The party of two took a much needed rest inside the Town Hall.  The stress and excitement over the past few days had worn on the both of them and the Town Hall was equipped with everything they needed to finally relax.

Out of the two, Ellie had been the most stressed.  She didn’t have any way to fight or even see most of the time.  Combined with her low level, she really was on the verge of death this entire trip.  So after eating some food, she quickly fell asleep.

Jude, on the other hand, had Murl’s journal.  He was by no means going to fall asleep until he read it at least once.  The journal had seen better days.  A large chunk of it was missing and other parts were crumbling away.  Still, Jude read it with great anticipation!

It was hard piecing everything together, but Jude was sure he had the gist of the journal.

***

Murl had started on another continent or as the locals called it.  Each had slightly different rules and classes.  Some were more extreme than others.  The planet itself was incredibly large, but Jude had already known this from his time in the Digital Plane.  Crossing to different was very hard.  Not only were the oceans large, there were natural barriers, eternal storms and even great sea beasts that blocked the way.  Murl, however, had crossed into several in the search of his quest.

His quest started out as a search for Jude, but over time changed to something else.  By the point of the journal entries that Jude had, Murl was searching for the truth behind this Planet and the Universe as a whole.  Murl had originally believed that the universe condensed all by itself through phenomenon’s that he had yet to discover.  However, after living several hundred years—

That’s right, he was already hundreds of years old when he comes to this !

—when he came across an entity that didn’t belong to this at all!  This entity was extremely evil and it both existed and didn’t exist at the same time.  Most importantly, the rules of the had little to no effect on it.  That was when Murl’s quest changed from searching for Jude to searching for answers.

Now when Murl went to a new he would root out the evil and its corruption.  When he arrived the town of Grimwar he once again encountered the corruption of one of the entities.  Though he didn’t find the entity itself, the Lord of Grimwar, Lord Bertram, later confessed that it was the entities ideas that had corrupted him.

Grimwar was a newbie town exactly like the town Longdale is today.  Lord Bertram was a greedy man who was obsessed with power.  Being the Lord of a newbie town offered a good cash flow, but his personal strength was quite low due to the area he ruled.  The evil emissary had come to him one night and told him a way to gain power.  The fact that it was easy, albeit gruesome, made Lord Bertram only want it more.

The process call for extracting the Internal Interface Circuitry (IIC or what Jude called the Modicuit).  The process was extremely bloody as both the heart and brain had to be removed.  Using the victim’s blood, a ritualistic circle and diagrams were drawn.  The full ritual would extract the IIC and allow another person to absorb it.  Not only would the person absorbing the IIC gain a massive EXP bonus, they would also gain progress towards skills and stats that the sacrifice had attained.   The worse part of all was that the victim was kept alive with an unknown power during the entire process.

At first, the lord of Grimwar kept these activities in the shadows.  He used the plethora of newbies to be his sacrifice.  Eventually, the low-level newbies weren’t enough.  So Lord Bertram slowly worked on the higher level people in town, such as the trainers.

This didn’t go unnoticed, but no one would have guessed that it was Lord Bertram who was the one at fault.  Instead, the lord was the one trusted to find the culprit.  This only lead to even more deaths, but by the time the lord was found out he had already reached a level that passed 200.

With no high-level people to sacrifice, Lord Bertram went from using quality to quantity.  The town hall quickly turned into a river of blood as no one could stop the mad man.  The Riwa kingdom at the time was still relatively weak as it had just come into power.  They could not deal with Lord Bertram as he was not the only enemy they faced.  The only thing they could do was to ban people from going to Grimwar.

However, it was already too late.  Bertram had locked thousands of people inside Grimwar and with his devoted followers, the rituals become public knowledge.  The people were too low of a level to escape the clutches of this new cult and many of them ended up embracing this evil, even if it still meant their death.  The people went crazy until Murl came.

Through much effort, Murl had gained a skill that allowed him to find corruption.  When he arrived to this , he felt the powerful corruption in Grimwar and headed straight there.  Murl’s true objective was the entity, but it had long left.  Since he was there, he decided to deal with the corruption of Grimwar.

By this point, Lord Bertram had already reach passed the level limit set by this .  This transformation had many side effects.  He now vaguely looked human, with fleshy bulbous growths forming all over.  His skin went from pink to white to a pale green.  Some of his fingers fused leaving him only 4 including his thumb.  His feet turned to stumps, that showed signs of growing hooves.  And horn-like growths sprouted from all parts of his body.

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Jude wasn’t sure what level Murl was, but he vastly outmatched Lord Bertram.  Jude also learned that this was considered by Murl to be one of the minor .  That didn’t necessarily mean its size, but rather the level ranges of the people and beasts that existed here.  People here rarely got to level 200.

Murl went through town and eliminated all the cultist including Lord Bertram, but the corruption had sunk too deep into the land.  Then to Murl’s horror, he found that all the cultist that he killed had gained a unique skill call .

Unable to cleanse the land or remove the threat of the cultist, Murl used a unique skill and cursed the whole town of Grimwar making it what it is today.  This was the only way to keep the evil contained and minimize its impact.

Jude now seemed to have more questions than answers.  Where was Murl now?  Was he still alive?  How long ago was he here?  He was already known as the Myth of Murl, did he do more here in this ?  And what was this entity?  Did it have something to do with the creation of this universe?  Was this the truth that Murl sought?

The journal had answered some of Jude's questions, but in the end only left him with even more.

***

After Jude mused over Murl’s Journal the then picked up the Holy Stone.  Clearly, this had something to do with the ritual that Murl had described, but Jude wasn’t sure why.  Perhaps it was something to do with corrupting something holy?

The stone was very familiar.  Jude pulled out the and compared it to the Holy Stone.  Sure enough, they matched.

Quest Update! Restore the Stone

Reward: Belt of Verity

You’ve found another piece of the great tablet!  Find the last stone in Riwa’s Capital Geonar. Recommended level 150+*

Raid or Infiltrate Event

Belt of Verity

Unassuming leather belt imbued with the essence of truth.  Only those on the righteous path will find such a belt.

20 HP

10 Str

5 Spi

5 Agi

Jude was delighted and quickly put on the belt.   As the description said, it was an ordinary looking belt, but Jude instantly felt the increase in his strength and health.  Especially the belt as it nearly doubled his strength!  Not that he was going around hitting things, but he did experience weight when things were added to his inventory.

Jude then looked over at his sleeping companion.  They both were pretty dirty by this point and her hair was a mess as they didn’t have time to really take care of themselves.  But somehow she still looked cute.

No, I can’t think such thoughts!  She’s only 16 years old!  She is too young!

Jude was technically 15 years old, which had an obvious effect on his hormones.  But his mentality was still that of one much older.  Even if you don’t count the time in the Digital Dimension, he was in his 30’s.  Double Ellie’s age.

Jude decided the best thing to do was get some sleep himself…

***

Ellie woke before Jude.  The last few days had been good for her, most of it had been a nightmare.  Ever since she had met Jude things had gone crazy!  Not that she blamed Jude for these things, rather she was grateful.  If not for him she would have been worse than dead and following him she had attained something beyond her dreams.

Never in her wildest imagination would she have gotten a unique class and one that had a such a high standing.  Sure she had dreamed of being a Master Smith or Master Artificer, but those were just dreams.  Even if she could attain them she would be old by then.  Now she had something almost to that level and she was still 16!  SIXTEEN!

Granted she still had to level said job, but for the time being, she could level it like a combat class!  She was essentially about to be power leveled!  Combat classes rarely relied on power leveling as their skills would end up being so far behind that they would be deemed useless.  Plus, the people doing the power leveling would usually find it distasteful.  The would instill a natural abhorrence to such actions.  But for a crafter to be power leveled was a different thing entirely. 

Crafters skills worked totally different than the combat classes.  There were no ranks.  All the skills worked on a basic set of principles.  The first was automatic.  This type would require the correct components, mana, and a recipe for it to work.  The later was manual.  This type required the crafter to have understanding and ability.  Ultimately recipe’s, knowledge and ability were what crafters needed, along with the necessary level to use those things.

Most crafters relied on recipe’s and mana to craft, but Ellie was different.  She loved the exploration of crafting.  She had found this love when she first worked out how to repair swords without using the money fee part of the repair.  It required knowledge of sword craft, knowledge of repairing such swords and a few other things.  For her, it was the most fulfilling way to craft.  She had used the same principles on the x-crossbow she had made during their boss fight the day before.  If you took out the fright of the battle and being a crafter in a dungeon, it was the most exhilarating time she had ever had.

Truly, Jude had brought a whole new world to her.  She would have never pushed herself so hard if it hadn’t been necessary.  She may have never brought herself to the point of creating something like that on her own.  What was the necessity of it?  And how much would the parts cost her if she bought them in town?  No, she would have never created something like that on her own.

She looked over at the sleeping Jude and blushed.  Who knew such an ordinary looking boy would be so wonderful?  

No that wasn’t right, he clearly had the lines to be very handsome when he grew up.

Ellie quickly took notice of her own condition and realized that she had some necessities to take care of!

***

Jude woke up late.  The comfort of the Town Hall had been surprisingly good!  He hadn’t realized just how much stress he had been under.

“Good morning,” Ellie said.

Jude looked over to Ellie and replied, “Good morning.”

He was surprised!  She looked totally different.  Besides the fact that the dirt was now gone and her hair had somehow and magically been cleaned, there was a new light in her eyes.  There was a radiance about her he could not describe.

“Breakfast is ready, let’s eat,” Ellie said.

He felt his face heat up and stay that way for the whole duration of breakfast!

Damn these teen hormones!