“what the hell is this ?” “where did you get this?” and so on was all that could escape Vayentha her mouth right now.
“sssshhh” with a finger to her mouth Ayana gestured for her to be silent “shut the door and sit”, and Vayentha did as commanded.
After she took place on the bed, Ayana started explaining, “I just returned from the inspection rounds and I just so happened to come across some extra stuff”. “This is more than just a little more stuff…..” Vayentha rebuked, “this is enough to last you quite a while….”
“it isn’t nearly enough if we want to be strong enough to defend ourselves” Ayana replied, thinking back to how the murlocks almost got her or how she had to hide away from the water sprites. “We need much more, but for now it will do”. “Let’s have a closer look at the murlock then”.
Immediately Vayentha said: “I want the corpse” Ayana was shocked with mouth agape for a moment, it took her at least 30 seconds to regain her composure, “Well? What are you going to pay me for it?” was the first thing she asked when she recovered from the shock, stunning Vayentha, “well I haven’t thought that far yet…”
“If you want something you have to exchange something for it, that is one of the rules of the tower and you know it” Ayana lectured Vayentha, not that she had any intention of giving or selling her the whole corpse anyway, those scales are just too good as a material for some simple armor.
Vayentha made some awkward facial expressions and went on pondering about the problem again.
After pondering for a little, Ayana came up with a solution, “let’s do it this way, I will scrape off enough scales of the murlock to make myself something nice and you can have the corpse, how does that sound?”
“But then I still haven’t given you something in return yet….”
“Let’s make it a gift in exchange for the gift I got last time from you.”
After processing what Ayana had told her, Vayentha’s face lighted up and she became over joyed, this is a resource she could actually use instead of some old book that she had no interest in whatsoever.
“Well, start scraping, I want to take the thing back to my room” Vayentha urged her while waving her hands to gesture Ayana to start moving. “have a little patience will ya? I don’t even know how much I need yet, so until I find out, you will have to wait”. She rebuked. With a disgruntled look Vayentha stood up and made her way to the door again, “I will be waiting, but if it takes too long I will come find you again” and with that she shut the door. leaving Ayana alone with her spoils in her room.
After Vayentha left, Ayana returned her gaze back to the murlock,
“Well, I indeed need to find out how much scales I need for some body armor”, let’s ask Percy if he knows if one of the apprentices might be able to measure how much scales I should scrape off and might be able to put together some armor.
Percy, also known as the information trader in the tower that knows almost anything you might need about other apprentices. His room is located in the first corridor on the second floor, on the left side of the hallway, sixth door on your left hand. Although he is just a beginner apprentice just like Ayana, he is nearing the intermediate threshold and has many connections on the third floor. One of the reasons his room is so close to the stairs. The old Ayana has seen his room just one time, but
It is a wirwar of paper and other stuff. how he keeps track of everything in such messy order, nobody knows, but it works pretty good for him.
As for how he looks, his age is nearing the 30, so becoming more than an intermediate apprentice is highly unlikely, he wears a medium high hat over his black hair and a brown coloured robe, instead of the normal grey ones, around his body. His eyes shine brown if he is near a light source, but mostly he prefers the near dark places. He wears a watch around his right wrists which he is checking every other minute, like he has someplace else to be and doesn’t like to stay in one place for prolonged time. He has a medium body hight off 1.70 meter, not too much muscle but also not too little, If his arms are anything to go by as an example.
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With that out of the way, Ayana shifted her focus to the simple crude spear, “actually just a stick with not much of a pointy end, but what does it matter, it came from the garden, so it must be worth something to someone, I guess”. Let’s get it to Hayden, he might know what it is worth and might be able to buy it from me if it is worth anything.
Hayden, as far as the old Ayana’s memories go, is one of the trader apprentices in the tower, just like Percy he is on the quicker side with his personality, but stays more in one place, namely his room, which is located on the third floor in the first corridor on the right, third door on your right hand. The rooms on the third floor are considerably bigger than on the second floor but his looks a lot smaller, this is because the walls are adorned with shelves with al different kinds of items, most things that an apprentice doesn’t need gets brought to him if the apprentice can not find an other apprentice to make a trade with. He gets by fairly well with this profession and doesn’t have to take on as much tasks in the tower as the other apprentices.
With her plan cut out for her and the day nearing its ending she puts the murlock and the crude stick back in to the pouch again, after which she unties it from her waist and opens up the hidden compartment of the trunk at the end of her bed, storing it away safely.
After that she lays down on the bed and closes her eyes, whereupon she focuses her mind on the tattoo to make the screen pop up in her mind.
“Screen, can you remind me what the required spirit cost, is for copying the second chapter”
The screen displayed: * Spirit cost: 8.4 spirit*
“thank you”
With that she closes the screen, her face make a sighing motion while her mind supplements the reason: “chapter one was just the introduction, hopefully chapter 2 has something worthwhile.”
She relaxes her mind and tries to feel her heartbeat in her chest again, it slows down and she goes over the lower body part, while that keeps on going she moves her mind back to her heart again.
After taking a pause at the heart, she moves on toward the left shoulder, it still takes more time then half of the lower body, but it is worth it as it starts pulsing, like last time, first solidifying the shoulder before moving on to the next part, the elbow. Moving along the nerves connecting them she notices a certain serenity that makes it easier to connect to the elbow. Finally connecting to the elbow, the pulse starts gaining momentum, while wavering a little and diminishing slightly, before it takes on the full drum of the heartbeat.
While waiting for it to solidify in the elbow, Ayana notices she has capacity to spare to think about the whole situation instead of having to focus completely on her meditation.
Making sure the pulsing is still keeping its momentum she lets her mind waver a bit, “Why was it so much easier this time around?’
But before she could think of a solution she feels she’s losing control of the deep meditational state, so she returns to the elbow and has a wild thought, “What if I move to the hand next?” and with that, begins moving along the nerves towards the hand. Feeling the same serenity kicking in she goes along with it and connects to the hand, there the pulsing starts as well.
Enjoying the victory of the improvement she moves on towards the fingers one by one, thumb first and back to the hand, on toward the index finger, back to the hand, but before she reached the middle finger, the concentration finally started to waver until it got lost.
Ayana gradually opened her eyes when she felt she couldn’t get back in the trance anymore.
“Screen, please check my status again would you ?”
The screen popped up and displayed the known lines of text from the status.
* Ayana,
Rank: beginner apprentice
Age: 23
Strength: 0.9, Constitution: 1.3, Dexterity: 1.0 and Spirit: 8.54.
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) *
“Wow, that is much improvement compared to last time, a whole whopping 0.45”. while flabbergasted about the improvement to her spirit, she failed to notice that 2 of her other stats had improved as well.
Growl… Growl…., “Ah, there is the familiar noise from my hungry stomach again, guess I’ll have to make a trip to the first floor before the dining hall closes, what time is it?” and she looks at the clock on the screen
19:50, “shit” and she rushes of the bed and out the door to the dining hall.
While going down the stairs she is just in time with yelling “coming through!” to make sure on of the other apprentices, coming up the stairs and already with a tray from the dining hall, steps slightly to the side and they don’t run into each other.
Just after she passes the apprentice, she notices that the apprentice she was passing was in fact one of the two she was planning to visit later on, namely, The information broker: Percy.