[Side Quest “Lost Children” complete]
[EXP +50]
[Necklace of Whispers received]
[Congratulations, you have reached Level 2]
“I told… you… to stop!”
Three free points. I didn’t think twice: all three into strength. When you’re holding the tusk of a three-meter boar with your bare hands, the choice makes itself.
[Name: Kai Sehun]
[Level: 2]
[Class: ???]
[Tier 1: Umbra Initiate]
[Available attribute points: 0]
[Strength: 15 (+2)]
[Dexterity: 11 (+1)]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Vitality: 9]
[Tenacity: 6]
[Luck: 8]
[Umbra: 1]
[Positive status: Blessing of Micael (+2 Strength, +1 Vitality, +1 Dexterity)]
With the bonuses added up, my strength reached 19. Even if someone at level 2 put every point into strength, they wouldn’t come close to me at that moment.
I pulled the tusk with my whole body. The boar went off course and toppled onto its side.
It got up at once, snorted even harder and dragged its hoof across the ground. Truly irritated, now.
I didn’t give bad luck a chance. I leaped to the spear, grabbed the Hsu Quandao and went at it before it could do the same.
Feeling the difference in strength, the Lord began to take the fight seriously. Foam ran from its mouth, and its appearance changed. The moss-covered white fur turned red, and its tusks and its whole body grew.
There it is. It finally found me worthy. I was starting to think it had no skill at all.
Every guardian of the Tower keeps a fury saved for the end. That was why many of the first human groups, who went in without help from anyone in Erebus, died without a trace. They saw the enemy’s health drop, thought they had it won and relaxed. In the Tower, a guardian with low health is the most dangerous thing there is.
I jumped and brought the spear down toward the Guardian’s head. It tilted its head and parried the blow with one tusk, and in the same motion tried to hit me with the other. I spun in the air and used the rotation to knock the attack away. The clash of the two forces released a wave that pushed Lili back.
Not even with these attributes can I handle it alone. A Nightmare guardian is something else.
I dodged its charges and counterattacked whenever I could. But my breath ran out fast, and its didn’t seem to have an end. The fury had dropped its defense in exchange for strength and agility, and even so it took blow after blow.
Good thing I didn’t come alone. I would have, in a dumber version of me.
Then I planted the spear in the ground.
The Guardian was a first-floor one, not very intelligent, and it read that as surrender. It charged with everything it had.
“You took your time,” I said.
I vanished into the shadow, and in my place a big man ran at the boar, his shield raised and wrapped in a golden glow.
“Holy Protection!”
Rafael had also reached level 2 and was stronger. He met the charge with a charge of his own. Meeting it doesn’t mean it was easy: he was being pushed back, centimeter by centimeter, his feet cutting two furrows in the earth. Even so, his face was awake in a way I hadn’t seen since the cemetery.
I reappeared above the boar, coming down with the Hsu Quandao in my hands.
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“SKRREEEHH!”
The Guardian thrashed in every direction and threw me off. With the blade still buried in its neck, it took a few staggering steps back. Seconds later, its legs gave way, and it fell. Even on the ground it struggled to breathe, its eyes full of fear and anxiety, and me reflected in them.
I had the strange impression I’d seen that beast before. But what my Erebus “self” had left in the index were only the most important things: names of people and beings with potential or danger, what would happen to Earth and what I should prioritize to open the next chapter soon.
Even that came limited. I understood why. Words and names, in Erebus, carry a power that a weak body and mind can’t bear.
A notification interrupted my thoughts.
[Do you wish to absorb the Curse that dwells in the body of the Guardian of the Black Forest?]
“What?!” slipped out of me, out loud.
“What is it?” asked Rafael.
I confirmed at once, without answering.
The system doesn’t offer something like this for nothing. And if it does, I accept before it changes its mind.
The instant I touched accept, the moss covering the Guardian began to be sucked into my hand, and, as it came off, it revealed the true size of the being that ruled that forest.
When the moss reached my hand, an absurd pain ran through my whole body.
“ARGH!”
“Kai!” Rafael ran to me.
Sun wanted to come too, but his hands were busy holding Lili, who had fainted from exhaustion as soon as the Guardian fell.
“What’s happening?!” the painter shouted.
“How should I know! He started screaming when that thing went into him!”
“Then make it stop! Pull his hand away, anything!”
“No!” I yelled, through the pain.
I couldn’t stop. That moss wasn’t just any curse. It appeared on many floors of the Tower.
The floors were more than dungeons with monsters: they represented things that had happened, graveyards of memories of ancient disasters. It was the only thing my “self” had told me about the secrets of the Tower, a piece of information that took him years to discover and that he only understood when he reached his peak as the Memory Thief.
The moss, though, everyone knew. It was a plague. As far as I remembered, no one knew where it had come from. It was always tied to disasters, had no known cure and was one of the Seven Terrors of Erebus.
List of what I knew about the moss: long. List of precautions I’d taken before saying yes: empty.
After minutes that felt like hours, the pain stopped, and a notification appeared.
[Your understanding of “The Plague” has increased slightly]
[Umbra +1]
[Your understanding of “Umbra” has increased by 0.1%]
[Secret Quest complete: Free the Guardian’s soul]
[Fame: +50]
[Affinity System unlocked]
[Affinity with Mystic Beings has increased slightly]
[Mortal Enemy => Enmity]
I was left speechless, and not because of the Mortal Enemy: that was normal. Everyone knows that protector beings like the Guardian hate humans to the bone, except children, who haven’t yet been spoiled by the world’s malice.
What surprised me was being able to improve the relationship. Enmity could become neutrality, and one day, who knows, friendship. Half of the beings with potential or danger I knew from the index weren’t even human.
Bonus? Not even close. This is a whole route nobody’s using.
“Hey, you okay?” Rafael asked, mistaking my look of surprise for the shock of the pain.
“Never been better.”
I looked into the Guardian’s eyes again. Before, they had been red as blood. Now they were brown. Its gaze no longer held the fear of death. It was calm, ready for the end.
I went closer and put my hand on its head. At any other moment, that would have been an affront. In its last seconds, it didn’t seem offended. Before its last breath, its status screen updated.
[Gibras, the Guardian of the Forest]
[Health: 0/8000]
[Grade: King]
[Status: Blessed - Intelligence increased, Strength increased, Health increased, Resistance increased]
Eight thousand health. King.
“Gibras.” The name came out of my mouth deeper than I expected. “If you’d been at your peak, we wouldn’t have scratched your fur. I’m sorry.”
I’m not sure who I was apologizing to. Maybe to the “self” of the index, who had probably never apologized to anything. I had my back to the others and thought no one had seen.
I held out my hand and absorbed the sphere that came out of its body.
[Soul with King potential collected]
[Vitality +2]
[Tenacity +2]
[Quest “Whispers of the Forest” complete]
[Nightmare Mode: 200% reward]
[EXP +200]
[Individual reward: Gold Chest]
“Kai, what’s happening?”
The scenery around us began to come apart, piece by piece.
“You must have gotten the notification that the quest is over. We’re being taken out of the floor.”
“And now?” Sun asked, with Lili still unconscious on his back.
“Now you decide whether you want to stay together or go on alone.” It was the right answer. It was also the coldest answer possible, and I heard it the moment it came out. I tried again. “I mean. I’d rather we stay together. But be prepared. The world out there isn’t the same as yesterday.”
Rafael looked at the girl on Sun’s back. Then at me.
“Together, kid.”
Sun just nodded, too fast, afraid the offer would end.
[Name: Kai Sehun]
[Level: 2]
[Class: ???]
[Tier 1: Umbra Initiate]
[Available attribute points: 0]
[Strength: 15 (+2)]
[Dexterity: 11 (+1)]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Vitality: 11]
[Tenacity: 8]
[Luck: 8]
[Umbra: 2]
[Fame: 50 - Unknown]
Unknown. For now, it was the title that suited me best.
Behind me, Rafael cleared his throat.