MOR-01. Warrior Of Mist, page 24
part #1 of Mists Of Redemption Series
“Hah!” I yelled, thrusting my kindjal into the chest of a D-ranked werecat and shattering the energy crystal. The monster exploded into little glowing lights.
[+56 EXP]
The System dinged. [Daily Task: (Destroy five Energy Crystals) Completed. +25 EXP]
[You have Leveled Up!]
“Sweet!” I hummed as I scooped up the drop items then adjusted my stats. Hmm, I was level seventeen now, but still a D rank. How many more levels would it take to get an S rank?
With that on my mind, I moved farther into the woods.
The forest path opened up in front of me, revealing a pond. Its surface was so smooth it looked like faintly glowing silver glass, and the trees around it grew thick and tall, bending over the water and spreading their branches out, blocking out the sunlight as if someone had purposefully woven the branches together. The dim light made the pond glow even more.
In the middle was an island just big enough to fit a stone arch about fifteen feet in diameter. Within that arch was a tree which looked like a weeping willow—only, it glowed. Faintly glowing pink leaves drifted lazily from thin branches on a nonexistent breeze. Between the leaves, clusters of bright white fruit twinkled in the faint light. Even the bark had ribbons of white neon webbing up and down its trunk and branches. All of this was under a huge cloche-like rock arch.
This had to be a pearl duku tree. It had to be one of the most beautiful scenes I’d ever seen in Gate Vale … so what was the catch?
I looked around but didn’t spot anything which could be a threat. I frowned at the pond and kicked a rock into the smooth surface. The splash was barely more than a ripple, and the rock vanished after a couple feet. I waited another couple of minutes, but nothing happened.
“Alright then,” I said, activating Feather Step. I stepped onto the pond.
Instantly, the pearl duku tree exploded into thousands of pink glowing lights. I paused, shocked.
No, it wasn’t that the tree exploded—every single leaf had soared into the air to form a glowing mass of lights. It took another second for me to realize they weren’t leaves at all—they were butterflies. According to their title bars, thousands of bloodsucking level ten gem butterflies. And they were coming at me like a swarm of angry bees.
“What the—?”
I threw up my hands and cast Mist—only, this time, I didn’t pull from the power I had stored inside me; I used Mist Creation. The still water beneath my feet evaporated and blended with the air, creating a thick mist that I could control. I couldn’t control the water or the air separately, but I could blend the two together and use them to my advantage, concentrating the two elements together as thickly as I could. The butterflies entered my mist and immediately slowed down. After a short while, some even fell into the water, their wings weighed down with dew.
My kindjal appeared in my right hand, and I put my left against the short sword’s handle. As I pulled my hands apart, I cast Mirror. A second kindjal, a replica of the one in my right, appeared in my left. God, I loved this new skill.
I Feather Stepped forward and slashed at the butterflies with both weapons. No matter where I aimed, I hit several at once. But my task wasn’t to kill these monsters—it was to get the pearl duku. Swinging my kindjals around and holding my mist thick, I ran to the tree.
The butterflies kept coming at me, and while I was able to keep most of them at bay, a few landed on me. I knew the instant they did because of the intense bee-stinging bite they inflicted. Slashing them away from my body, I couldn’t help but notice that the longer they were on me, the longer they sucked on my blood, the redder their wings became. Ugh. I fought my way across the pond until I finally reached my target.
Panting, I inspected the pearl duku tree. Now that I was closer, it was obvious why they were called what they were. The fruit dangling from the thin branches really did look like huge white pearls glowing in the dim light.
The kindjal disappeared from my left hand, and I reached out to grab a handful of the fruit hanging on the nearly bare branch. My grip was too hard, and the fruit exploded in my hand. A milky gelatin squished between my fingers while opalescent juice dripped down my wrist into my arm bracer.
“Crud!” I gasped, shaking my hand out. The skins of the pearl duku flung to the ground several feet from me.
The gem butterflies stirred. Some were thrown into a whole new kind of frenzy, aiming at my hand as if it’d mortally offended them, while another portion flew to the broken pieces of pearl duku on the ground. They landed on it, each little bug trying to push others out of the way.
I swung my remaining sword even faster while pulling another fistful of fruit off the tree. This time, I quickly slotted them into my Items Bag before I could crush them.
[Daily Task: (Collect five Pearl Duku) Completed. +25 EXP]
I huffed a breath of relief then turned and ran back across the pond, a small swarm of butterflies chasing after me and my left hand. I swung at them while trying to collect as many drop items as I could. Since their energy crystals were so small and most of them sank into the water, it was nearly impossible for me to destroy them and collect orbs at the same time. My mist slowed the buggy monsters, and they weren’t so hard for me to evade, but I could see how a melee Hunter or a mage without an area spell could have trouble with them.
Even so, I was still breathing hard by the time I made it to shore and ran into the woods. The butterflies still hounded after me until, suddenly, they stopped.
I slowed down and turned, blinking at the mass of pink lights that shifted and swirled in the distance. Their wings made an angry sha-sha sound, but they didn’t come any closer. They didn’t move one inch from under the dim shadow the overhead trees cast. I blinked again and looked at the sunlight hitting the ground around me. It clicked.
Oh, they couldn’t go in the sun.
“Maybe they should have been called vampire butterflies,” I muttered.
My kindjal disappeared, and I lifted my left hand, trying to think of what to do about the fruit juice on it. Then I paused. My hand was completely dry, as if it had never gotten wet to begin with.
“Hmm.” I had a feeling the System wanted the pearl fruit for something, just like it had wanted the Essence of Nothing. Curious, I opened my menu. There were sixty pairs of gem wings in there. They were pretty to look at, as if someone really did carve delicate wings out of pink quartz. In the midst of them were two pearl duku.
“Two?” I muttered to myself. I knew for sure I’d grabbed five. The System even marked it off as five. So where did the other three go? Or … ?
I glanced at my left hand and wiggled my fingers around. Was it really like the Essence of Nothing that had vanished from my Items Bag? The System wanted it for something, and since there was some on my hand, it took that first and the remaining from my Items Bag? That’s why there was some left over? It seemed far-fetched, but was it really?
With that still on my mind, I turned around and walked back toward the trail. Just as I stepped onto the compressed dirt, I heard the sounds of people talking.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Miles. That’s an idiotic idea.” A woman sighed in exasperation.
Hm. Was her voice familiar? I turned around and saw a man and a woman standing off the side of the trail, the same couple I’d bumped into earlier today just outside of Glenn Holt.
The man, Miles, stared at her with avid eyes. “No, I’m serious, baby.” He held up his gloved hands. In his fingers was a small glowing energy crystal, shining like a little star. “Haven’t you ever wondered about it? These crystals are full of energy. What if Hunters could absorb that energy into their bodies and use it to become stronger?”
CHAPTER 34
The woman gave Miles a look which expressed exactly what I was thinking.
“Huh?” she asked in a flat, are-you-stupid? voice.
“Just hear me out, honey,” the mage rushed on. “I really do think that a person could extract and use the energy in a crystal.”
The woman tapped her forehead and gave him a patient smile. “Miles, that was proved impossible over fifteen years ago.”
It was true. When crystals became the main source of energy, extensive experiments were done on them to make sure there weren’t any negative side effects. Some of those experiments involved Hunters and humans trying to extract the energy so that a person could use it and become physically or magically stronger. Every single test had been a failure. No matter what they did, a person couldn’t absorb a crystal’s power.
I rolled my eyes and turned away, not interested in their conversation anymore. If he wanted to play with crystals like that, that was on his time.
But the man’s voice still carried in the wind. “I know. But I think they were doing it wrong. I’ve been reading a lot, and I think the right way is through cultivation.”
My eyes widened, and I froze midstep. That was a word I didn’t hear from other people’s mouths. Slowly, I turned around and walked back. They still hadn’t noticed me. To keep it that way, I jumped into a nearby tree and perched on a branch to watch. Spying might be rude, but the man had finally gotten my attention.
The woman still didn’t look convinced. “Reading? Babe, those are fiction books. Fiction—as in fantasy! They aren’t real. If a process like that were possible, it would have been discovered years ago.”
“But all fiction is based on some sort of real event. Even Moby Dick was based on a real whale,” Miles argued back, nodding his head in self-righteousness.
“Yet there has never been a person who’s gone forty thousand leagues under the sea in a submarine,” she replied in the same blunt tone. “And there sure as hell isn’t a prehistoric land in the middle of the Earth. Most fiction is the product of someone with an overactive imagination and too much time on their hands.”
He opened his mouth then paused. “But there have been people in submarines who’ve reached the bottom of the ocean.” He threw his hands in the air and hurried on. “I really want to try this, honey. I can’t accept that we’ll be stuck in the same place in the Hunter hierarchy our whole lives. You deserve so much better than that, and I’m going to give it to you.”
The girlfriend sighed. “Miles, I’m happy right now. Don’t get caught up trying to change something you can’t and drive yourself crazy over it.” Her words were smart, but her tone had softened.
He gave her a tight hug and rubbed his cheek against her brunette hair. “I won’t. But I still want to try this.” He stood back, holding up the crystal. “All the books I read had a specific way to cultivate. I just want to try it and see if it’s possible. If it is, it could change our lives forever. If not, oh well, it was a nice dream. What do you say?”
The woman stared at Miles for a second then slowly nodded. “Alright. But don’t come crying to me when it doesn’t work.” She gave him a quick kiss before turning around. “I’ll watch your back for one hour. Just one hour, you hear me?” She stabbed a finger at him.
He grinned like an idiot. “I love you.”
She smiled as she grumbled under her breath.
I watched their play, smiling to myself. The man sat down cross-legged on the ground. He held his hands differently than what I did, but all in all, it actually looked like a real cultivation position—not that I was a pro. I had to be a toddler at best, but I was getting better every day. Since my eyes were closed when I cultivated, I’d never actually seen the whole process. I couldn’t resist leaning over so I could pay close attention.
A minute passed. Five minutes passed. The woman noticed a dire rat and ran off to kill it. She didn’t notice the second dire rat sneaking up on the man while she was gone, but I killed it by pairing Throw and Critical Hit. My kindjal exploded the energy crystal, so by the time the woman returned, the rat carcass had disappeared and my kindjal was back in my hand. The drop orb stayed on the ground just six feet from him for a couple minutes, completely invisible to the woman, until it disappeared by itself.
Twenty minutes of nothing else passed by. I lounged on the branch, swinging a leg back and forth under me. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry. My first time cultivating wasn’t successful, even though I had a manual in front of me. This guy was going off books he’d read in the past. Who knew how much he remembered?
Miles hadn’t moved a muscle, but I could tell he was concentrating hard from the thin layer of sweat building on his forehead. His girlfriend kept looking at him, but she bit her lip and looked away without disturbing him.
Another forty minutes passed by with only minor monster interruptions—that the girlfriend knew about. Some of them I took care of before she even knew they were there. The girlfriend checked her Guide menu for the tenth time, probably checking the time, and silently sighed. She turned to Miles and opened her mouth before pausing and closing it again. Finally, she gripped her hands together and walked up to him. She opened her mouth. “Mi—”
Suddenly, the energy crystal resting in Miles’s hands lit up like a mini blue sun.
The woman gasped and stumbled back, holding a hand up to block her eyes. I gasped and leaned closer.
Energy, strong and bright, pulsed from the crystal. It swirled around the stone for a second then slowly drifted toward the man’s chest. As soon as it touched him, the energy rushed into his body.
His eyes popped open. “I can feel it!” he gasped. “I can feel the power. Oh my god, it’s so strong. I can feel it in my heart, in my arms, my hands.” He laughed in delight. “It works, honey! It works!”
I stared at him, wide-eyed, seeing what they couldn’t. The title bar over his head was changing. Before, it said he was level seventeen, the same as me. The same as his girlfriend. The number had now increased to eighteen.
It worked? He really was absorbing the energy from a crystal and becoming stronger. Even though I was waiting for it, the thought still blew my mind—and all the contradicting theories I grew up with. If Hunters really could absorb the power in energy crystals, why hadn’t they done that from the beginning? For as long as I could remember, crystals were used as an energy source to power the world. Batteries full of clean energy with no effect on humans or Hunters.
The mage’s level rose to nineteen, the light of the crystal still strong.
If Hunters really could absorb the power, why was there such a heavy caste system in this bloodthirsty society? Why did Es and Ds still exist if they could just cultivate a crystal and become stronger?
A flash of anger boiled in me as the helplessness of my past came to mind. Did I really go through all that shit for nothing? Could I really have avoided the pain of being stuck at the bottom of society’s food chain if it weren’t for believing the words of the government? But why would they lie to us? Wouldn’t it be better for them if Hunters were stronger? Then we could more easily handle the threats inside the Gates.
The woman stepped closer to Miles then back a couple feet. “Are you okay? How do you feel?” Her voice trembled, like she was excited and scared at the same time.
“I feel invincible!” the mage yelled in elation. His level rose to twenty.
“Oh my god,” the woman whispered in awe. “This is amazing.”
His laughter slowly died, and he looked down at the crystal in his hands. His brows pulled together. At first, he looked confused … then concerned.
“What’s going on?” The woman stepped closer.
“I don’t …” Suddenly, he threw his head back and screamed. His voice was raw and brutal, obviously in intense pain, but there was no visible problem.
Shocked, I jumped to my feet.
“Miles!” the woman screamed, running to him. She grabbed his shoulder with one hand and gripped the crystal in his fingers with the other. No matter how hard she pulled, neither the crystal nor his position changed. It was like they were frozen in place as he screamed in agony. “Miles! What’s wrong? Miles!”
He didn’t move—no, he was moving. Without shifting position, his body was moving. It was changing. Under his black robes, his arms thickened and twisted in odd shapes. His torso elongated and thinned as his neck widened. His legs twisted around, and the boots slid off his feet. The fingers holding the dim crystal grew broader and sharpened at their tips until they were claws.
The woman screamed in horror and stumbled back, her hands covering her mouth as she gasped for air, staring at the man as he changed into a monster.
His human scream morphed into a reptilian roar. Red scales replaced his skin, spreading into place as his clothes slid off his narrow shoulders and pooled in his lap. His hair fell out as his face lengthened and flattened until it was more lizard-like than human. A four-foot tail shot out of the folds of his clothes.
The monster’s level hit twenty-one. The crystal in its claws flashed bright before it vanished as the monster the Hunter became opened its mouth wide and roared into the air. A blast of fire shot from its mouth and dissipated in the air above.
“Miles?” the woman whispered, like she couldn’t understand what was happening. Her legs shook as she edged back.
I could barely process what I was seeing. Oh my god, what just happened? Did I really just watch a human turn into a monster?
The huge, red lizard lunged for the woman, crawling on all fours and leaving the pile of clothing behind.
She blocked his first attack with her long sword. “Miles! Miles! It’s me! Come on, wake up!” she begged, her whole body shaking with her sobs.
Fast as lightning, the lizard whipped at her with its tail. While she blocked that, the monster’s head shot forward in a blur of movement, and its wide mouth clamped shut on her throat and shoulder. The force of the attack knocked the woman backward, the monster on top of her. It all happened in seconds.
I flung my kindjal at the lizard as I jumped from the tree. The monster dodged back from the woman, and my kindjal sank into the ground between them. It looked up at me and hissed low, pulling its lips away from red gums. I closed the distance between us with Feather Step as the lizard whipped out its tail. I deflected it with the newly returned kindjal and twisted in the air, kicking the monster hard in the chest. It stumbled back five feet.
