“What do you mean, the world isn’t the same as yesterday?” asked Rafael.
“Yeah, Kai. What are you talking about?”
I put my hand to my chin. If they decided not to stay with me, I’d be handing information to people who could become enemies. On the other hand, no one there had any reason at all to trust me blindly. I had already demanded that trust three times that night. It was time to pay something back.
“Okay.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “What I’m about to tell you sounds crazy. Believe it or not, it’s the truth.”
“Your skill said we can be trusted?” Rafael asked.
“It did.”
“It’s night.”
Sun looked from one of us to the other, lost. I pretended it had nothing to do with me.
I told them how things would happen from then on, from the terraforming to the possible futures. I only left out how I knew all of it. The book weighed in my pocket as if it had heard.
“You saw the terrain start to change right after midnight. Houses and buildings disappearing, structures showing up that were half medieval, half classical.”
The two of them nodded.
“The Erebians call it terraforming.”
“E-Erebians?” asked Sun.
“Sun, were you among the ones who vanished in the Y2K bug?”
“No. When it happened, I wasn’t even born yet.”
“What they call Day One wasn’t a disappearance. It was a teleport. For the last twenty years, everyone who vanished that day, me included, lived somewhere else. A world called Erebus.”
“W-wait. Wait, wait. I’m lost. What somewhere else?”
Rafael stayed quiet. From his face, he had already decided to believe it and was only checking the details.
“And this terraforming?”
“It’s the process of changing our planet to the Erebus standard. ‘Erebians’ is just the name we, from Earth, gave to the people who already lived there when we arrived. In fact, that population is mixed, coming from several worlds that were terraformed before.”
“B-but why Earth?!”
“Honestly? No idea.”
It was true. For the first time that night, I wasn’t hiding anything.
“And what happens to our planet?” Rafael finally asked.
“The whole structure changes. The makeup of Erebus goes in its place, from houses and buildings to mountains and oceans. All technology turns into scrap the instant the process begins. You saw the phones die, right? It’s going to happen to everything. Electronics, cars, planes.”
Sun’s face froze.
“Sun?” Rafael found it strange. “You okay?”
“Y-you’re lying, right?” His voice rose half a tone. “You’re not absolutely sure. Right, Kai?”
I didn’t answer.
“M-my parents crossed the ocean to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. They were supposed to be flying back tonight. They were going to land tomorrow.” Sun smiled, a crooked smile, the smile of someone who still believes it might be a prank.
I knew how to give orders to ten thousand people. I knew how to break bad news in a faction meeting, with a map on the table and numbers beside it. I didn’t know how to do this. I bit my lip and could only manage two words.
“I’m sorry.”
Sun’s legs gave way, and he fell to his knees. Rafael caught Lili before she slid off his back.
“L-liar.” His voice broke in the middle. The tears fell straight to the ground, without running down his face, because he was looking down. “Dad. Mom.”
I stood still. My hands didn’t know where to go. I thought about putting one on his shoulder, and my hand actually rose, and went back down. What right did I have? I had known about this all day and eaten an egg bread.
After a few seconds, I opened my mouth again, and what came out was the worst thing possible.
“I wanted to let you feel all this calmly. But we only have an hour in here. After that, the tower sends us back to the entrance.”
Rafael stared at me, and his eyes asked me to leave the boy alone for a bit, and I did. I moved a few meters away, sat on a root and went to check the dungeon items, because it was the only thing I knew how to do with my hands.
The worst part was that I knew where that came from. The line about the hour belonged to the other one. The one who gave orders. He had solved the most urgent problem, which was time, and run right over the most important one, which was a fifteen-year-old boy on his knees in the dirt.
I materialized the necklace.
[Necklace of Whispers]
[Granted to the one who freed the souls of the children trapped in the Forest of Whispers, so that those who saved them may have a little more luck than they had]
[Luck +3]
[Item bound to the soul]
Of all the attributes, luck is the hardest to get. You can’t raise it with free points. Only with temporary consumables and items like that one. I hung the necklace around my neck without thinking twice.
Luck 11. The perfect accessory to wear right before opening a gold chest. Sometimes things arrive in the right order.
Below the tenth floor, gold is the best chest you can find, followed by silver, bronze and wood. Higher up, platinum, emerald and diamond chests appear. The material of the chest is only appearance. What matters is the rarity of what comes inside: common, uncommon, rare, epic, unique, legendary, mythic and, counted on the fingers of one hand, divine.
I touched open. When the lock gave way, a light spread through the darkness and caught the attention of the rest of the group.
This shines brighter than an emerald chest.
When the light died down, I went through the chest. Three objects.
A gold chest usually has at least five. That one had three. After looking at the rarity of each, I understood why.
“I hit the jackpot,” I said to no one. “Has to be.”
A hooded cloak, a ring and a book.
[Hood of Specters]
[Rarity: Rare]
[A mantle worn by those who do not wish to be found easily]
[Dexterity +2]
[Passive Skill: undetectable by classes E or below and by creatures of Lord class or below at a distance of more than five meters]
[Blacksmith’s Ring]
[Rarity: Rare]
[A ring worn by the blacksmith Berg at the start of his career. Old as it is, it still holds a spark of the countless works he created]
[Dexterity +1]
[Intelligence +1]
[Passive Skill: manipulates low-level flames and adjusts them to the desired temperature]
Those two alone would already be an incredible find for any Erebian starting out. But the third was priceless, especially in the hands of someone like me.
[Basic Forging Guide]
[A book for those who wish to devote their soul to the majestic art of creation]
[Written by Ymir Varuna]
[Consumable]
I used it on the spot, as if the book might run away. The whole body of knowledge went in at once. In the hands of someone who didn’t know its value, it would be just another book. I knew exactly who Ymir Varuna was.
[Production class acquired: Apprentice Blacksmith]
[Crafting formula acquired: Ultralight Reinforced Bracer]
“If those bastards in the other factions knew I found Ymir’s manual in a gold chest, they’d die of grief.”
Ymir Varuna was among the so-called Twenty Creators, blacksmiths so brilliant they forged weapons capable of destroying cities, and among the ten best of them. He also had a talent for architecture. After raising an entire fortress by himself, he earned the title of the Architect.
Any information or item from a titled blacksmith was worth a fortune to any great faction. A fortune, at that moment, was exactly what I didn’t have.
An apprentice blacksmith with the Architect’s formulas. This is a whole business.
“I’ll have to move my plans up.”
Behind me, another glow. I turned: Sun, Rafael and Lili had opened their chests. I could have lent them the Necklace of Whispers, but it was bound to my soul and wouldn’t work around anyone else’s neck.
Each of them received prizes according to their participation: Sun and Lili, gold chests; Rafael, a silver chest. The big man didn’t seem to mind. Their glows were smaller than mine, and so were the contents. Most of it was common equipment, but a few pieces were truly worth something.
Lili got a white robe, which she put on right away in place of her rags, and a golden necklace. She went from street kid to little apprentice priestess, apart from her dirty hair and skin.
[Blessed Robe]
[Rarity: Rare]
[Vestments of the priestesses of the temple of Un]
[Intelligence +2]
[Vitality +1]
[Blessed Necklace]
[Rarity: Rare]
[Passive Skill: increases the potency and duration of blessings by 10%]
She ran her hand over the robe again and again and smoothed the fabric to make sure it was real. Then she looked at me, at Rafael, at Sun, waiting for someone to come take it. No one came.
Sun got a pointed hat. He picked it up with his hands still shaking, his eyes red, and kept looking at it without understanding why the world insisted on going on handing out things.
[Dorothy’s Hat]
[Rarity: Epic]
[A hat worn by the renowned mage Dorothy Visalia]
[Intelligence +4]
Rafael received only one item in the silver chest: a shield that made him remember a little figurine.
[Silver Guardian’s Shield]
[Rarity: Epic]
[The shield of an ancient knight who interceded for all the innocent]
[Vitality +2]
[Tenacity +1]
[Passive Skill, Protector’s Strength: when protecting another person, increases the shield’s resistance and the vitality it grants by 50%]
The big man looked at the shield and pressed it to his chest with both arms, his chin resting on the rim.
Then he got up, went over to Sun, sat beside him on the ground and stayed there. He didn’t put a hand on his shoulder or try to comfort him. He just stayed there beside him, a big, quiet wall against the wind.
I watched that and stored it away, the way I stored everything that worked. That’s how it’s done: sit beside him and shut your mouth.
It was information no index would ever give me.
[Name: Kai Sehun]
[Level: 2]
[Class: ???]
[Tier 1: Umbra Initiate]
[Available attribute points: 0]
[Strength: 15 (+2)]
[Dexterity: 11 (+4)]
[Intelligence: 15 (+1)]
[Vitality: 11]
[Tenacity: 8]
[Luck: 8 (+3)]
[Umbra: 2]
[Fame: 50 - Unknown]
The best numbers that body had ever seen. On the other side of the clearing, Sun still hadn’t raised his head.