We walked out of the forest. The dungeon had a sort of glow to it in the day. I was curious to explore one, but I knew I wasn't ready to die before I was even able to complete a quest.
We called another car and we headed off for the city. The driver glanced at the bowl on my head then turned back at the road. His face was pulling up on his mouth, where he tried to hold down a smile. Very quickly the large red top of the castle's tower came into view. The tower darkened and unraveled as we got closer. When we were close enough to see the whole castle its height clearly stood out.
"Not a chance every floor of that castle is used right?" Stella asked.
"It's not blocked for the public entirely. If you two are new here y'all should check it out when it's opened. There's a nice tour guide in Festival that can take you all around the city."
The driver's eyes went up to the mirror, seeing into the back, the black bowl stood out clearly and he couldn't contain his laughter. I laid a hand over the top and started laughing with him.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to make fun of you." The driver said.
"It's alright, I only have it this way for a little bit. We don't have anything to carry these metals with us."
"Only for a little bit?" He repeated my words.
"Yeah I can change it." I lit a part of it on fire, showing its properties.
"Oh, that's really cool. My grandson is going to be a dragon. I heard you guys only get special horns if you're destined to be special, no?"
"Yeah, that's right." I pulled Stella into an arm. "She's also got horns that are unique, see." I pointed at the crown on her head. "You wouldn't guess the last person to ever have a crowned horn would you."
"Uh." The driver thought for a second. "I'm sorry, no I don't know."
"King."
"The man destroying every country around him? The King. King of Ego- Swords?"
"Yeah he's a full dragon so if you saw a picture maybe since he doesn't show his horns normally you would have assumed he was just a weird human with four eyes. Haha."
"Wow, glad you're here in Fayha. Having someone who's going to be as strong as Hiddid's King, or Mila's President here would make me feel way better." Stella's face brightened slightly, then she pushed my arm off her.
"Have you ever heard of the banshee of the castle?" The driver asked
"No?"
"It happens when you visit the castle. Not to everyone so it could be a lie. It didn't happen to me but apparently you could hear screams from high up in the castle and when you do…" the driver trailed off.
"What?"
"Well you will dream of the crude king."
"Wasn't the last king like fifteen years ago? Āpala right?"
"Yeah that was his name. It's a more local legend just to the people who live near the castle of a curse he gave those he loved. Loved is a crude way to put it though."
"Do you know the story?"
"Sorry I don't. Maybe if you get an opportunity to visit the castle you will experience it."
...
We got to the guild. We walked in, the small cuts on my shirt didn't stand out in this crowd. The smell of burgers welcomed us, but we were headed for the counter to complete the quest. The clerk reached for registration papers again.
"A total of forty huh?" The clerk looked at our IDs then back at us. "I guess I can't ask for proof of kill if they were weak enough that they couldn't hold their forms. Would you two take a lie detector test?"
"Sure, how's that gonna work?"
The man shrugged and pulled up a box with a small bell next to it. He explained as we put our IDs into a rectangular cut out in the box. The man asked how many goblins were there and a handful of other questions.
We answered all the questions without the bell dinging once. He gave extra money on top of the quest and we were given a promotion. We were F because we had never done anything before. Now we were E, just a step ahead. The other ranks weren't as simple as this though. It would get incredibly harder the higher up, even sometimes requiring feats to be known.
"Here's sixty. Goblins don't really come out for much but it's impressive you two took down that many for the first time." He dropped the cash into our hands.
While he signed a few papers he said "Oh, and don't worry too much about the dungeon over there. Someone should be out to clear it out when the quest is taken. Normally they don't come out of the dungeon so you could be strong enough to take it on by then if you're lucky." We thanked him and headed towards the door.
"We should go and use our magic points in the hotel room. We're getting too good to be just opening in like-" I bumped into someone coming in as I opened the door to leave. The man I ran into was Angel.
"Are you alright?" He asked, his eyes went up to my bowl and laughter poured out of him.
"I already laughed enough but it sure is funny."
"Yeah, why would you do that?"
"I needed room to hold things."
"Yeah she even used my hat." Stella glanced down, pouting at the metal filled pirate hat in her hands.
"I'm sorry you guys needed to carry things that way. Did you not get any gear before going out?" Angel saw the staff Stella had, but that was all the equipment we had.
"Nope, just a sword and a staff. That's all we started with."
"Where's the sword?"
"She melted it before we even got to Fayha." Stella said unimpressed as if she wasn't laughing at me for doing it.
"Yeah… haha."
Angel looked at us before drawing back and shaking his head.
"Well, we are off to go fix that very issue with equipment with this bag of metal." I gave the medal a small shake.
"Do you already have a blacksmith in mind?" Angel asked, his face scrunching up, and an eyebrow raising.
"Oh so you could tell what we planned to do?" I ask confidently.
"Yeah, that metal is really nice to bind into a sword because of its high melting points and affinity to practically everything. Though that's the biggest problem with it. It costs a whole lot to bind to weapons, and it's not rare enough to sell for money. It also can't hold by itself easily, that's why you have shards." Angel continued to spout out facts about the metal like a professional researcher of it specifically for years.
"Umm.." Stella and I both glanced at each other. "This isn't hellstone?"
Angel's face scrunched as he defended. "Absolutely not. Not even close. How'd you get that idea? Applestone has a completely different purpose and look."
We explained our reason for looking for the medal along with how we thought it was this stone.
"Well hellstone is similar in h-" I stopped him before he continued.
"How are you this knowledgeable?"
"I said it before. I'm a sword dragon. We learn everything about weapons and the things that make them. I can't promise you a good price but I can have my family hold onto that stone for you and give you a small discount when you have enough to get a good sword?"
I pulled the bowl off my head and offered to dump it into his hands. I'm actually kinda over the bowl thing, and coming back to the medal we got on our first mission to enhance our weapons later sounds nice.
He took the medal and put it wherever he had put his scythe before. I smoothed my horns back into shape, we said goodbye and walked past him to our hotel. The night was drawing near, but not there yet.
"Wanna explore the city more?" I asked.
Stella, who was on her phone speed typing, looked up and glanced at the sky.
"Sure."
We made our way down streets of food stalls, games and unique shops. After an hour it dawned on me that Angel could have lied to us about the worth of applestone and just stole all we had.
FUCK! I looked over at Stella who was enjoying the walk. I'll wait to bring it up. Maybe Baydí can help us.
…
We found a restaurant and sat down outside.
"A little splurging with this money can't be bad right?" I asked.
"As long as we try to make more tomorrow than today. Though if this was super lucrative everyone would be an adventurer."
"Fair enough, but doing some more into our magic right now can help."
I casted the status spell. Blinking a couple of times to get used to the glowing words in my eyes, my magic point count had gone up twenty four, and my magic capacity must have increased naturally because of how I was stressing it against those goblins. I used five to increase speed. Then I put six into both my strength and magic strength. With the rest I put it into increasing my stamina. I can hold the fire dagger for thirty eight minutes now.
I glanced at my skills. My eyes go over the universal being skill.
Universal being (locked), fire manipulation, gravity manipulation, pure magic manipulation, stamina boost, strength boost. I also had a couple of random ones I had gotten through Rex.
I thought of trying to open universal being. The fear that I was mostly resistant to at this point came back hard. I grabbed my face and held my mouth closed so I wouldn't scream. My face started to sweat and I fell to the ground. Tears started falling out of my eyes and I became still for a minute. When I came back Stella was hunched over me praying.
"I'm all good."
"I know. I didn't like you not being awake next to me though. When we sleep again, don't fall asleep before me."
Stella pulled out her phone and a soft light both came from and reflected off her eyes. When I sat up in my chair a handful of people watched me. I reused the status skill and my eyes were filled with color. I was hoping for the enhancements to go up from that but it doesn't look like I've really changed all that much with it.
I pulled my phone out and started scrolling while we waited for our food. Using another basic spell I started hearing what was coming through my phone. I swiped through the short form videos. Giggling and saving sword form videos along with spell videos. The next video was a man with blonde hair and a pumpkin earring. Oh I must be getting Fayha videos since I'm here.
"In the capital of the festival two people have gone missing. It's completely weird for them to disappear in a way that couldn't be tracked so I'd guessed it was a kidnapping." The man on my screen flashed pictures of the two that went missing and continued talking. "Fayha isn't known for zero crime but it's strange for something like this to happen in Fayha. Watch out y'all and if you see anything or know anything contact…" he started listing ways to get in touch with the authorities and the family of the missing.
Giving the family names away is weird but I guess Fayha's people trust each other not to do despicable things with their numbers.
I put my phone down and started eating with Stella. The burger I ordered had an effect where your nails would glow until you finished eating it. Stella's pasta made her hair start randomly blinking bright colors. Fayhian culture was so out there that it was hard to explain why they would make food do silly things like this other than it was just fun to.