Level 1 Fallen

It didn’t take long before a human woman with pitch black hair arrived, wearing a heavy black cloak that obscured her figure. “Hello, my name is Eilwen, I was told that you would be expecting me?” she asked, looking around before her eyes settled on Diane. She didn’t say anything, just offered her a warm smile of greeting, and Diane responded with a brief nod.

Seeing the girl approach, I smiled and stepped forward. “Sorry for the short notice, but we’re in a bit of a hurry. We’re after a time-limited dungeon in Aetheris, and so we need someone familiar with talking to the Aarakel.”

“That’s fine. I often interacted with the natives when we were traveling through Aetheris,” Eilwen assured with a nod as I pulled out the car. Bella hopped into the passenger seat while Diane and her friend hopped in the back.

“You’re going to want to hang on,” Diane urged, grabbing the door for support. “We’re in a hurry…”

Eilwen blinked in confusion, but grabbed her own door as I turned the car on. Without hesitation, I flew up and into the sky at my top speed, a shrill cry echoing out from behind me.

“Diane, how long until the rift switches to Aetheris?” I asked, turning the car towards the northwest to head for the rift.

Diane pulled up the schedule while Eilwen was scrambling for more to hang onto. “Not for a couple hours. However, if we can get there in the next twenty minutes, we’ll be able to reach Petralith, and then just wait for two cycles for it to hit Aetheris.”

“Petralith, it is,” I said in a firm tone. If we were to wait for two more hours, we wouldn’t even make it to Aetheris before Diane’s time was up for the day.

I focused, using Wraith Zone around the car. Similar to when I used Beyond the Veil, the world beyond the skill’s effect seemed to turn hazy, though not to the same degree. Right away, I noticed that the car sped up, not facing the same level of wind resistance that it usually did.

Thanks to this, we may it to the rift with only a couple minutes to spare, driving through and waiting in the air above the defensive camp below. While I was driving, Diane had been explaining the special nature of the Sage’s Sanctum to Eilwen, who was growing more and more interested by the moment.

“By the way,” Bella asked while we were waiting for rift to change. “Why did the Twisted Eye go to Aetheris in the first place? That was your base before you migrated to Chimeris, wasn’t it?”

Eilwen let out a small sigh. “The guildmaster wanted a flying city. That’s really all there was to it, honestly. He wanted to remodel one of the flying islands of Aetheris into a city for the guild, but we didn’t have anyone in the guild with a ten star trait, so we couldn’t set up a kingdom. And without another player kingdom to align ourselves to, that dream kept getting further away.”

“Even when we did find a player that had managed to establish their own nation, they kept working us to the bone with the promise to eventually give us our own territory. In exchange, they kept wanting us to gather more and more materials for them, clear out dungeons, or defend their capital, all while claiming that we were earning ‘points’ towards obtaining our goal.”

“That was when Diane reached out to us about the offer from her friend Drake, letting us have our own territory without any of those complications. All we had to do was manage the land, which was only natural. Admittedly, it wasn’t a flying city, but after seeing what became of the Sunset Isles, I doubt anyone is complaining.”

“As for the NPCs and Fallen that were with us, they had been traveling with us since before the update hit, so they just naturally followed us to Aetheris. Like us, the king of that little nation was trying to turn them into a free workforce, so we were actually thankful to be able to get out of there. It just took us a little bit because we had to pull out of all of our work, and the terrain of Aetheris doesn’t really lend well to a mass migration.”

As she finished talking, the portal shifted to almost pure white, with floating specks of brown hovering within. “That’s the one,” Diane said, and I drove through the rift.

On the other side, we were immediately able to tell what Eilwen meant by the local terrain. It was basically the airborne equivalent to Thalassia, with islands flying in an endless sky, hovering over an ocean of clouds. Each island had roots and stones hanging from its sides and bottom, some wide enough to support entire cities while others were essentially floating boulders.

“How do people normally get between these islands?” Bella asked curiously, and Eilwen pointed towards a boat in the distance, one that seemed to be parked on the edge of an island, in midair.

“Boats made from the wood of Aetheris are able to naturally fly, so you can use those to travel between islands in small groups at a time,” she confessed, while I turned the car to drive north-by-northwest, just as the system prompt had said before.

“Just to be safe, we’re not heading towards your old base, are we?” I asked, glancing back towards Eilwen, who quickly denied such.

“No, the kingdom we lived in was almost straight west. Honestly, I’d be surprised if it’s still around anymore. Not all that many people like Aetheris, and the king’s personality was terrible. If the lack of security after we left didn’t do him in, the Aarakel just might have.”

I winced at that, “Are they as strong as the natives of Chimeris?”

“I think so. However, they don’t really use runes like the Chimerae. Instead, they fashion their shed feathers into powerful weapons.” After Eilwen said that, she fell into thought. “By the way, I have a small request, if that’s alright.”

“Hmm?” I looked back again briefly, making sure not to fly into any floating boulders.

“After you get the skill that you’re looking for, could you teach it to one of the Fallen in Sunset Isles? A skill to increase Intelligence and Magic would be really popular with the guild members who love magic skills.”

“Sure,” I agreed without hesitation. “There’s no point in me trying to just keep this skill for myself. Ah, though I will be demoting it to the lowest rank before I make use of it, so it will probably be that rank when I teach it to anyone else.”

“That’s completely fine!” Eilwen assured me. “We tried the Chaining Strikes skillbook after we got it from the dungeon, but… although the damage of it is really high, the cost is too much. We think that the skills lose a lot of their efficiency if you don’t properly evolve them.”

“That’s… entirely possible, but I’m the wrong person to ask there,” I chuckled weakly, scratching my chin. I had no idea how much skills normally cost to use, aside from what I see from others.”

“I suppose not,” Eilwen muttered, staring ahead. Soon, we approached a rather wide rock floating in the sky, one that had a small city built on it. There weren’t any boats coming or going from the island, but I could see a few feathered humanoids flying between it and the other nearby islands.

According to the instructions from the system, this should have been the place. Thus, I parked the car at the edge of the island and had everyone get out, stowing the car away before cancelling my Wraith Zone skill.

Almost immediately, the nearest Aarakel jumped in alarm, turning to face me while brandishing a long feather like a sword. “Who are you?” he asked in a harsh tone, but Eilwen stepped forward, lifting her hands.

“We’re just travelers. We don’t mean any harm to you or your kin,” she promised, though the man maintained an aggressive stance. “We would just like to visit the library, if that is alright?”

“The library?” the man asked with a scoff. “And what would Players like you want with our library? Are you going to try to steal more books from us?”

“What?” Eilwen asked in genuine surprise. “Have Players been coming to steal from the library? Why would they even do that?”

The man narrowed his eyes slightly. “You’d have to ask them. A few players have visited, but they all wanted to steal something. Books, jewelry, our feathers, it’s all the same.”

Eilwen quickly shook her head. “It’s not like that. What we’re looking for is a dungeon… ah, have dungeons reached this area yet? I don’t mean any offense, but it’s hard to tell where dungeons have appeared.”

“And you think that there is information on the dungeon in our library?” the Aarakel asked, his voice having drawn more of the natives to watch the exchange.

“Not… exactly,” Eilwen denied, clearing her throat. “To be more exact, we have reason to believe that there is currently a dungeon in your library. We’ve been tracking a dungeon that randomly changes positions between libraries, and our information says that it should currently be in a library within this nest city.”

“If it makes you feel comfortable, you can assign a guard to watch us, and make sure that we don’t steal anything. If we can’t find the dungeon by the end of the day, we’ll leave without any complaints.”

Hearing her argument, the Aarakel slowly lowered his featherblade. “What sort of dungeon is this? I have not heard of any monsters appearing in the library.”

“From what we have heard, it is a secret dungeon with special rules, so monsters would naturally not emerge,” Eilwen assured him in a gentle tone. “Also, I would request that whoever you have escort us not enter the dungeon themselves. Like I said, the dungeon can change locations at random. If it happens to change position while we’re inside of it, I don’t want to leave one of your men lost with no way to return home. Or worse, if there are dangerous traps in the dungeon itself.”

Several of the surrounding Aarakel began murmuring amongst themselves. The one holding the feather blade stared for a few more moments before straightening his posture. “Loam, lead them to the library. But, stay with them. Don’t let them out of your sight until they are in the dungeon, and then wait for either them to leave or for the gate to close.”

Another Aarakel, this one a muscular figure with black wings, stepped forward and saluted. “Yes, sir!” he shouted, looking at us with narrowed eyes, gesturing for us to follow him.

“Have Players really been coming to steal books?” Eilwen asked in confusion as we followed Loam. “I understand that literature from an exotic race would be rare, but I can’t see why people would go to all that trouble.”

Loam scoffed slightly, shaking his head. “Some mentioned quests, others just laughed as they either destroyed or stole what they wanted. Now, how are you going to find this dungeon that you speak of? Are you going to damage the library in the name of ‘searching’?”

“No, no, nothing like that!” Eilwen assured him. “According to the information we divined, there should be a single book near the back of the library called ‘Truth in Plain Sight’. If that book is pulled on, it should open the gate. The dungeon is designed for seekers of knowledge, so I can’t imagine that it would require anyone to damage books to get in.”

Loam simply huffed at that, though I could tell that he seemed somewhat relieved with this information, if only because it made it easier for him to track our movements.