Still stunned after reading the first couple of words from the screen, Ayana slowly starts coming back to her senses and begins reading the rest of the first page and after that the first chapter.
While reading her mouth went agape, “I will have to start copying the rest of this book, this is probably very useful for later.”
“screen, what is the cost for copying the second chapter?”
*order received………. Calculating spirit cost……*
* copying second chapter
Spirit cost: 8.4 spirit*
Bugger, that’s more than I can afford right now. Only one way to solve that. So Ayana walks to the bed and lays down to start meditating.
While relaxing to feel her heartbeat in her chest she notices that while breathing the beat slows down tremendously and her entire body starts to relax. She completes the lower half of her body meditation far faster than before and starts with the upper left side shoulder, the one where she lost focus last time she went into deep meditation.
This round she needs some time but eventually her shoulder emits a slight pulse, pausing just slightly to fortify that pulse in her shoulder she moves on to the nerves connecting her shoulder to her elbow, and it starts pulsing as well. Stopping there to fortify the pulse, her spirit retracts into her body because she could not hang on to her relaxed state anymore.
Ayana’s body shuddered and she slowly opens her eye’s after her spirit is retracted. “Hopefully that did something again, Screen could you display my stats again?”
*Beep*
* Ayana,
Rank: beginner apprentice
Age: 23
Strength: 0.7, Constitution: 1.3, Dexterity: 0.9 and spirit: 8.09.
Elementium affinity: Darkness
Known spells: none as of yet.
Known skills: magic reading,
Known books: Deviant Runes for Beginners (complete), beginnings of magic circles (1 chapter) *
“great I made some progress yet again”. “it is just 0.08, but is it something none the less. As expected, some changes had been occurring in her body, but those are so small that she probably wouldn’t had noticed if the screen couldn’t scan her and display her stats.
In the memories, from the old Ayana, that she still has access to, there is no information about the tattoo on her arm at all, “maybe this is something that wasn’t there before I took over her body” and again Ayana was left with a lot of questions she probably wouldn’t get an answer for anytime soon.
Rumble…… rumble…… “oeps, that’s my stomach,” and she looks at the clock. “I guess it is time for diner already?”
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This routine of copying, meditating, conversing with Vayentha, almost being late for diner and sleeping went on for a couple more days until it was finally time for her garden inspection round outside the tower that needs to be completed every week.
Master Wilson had asked the new apprentice leader to find a replacement until I felt up to the task again, but I shut that idea down prematurely, because I feel fine and besides, I would lose out on the rewards that can be found outside and the one for completing the inspection.
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That morning Ayana wakes up rather well rested, she gets out of bed and puts on her robes especially the one with a magically expanded pouch on it and grabs her gear out of the secret compartment of the chest on the end of her bed. Goes through the door to the outside of her room and after carefully locking the door she continues her walk to Garrick’s room.
Knowing it is time for the inspection round through the gardens, Garrick prepared himself outside his door waiting for Ayana to show up.
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So they greeted each other and continued their way to the front door of the tower together.
Garrick is a well build man, he has half long brownish hair that is tucked behind his ears. Presumably he originated from a town named Roseharbor. Roseharbor town is supposed to be located somewhere in the Rockwarf region, “no idea where that is, but that is all that he told me”.
After having crossed the corridors on the second floor, descended the spiral blueish crystal staircase that connects the first and second floor and walking through the main entrance hall, they approached the front doors.
At the front doors an other apprentice was already waiting with 2 identical items in his hand, as they shortened the distance with the apprentice, the more clearer became what he was holding: “talismans!” the kind we are going to be wearing when venturing outside the tower.
The talisman was a small coin with the Armrose sigil on one side engraved. Strapped on a leather band to put it around the neck.
While Garrick and I are putting the talisman around our neck the third apprentice turns towards the door and starts mumbling an incantation.
A clicking sound is heard and the doors begin to slowly slide to the side into the walls until there is enough space between them for 2 bodies at once. Garrick and I walk through and behind us the doors start closing again.
Both Garrick and I stood in front of the doors until they were completely shut. Following the closing of the doors, Garrick pulled up the cap of his mantle and directed his body to move to the right path, of the two paths in the garden that we have to traverse. “I will take this way” could be heard mutteringly while he already walked away not waiting for me to even reply.
Although it is supposed to be day time outside of the tower thick clouds surround the garden and very small amounts of sunlight could be seen from outside the dense layer of fog. “Actually a pretty good fit for the gardens of a water element Deviant” the thought just popped up unconsciously.
Right after Garrick left I focused on the tattoo, it had been itchy for a short time already, and the screen popped up.
* bzzz…. Chhchchhch……..*
* gathering initial data complete……. Would you like to display?*
“sure, why not, lets see what makes him tick.”. the screen started displaying and the corner of Ayana her mouth started twitching.
“his strength is almost as high as my spirit is, maybe he is trying to become a body enhancing deviant.”
“Anyways, I need to start moving or I won’t be back in time” Ayana initiated her survey round of the left path, the first thing she should encounter, she learned from the flashbacks, should be the murlocks,
Murlocks are basic but nasty creatures, they have the heads of fish, especially looking like piranha. There body resembles a merman and they do have 2 leg kind of things they walk on, but their feet have fins between the toes.
Normally their weapon of choice is a crude spear made of a normal spruce wood stick with a pointy rock or something scharp lodged on the top side of the stick. In the Fog Garden however they only use the crude stick because master Wilson doesn’t permit weapon use for the tribes living here. But still their numbers are not to be trifled by, there are enough of them to bludgeon you to death.
Speaking of bludgeoning, if you don’t watch out a group of parvum serpentis, small water serpents, could kill you with smacking their tails against you ass well, or they just bite you with their poisonous fangs. But that is for after you have survived the murlocks.
There is only one item that is frequently found near murlocks that worth keeping them for: their scales, bendable but sturdy and water-resistant. On the inspection round just picking them up from just next to the path should get you enough scales to be able to finish the quest which requires 10 scales.
Besides the simple scales, you may also be lucky for once and find one of the things they dove up from the pond behind their cave. Like the green colored malachite or the yellow brownish tigerseye, both are simple stones that can be used to make healing pastes, or so the old Ayana heard.
If you pass the tribe at a good moment you might even find a deceased one. If your cautious enough you could skin their fins from the hands and feet and with a whole bunch of scales, you can make a killing from a dead one.
“lets see what we can find this time” and with that thought she continued walking on the path into the boundaries of the murlock tribe. Only 10 meters after the imaginary lines she spotted a scale just an arms reach from the path, walking a bit quicker she closed in on the scale.
After bending down to collect it, she started walking again until the next scale came into view. Ayana repeated the cycle of walking, picking up and continuing for a couple of times before she registered that in the far end of the bushes something moved. Averting her gaze from the scale she currently has in her hand she moves her focus onto the bushes that supposedly made some noise.
While putting away the scale she drops down to her knees to mask her presence, because the noise from the bushes slowly reveals itself by walking out of them.
“For what I can see is it just an older murlock” is the first thing that comes to Ayana’s mind, but upon closer inspection out of curiosity she notes that this specific one has some dark spots all over his arms “clearly a sign of elderdom within murlocks,” is what pops up from the old memories after she notices them.
The murlock in question didn’t move, but clearly something is happening, only it is way too far from the path to just go take a look, what if one of the others comes to check on it?
While she is still debating with her self over whether or not to go take a look. The murlock puts down his old stick, before taking a seat itself, just like it is about to meditate.
“I suppose I could try to kill it?” shouldn’t be her first thought but still, that was the first thing she could think of when going over the options of what she could do. She needed money and supplies and she needs them fast, so now the dilemma only consisted of how to kill it and not get busted by the other murlocks.