“Risemutate: ghost quarters.”
The coin in my fingers shivers, cracks along its side, and slides apart with a spray of Pearl-coloured energy. The two halves quickly transform from glass into the strange material ghost quarters are made from, except… not quite the same. They’re a little larger–though still the same size as a glass lone–and they feel far sturdier than the others.
Twice as sturdy. I don’t know how I know that, but they’re exactly twice as sturdy as the ghost quarters I dug out of the sand. Bigger and sturdier, but with the exact same patterns on either side.
“Hey, that’s convenient. Looks like I don’t have to memorize how another new coin feels. And now I’ve got two shields instead of–”
A screen pops up in my face, cutting me off mid-sentence.
Information update: Ghost Quarter (Approaching True).
A ghost quarter created using a method far closer to their origination.
If used in place of Worth in the casting of a spell, utilization of a skill, or of any non-transaction means, carries a Worth of 1. Worthless otherwise.
“...Okay, I guess I should’ve expected something like that.” I say as I inspect the coins a little closer now. “I guess that should’ve been obvious when it split into two, not four.”
But… what does the message actually mean? If the ghost quarters aren’t just a native species, then someone had to have created them. Or they were much more powerful once, and then got weaker over time. Either through someone’s manipulation or some kind of weird-ass regressive evolution.
Pearl taps on my cheek to get my attention. “I have something I want to say, but I think it’ll trigger the censorship again.”
“Nice.” I say with a grin. “Means I’m on the right path here.”
“On the right path with what?”
I wave her comment off. “Just a theory I’ve got knocking about in my brain. Can’t speak it into being because of the censorship. You seem like a smart girl, so you can fill in the blanks yourself.”
“Ohhh. I think I understand.” Pearl says knowingly, then nods at my new and improved ghost quarters. “Do you think you can double those or do they still count as the same initial coin?”
I grin and split the coins, one in each hand. “One really easy way to find out.”
First, the right. I flick the coin into the air, and it… stutters for a second. Almost like it missed the opportunity to spin once, then resumed its normal trajectory without any adjustment. I feel something coming off of it that heavily reminds me of my Class Card’s screen, then that too disappears into nothing a moment later when I snatch the coin from midair and press it into my palm.
“Tails.” I say with heavy suspicion.
The coin flashes as I reveal it, then doubles in effective Worth. Turning one glass lone into two ghost quarters that’ve each got two Worth of effective power. But it felt like the system did a double-take at the action. Like someone who had to double-check the rulebook after they saw someone doing something shady, but not necessarily illegal.
“Did it work?” Pearl leans in a little closer. “It looks like it worked. But you don’t look super happy. Is there a catch?”
I shake my head and switch the hands my coins are in. “There isn’t one yet, but I have a strange feeling that might change down the line. The system resisted my skill triggering for a second.”
“Oh. That’s bad.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” I chuckle as I flip the other coin.
It doesn’t stutter in midair, but that doesn’t mean I’m scott free. The verdict could be being debated this very moment by… however the system comes to its decisions. A moment later I snatch it out of the air and empower it with a simple thought of ‘heads’.
Pearl watches it glow with obvious interest. “If you can use your spells and skills without saying anything, then why do you say things sometimes?”
I shrug. “Dunno. Whatever feels right in the moment, I guess. The first time I used them I kind of felt like I needed to speak. After that… they just need some kind of trigger.”
“You must have a really vivid imagination. I knew someone who couldn’t see anything when he closed his eyes, didn’t have an internal monologue, and got his tongue chopped off in a fight. He had to use hand symbols to cast his spells, and he got so good at it that people made an entire disciple of spellcasting based on his workaround for his disabilities.”
“Damn. He must’ve been one hell of a mage.”
Pearl nods vigorously in agreement. “Almost everyone else who tried to copy him failed, and even the ones who succeeded would’ve been better off thoughtcasting. But he did wonders for making spells accessible to everyone, not just the species with inner monologues or vivid imaginations.”
“Some species don’t have imaginations?”
“Oh, yeah. But there are species without psychic powers, or the ability to see heat, or… heck, just look at me!” She gestures proudly at herself. “Do you think you could turn yourself into goo, control it with your bioelectricity, and live in a shell?”
That’s a hard no from me, but she’s got a good point. If I’m going to meet people from other species I’m going to have to adjust my expectations. Just because Pearl is pretty normal personality-wise, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s sentient goo living in a shell that’s harder than steel.
“Point taken, understood, and internalized. I’ll try not to assume anything too quickly about whoever I meet.”
“Just do what you did with me and you’ll be fine.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
I raise an eyebrow in question. “And what, pray tell, did I do with you?”
“You treated me like a person.” Pearl says seriously. “As long as you do that, you’ll have a much easier time finding out who the jerks and good people are. No matter what they look like or if they’ve got an imagination or not. Now start moving those feet. We’ve got a cave-in to get to!”
Pearl stretches her arm down the tunnel as if there was any other way to go. I roll my eyes and take both my empowered ghost quarters in my right hand, then set off down the tunnel to hurry towards a massive roadblock. Not my idea of worth hurrying for.
But… with less than two weeks left, I guess everything’s worth hurrying for.
----------------------------------------
After a little break for some searing pain, during which I had to peel Pearl off of me to stop her from filling my throat with the last of my health potion, we finally got moving. It’s almost impressive how same-y the tunnels are, so much so that there’s absolutely nothing to look at for the… however long it takes to get to the cave-in. I’d guess it took about fifty minutes, but it could’ve easily been two hours or thirty minutes.
All to get to a massive pile of wet sand that’s filled ninety percent of the tunnel. I can’t even see the break in the glass from here–just tiny holes all throughout the cave-in that emanate a… weird aura. And the smell–god, the smell. It’s like someone rubbed a dead fish in rotten eggs, threw it in a vat of piss, and let it evaporate in the hot summer sun until only something that could be used in a war crime remained.
“Hurgh.” I groan and lift my shirt over my mouth and nose. “What died here, and what threw it up after it tried to eat it?”
Pearl gags and retreats into her shell. “I don’t know, but please don’t describe it to an uncomfortable degree.” Her voice echoes out of her shell, but the disgust in it is untouched. “If I had to guess, I’d bet that the water made the sand too hard to burrow through. So whatever was in it got stuck and died.”
I stare at the rotting pile of pristine sand as my stomach rises into my throat. No matter how I choose to do it, I’m going to have to get closer to that horrible scent. There’s a small gap near the top, just big enough for me to slide in on my stomach, but I’ve seen too many documentaries on people who died in caves to risk that. Pearl did say that the sand was thick enough that everything inside rotted and died, so maybe it’s thick enough to support me digging a tunnel through it?
With a deep breath I gather my courage and walk up to the putrid cave-in. I press my fingertips to the sand and try to force them in with just my strength alone, but it feels like pressing against a shell of warming ice. Hard, cold, and with a sheen of water on top that makes it slippery as hell. God, does that sheen stink to high heavens.
I flick the water from my fingertips and look up at the maybe two-foot wide opening. Before I commit to anything, I should try and get a good idea of how long the cave-in actually is. I take a slight step back and slam one heel into the pile, gouging out a foothold one chunk of icy sand at a time. Once it’s big enough to get my toes in I stop, lean back to look at my handiwork, then swallow hard and stick my fingers into a few of the premade holes to pull myself up.
One foothold isn’t much to work with. It strains under my weight ever so slightly, and I can hear icy sand tinkle against the glass, but it holds. I yank myself up with a grunt and slide into the opening arms first, then summon my Class Card for some light.
The golden glow reaches into a rapidly narrowing opening. Less than a dozen feet in the sand presses tightly up against the glass, completely sealing my ‘easy’ way forward. But Pearl hadn’t said anything about a dead end. There’s got to be some kind of other way… yup, there it is. Instead of continuing up, the opening drops down a few feet before it hits the glass. Except for one major problem.
It’s all of one foot wide.
No part of me could fit through that even if I was in perfect shape, and no part of me would want to go down there anyway. I shift my class card to get a slightly closer look at the walls, and notice that they’re not like the rest of the spotless glass. They’re scuffed up and even a little scratched–almost like something clawed its way through here. Something whose body was rough enough to damage the glass, but that didn’t damage the sand below.
Actually, scratch that. The sand’s even more beat up than the glass. Like someone went over everything with rough grit sandpaper and an ice pick.
“Pearl, do you think a shark-dog could’ve done this kind of damage?”
She sticks her head out of her shell for a second to take a look, then slips right back in. “Technically, yes, but also no. A full-grown one probably could, but it would be way bigger than this hole. And one small enough to fit wouldn’t have the muscles, skin, or teeth to do all this damage.”
I slide out with a grunt and land on my feet. “If there was a shark-dog that size with the strength of an adult, do you think it could do this?”
“Yes. Definitely.” Pearl confirms without a second thought. “Though the only chance of that happening is system intervention. And I don’t really see a reason why it would do anything like that for a non-sapient species.”
“Unless that non-sapient species got forcibly evolved. Or if the system decided to make it way more powerful as a part of your quest.”
“I… guess that could happen. Unless someone made a digging tool out of their corpses.”
I snort and flex my fingers in thought. There’s all this glass around us, and unless someone thought to make a drill out of the shark-dogs before they came down here, they’d have no way of going back to get the parts. I’m ninety percent sure this is just some monster, but with all the Worth I don’t have, one semi-intelligent monster might be too much.
I run my hand over the sandy surface riddled with ghost quarter holes. If I’m going to stand a chance against whatever’s at the end of that tunnel, I need more ammo. From the smell of it, though, all this ammo’s been dead for a pretty long time. But sand dollars are just skeletons, right? So why not ghost quarters?
Pearl gags in disgust as I jam as much of a finger into the hole as I can get.
“Oh, what are you… that’s… huuurgh.” She groans and looks away. “That smell won’t come out no matter how hard you wash your hands. You’ll have to cut off your fingers if you ever want to make friends again.”
“I’ll just be a stinky-fingered hermit for the rest of my life, then.” I chuckle, then pause to dry heave. Pearl laughs, then also dry heaves. “Really hope you’re not right, Pearl.”
“So do I.”
My finger scrapes against something slimy and… stringy. Before I can stop myself I push a little further, and the thing spreads around my finger like a thousand threads of rotting meat. Saliva pours into my mouth as my throat starts to tighten, warning me of the upcoming unpleasantness that’s pretty much a done deal now. I choke down the vomit as best as I can, and with teary eyes, focus on depositing the thing under my finger.
The hard-ish thing I was pushing against disappears, but the rotting whatever stays behind.
Ghost Quarter Skeleton
Can be used just like its still-living counterpart, but is far more fragile and volatile.
Carries a Worth of one, but cannot be sold and does not count towards Net Worth.
…Urgh.
----------------------------------------
After I finish spilling the contents of my stomach onto the poor glass floor, going back to the foul-smelling mound of sand is a… test of spirit, to say the least. But the hundred or so easily accessible holes call me with a grim reminder of my own Worth. It takes a lot more willpower than I’d like to admit to walk back up to the sand, stick my fingers into the rotting holes, and fill my last remaining inventory slot with fifty of the volatile coins.
By the time I finish, my face is covered in more tears and sweat than when I was an inch away from the beacon. And I’ve got a massive bone to pick with this damned pile of rot.
I summon a skeleton coin, flip it, and snatch it out of the air as my skill takes hold of it. The thing feels infinitely less solid than anything else I’ve touched, but within that fragility is something dangerous. A single thought of ‘tails’ doubles whatever it was worth, and I press it against my thumbnail pointed at the sand pile’s center mass.
Time to get more than a little practice with Projectile.