"Let’s see what your Luck dragged in," Valtar hovered over my shoulder (metaphorically, of course). "From some stinking, bubbly, corpse-filled swamp, since that’s where she’s likely registered. But who knows? Maybe you’ll find the 'Win Game' button? Anything is possible... heh-heh."
Inside lay the following:
- Two Sparkfall Rings. Now I had three. If I wore them all, I could moonlight as a disco ball in a local tavern.
- A half-burned torch. It looked as if someone had desperately tried to evaporate a small flood with it.
- A stale piece of bread. Hard and weighty, like the boulder Modsognir resembled. The system kindly prompted: "Damage: 4," but modestly remained silent on whether that was from eating it or meeting someone’s head with it.
- A coil of old rope. Slightly gnawed by someone (I perfectly understood that "someone" if the choice was between the rope and that bread), but generally sturdy. Rope is a universal thing. As Kobo Abe believed, it’s one of humanity's oldest tools, created to tie down the good. Though an ancient stick to drive away the bad would have been more useful right now... Damn it! I’m not obsessed with sticks. Valtar just infected me with this idiotic fixation.
- "Selkie’s Tear" earring. Grants +1 to Willpower. Faster ME recovery would be useful, but I had just learned about regenactivator capsules, and my [Flameborn] trait would handle mental attacks. Besides, I had no desire to pierce my ear in these unsanitary conditions. To top it off, the earring was pointedly feminine: with delicate, ornate patterns and a cloudy stone; you couldn't even pretend to be a pirate with it.
"Condolences: I understand you're disappointed," Valtar sighed theatrically. "Not a single stick. Not one! A tragedy."
I remained silent. Such were the costs of his crap-assistance.
"But, I hope this at least brings a smile to your mournful little face!" he continued with exaggerated cheer. "'Novice Gambler' achievement earned! You’ve opened your first Reliquary! Congratulations, you’ve dipped your toes into the slippery path of magnificent life priorities. Reward: A copy of the Reliquary you just opened (Adventurer’s Reliquary). This achievement has several stages; you’ll get the next one after nine more openings."
Perhaps I should have started talking about how I love challenges and despise easy lucre. Maybe then Valtar would continue his charitable mockery. I opened the new chest, no longer hoping for a miracle. And for good reason. Inside lay another survival kit for a chronic loser:
- A fourth Sparkfall Ring. Seriously?
- Three weak regenactivator capsules for Karmic Energy. Something new.
- The Chosen One’s Journal. On the first and only readable page was an entry: "Day 1. I’ve been summoned to this world—yes, me, a humble office guy, chosen as the hero of prophecy! My heart is pounding with excitement! I’ll write everything in more detail after I meet those cute kids singing and dancing in the forest clearing. Life is good, boys!" The rest of the pages were tightly compressed and soaked in dark, old blood. I desperately hoped this was just a stupid joke from Valtar and not a real artifact of someone’s very short epic. Yes, that’s what I’ll choose to believe.
- A rusty dagger named "Rusty Dagger." For some reason, I doubted this was a new Chameleon’s Tail.
- A scrap of parchment with the seal of the same jagged ring: "Coupon of The Centuries Ring: collect 50 (fifty) of these to exchange them for an artifact no higher than 'Rank B' at any Guild branch. (Collected: 1/50)." Well, I needed a hobby to distract myself. Why not collect candy wrappers?
If this was a "Reliquary," what did they consider a trash heap? Fine, ingratitude is a sin. These were gifts, after all. I’d appreciate them properly when it came time to pay for them.
"Still no sticks at all..." Valtar drawled again with fake sympathy.
"Don't you dare send me another one," I whispered, almost consciously trying to execute my "scamming Valtar for free junk" strategy. "I won't even open it."
"Oh, the anger stage already! You're handling grief like a champ!" he replied.
I immediately tapped the nagging notification, just to drown out his voice with another version of his voice.
"'Rookie' achievement earned! You’ve gained reputation points for the first time. Reward: A brief dopamine burst from the realization that you were actually not entirely useless to someone in this long world."
In the reputation section, a new bar had indeed appeared: "Traders’ League." The slider sat at the 10 mark (practically at the middle), and beneath it read "Neutral."
"Mandatory educational briefing," Valtar began in the tone of a tour guide in a torture museum. "At -1000, it’s 'Feud'—the faction is proactive in your destruction. At -500—'Hostility'—they simply attack you on sight. 0 (or 10) is 'Neutral'—nothingness, as you know from your own experience. 500 is 'Recognition'—the faction respects you, grants some unimportant privileges, and might stop spitting in your soup when you're looking. 1000—'Reverence'—includes a high rank and some generous gift, like a land grant. I’m explaining this in detail because you’re unlikely to find out any other way."
Despite the insignificance of this "ten," it was oddly pleasant to realize the world had started to notice my existence. Fjord continued to roam the camp, and I decided to tidy up my inventory. The regenactivator capsules shared their cells in multicolored clusters. "Weak Mental Energy Regenactivator Capsule: when broken, instantly restores 50 ME to the nearest being," I read.
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I pulled out one of the capsules to turn it over in my hands. A long, seamless glass ampoule, as if blown in a single instant, containing a motionless blue substance. I had accumulated five of these blue ones (for the brain), three red ones (for health), three green ones (for the body), one orange one (for strength), and three gold ones (for karma). Is that for a Luck bar? What kind of Class uses luck for spells anyway?
"Ah, they grow up so fast. Yesterday they were running from monsters, and today they’re already tasting the delights of inventory management," guess who commented. Then he immediately jumped in with an instruction: "Speaking of delights: items can also be bound to a somatic component. If the object fits in your palm and isn't a weapon, its summoning can be bound to a gesture. I recommend binding it to the 'oh, I'm dead' reflex."
"Why not weapons?" I asked.
"Would you want to live in a world where a long sharp thing for skewering bodies could materialize in any palm in a second? I could pass your request to the creators, of course, but I doubt..."
"I get it!"
I bound the red capsule to the gesture "clenched fist toward myself," so the movement already included the impulse to crush it, and the blue one to a light flick of the thumb against the ring finger—easy to summon, but not by accident.
"Ready?"
Fjord appeared before me, playing with two old battle-axes, each the size of my thigh, their handles tightly wrapped in coarse canvas. One axe slipped and fell into the mud with a dull thud. The blue man, without changing expression, picked it up and continued spinning it as if nothing had happened. "Let’s go find those snow-asses."
He had already selected three guards—all with unremarkable features—and our small squad moved into the forest. The bandits hadn't even tried to cover their tracks: broken bushes, trampled grass, snapped branches—even I, with zero tracking skill, could see how the trail was practically screaming: "We ran this way, and we don't care!" Blue hung his axes clumsily on his belt and walked ahead, surprisingly silent for his bulky frame, casually lacing his hands behind his head. In the shade of the trees, his blue skin took on a deep cobalt hue.
When the caravan was far behind and only the whisper of leaves broke the silence, one of the guards couldn't take it anymore:
"So what kind of magic did that gang have? The one that makes you drop your hands?"
"Empathic suppression, that is," the most bearded of the three grunted—evidently the local expert. "Nasty business. It shoves a feeling into your head that the enemy is your blood brother, a bosom friend, or... you know, a beloved woman. Long story short: if you don't have brain-protection, you just drop your guard and wait for them to slit your throat with an apologetic smile. You're the one with the apologetic smile, by the way. Or something worse..." He twirled his hand near his head in a strange gesture.
"But we have that brain-protection now, don't we?" the second guard asked, and all three, as if on command, turned toward me.
"You bet!" the bearded one confirmed proudly. "That’s why I agreed to go. Wouldn't have otherwise."
"Lex, right?" the third addressed me respectfully. " You look very beautiful, sir."
After the last twenty-four hours, I hardly looked like I was at the peak of my beauty (more like a friend of the Night Emaciator), but maybe he was referring to the Shameful Shoddiness.
"Thanks," I nodded, accepting the compliment. "I’ll handle the empath; you guys just deal with the others quickly."
"Who couldn't handle them in a fair scrap?" the third guard declared, clearly cheered up, mortally wounding the air with his sword. "They're just bandits."
"Lex..." Fjord thoughtfully tasted my designation without turning around. "Is that an external name? Haven't heard it before."
At that moment, a short grey humanoid with a awl-like nose, similarly pointed ears, and yellow ferret-like eyes emerged from the bushes. At the sight of us, the creature’s ears drooped, and it retreated back into its bush. Though, likely, the sight of Fjord alone was enough (and the others—wasn’t). I might have made some sound of confusion, and Blue decided to clarify:
"It’s not your true name, is it?"
"It’s... a working alias," I replied, choosing my words. "No one here knows my real name. It stayed where I came from."
"Rightly so," Fjord grunted approvingly. "The fewer letters you give this world, the less power it has over you. Fewer hooks to catch your soul."
Turns out I’d already given seventy-five percent of myself away. Hook away, then.
We delved deeper into the thicket. The forest here became different: denser, the trunks entwined by heavy, rope-like vines hanging from branches like ready-made nooses. An unpleasant chill ran down my spine—the setting was far too familiar. The guards fell silent, huddling behind me, clutching their weapon hilts as if the steel could yank them out of this situation like a fishing rod pulling a fish and land them home in a warm bed with milk and cookies. Judging by that metaphor, I was nervous too, distracting myself by inventing weird metaphors. Only Fjord walked on unperturbed, as if strolling through a city park.
"Let me see your toothpick," he suddenly asked, turning around. Seeing my hesitation, he added with a slight smirk: "I know a thing or two about artifacts. Met plenty in my travels, a couple even outside of combat."
I handed him Chameleon’s Tail. Fjord took it cautiously, as if it were a sleeping animal. His thick fingers ran over the cool bone surface, feeling the texture.
"White Ineytal," he said quietly—whether he was classifying it or it was an exclamation, you couldn't tell here. "It’s not what it seems, that’s for sure. A sword like this doesn't just fall into anyone's hands. There’s a shadow trailing you, Lex. Or a thread of fate." He smirked. "Both can be useful. Or lethal. Or usefully lethal, in the most bizarre proportions."
Yeah, read the description of my trait. I reached out to take the Tail back, but Fjord wasn't in a hurry to return it, instantly finding its balance on his finger.
"You didn't finish that girl," Blue noted, looking past the sword at me. "Though you could have. That says a lot. Maybe about stupidity. Or maybe about something else..." He suddenly laughed, loudly and genuinely, breaking the tension, and returned the sword to me, slapping my shoulder so hard I nearly continued flying along the vector of the blow. "I’ll bet on the second. I like making strange acquaintances, Lex. I’ll tell my friends about you. And I invite you to the ‘Centuries Ring.’ No matter what kind of weird weirdo you are, you’ll fit in there."
Fjord grabbed his own wrist and showed it to me. Likely the trademark gesture of his guild.
"You’ve gained one reputation point with the 'Mead-drinkers' faction," Valtar informed me. "And one with the ‘Centuries Ring’ faction. I'm sure even you realize how useless this all is."
The “Centuries Ring”—the creators of the Reliquaries? And "Mead-drinkers"... I doubted it was just a club for people with a sweet tooth. But I decided not to ask. Some mysteries are better revealed gradually so as not to drown in them.
Soon, we came to a clearing between giant trees and saw the camp of the "Crimson Blade."