clearly emboldened by Monica’s proposition. “She’s a Titan’s manifestation. Did you even listen to what I just said?”
“Now,” Monica said, taking the book back from him, “we need to go. But we’ll have a chat on the way over and at the village. Behave, don’t cause problems, and I promise you will get to know an Avatar personally. Including my Skills.”
Lucas started tearing up.
“They all thought I had gone crazy at the Institute,” he said, almost sobbing.
“The Institute?” Ted’s eyes went wide. “You’re from the Institute?”
“What’s the Institute,” Monica asked.
“A bunch of heretics who don’t follow any God and try to gather heretical knowledge,” Heidi said with disdain.
“Scholars who have gathered under no God’s banner and have founded the largest school where like-minded people can research famous or obscure topics. This guy is probably on the far end of crazy, but trust me, he’s not the craziest. They have tinkered with things that have almost destroyed entire cities for the sake of knowledge.”
“Interesting,” Monica said.
“I am barely a one-star Scholar,” Lucas said, recomposing himself. “I couldn’t find much about the Old Gods other than what I told you. That is my area of expertise, and I was trying to gather enough knowledge to push myself to the second star, hoping to access more texts at the Institute. But I needed to make a decent contribution to get it. That’s really why I chose to come here and join these lunatics.”
“You would have killed an innocent for the sake of knowledge?” Monica frowned.
“I… yes,” Lucas admitted guiltily.
“See?!” Heidi said. “He admitted it! Kill him! He said he would have killed someone!”
Monica raised her chin and studied the large Scholar.
“We can work together, Lucas,” Monica said. “But if you ever kill someone or hurt them because of knowledge, you’ll lose access to me, and, well, you will also lose your life after I hunt you down. Do you think that’s enough to convince you to not become a monster for the sake of a little star?”
Lucas nodded stiffly.
“Milady, you clearly might not know this about yourself, but among the Titans, you’re rumored to be the greatest fighter bar none. In the legends, not even Machina, your greatest enemy, could extinguish your life forever. If I were a lesser Scholar, I would be tempted to take an oblique course, but since I’m not, I would be a fool if I were to turn down someone who’s clearly going to explore parts of the world that no one else could survive other than an immortal fighter. I expect you will come into knowledge and adventures that not even the New Gods could boast of from their System-crafted golden cage. Why, then, would I ruin such an opportunity when I’m about to be the one recording the largest body of discoveries any Scholar had in their hands?”
After that, Monicah heard a notification ringing in her mind.
*Ding*
Quest Completed - ‘No Man’s Land I/III’
Explore the ‘abandoned’ Temple of the Twin Phoenix.
*Ding*
Your reward is on the way.