Having finally reached the destination on her map, she looked around. There was nothing there but a small and pitiful wooden shack. The shack, that at some point have been painted green, looked beaten down by the elements and deplorable. Most likely, at the blow of the most gentle breeze it would collapse on itself. Rae wondered if someone really lived there, it seemed questionable but her source could be trusted. No matter how unlikely was that someone would live there, the mark on her digital map wasn´t moving. She was at the right place. She gathered courage and moved forward, stopping in front of the main door. With her fist she knocked at the door; however, there was no answer. She knocked one more time, this time she applied way more force to it. Like before, there was no answer; but, unlike before, the door gave up due to the force applied to it and slowly opened.
In front of her, the interior of the shack was revealed. It was a single room with barely any furniture on it. In fact, most of the room was empty. The only thing that was visible was a green pedestal on the middle of the room. Rae slowly walked inside and started inspecting the room. It was evident that no one had been there in quite some time; the thick layer of dust that has been accumulated over the wooden floor, and the green pedestal, confirmed that fact. Could it be that her friend had lied to there? That seemed unlikely, her friend was aware of the dire troubles they were into; and furthermore, she had nothing to gain from misleading Rae. She decided to inspect the pedestal on the middle, maybe it could give her a clue of where the owner of this place had moved to.
She moved closer to the pedestal and with a fast swipe of her hand she cleared most of the dust that have collected on top of it. The pedestal was a pale green in color and seemed to be made of a natural occurring stone. The pedestal was firmly set in the ground; so much in fact that Rae wondered if perhaps the shack was built around it instead of being moved in there. There was no way to move it and the foundation of it was probably set below the wooden floor of the shack. On top of it there was only a strange stone of a rhombic shape, probably made of the same material as the pedestal itself. An inscription could be seen at the bottom of the rhombic stone. Rae quickly removed the dust so she could read clearly. The inscription was the following:
“To those consumed by unreasonable desire,
to those with high and unreachable goals,
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
know that a small sample of your hearts and souls
is enough to call forth the magic genie.
As long as you pay the proper tribute
your request surely will transpire”
On the pedestal, in front of the rhombic stone, there was marking of a summoning circle. It was part of the technology given to humans to work on this new realm and Rae knew immediately what she had to do. She took a knife from her back pocket and slightly sliced her right hand. Without delay, she placed the now bloody hand on the pedestal and started focusing energy from her core. Normally, all you had to do to activate a summoning circle was focusing some energy from your core; Rae had done it several times before. However, that only would work if you were the original caster of the summoning circle. Rae assumed that the blood was needed so anyone would be able to use the circle; most likely that was the reason the inscription above said “hearts and souls”. Rae had never heard of this method, but sure enough it had worked; and the summoning circle was now shining. Below the circle, a counter appeared “00:16:00 request received”.
Rae was upset. She was not happy about having to wait 16 additional hours. From the format of the counter she could tell that she had been lucky that only has been hours instead of days; but the idea of having to wait here while her companions were in danger was not pleasing. It had been a long travel to reach this shady shack. First Rae had to travel from level 36, where she and her companions were fighting to breach level 37, to level 12 where this shack was located. It had been a week of travel to reach this level, even with the fast travel portals. After finally reaching level 12 she had to travel by foot for another 4 days to get to “Northern Wastelands”, after entering the region she had walked 3 more days, completely lost, until she had found this place. Her locator could do very little to help because of the inaccessibility of the terrain; furthermore, since this region hadn’t been thoroughly explored, it only showed the final destination and not what roads or path to take to reach it. In total it had been 14 days of travel. Rae had been receiving updates from his companions regularly; but she was still felt uneasy knowing that danger would break at any moment. She felt worse knowing that even if she could find help; there would be another 14 days before she could rejoin her companions. How many of her friends would die on that time. Sure 16 hours didn’t look like much but for Rae it meant an eternity.
There was naught for it. For now all what Rae could do was wait. So she sat on the floor to rest. Soon after she started to wonder how this summon circle worked; not only required blood to be activated but it wouldn’t transport it target immediately. The inner workings of this set up were incredible weird for Rae. After 6 hours or so of waiting, Rae felt asleep.