“Sure,” Freya rolled her eyes. “A little.”
“Regardless, he is the best option you have,” she said.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll go visit him.”
“Good. Meanwhile I will try to see if I can learn anything more of the Phantom Lord. I will be sure to alert you if I find anything.”
“Got it,” she said.
DING!
Congratulations! You have completed the quest: The mysteries of the Self II! You have found answers to a few of your questions. Though you still haven’t found out anything about the presence, you have now found another person you can go talk to. Reward: The Mysteries of the Self III.
DING!
You have obtained a quest: The mysteries of the Self III! More mysterious are piling up around you. Go find the Grand Wizard Krof and see if you can get any answers from him regarding the Death Seal. Rewards: Unknown.
Just how long does this chain quest go on for? I wondered. As long as it takes for me to find out who I am I guess, I answered a moment later.
Freya looked at me. “Ready to leave?”
“Right away?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “We don’t have the time to laze around anymore. And that Death Seal within your mind only means we need to speed up even more.”
“Understood,” I said as I followed her out. A part of me feared that the Phantom Lord was coming after me, but the rest of me subdued the emotion, knowing the fear was only going to hinder me.
“Also,” Ijyela said as she stood up from her chair, her tall frame looming over us. “I’m not sure either of you know this so I will tell you anyway. Markus Goodfield has finally made a move from his side.”
“Yeah,” Freya said. “I got a message about that just a few minutes ago.”
“Wait what?” I asked.
“Markus Goodfield has assigned his Elite Squads to comb the Kingdom of Aingard and come after what he deems is a ‘Rogue Eternal’. I do not know what that means for you two.”
“Ah,” I said, realizing ‘Rogue Eternal’ was referring to me. “So now the Alliance of Light is after me too?”
Freya nodded.
“This isn’t something you could have prevented, Zoran,” Ijyela said. “Just be careful about it.”
“Fine,” I nodded.
“We’ll be fine,” Freya said as we walked out of the door. “Sorry for leaving so suddenly, Ijyela,” she said.
“Don’t worry, dear,” the elven witch smiled. “It was to be expected. This situation calls for haste. Just let me know what Krof has to say about this situation.”
“Will do,” she said. “We’ll take our leave then,” she bowed.
I followed suit. “Thank you for everything,” I said.
“Good luck you two,” Ijyela smiled. “Hopefully Krof doesn’t kill you on sight.”
***
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“She was kidding wasn’t she?” I asked.
“Well,” Freya said, walking calmly through the forest. “That Wizard Krof does not really have the best record with insane fits. It wouldn’t be too farfetched for him to kill someone on sight.”
“So Ijyela wasn’t kidding?” I blinked, confused.
“She probably was, but it’d be best we still stayed on guard when we go to meet him.”
“Why would he even kill anyone on sight? That seems really paranoid.”
“When you’re a wizard like Krof people try to kill you quite a few times.”
“Oh,” I said, piping down immediately. How many assassination attempts does one have to go through to become that paranoid? I wondered.
My stomach grumbled loudly, interrupting my thoughts and earning a chuckle from the Moon-elf.
“Well, someone’s hungry,” she smiled at me. “We should probably stop and make some food for ourselves. We’ve got a long walk ahead, and starting with an empty stomach is probably not the way to go.”
I nodded. I was embarrassed that my stomach had spoken before my words did, but that didn’t change the fact that I really was hungry. I was ready for some food.
“When was the last meal you had?” Freya asked, leading us forward.
“Uhhh,” I thought but couldn’t remember.
“Wait,” she looked at me. “Don’t tell me you haven’t had a single meal since you woke up in the Viridian Forest.”
I blinked. “Oh wow,” I said, realizing she was right.
“How are you even walking around still?!” she exclaimed, clearly stunned I was still a functioning human being.
“Maybe my hunger gets reset every time I resurrect?”
“Or maybe Eternals just don’t get hungry as easily,” she chuckled. “Anyway, I don’t really have any food on me so we’re going to have to hunt something down.”
“I’m fine with that as long as I don’t have to shoot an arrow,” I said. “I suck at archery.”
“Swords are fine,” she chuckled, sliding hers out of her sheath.
“What do you we even hunt in here?” I asked. “Squirrels?” I laughed.
She shook her head. “Wolves.”
My laughter stopped. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Good protein, and wolves are much easier to find in this forest compared to any other animal.”
“I bet they are,” I muttered, recalling my last faceoff with the creatures.
It wasn’t like I was scared to face them again, but to say I was perfectly calm was wrong too. My mind was already a rattled from the exchange with Ijyela, and being reminded of the wolf incident only made it worse. In an odd sort of way though, a part of me seemed to be looking forward to meet the wolves again. I was much stronger now, and so it felt like it was time for payback.
“We should split up and hunt,” Freya said. “But before that, it’d probably be a good idea to form a party together.”
“What?” I blinked.
“A party?” she said. “You know, when two players form a group together. Do you not remember?”
“I do, I do,” I mumbled. “Gosh, don’t treat me like an old man.”
“I will if you’re so slow,” she chuckled. “Wait, I’ll send you a party request.”
I nodded.
A Party was basically a group comprising of a few players and allowed them to access greater services within the Ga’em. For example, the players within a party could view each other’s stats and skills, and could also find each other’s location on a map, which was probably the feature that we were planning on using at the moment.
DING!
You have been sent an invitation to join a party formed by: Freya. Would you like to accept?
I hit the ‘Accept’ button without as much as another blink.
DING!
You are now in a party with Freya.
“Nice,” I turned to Freya.
“Oooh,” she said, staring at a screen in front of her. “Pretty good stats you’ve got there, Zoran. Nice set of skills too.”
I took me a second to realize she was looking at my data. “Hey, no fair,” I complained. “I played nice by not looking at your stats.”
“Well, too bad for you,” she chuckled.
I stared at her head, and a screen popped up in front of me. It was similar to my analyze screen, put held way more information.
DING!
Name
Freya
Level
47 (21% to next level)
Health
540
Mana
820
Stamina
470
Strength
88
Agility
91
Dexterity
55
Wisdom
74
Constitution
54
Intelligence
82
Endurance
47
Charisma
23
Luck
29
Whoa, I thou
ght, noticing the spread in her stats. The high Agility and Strength stats were from her Assassin profession and the high Wisdom and Intelligence stats were probably from her Moon-Elf race bonuses.
Each race had a certain stat bonus that it got, which basically meant a certain stat would automatically increase whenever a person of that race levelled up, regardless of whether they invested stat points in it or not. For the Moon-Elves the stat bonus was in Intelligence and Wisdom so it made sense why Freya was able to get it up to such high levels, especially since she was already at level 47.
I noticed that she’d leveled up two levels more from when I first analyzed her back at the spring. Probably from the battle with the Valdar, I concurred, remembering that I’d earned a ton of XP from that duel as well.
I noticed that the screen I was looking at had two sections to it, with the tabs ‘Stats’ and ‘Skills’ helpfully positioned at the top of screen to help me navigate.
Let’s see what kind of skills she’s got, I tapped on the ‘Skills’ button.
DING!
Access to this screen has been locked.
“What,” I turned to her, only to see her grinning face. “You locked access to your skills screen,” I complained.
“Pretty neat huh?” she chuckled.
I sighed. “I didn’t know you could do something like that,” I said.
“I’ll show you how to do that later if you want to.”
“No, it’s fine,” I mumbled. “All I need is the location tracker option, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You just have to open up your field map and you’ll see a green dot on it. That represents a party member’s location.”
“Got it,” I said.
“I guess that’s about all you need to know,” she said. “I’ll head out now. If anything happens, I guess yell?”
“I’ll be fine,” I smiled.
“If you say so,” she said as she pulled out her longsword, and with that she was off.
I turned around, facing the darkness in front of me. “Well this seems like a nice path,” I mumbled to myself as I headed forward. My hands slid my sword out of its sheath as well, holding the weapon out in front of me.
My mind wasn’t really spending much time in the present, my thoughts still hung up on the connection I seemed to have with the Phantom Lord. I wondered why it was he’d tampered with my memories, why I possessed something like the Death Seal. Why was I involved with such a man?
A part of me though felt amused in the face of all my questioning. In the few days after I’d woken up I’d had plenty of questions, a lot of which had almost been answered by now. However, now I had to deal with a separate set of questions I had, each one arguably much harder to answer than the ones I’d had before.
Maybe I’m just going to be stuck in an eternal state of answering questions, I thought to myself.
Suddenly, a low growling rung through the air, cutting my thoughts short. I stopped still, going down into a low stance immediately. A pair of red glowing eyes emerged from the darkness, staying still.
“Finally,” I mumbled to myself, holding my sword out in front of me. “We meet again.”
A few lone strands of moonlight pierced the dense canopy, falling onto the dark silhouette of the wolf. The beast threw its head up into the air and howled, the tone reverberating in the air before dissipating into the wind. More eyes emerged out of the black, numbering about ten pairs in total.
“A pack,” I muttered. Had not expected that many to come on at once. I quickly used my analyze skill on them, and noticed that the highest levelled one was only level 12. Easy pickings.
I’m not giving you the element of surprise this time, I thought and charged forward, sword at my side.
The wolves instantly scrambled, moving in all directions at once, but turned an instant later and charged right at me. They slid through the darkness, but I could see them clearly now. My Night Vision skill had activated.
I yelled out and swung my sword at the first one that came up to me. The blade passed through cleanly, and the beast went thudding to the ground, dead on impact.
Another wolf jumped onto me, sinking its teeth into my shoulder. I yelled in pain as I twisted my body, trying to shake it off. I grabbed it by the neck and jerked it off, its teeth slicing my skin as I yanked it loose. I threw the wolf hard against a tree and rushed up to it, pushing my sword through before it could react, making the kill.
I kept charging forward, dodging teeth and claws and slashing into all the wolves that attacked me. It took me about another five minutes before every last wolf was on the floor, their health bars all at zero.
And I didn’t have to even use Bladestorm.
DING!
Congratulations! You have defeated Wolf Pack (Level 10). Reward: 2000 XP. Reward: Wolf Meat (x5). Reward: Wolf Tooth.
DING!
Congratulations! You have learnt a new skill: Hunting! Hunter, not the hunted. Gain increased ability to track small animals. Increased knowledge of the behavior of prey. Agility increased by +5% while hunting. Strength increased by +5% while hunting.
DING!
You have obtained a new item: Wolf Tooth. This item holds power within the ranks of a wolf, and can show dominance depending on what kind of wolf it was obtained from. Can be used to frighten wolves and avoid combat. Would you like to transfer item into your item inventory?
I tapped on ‘Yes’ and the screen disappeared. I quickly summoned a Warrior’s Restoration Potion from my Item Inventory and rid myself of my injuries.
Boy, did that feel good, I stretched my arms, my sword still in my hand. I’d gotten the food that I needed and a neat skill as well. I wondered for a moment how I’d gotten the Wolf Meat as an item drop this time, when nothing of the sort had happened when I’d killed beasts like the Sabertooth.
Maybe the items drops the Ga’em gives me are based on what I want as well, I thought. I couldn’t remember if that was indeed the case but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
I opened the Field maps option of my Maps Menu, and a screen emerged, displaying the vast region of the Viridian Forest.
I saw my blue dot blink a little close to the southern edge. I zoomed out a bit and noticed a blinking dot of bright green positioned to my West, about a good mile or so away from me.
She moves fast, I chuckled. I should just head back to where we split off.
I’d taken only a step forward when I heard a low growl echo hungrily through the air. My head slowly turned around, not wanting to make any sudden movements.
A massive wolf walked out from behind the trees, this one much more than twice as tall as I was. Its eyes were not red, but a solid white, and its pupils were missing as well. Its fur was a weird grey, and black markings were drawn all over it, in weird, contorted shapes.
I felt an odd aura emanate from the beast, as if something was terribly wrong here. I looked at the creature’s head and the analyze screen popped up.
Race
Rabid Forest Wolf
Level
32
Health
1100
Mana
150
Stamina
970
Rabid, I noticed. Maybe that’s why it looks different.
The beast stepped forward, its paws swiping the stray leaves on the forest floor. It gazed at me with its emotionless eyes, its mouth panting.
I held my sword up, unsure of what I should do against such a creature. My first instinct was to turn to Freya for help, but she was too far away to come help in time. I doubted I could even get a Ga’em message across to her given the situation I was in. Taking my eyes off this beast for even a second seemed like it’d prove deadly. Taking my eyes off it long enough to write a message was suicide.
The wolf threw its head to the sky and howled, its shrieking call piercing my mind. It jumped at me all of a sudden, it’s claws aimed for my face. I dived to the side for all I was worth, rolling onto the ground and bringing mysel
f up in an instant. I turned around just in time to see the wolf swipe at me with its sharp claws. I threw my sword right into the air, connecting with its attack but still getting pushed back.
Too strong, I mumbled to myself, feeling uneasy. Would I really be able to take this beast out? I have to go on the offense, I thought.
I charged at it, relaxing the muscles in my arms but still holding onto my sword. I’d have to use my options well if I wanted to take this thing down.
“Bladestorm!” I yelled. My combo-move activated instantly and I charged to the beast, my body moving much faster than before. My weapon surged onto the wolf, my movements turning more intensive with every strike. I was dominating the faceoff when beast suddenly pulled back at a speed faster than I’d expected. The next thing I knew its claw smacked into me, throwing me hard against a tree.
I saw my health bar lower to about half as I slowly brought myself back up. I looked to the beast and noticed that my special move had only taken out about a fifth of its total health. Granted, I hadn’t been able to execute Bladestorm completely, but it was also unsettling that the wolf had been able to move so quickly all of a sudden. If it was faster than I was, and that was probably the case here, then Bladestorm wasn’t going to be particularly helpful.
Fine, plan B then, I thought and charged forward once more.
The beast was ready for me this time and lunged forward. I slid away from its path, letting it land on empty ground, just like before. However, that was where the similarities ended. I quickly jumped onto its hind leg and used it like a wall to propel myself onto its back, surging up to its neck just as it noticed what had happened.
The Eternal: Awakening - A LitRPG Saga (World of Ga'em Book 1) Page 14
