I rented a room for one night and spread the chests out on the floor in front of me. I was in a hurry. The group was alone in the clearing, and the bald man from Expansion Reach, somewhere in the city, must have been starting to wonder why his three thugs weren’t coming back.
“Two silver materials chests, one gold materials chest and one silver chest.” I rubbed my hands together. “I hit the jackpot.”
A materials chest is usually worth less than an item chest of the same color. The materials are from the same range, but material on its own does nothing. That is, of course, if whoever opens it doesn’t know what to do with them.
I did. If anything good came out of the gold chest, it would go straight into Amelia’s hands. An Epic piece made by an intermediate blacksmith, at the level I was at, would be like entering a neighborhood tournament in a king’s armor.
“First, the silver one.”
I opened it. I didn’t know if I’d been lucky or the opposite.
“A pair of boots and some shillings.”
[Boots of Swiftness]
[Rarity: Rare+]
[Dexterity +2]
[Active: increases movement speed by 100% for 10 seconds]
[Recharge: 15 minutes]
“Okay. I admit it. These are very good boots.” I turned one over in my hand. “Maybe some of the best in the range.”
Ten seconds at double speed. For someone who lives by appearing and vanishing, it was almost a second Shadow Walk.
Luck disguised as bad luck. My favorite kind.
I set the boots aside and opened the first materials chest without thinking much.
“Nothing.”
Secondary material, low quality, the kind you buy by the kilo. In a silver chest, the list of possible materials is almost endless, and most of it is useless for anything worthwhile.
Maybe I was dreaming too big. What are the odds of something good coming out of a box like this?
I opened the second. Almost all of it disposable. Almost.
“Finally.”
[Wyvern Fang]
[Rarity: Epic-]
[A fang torn from a distant relative of dragons. The blood may have diluted its power, but it still has the strength to rend the skies]
I held the fang up to the light from the window. It was curved, yellowish and denser than it looked. Spear material. I could already see the tip.
I cracked my knuckles and pulled the gold materials chest in front of me.
“Last chance.”
I counted to three and touched the lock.
The whole room sank. Gravity had decided to fall only on me. My vision darkened at the edges. My knees buckled on their own, and my chin hit the wooden floor.
Get up. Get up.
The one shouting was me, on the inside, in my usual voice, with none of the cold of the other one. I dragged my hand to the chest, touched the only thing inside without even looking at what it was, and sent it to my inventory.
The weight eased, but it stayed there in the background, like the hum of a refrigerator you only notice when it stops.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
“Hey!” A man’s voice, on the other side of the door. “What are you doing in there? Get out of my inn!”
“Huh? Why?”
“‘Why’? I don’t know what you’re doing, but I know it’s you! You’re the only suspicious guy who checked in today! Whatever it is, it’s dangerous, and this is a family inn! Out!”
So it wasn’t just me. Whatever that had been, it had gone through the walls and landed on the head of everyone on the floor.
“Yes, sir! One minute and I’m out!”
I put everything away in my inventory and opened the door. It was the old man from the front desk, the same one who had rented me the room. He was pale and gripping the doorframe like a boat passenger on a choppy day.
“A thousand pardons for the trouble. Please, accept this.”
I put two shillings in his hand. He looked at the coins, looked at me, and his anger lost a little of its steam. Not much.
I didn’t mind the expense. Whatever was in that chest was worth more than all the shillings in the city.
*
I went straight to a forge nearby. With the intermediate apprentice insignia, nobody asked questions: I paid a small fee and got an anvil for an hour.
I spent the whole hour making bracers.
Without magnetite, they all came out with the base attributes. As happens to any blacksmith, not all of them worked out. Some lost a grade along the way and ended up only Rare.
[Ultralight Reinforced Bracer]
[Rarity: Rare]
[Made by Zero]
[Vitality +1]
[Tenacity +1]
[Dexterity +1]
[Passive, Reinforcement: reduces damage taken by 5%]
In total, not counting the first, there were twelve: four Rare+, six Rare and two so bad they wouldn’t even serve as doorstops. I set one aside for myself, kept the one with extra durability for Rafael and left the others for sale at the smithy.
I did the blacksmith’s math while the anvil cooled. Twelve bracers, ten sellable, forge paid for. The profit depended on how many newcomers afraid of dying the city had, and the city had plenty. All that was left was not thinking about the gold chest.
That was the hardest part of the math.
I wanted to know what was in that chest. I wanted it badly. But just being near it, even stored away, it pressed on me. One of the memories in the index spoke of a force like that. It didn’t say what it was, or where it came from. It only left a warning: don’t underestimate it. And I understood enough to fill in the rest. If that pressure got into my head to the point of knocking me out, it would keep gnawing at me from the inside, unhurried, until only the shell was left.
So I left it for later. When you go up a tier, the mind gets stronger along with the body. Waiting cost me nothing.
It only cost me my curiosity, which for me had never been cheap.
*
It took me an hour of running to get back to the clearing.
I saw the group from the top of the hill. Rafael was doing exactly what I had done, hood up, a giant shepherd leading skeletons to the bonfire. Except he needed more time between one run and the next, to catch his breath. Without Shadow Walk, every escape cost double.
I came down through the shadow of the hill and came out beside Sun.
“You’ve gotten a lot better.”
“OH MY GOD!”
Even Lili put her hand to her chest, breathless.
“For the love of God, Kai! You have to stop doing that!”
“Would you be calmer if I shouted a warning before showing up?”
He actually thought about it, poor guy.
“Isn’t there a way for you to have more… presence?”
“I don’t know. It’s a class thing.”
“Speaking of which.” He narrowed his eyes and kept staring at me.
“What? Is there something on my face?”
“N-no, no. It’s just—“ Sun searched for the words. “It’s obvious my class has to do with painting, right?”
I nodded.
“It must be a class thing too, but, Kai, colors stay away from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like a hue. Everyone has one. Lili is golden, sort of covered by the divine aura of her skills. A candle gold, not a jewel gold.” He pointed at Rafael, down below. “Mr. Rafael is silver. The silver of old armor, with a few scratches.”
“Makes sense, he’s a knight. And mine?”
“Yours is weird.” He bit his lip. “If white is the absence of color, black is the sum of all of them. If you mix paint of every color, it turns black. Your hue is black. Black like a vacuum. Honestly? If I didn’t know you, I’d never go near you. It’s like you’re… a mix of everything.”
A mix of everything.
I thought about the souls. The spheres I pulled into myself, one after another, since the forest. The three men on the hill. Maybe I should be more careful with that skill. Maybe it was already too late.
“Ah, Sun.” I forced a light tone. “You sure know how to compliment a friend.”
“It wasn’t a compliment!”
“I know.”
Rafael climbed the hill to us, his body marked by a few light cuts, nothing deep.
“You’re back. Don’t mind the state of things. Took me a while to get the hang of it.”
He took off the hood and gave it back to me. Then he frowned.
“Level 4, kid? When did you have the time?”
“That’s right,” said Sun. “Where were you?”
“Making this. A newcomer’s first forging is worth a level.”
I materialized the bracer with extra durability, the first one, the one with the zero on the edge.
“Here, Rafael. It’s yours.”
He turned the bracer over twice in his hand before answering.
“This is worth a lot. Wouldn’t it be better if you kept it?”
“No. I can hold a monster off for a few seconds, but then I don’t deal the damage I would if I were free. My class wasn’t born to stand in front and take a beating. Yours has a ton of skills for that.”
Also because whoever holds the line needs to be the hardest to kill in the group. That I didn’t say. But I thought about the Steel Boots, the leather pants, the hood, and now the bracer, and I realized I was building Rafael up piece by piece, like a wall.
“All right.” He fastened the bracer on his forearm. “Thanks.”
“Where are the points from your new level?” asked Sun, who now studied everything I did.
“I saved them.”
“You saved them? You can do that?”
“You can. Nobody spends points before knowing their class. First you see what it asks for.”
Sun opened his mouth to argue, thought about Empires and closed it.
“Kai, you said we needed to reach level 3. We’re there. What’s the next part of the plan?”
“Are you tired?”
The three of them looked at one another. They had been repeating this for hours, skeleton after skeleton. Saying they were fresh would be a lie, and they knew I’d know. I hesitated.
“Don’t overthink it,” said Rafael. “We do what has to be done. We trust you. Trust us too.”
I looked at him. The voice was the same as always, short and deep. But it had an extra firmness, of someone who had commanded people somewhere, in a locker room, in a ring, in a life before this one.
So the fighter is still in there.
The order was already ready, like the lists I had made in my head since I was a boy. One: gear on Rafael. Two: level 3 for everyone. Three: money coming in without depending on the Tower. Four: information before the enemy. The first three were done. The fourth was on the second floor.
“All right. Then get ready. We’re going to challenge the second floor of the tower.”