Chapter 2: I'm Not a Pervert, I Swear
With nothing immediately available for him to see his reflection, apart from the bars on his door that just showed a green hue, he sat back on the bed in disappointment and opened his Abilities.
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Core Abilities:
- Orc (Racial Passive Abilities)
- Traveller (Special Abilities)
- (Inaccessible Core) Core Level 5
- NA
- NA
- NA
- NA
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"Okay," Jaxon thought about Orc (Racial Passive Abilities) and it expanded.
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Orc (Race Passive Abilities):
- Keen Scent
- Whisperwind Ear
- Spiritual Awareness
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"What the...?" He then expanded each of the abilities to find out more. The window opened:
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- Keen Scent: Level 1 of 5
This passive ability grants an orc an exceptionally acute sense of smell.
- Whisperwind Ear: Level 1 of 5
This passive ability gives you extraordinary auditory sensitivity, allowing you to hear sounds from great distances.
- Spiritual Awareness: Level 1 of 5
This passive ability enhances your sensitivity to magical energies and spiritual presences.
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"Ahh," Jaxon thought, "that's why everything looks so vibrant, and why I could hear the sound of the stream and kids playing from so far away."
Jaxon then closed his eyes and focused on his hearing. Suddenly, it was as though he was surrounded by a 360-degree sound landscape. He could hear people walking and talking on the streets, the sound of kids playing, and birds in the distant forest. Wait—he could hear someone approaching the building he was in. Quickly, he closed all his menus, stood up, and moved over to the door.
Jaxon heard the sound of a key in the door lock, then footsteps, and keys being thrown onto a table. A middle-aged man came around the corner into his cell.
"Ahh, I see you're awake," the man observed.
"Hi," Jaxon said. "Can you please explain why you attacked me for no reason?"
"No reason?" the man echoed. "You were hiding in a stream behind our village, naked, 'perving' on Lydia as she did her washing, doing aether knows what!"
"Wait, what?" Jaxon protested. "I was not!"
"Then what were you doing?" the man challenged, with a look that suggested he doubted Jaxon would have a good enough excuse. "Behind our... where the women do the washing?"
"Well," Jaxon's mind raced. What could he say? "I'm not from around here. I hail from another world. I'm dreaming? Crap, crap, crap."
"I was swimming!" Jaxon blurted out.
"Naked? Behind our village, where the women do the washing?" the man repeated.
"Wow, sexist much?" Jaxon thought.
"No, I was... walking, and I was attacked. They took my clothing and belongings, and I jumped in the river to escape them. I floated downstream and ended up here," Jaxon explained. He didn't think there was any other way to explain the full situation.
"Then why didn't you say that to Lydia?" the man asked.
"I did..." Jaxon trailed off, realising that he hadn't opened his notification screen, so the Universal Travel Translator ability had not been active when he was yelling at the woman called Lydia.
"I was flustered, and in shock from being mugged, so I put my hands up to show that I meant no harm. But then I realised that I then uncovered myself and, well..." Jaxon scratched his head, indicating the awkwardness of the situation.
"Okay," said the man, eyeing Jaxon sceptically, "that kind of checks out. Lydia got quite a fright, though. We don't get many of your kind here."
"What," Jaxon replied, "males or nudists?" The man paused halfway to opening the cell door and looked at Jaxon, who was laughing. "I was joking," said Jaxon, still grinning.
"You're a strange orc," the man said as he opened the door. "Most of your type don't come down this far."
"My type?" Jaxon echoed.
"Yeah," the man replied, "you know, orcs."
"Oh," Jaxon said, processing the new information.
"What are you going to do with yourself now? Where were you going when you were robbed of your belongings?" the man asked.
"Oh, um, I don't remember," Jaxon said.
"Really?" the man responded, sounding surprised as he led Jaxon out of the cell and down to the front door of what Jaxon assumed was a small holding cell for people who got a bit rowdy, perhaps after having too much to drink.
"Oh, um," the man looked worried, "perhaps we hit you a bit too hard on the head."
"It's okay," Jaxon reassured him, feeling an urgent need to sit by himself and figure out the entire situation. "Thank you very much, Mr..." Jaxon hesitated, extending his hand, waiting for the man to introduce himself.
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"Oh, sorry," he said quickly, realising his oversight. "How rude of me. My name is Harrison. I'm kind of one of the leaders here in this little village," he said as he shook hands.
Jaxon took a moment to survey his surroundings, noting that he was indeed in a small village, comprised of about fifteen houses, a well, and other signs of communal living. "Well, thank you, Mr Harrison, for letting me out," he said, still processing the situation.
"No problem," Harrison replied with a casual shrug. "At least you had a good night's sleep, and I'm sure you will be wanting to go on your way."
"Wait, I slept all night?" Jaxon asked, surprised.
"Well, I assume so," Harrison said. "I left in the middle of the night to go home and sleep, so unless you woke up just after I left..."
"Oh, okay. Well, thanks," Jaxon said, feeling a wave of confusion and gratitude. "I need to go and sit down for a bit." Jaxon headed over to the edge of the village and found a grassy patch and sat down, then he went back into his Inventory and looked around a bit more, and noticed at the bottom a button labelled "Money." He opened it and was shocked by the following information:
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Lumin Bits = 800
Mana Disks = 672
Echoe Drops = 5
Note: 1 Mana Disk = 20 Lumin Bits
Note: 1 Echoe Drop = 100 Mana Disks or 2,000 Lumin Bits
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"Wait, what?" Jaxon thought. "I HAVE MONEY? Inside me? And what the heck happened to bronze, silver, and gold?"
"Wow," Jaxon thought. "Okay, so a Lumin Bit is like a dollar, a Mana Disk is 20 bucks." Giddy with happiness that he would not have to work the streets to make some money, he mentally willed the appearance of a single Lumin Bit, and to his amazement, the Bit materialised in his hand. It was a small resin puck, the size of a water bottle cap but half as thick, encasing what seemed to be green algae. The algae had a blue bioluminescent glow that slowly moved around inside the puck.
"That's so cool," he said out loud, admiring the Lumin Bit. "So, that's a Lumin Bit. Let's have a look at the Mana Disk."
Jaxon stored the Bit away and then summoned a Mana Disk, roughly the size of a 50c coin from his home world. Yellow and slightly tingling to the touch, he pondered its presence. "Hmm," he thought, stowing the disk, "Better not reveal an Echoe Drop here; it might draw too much attention."
His thoughts shifted towards his Orc abilities. Focusing on the surrounding sounds, he detected someone's breathing about 15 metres behind him in the forest. Concentrating further, he pinpointed the source. The sound was steady, indicating the observer was consciously remaining still, likely watching him.
Realising this, Jaxon stood and started walking deeper into the forest, intentionally moving away from the source of the breathing. Although he moved casually, he remained alert, making sure the breathing was not following him. It did, but kept a safe distance. As he delved further, the breathing faded.
Once he could no longer hear the sound of the breathing he listened for anyone or anything else around him that could be watching or observing him then he sat down again and opened his inventory and removed an Echoe Drop. Immediately he was taken aback by its beauty. It was the size of a golf ball but the shape of a teardrop. It had some weight behind it and looking into the glass teardrop was like looking at sun rays shining through a forest canopy. However, the lines kind of twinkled or faded in and out, Jaxon removed a second one from his inventory to compare them. The second one was the same shape but the light lines were slightly different and when Jaxon removed the second one from his inventory the first one started to vibrate ever so slightly and started to emit a soft tone. Jaxon noticed the one that he removed also started to vibrate and emit a slightly different tone and the closer he put the two Echoe Drops together the louder the tone seemed to be. “This is mental!” Jaxon thought, "It's like the drops were vibrating at different intervals but together." Jaxon experimented and separated them by a full arm’s length and they stopped vibrating and then upon returning them together they started up again, “How cool is this!” he thought. "They are like singing stones."
He did another quick check of his surroundings at that time, as it would suck to actually be robbed and have his money taken. He thought that because he was not paying attention to his surroundings someone or something could have encroached, however, he thought it was quite convenient to have his money stored inside himself or inside his inventory and it not be seen or accessed. He supposed he could just quickly put them away if someone did come, but he had his orc hearing definitely listening for noises. “Okay,” he thought, and he removed all four of the Drops and could not believe his ears when they all started vibrating ever so slightly and singing their notes together. It was like an old-fashioned wind chime on his grandparents' cottage, all the Echoe Drops singing together randomly, yet still sounding harmonic.
"Wait! My grandparents, my parents! My sister!" Jaxon remembered. "They will be so upset that I have disappeared, okay, well not so much my sister," he laughed jokingly, "she won't care if I was missing but my parents would." "Okay," he thought, "I'm lying to myself, she would in fact care that I'm gone." Jaxon reeled in his thoughts, "I do need to work out what is going on and how I got here."
Jaxon put the Drops away and then opened his map. "Okay," he thought, looking at the lines which appeared to be his previous walking path. He tried to get the map to zoom out and amazingly it did! Then he saw a dot on the map called: City of Cresthaven. "Well," he thought, "I guess that’s where I’m heading as it’s pre-marked on the map. Hopefully, there will be some answers there and hopefully he can work out what a core is and why he has an inaccessible one." He moved his map to the corner of his vision, took a deep breath, and then immediately vomited due to the smell of rotting flesh which was picked up by his Keen Scent ability. It seemed that he could smell the dead rotting flesh and then upon intentionally focusing on it, he then heard the sound of maggots digging and eating through the flesh. "Fugging hell! that’s gross!" he thought. "Wow! I’m going to have to practice with these abilities," I really don't want to get caught like that again," he spat as best as he could on the ground to get the taste out of his mouth and then intentionally set off again, without taking a deep breath in.
Preparing to depart, Jaxon stood to his feet, took a big deep breath, and then instantly vomited onto the forest floor, as a sudden overwhelming stench of decay had hit him—his “Keen Scent” ability had identified the smell of dead, rotting flesh. Unfortunately, once he noticed it, his Whisperwind Ear completed the sensory overload by honing in on the scent target, thus providing him with the not-so-delightful ASMR sounds of maggots crunching and munching on dead, rotten flesh and them squirming in the carcass. "Fugging hell, that's gross," he recoiled, pinpointing the source as merely 12 metres away.
Jaxon spat to rid his mouth of the vile taste, then quickly moved away in the opposite direction of the sensory overload, and tried to pull his senses back. Much to his relief, he was able to focus on the smell of the trees in the forest instead. Determined to master his new abilities to avoid such unpleasant surprises in the future, Jaxon resumed his journey, cautiously avoiding deep breaths.