144 - Hunger
Back against the sarcophagus, Alexandra sat hugging her knees together.
“What have I done?”
“Hunt. Good,” Speck said, moving around on her shoulders.
“Good? You call that good? I destroyed the fucking source. I’m never going to open my guild at this rate.”
Speck patted her head with a shadow limb. “Good.”
She shook her head. “No, Speck. Not good.” The elemental didn’t understand. Money and guilds were alien concepts to it.
“Kill. Bones. Good.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t think about what could have been, but be happy about what happened,” she said, stretching her legs in front of her.
Source aside, she was pretty satisfied with how the fight had gone. She’d won, and for once, it wasn’t her relying on her skills and attributes, but using her brain. Sure, she hadn’t thought things all the way through, but it was good enough for a first try.
Furthermore, she should be getting some nice benefits out of this fight.
“I’m going to turn on the light.”
Speck acquiesced and ran to hide in a crack in the walls.
Alexandra cast her skill and opened her journal, zeroing in on the line she wanted to see.
Mana Persuasion: Override an enchantment with your own (1/1)
She smiled.
Mana Persuasion – Uncommon:
Improve your ability to negotiate with mana.
Each level increases the accuracy of how your intent is communicated.
Each level increases your persuasiveness.
Unlike her other mana skills, this one hadn’t morphed under the effect of her solar affinity, likely because Mana Persuasion wasn’t targeting her own mana.
“It should make my future enchantments easier.”
Alexandra had expected this new skill to be her biggest reward after that fight, but her eyes were drawn to another line in her journal.
Giant Slayer Training Quest Completed x 1 -> 2,500 contribution points
Giant Slayer 5 -> 6
“Nice!”
She’d been hunting Silver-ranks for a while now, and that was exactly what that training quest asked of her. The next reward for this training quest had gone up to 3,000 contribution points, which gave her some hope that she would be able to purchase an uncommon skill soon enough. Hunting Silver-ranks was only going to get easier, while Giant Slayer’s training quests’ rewards would only get better.
“Rare skills cost 500,000 points,” she whispered. “That’s still a bit too much.”
She would have to hope for an event quest to bridge the gap.
It had been a while since she’d gotten one, and while she wasn’t certain that her theory was right, she believed that they stemmed from people asking her to do things. It wasn’t a sure shot, as there had been many instances where someone had given her a task and no quest had appeared.
“I guess I’ll have to talk to people,” she muttered under her breath. The things she’d do for quests…
That was the end of her rewards for the fight. She wanted to find a way to upgrade Basic Enchantment into an uncommon skill. As of now, the only method she’d managed was the skill merge in Manyfold Style, but it wasn’t the only way to upgrade skills.
The other solution consisted of understanding a skill in such precise detail that it would upgrade by itself. More complex than a skill merge, it had the advantage of keeping the skill pure in its original intention.
Alexandra would have to sit down and take the time to categorize her skills and decide how she wanted to take them forward. For now, however, she had a tomb to explore.
“You’re good to continue,” she asked Speck as she turned off the light.
The elemental flew back on her shoulder. “Yes.”
She hadn’t spent much energy dealing with that first bone elemental. That was an advantage of using enchantments. Her own mana was only serving as a connection to the ambient mana, not as fuel.
Now that the room was safe, she took the time to examine the scenes carved on the walls. They depicted battles between regular humans and people with dog heads. She didn’t know if this was a race that existed on Laika or a metaphor for a different faction. Whatever the conflict had been, her history lessons hadn’t covered it. The tomb seemed ancient, perhaps predating the current world order.
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She clicked her tongue. Speculating wouldn’t get her any closer to the truth. Besides, all she cared about was a potential path to the surface.
Speck returned to the ceiling as they moved on to the next room. There, too, a stone sarcophagus stood guarded by three skeleton puppets.
“Speck, limbs.”
Speck deployed a shadow puppet to match the skeletons. Three shadow tendrils shot out from it and wrapped around the skeletons' wrists, ankles, and ribcages. The puppets rattled and strained, sabers going nowhere.
Alexandra didn't bother connecting Drain Life to the sarcophagus this time. She'd learned that lesson already. Instead she walked straight to it, sword still drawn, and rested her palm flat on the lid.
The mana was already there, waiting under the stone the same way it had in the last chamber. She let her intent sink in, tracing the threads down from the lid same as before. Three strands. Same convergence point at the base.
This time, though, she was careful not to fan the flames too much.
With Mana Persuasion active in the background, she pressed her intent against the ward.
Warmth, she suggested, gentle about it. Wouldn't that be nice?
The ambient mana stirred, curious rather than alarmed.
Warm. Just warm. That's enough.
Heat bled into the stone. She kept her intent soft and encouraging, like she was trying to talk a spooked animal into eating from her hand. Every time the mana tried to run away with the idea and turn it into something violent, she eased off and let it settle before nudging again.
Behind her, the skeletons convulsed against Speck's limbs, joints already loosening.
“Careful,” she murmured, mostly to herself.
The lid warmed under her palm, then warmed more, until she could feel it through her glove. No cracking this time. No smoke pouring out. Just heat working its way through stone and into the bone elemental inside.
A soft, low groan came from inside the sarcophagus.
She let the heat climb, degree by degree, watching the threads of old mana cave to her intent. It took longer this way.
By the time she felt the elemental inside go still, the stone had barely discolored. No fissures. No smell yet, just a faint warmth radiating off the lid like a stone left too long in the sun.
She withdrew her hand slowly.
Behind her, the skeletons had gone fully slack, sabers clattering to the floor one after another.
“Burned,” Speck said, sounding almost disappointed there'd been no chaos to enjoy this time.
“Cooked,” Alexandra corrected, allowing herself a small, satisfied smile. “There's a difference.”
She lifted the lid. The bones hadn’t charred this time. Brittle and warm to the touch, they were inert now that the source was neutralized.
“There we go,” she said. “That's how it's supposed to work.”
Speck's source uncurled from the ceiling crack and dropped onto her shoulder. “Good.”
“Good,” she agreed, already reaching into the sarcophagus to start collecting what she'd need. “I think Mana Persuasion is going to save me a lot of trouble, and make me a lot of money.”
The stairs beyond the second chamber went down. The next set went up.
Every room repeated the last: a sarcophagus, three skeletons rigged to spring the moment she got close, carvings of the war with the dog-headed people on the walls. She fell into a rhythm. Speck's limbs first, pinning the puppets. Then her palm on the stone, Mana Persuasion humming underneath while she talked the enchantment into turning the coffin into an oven.
She got better at turning the enchantments, and at the collecting, too. The first source had been completely destroyed. The second was still there, but it was still damaged. By the tenth, she’d perfected her slow-cooking method, pulling out near-perfect sources.
At least, that was as far as she could tell. She had no real way of knowing besides appearance. Bone elemental sources were thick, white, and viscous. The fewer impurities she spotted in the liquid, the better.
“Bored,” Speck said as she was carefully collecting a source.
“You’re the one playing with the skeletons.”
“Kill. Bones. Good. Wait. Bad.”
She almost laughed, but didn't have the energy for it. Her stomach chose that moment to remind her it existed, a hollow twist under her ribs that made her pause.
She sat back on her heels. Hungry. Properly hungry in a way she hadn’t felt since reaching Bronze and unlocking her bloodline. There was no sun to feed her here.
She was tired.
“How long have I been down here?” she muttered, not really expecting an answer.
She finished collecting the source in her gourd and set it in the bag, then wiped her palms on her thighs and opened her journal.
Familiar Contract 2 -> 3
Mana Persuasion 1 -> 3
Along with her skills leveling up, she received a total of 500 contribution points for her efforts. But that wasn’t the part that caught her attention.
Quest Journal
Daily Reset: 06:00 | Streak: 113 Days | 10% All Stats, 10% Skill experience
Next Milestone: 250 Days
Daily Quests:
- Find the owner of the tomb you’re currently exploring (0/1)
“Speck.”
“What?”
“I’ve been in here a full day.”
Speck's limbs stopped twitching. “Day?”
“A day.” She looked at the bag of bones beside her, then at the sarcophagus, lid still faintly warm, then back at the journal. “It’s the sun going all the way around us.”
“Sun?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t know. I don’t think you’d like it,” she said, sighing.
Willow and Kam were going to worry, and that wasn’t even her biggest problem. As long as they didn’t try to look for her, they’d be fine. Her real concern was that she needed to eat and rest.
“Food,” Speck offered, unhelpfully.
“I don't have any food, Speck.” She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I need to find the surface.” She paused. “No, I have to clear that damned quest first.”
She closed the journal and pushed herself up, knees complaining. The corridor past this chamber split three ways. One set of stairs went down, one up, and the last one ran level.
“Down,” she decided. “We're heading down until we hit the core of this place. That’s my best bet at finding the owner.”
Speck resettled across her shoulders, already scanning the dark ahead for the next chamber.
Her stomach called. Alexandra gritted her teeth. There wasn’t much she could do about it but keep going and hope they’d find something edible on the way.