~ CHAPTER 19 ~
THE MAGIC OF SEEKING AND DISCOVERING, PART 3
I thought that a [Chef] would probably be able to tell me where I could get [Neit Flour]. It made sense, anyway. Turns out I was right. There was only one problem: the answer he gave me.
[Neit Flour] is made at… wait for it… the flour Mill. Yeah, I was pretty shocked too.
The Mill, however, was one of the few essential buildings not inside the town walls. It was located about fifteen minutes almost directly north along the road. That was important, because apparently the specific kind of flour I needed wasn’t made often enough to have any resellers in town. At least at just past nine o’clock in the evening, that was. Another shock, I know. There was an upside to all that, though, and that was that my chances of finding [Thwart Grass] along the road were supposedly pretty high.
I reactivated my [Eyes of Wonder] Skill as I headed out of town, and took note of the two times I did notice things that were out of place. The eddies of colour were pretty similar everywhere I went, although as expected the direction they flowed changed a bit based on where I was in town. However, the two times I noticed big changes were first when I passed by that drain from earlier that I still wasn’t going to explore, and second when I passed by a quarterstaff vendor who also happened to be a Mistborn. That basically confirmed my hypothesis. Sort of.
There were just two very big holes that needed filling. First: the fact that the vast majority of flows were coming from some very specific place somewhere near the centre of town. And second: the fact that there had been one person who hadn’t been Mistborn.
It also didn’t explain why the strange flows of colour were only coming from Mistborn, or how the Eyes of Twilight fit into the picture. I briefly considered doubling back to ask those [Witch]es about it, but concluded I’d rather just not have to deal with them again. In any case, it left me with an idea of where to look next, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit satisfied about that.
That was, until I noticed the trail of tiny purple ants running along the cobblestones right under where I had been about to put my feet.
My shoes had unlimited durability, so if I took them off and threw them in a fire, I wouldn’t need to buy new ones, right?
At least I made it out of town pretty quickly after that.
*whoosh*
Now Entering:
[Lower Spelltouched Wilds - Cowl's Gate]
PvP restricted. Lightly patrolled by allied NPCs. 4% explored.
Standing outside the main gates, I had to marvel at how different the scene was from earlier. Before, I’d been blown away by the scale of the gates, the fierceness of the guardian crystal, and the atmosphere of the steamy jungle. Now, it was like I was on an entirely different planet.
The light from the moon was bright enough that there would have been no difficulty seeing, but that hadn’t deterred practically every plant in the jungle from opening up their own forms of illumination. In fact, where I could see under the jungle canopy was now quite a bit brighter than it had been earlier. The sounds of birds and insects weren’t any quieter than they had been earlier either, although the species involved had clearly changed.
As for the gate, where before the little zaps of lightning had been a neat touch of flavouring for the scene, now they caused the whole city to look like some mad inventor’s laboratory. Which, I supposed, it probably was.
There was another aspect of the scene that added to the contrast as well, and when I realised what it was, I had to bury my face in my palms. Mr. bubbly Balar. He was still there. Or he was back again? I had no idea. He was still walking very purposefully, and he was still looking distracted while doing so. His destination appeared to have changed, though. Also his equipment: he was now wearing tough looking leather gloves, and carrying a miniature pointed shovel that seemed to have some kind of enchantment on it.
I felt my face stiffen. Should I wave at him? Did I have to? Had he recognized me? If I turned around so he couldn’t see my face… his eyes met mine. Too late. After a moment of incomprehension, his face split into a big dimpled grin and he gave me a friendly wave with his shovel-thing. He didn’t stop or change direction, though. A few moments later he’d passed me by. I totally should have said something, right? But he didn’t say anything to me…
I slapped my cheeks to bring myself back to the present. That had been unexpected, but I still had a quest to do. I started walking. Or… nevermind. I stopped walking again. Too much potential for awkwardness. I waited another minute for the Balar to pass out of sight.
After that, my trek was pretty uneventful. I didn’t see any [Thwart Grass], but I did see a few things that might have been orange trees, something that looked like bright pink pampas grass, some sunflower-like-things that could shoot laser beams at whatever bugs came near, and a giant upside-down pylon made of something like amethyst.
I also saw an unexpectedly large number of people. Most wielding axes, pickaxes, shovels (full sized ones), or various types of what was probably magical surveying equipment. I even saw another Sathanid in the distance at one point, but he was far enough away I didn’t have to change course. I did briefly change course to avoid the person fighting off rock monsters, though.
My Skill didn’t react to anything, as far as I could tell, and I started to wonder if I should just turn it off. Was there something I was supposed to have seen back in town, but now that I was outside I was out of the quest area? The lines of colour had almost completely disappeared the moment I left the gates. As I thought about it, though, I realised that without that distraction, there was actually a lot more to my skill that I just hadn’t noticed earlier.
For example, I didn’t know what my innate Focus was, but it was clearly high enough that when five percent of it was added to my Perception, the result was kind of freaky. Those sunflower things? They’d been at least thirty meters away. The pylon-thing had been half buried and hidden behind several layers of trees. Every time I looked around, I’d get distracted by some extraneous detail I’d normally not even be able to notice, even if I was looking. A bug eating a leaf on the other side of the road. A mark in the gravel where a fireball had missed its target. A human-sized patch of singed grass where the next one hadn’t…
It wasn’t just sight, either, despite my Skill's name. I listened as I caught a faint mix of shouts, high-pitched yipping, and the ringing of swords clashing on solid objects coming from off to my right. Yes: it was normal to have combat-based quests. Kill ten rats. Or [Spider Monkeys]. Take your pick. I felt a warm glowing of appreciation in my heart for my current quest.
Naturally the game did have to make some concessions for being a game, though. When I finally crested the last ridge and saw the Mill, it was radiating bright yellow light through its windows and was evidently doing good business. No surprise there: it was a major quest hub.
The Mill was one of the most popular sights that people liked to take videos of during the beta, and I could appreciate why. It wasn’t so much grand as just really interesting looking. Normally you’d think of mills as being based around either a water wheel or wind sails, right? But, in a place called the Wind Continent where magic ran freely, what fun would that be? Of course it was built on top of a Mana Spring.
The whole building was carved out of a single piece of rock about four stories tall, jutting out from the face of a cliff. Crystals like the ones guarding Cowl’s Landing floated around its top in lazy circles, but its main defences were the raisable drawbridges rising to the doors from just below where I was standing. Underneath the ground sunk sharply into a densely overgrown gorge that I knew was much too dangerous for people like me to enter alone, but from above, it just looked like a nice leafy green moat.
With my enhanced Perception, I could admire all sorts of unexpected details about the scene. The bits of magically twisted lichen growing up the sides of the cliff, glowing in the moonlight. The abnormally lively potted plants hanging from the windows, standing out against their own glowing halos from the lights inside. The faint sparkle of light from beneath the canopy marking where a player’s corpse could still be resurrected… The drawbridges were clearly used often, judging from twin vertical lines of blackened stone on either side of the doors.
The Mana Spring itself was in an open cave some distance under the Mill, accessible to players and monsters alike through the gorge. During the day time I would probably be able to see it without much difficulty, but right now it was hidden completely in shadows. Besides being the target of a lot of common questlines, the spring was also the site of one of the first instanced dungeons for small parties that had been found so far.
There was also another entrance inside the Mill that lead to a different wing of the same dungeon, but it had fewer enemies to fight, and was therefore less interesting to livestreamers. That is, to the kinds of livestreamers my friends had any interest in either watching or talking about. Time to move on.
I crossed the drawbridge without incident, though at one point there was a bone-chilling roar and the whole bridge shook for a while. I could see where the monster was from the shaking of the trees, so I knew there was no point in worrying. The sparkles from the dead player had disappeared, so either someone had gotten to them, or they’d released back to Cowl’s Landing. It wasn’t hard to guess which, given the roar.
Safely on the other side, it was time to continue my business! I entered the Mill, and approached the first NPC I saw inside.
The conversation was short.
Very short.
The monster was still prowling in the gorge when I recrossed the bridge, but it was clearly headed towards the cave rather than anywhere I might run into it. Thank you.
Here’s how it went. [Neit Flour] is made from [Neit Ears], which grow from [Neit Bells]. Still following? Processing the flour would be free, purchasing the ingredients would not. My next destination was a clearing somewhere off to my right-ish, in the same general direction as the bog should be, but not as far. I even had some landmarks to look out for.
As I walked, I noticed the flicker of [Drained] popping up, and I again considered dropping my Skill, Now that I knew it was there, though, I felt like my increased Perception was too good a bonus to throw away. I could hear the hoots and crashes and clangs of things going on all around me, but I was starting to build up a sense of which ones were just there for flavour, and which ones meant approaching combat, and therefore the directions I shouldn’t walk. I popped a popsicle into my mouth: nine more minutes.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Without needing to worry about monsters, I could allow myself to relax and just enjoy the atmosphere. A cool breeze played across my skin, not doing quite enough to counteract the stickiness, but still pleasant. Above me I could occasionally spot the moon between the branches, illuminating a ring of clouds that looked oddly artistic. It was a nice feeling, just being out here on my own. I didn’t have to worry about what anyone thought, I could just be myself. I allowed my mind to wander.
Why had the game decided to give me mystery type quests? It didn’t seem to make sense. And what had those wavy lines in town been all about anyway? Why only Mistborn? And that other girl? Why had my hair been valuable enough to steal, and my blood valuable enough to make Mr. Ratman turn mildly semi-sort-of-agreeable? There was no chance these things weren’t somehow connected. Why was I not giving off wavy lines myself? Or… was I?
I stopped and squinted at the air in the general direction of Cowl’s Landing. Nothing. Wait… something through the trees, pulsing. I froze. Oh, that was my wavy line alright, but it wasn’t heading towards Cowl’s Landing. The colour wobbled, twisting around the trees towards something in almost the exact direction I’d been walking a moment ago. I hadn’t seen it because I’d been right inside it. I edged closer, my heart starting to thump.
Slowly.
As I approached, I could feel as much as see the effect getting stronger. Whatever it was I was approaching, I didn’t have to guess that the game really wanted me to see it. My Skill was like a torrent of wind twisting between the trees, tugging at me. Come this way. This is important. I wove through the branches following it as carefully and quietly as I could: the game might want me to see whatever was coming next, but that didn’t mean I wanted it to see me.
I got closer, and gradually I could see the distortion taking shape almost like a tangible thing. How I’d managed to miss it earlier I had no idea. It was distinct, like it had a solid shape to it behind the trees. An old stump? Or maybe a person? Holding a large shield. I could see them standing, staring up at something in front of them. I crouched lower.
Even as I crept closer, I could see the outline moving. It was coming into clearer focus now: a person, shaped out of vividness against the glittering jungle. I saw it brace itself, pushing against something with its shield. I heard a clang followed by a high-pitched whining sound.
Combat.
I hesitated. I needed to leave. Preferably now. Or earlier. That would be the smart thing to do. I felt the skin on my palms sting where my nails were biting into them.
Remember when I said I had combat Skills? No? Well… it was a lie. I couldn’t fight. In the fight against the swamp monster, I’d been useless. Worse than that. The only reason I hadn’t died then and there was because of Essy, and she wasn’t here right now. I was a support class. One with only a single support Skill, at that. Getting into combat was guaranteed death.
I still didn’t have my answers, though, combat or no combat. I crouched against a tree and listened as another clang shocked the air, much louder now, and a girl’s voice shouted something unintelligible. It was still a bad idea.
Silence.
Branches creaked. Something groaned, long and deep. *Whompf*. I saw the figure stagger, but barely hold her position. Why wasn’t she fighting back?
Steeling myself, I carefully brushed aside a curled up fern and… Oh.
Oh.
That made sense.
Freechild. Brown hair. Almost as short as me. She’d swapped out the main part of her chainmail for an oversized piece of plate, making her look even more round, but I knew this girl. Everything was still. The effect of my Skill surged around her, thousands of tiny threads gathering to create an invisible vortex in the air, and she was a timeless, immovable monolith in the centre of it all.
Also, the thing she was fighting was at least three times her height, and made of some disturbing combination of tree bark, moss, solid rock, and dark red crystals. It had three legs, each almost as thick as I was, and two arms not a whole lot smaller, one of which it was in the process of yet another swing.
*Thwack*
This time, though, she was apparently ready for it. She caught the huge branch on her shield as if it was nothing more than a twig, and simultaneously slashed at it with her sword, scoring a loud *thwop* sound as her blade dug into the bark. It was a brutal counterattack.
Or… it might have been, if she hadn’t then attempted to dislodge her sword, failed, attempted again, and then succeeded so well that she overbalanced and landed on her butt with a yelp, while her sword made an undignified lurch through the air to land somewhere off to my left. Chips of bark from the wound pelted the ground with sharp popping sounds, like miniature wooden bullets. The answer to my question: she was fighting back. She was just losing really, really badly.
The monster looked mildly annoyed. It glanced at its new injury, and then just shrugged. And then it drew back its other arm to crush her while she was down. I didn’t need to see it to know how this was going to end. She was screwed.
It wasn’t like I could do anything to help, anyway, right? I didn’t have any usable combat Skills, and I really didn’t want to die right now, given how far I was from town. I should just turn around and leave, I’d seen all I needed to.
The branch landed with a deafening crash, smashing the ground so hard I could see it bowing around its target to leave a meter long crater behind her.
I bunched my feet under me and leapt out of my hiding spot, racing to where the sword was still slightly quivering. “Get back up as fast as you can! You have sixteen seconds, but I don’t think it’ll last more than one or two more hits!”
It took the girl a second to realise she wasn’t dead.
Around her body pulsed a shimmering orb of molten fire, its tendrils licking outward.
It wasn’t like I’d really had a choice anyway: if I didn’t want to die, she probably didn’t either.
[Path of the Runemaster (Part 3)]
Temper your mastery of the Runic powers with experience by empowering a Sign 10 times, at least once while under pressure. - 1/10, 1/1.
Yes. There was nothing to do but move forward. My list of riddles was irrelevant: I could have the answers walk right in front of my face, and unless I saw them, it wouldn’t matter.
~ ~ 26/1/1/21:27 ~ ~
Status: [River]
Class: [Novice Mistborn Runemaster]
Location: [Lower Spelltouched Wilds - The Stormveiled Delta]
Health 38/38 ~ Mana 21/41 ~ Stamina 27/41 ~ Runes 0/1
[Isolated (Stage 1)], [Eyes of Wonder] Equipped Skills (8/8):
[Force Infused Palm]
[Myriad Fists]
[Imbued Defence]
[Unarmed Discipline (Passive)]
[Body Conditioning (Passive)]
[Inscribe: Rune of the Creator Flame (1/1)]
[Sign of Inverse Devouring]
[Eyes of Wonder]
Statistics:
Defence +8
Resistance +5
Constitution +4
Willpower +4
Endurance +4
Spirit +1
Perception +1 (+5%)
Focus (-5%)
Equipped Items (3/8):
[New Arrival’s Simple Dress]
[New Arrival’s Simple Shoes]
[Valesilver Pin]
[Silversilk Bracelet] Other Skills:
[Elementary Ingredient Preparation (Passive)] Other Items:
[Special Edition Founder’s Token]
[Novice Healing Potion]
[Novice Mana Potion]
[Small Pouch]
[Small Iron Key]
[Sugary Biscuit]x2
[The Keeper's List]
[Amarh Elbow Gristle]x18
[Thoril's Needle]x15
[Myrl Rose]x6
[Crushed Red Longshore Prawn's Shell]x3
[Red Prawn and Pepper Stew Jelly Popsicle]
Active Quests:
[Cryptic Flows of the Mist (Part 1)]
[Path of the Runemaster (Part 3)]
[The Keeper’s Garden (Part 1)]
[The Ancient Keeper of Runic Magic (Part 4)]
[Things Worth Finding in the Mist]
[The Eyes of Twilight]
Status: [Demi]
Class: [Novice Freechild Guardian]
Location: [Lower Spelltouched Wilds - The Stormveiled Delta]
Health 19/60 ~ Mana 7/10 ~ Stamina 31/40
[Weakened (37%)], [Knocked Down], [Sign of Inverse Devouring (15 sec)] Equipped Skills (6/8):
[Guarded Strike]
[Standfast]
[Shield Block]
[Shield Discipline (Passive)]
[Mocking Shout]
[Strength of Eternity (Passive)]
Statistics:
Defence +26
Resistance +4
Damage +2
Endurance +1
Strength +8
Agility (-37%)
Celerity (-37%)
Equipped Items (5/8):
[New Arrival's Basic Short Sword]
[Greatshield of Dauntless Hope][Tarnished Iron Breastplate]
[New Arrival’s Simple Undershirt]
[New Arrival's Basic Chain Tasset]
[New Arrival’s Simple Pants]
[New Arrival's Basic Leather Boots] Other Skills:
Other Items:
[Special Edition Founder’s Token]
[Novice Healing Potion]
[Novice Stamina Potion]
[New Arrival's Basic Shield]
[Novice Rejuvenating Salve]x5
[Novice Healing Salve]
[Guldrin’s Checklist]
[Saproot Seed]x14
[Mordalk Stew (cold)]
[Luma Feather]
[Garden Pebble]
[New Arrival’s Basic Chain Armour]
[Depleted Meridian Stone]
[Palt Lure] Active Quests:
[Wanted: Dead Spider Monkeys]
[Guldrin’s Experiment]
[Strength of Eternity (Part 3)]
[Asyr Hospitality (Part 4)]
[Mill in the Jungle]
[Wanted: Dead Starfire Wasps]
[Wanted: Dead Jungle Palts]