“You could’ve killed me!” Seth roared in Nosam’s face.

“But I didn’t. And we won,” Nosam replied with a calm visage.

We saw him, one of Seth’s minds ranted. He was aiming for us. He wanted to take us out with the beast.

Behind them the beast laid dead. Its body was almost unrecognizable. One of its legs hung limply from a cut deep enough to score the bone. But its bone had proven too sturdy and had held so that the leg remained attached. The rest of it, however, was in a terrible state.

Its body was twisted and turned, crushed like something caught between countless objects in constant motion, decimated by irresistible forces. Its long neck was wrung like a wet cloth squeezed of its liquid so that blood leaked from it in spirals that went up the entire neck. Its birdlike head was crushed inward so that only a tongue lolled where it had once had a beak.

The rest of its body suffered something similar that made it hard to look at. So around them no one watched. The rest of the team kept their tired eyes and wary bodies away from the dead Nooman.

The beast and Nosam were both silver.

Just what kind of skill was [Falling Moon]?

He did say it was overpowered, a mind pointed out.

He also said it would only take its head. This from another mind. That was its entire body.

The mind wasn’t wrong. The skill had decimated the entire silver rank beast. His mind thought back to what had happened and a tremor ran up his spine. He had almost been a part of that mess. If the beast’s fear had not drawn his attention to it what would’ve happened?

Nosam had invoked the skill and let it loose on them. Seth had been standing barely half a foot away from the kneeling creature when it had turned fearful eyes towards Nosam. Within the reach of his senses he had felt the monstrosity Nosam had been concocting. Felt him unleash it.

It had shot across the distance with a speed unfair for a blob of confused reia that large and Seth had activated [Quick Step]. It had carried him far from the site of the disaster.

So when it happened, he was far enough to be safe but close enough to watch every single part of the event. He had watched the ball swallow up the reia beast. He’d watched as it writhed within the ball of colors, watched it wail and whimper, crushed and twisted. He had watched it die a gruesome death.

Its death did not worry him. But Nosam’s ability to create such carnage did. It reminded him not to make an enemy of the adventurer.

“We should go back.”

Seth turned at the sound of the voice. He and Nosam found Scott limping towards them. Both of them looked down and saw a stain of blood on his right leg, soaking through his trouser. His limp did not deter him, though. Whatever injury he had suffered was not enough to stop him from approaching them. He forced his way across the distance until he stood with them.

The rest of the team remained in the false security of where they stood, watching with half-glances and unveiled terror.

This place had been too much for them.

Nosam shook his head. “We can’t go back.”

“You’ve got to be FUCKING KIDDING ME!” Scott turned on his one good leg, arms spread, somehow encompassing everything around them. “Do you see this shit?! We’ve lost two of ours and you expect us to keep going?!”

“We took a contract,” Nosam told him. “We are adventurers. Our job is to see the contract to the end.”

“No, you took a contract,” Scott spat. He limped forward and poked Nosam in the chest the way old women do. “You took a contract. Then you dragged us with you into this mess. Now we want out.”

Nosam looked down at where Scott had poked him then back at Scott. “What happened to taking risks, huh? What happened to the boy that wanted to be Baron one day? What happened to—”

“HE WOKE UP!” Scott shouted in his face.

Then he turned his back to them and ran a hand over short wooly hair. “He woke up,” he repeated, quieter this time. When he turned back to them it was with tears in his eyes. “He faced a silver beast and found he didn’t measure up. He watched his friend make a mistake and die. He watched a monster eat his friend alive just because he tried to save a girl.” He sniffled then fell back on his ass. “He woke up,” he cried.

They kept quiet a moment, allowed the silence of loss conceal the world around them. The silence was filled with the sad sobbing of a broken adventurer. His busted leg could be healed easily. There weren’t many adventurers or even soul mages with healing skills, but there were elixirs and potions. The right one would fix his limp. Heal his leg good.

But his leg wasn’t the problem.

Seth watched the rest of the team consoling each other.

No. The leg wasn’t the problem. The Nooman had broken their wills. Crushed them to dust. Perhaps they would return to being adventurers one day. But it wouldn’t be anytime soon. They would need months to heal. Likely years. And it would do horrible things to their evolution.

Seth could almost understand them. Almost. So he stood still and waited for the team he wasn’t really a part of to make its choice at the cost of his quest.

Nosam stepped forward and squatted in front of Scott. “What’s my authority?” he asked the boy.

Scott sniffled. “Iron.”

“And how old am I?”

“T… Twenty.”

“And yet I keep on going. I strive and push. I learn and overcome. I’ll be silver someday. And when that day comes, I’ll be a damn good silver. But until then, I’ll keep pushing, I’ll keep forcing myself to be better and my skills will keep growing.”

Scott cleaned his eyes with one hand, wiping at his face slowly amidst quiet sobs and loud sniffles. Far behind him the rest of the team listened. They stopped cowering, ceased their hidden glances and trembling. Nosam’s words had given them some hope. Enough of it to make them stand a little straighter and look a little brighter. Just like that he’d almost succeeded in making them discard the last few minutes. The terrifying chaos of almost dying.

We can’t be the only ones that saw that skill, one of Seth’s minds complained. How could they have seen that skill and still think he’s Iron. Iron skills don’t crush a silver in one blow. It doesn’t matter how weak it is.

They’ve been his teammates for a while, another mind explained. I’m sure his actions are no longer out of the ordinary.

But that skill. It doesn’t make sense to think he’s Iron. It doesn’t make sense to think he’s… the thought trailed off and Seth felt a sense of realization come over the mind. I get it now, it thought, like a sage experiencing an epiphany. Their retarded.

Seth slapped his forehead.

Nosam spared him a questioning look. Seth saw the urge to ask a question in his eyes, then watched it die.

Nosam returned his attention to Scott. “So what do you say?” he asked. “Let’s finish this one. Then we rest.”

Scott sucked in a deep breath. He cleaned what was left of his tears and sniffled up the remnants of snot that pooled at his nostrils. When he met Nosam’s eyes again, a little life had returned to his. A little determination.

“No.”

“Wait! What?”

“We can’t.” Scott shook his head, getting up from the ground. He struggled to do it with his bad leg but found success after a few tries. “We’ve gone as far as we can. We’ll take Ned and Natsuki with us… what’s left of them so their parents have something to bury.”

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Nosam looked back at Seth. In the dark cavernous surrounding all he could see were his eyes, and they begged him for help, for support. Seth met them equally. He did not flinch from it. He did not back away from it. He offered no help. It wasn’t his team so decisions like these were not his place to offer his opinion.

He turned around and walked away from them.

In the dark he could see almost nothing so he allowed his minds guide him. And they did. When he got to his destination, he picked up his blade dug into the ground. He drew it as if unsheathing a sword from a particularly loose scabbard and swung it, ridding it of the sand that clung to it. Then he raised it up as if to some nonexistent light.

“Any sand on it?” he asked his minds as what was left of the team continued to bicker behind him.

There was a momentous pause before an answer came.

Nope. It’s clean.

He nodded once and slid it into its scabbard behind him. He held its twin in his hand. Unhinged from its strap. He would have to carry it in his hand until he met someone who could fit it back. Slowly he moved his rifle from his back and sat down, placing both rifle and blade on his lap.

He watched the team and waited.

Outside night had fallen deeply. The sun’s slumber had long since begun and the night’s reign had lasted for a while. They stepped out of the mountain, disgorged from its crevice with a dampened mood. With most of them low on reia, Joy and Fray too tanked out to produce anything worthy of lighting their way, they watched their steps under the guidance of pale, blue moonlight.

Seth walked beside a displeased Nosam. The frown marring his features screamed his disagreement of the conclusion they had come to. Behind them the rest of the team—what was left of them—walked with the disgruntled grace of the defeated.

Scott limped, supported on both sides by Pride and Dare. Beside them Joy walked with Ned’s retractable staff, using the weapon as a support cane. Both hands held it firmly, gave her leverage to stand straighter. While she did her best to walk with her back straight, to give a visage no one present cared about, she was anything but graceful.

Fray walked as someone who had long since accepted a truth Joy refused to allow herself drown in. She dragged herself after them, sad and pathetic. Her pointy hat was abandoned somewhere in the not very empty nest. Forgotten, like the dead after a considerable number of years. Her face was weary, tired. She looked old, somehow. It was like watching a child grow too quickly. She had, in all ramifications of the world, succumbed to despair.

In the reach of his senses, Seth found them pathetic. But it was not entirely their fault, was it? Nosam had taken a contract they were not capable of taking. He’d brought them out in search of an item no Iron adventurer should’ve gone in search of.

They would miss Ned and Natsuki. Eventually they would mourn them. But for now, however, they would mourn their own individual loss. They would mourn their pathetic defeat. Their lost pride. If the lack of light in Scott’s once bright eyes was anything to go by, it would be a great forever before they pick themselves back up.

Leaving Quest Parameters.

Further Departure Will Impact Below Quests.

Main Quest: [Guard the Seeker]

You have been contracted to search for a lost artifact. You have also come to the realization that while you seek a lost artifact, only one knows what it truly is. This has led you to understand that only one thing matters. The life of the seeker stands above all.

Objective: [Protect the seeker] 1/1

Reward: New Skill

Consequence: Contract failure

Hidden Objective: [Secret of The Silver Mage]

You have found an interest worthy of wagering dots of your supremacy on. Discover how the silver mage navigates the active nest and settle the score.

Objective: [Secret Discovered] 0/1

Reward: Increased Mental fortitude.

Consequence: Main Quest [Guard the Seeker] cannot be completed without completing Hidden Objective [Secret Discovered] 0/1.

Seth walked on. He spared the quest a precursory glance but no more. It would not be the first quest he would be failing. Although, he felt the loss of a potential skill was unfortunate. But there was no team to continue on the quest with.

He was not delusional enough to believe he could clear it with only Nosam with him. From his short experience the adventurer was more likely to kill him than help him. If anything, he was playing bait for the Silver. In fact, now that he thought about it, perhaps that had been Nosam’s intentions from the start. Perhaps none of them were even intended to come back alive.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” Nosam said quietly to himself. “We weren’t supposed to be this weak.”

“We’re sorry, Sam,” Dare said quietly.

Nosam barked a short derisory laugh. “A lot of fucking good that does.”

“It’s not our fault. It was silver.”

“There were seven of you,” Nosam spat, his voice a little too harsh. “Eight, if you count Seth.” He stopped and turned so he could look Pride in the eye rather than Dare. “And you thought he was going to be a problem. He did more than you could ever dream of doing.”

Pride looked away in shame.

Seth read another notification as it popped up in front of him.

Main Quest: [Guard the Seeker]

You have been contracted to search for a lost artifact. You have also come to the realization that while you seek a lost artifact only one knows what it truly is. This has led you to understand that only one thing matters. The life of the seeker stands above all.

Objective: [Protect the seeker] 1/1

Quest Passed….

Hidden Objective: [Secret of The Silver Mage]

You have found an interest worthy of wagering dots of your supremacy on. Discover how the silver mage navigates the active nest and settle the score.

Objective: [Secret Discovered] 0/1

Reward: Increased Mental fortitude.

Consequence: Main Quest [Guard the Seeker] cannot be completed without completing Hidden Objective [Secret Discovered] 0/1.

Objective Failed: [Secret Discovered] 0/1

Hidden Objective [Secret of The Silver Mage] Failed.

Main Quest [Guard the Seeker] Failed.

Seth froze.

Shite! One of his minds cussed.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” he cussed as well. He read it again and swore like a sailor, surprised at how much of the expletives he’d learned from his one time on a ship long ago he still remembered. “You mean we didn’t even have to complete the contract?”

Nosam turned around to look at him. “Of course we had to complete the contract. The reward was significant. And we would’ve gained the trust of the guild. We would’ve been offered more contracts. Our reputation would’ve soared.”

Seth ran a hand through his disheveled hair that fell loosely around his face. It pulled strands of hair from his face. He didn’t turn to attend Nosam. He wasn’t talking to the adventurer. Greater things bothered him.

“We should’ve stopped when we saw the first one,” he mumbled.

Hindsight, his mind thought solemnly.

“A drapner was not a good enough reason to stop,” Nosam disagreed.

Seth ignored him, pacing around, circling a single spot, a finger between his teeth. “We can still salvage this, though. Right?”

We can’t.

“No.” His mind wandered to the potential of a new skill and he shook his head vehemently. “We can.”

He raised his head, pulled himself from his thought even as they advised him to stop. He looked at Nosam with a new interest.

Nosam met his eyes and nodded. “We can still salvage it. But only if we go back in.”

There was a desperation in his voice Seth cared nothing for. Returning to the nest be damned, there was an easier way to get what he wanted. He walked hurriedly until he stood before Nosam.

“How did you navigate the nest?”

Nosam’s brows furrowed. “What?”

“The nest! How did you navigate it? You knew where to go before Joy’s light even showed us what was ahead of us. You’ve either been in there before, have some kind of map, or you’ve got really impeccable eye sight.”

“Oden?”

“How?!” Seth hissed, taking the collar of his shirt in both hands. “Just tell me how you did it. That’s all I want to know.”

“Oden!” Nosam barked, grabbing him by the wrists. His grip was strong and Seth felt a crushing pain. “Control yourself. You look like you want the reward all to yourself. You can’t do it alone.”

Seth scoffed. But he released Nosam’s shirt then pulled his hands away. Nosam let them go.

“I don’t want to know how to navigate the nest,” he said. “I just want to know how you did it.”

“Why?”

“Just…” Seth made a random gesture with his hand. Even now he felt what was left of his reia reserves draw to his hands, healing whatever damage had been caused. Nosam, apparently didn’t know his own strength. “Just humor me.”

Nosam remained silent. Seth was growing skittish, worrying he would get no answer when someone spoke.

“He has a skill that allows him sense vibrations or something,” Pride said.

“It allows him know what’s ahead or behind him,” Scott added. “What’s generally around him.”

Seth took a moment to think about it as Nosam frowned.

The skill he’d used to decimated the Nooman had been a massive ball working with the aspect of force reia. And force reia bore a wide reach of uses. Sound was a subset of force reia. So were vibrations of varying kinds. Even a shock wave shared a touch of force aspect.

Echo location, one of his minds thought.

Seth snapped his finger in agreement. He was like a man who’d just discovered the secret to his constant failure.

“Echo location. Like sharks.” He paused wondering how he had that knowledge. “Doesn’t matter. So he sends it out all around him. It gives him details about every physical thing around him.”

It was no wonder none of his teammates wondered how he navigated the nest so easily. So that was the answer. A grin split his lips and he turned his attention inwards.

“We’ve got our answer,” he told his minds. “What now?”

Nothing, one of them answered. We already failed the quest.

His mouth fell open. “This has got to be some kind of joke.”

Seth turned and kicked something on the ground. It was heavy and it crossed the distance before smacking into the front of the vehicle they came with.

He looked up and saw his rifle case. In its side was a dent where he’d kicked it. He hadn’t noticed they’d come this far out, covered the distance to where they’d parked. Then again, they hadn’t parked far from the nest.

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair again. He’d lost a skill because of a mild impatience. He had no idea what the skill was but it was a skill. A skill gifted from a quest. He only had two of those and they were powerful. They were not necessarily damage dealing, but they played significant parts.

[Heart of Winter] gave him a detached objectivity. It gave him a calculating heart. Cold as it might seem, it eliminated the bias of emotions. Fear. Hate. Pain. It rendered them powerless. It made him a better fighter. A deadly fighter. [Fractured Mind] silenced the voices in his head and gave him focus. With it, the world around him was at his beck and call. Nothing escaped his reach.

Nosam took a step towards him and asked, “Are you alright, Oden?”

Seth shook his head slowly, then squatted down. Eyes closed tight, he rocked himself gently. He had lost a skill. And why? Because he had not cared enough to read the quest properly. He had not bothered to understand it. It made no sense.

“It makes. No sense,” he mumbled to himself.

Thinking of his loss—the reason for it—hurt.

One of his minds, the youngest of them all, chose then to think.

We think he’s broken.