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02 - The Spirit Keeper
🕑 Added 2024-06-22 23:00:11 +0000 UTC[Congratulations! You have awakened as a Spirit Keeper!]
***
Ryan's mind was filled with incoherent thoughts. A storm of words and ideas all climbing on top of each other, fighting for the spot at the front of his focus. Was he hallucinating? Was it some sort of elaborate prank? Or, was it possibly that somehow, maybe, he actually awakened?
But, if that were the case, then his class was one that he had never heard of, which immediately made his heart skip a beat. It wasn't something that he would admit to others, but even at his age he was still almost obsessed with the Awakened. He spent a lot of time on the different forums and wiki-sites talking about news or updates on different Awakened, and even more embarrassingly, he had basically every publicly known class memorized. So, either, the only people that awakened as a Spirit Keeper were those who felt like they needed to keep it a secret, or he was the first one who had ever awakened as one. Of course, either of those seemed more than just unlikely, so maybe Ryan had simply overlooked it. It could be a class that was so mundane and boring, that nobody paid it any attention, and even Ryan skipped past it.
None of that really mattered in this moment, though. Ryan had awakened. Once he managed to collect his thoughts, his heart beating so loud that it drowned out the noise from the café right below his feet, and even that of the cars driving by and honking in this terribly loud city, he did what everyone did when they first awakened. He thought of the command prompt, and before he even consciously formed the words in his mind, the floating, vaguely translucent window appeared in his view.
***
[Ryan Aglecard] [Age - 19]
[Spirit Keeper | Level - 1]
[MP - 18]
[Stats]
-[Dexterity - 1.12]
-[Intuition - 1.01]
-[Mana - 0.56]
-[Sociability - 0.98]
-[Spirituality 0.47]
[Skills]
-[Spirit Construction | Level - 1]
-[Spirit Domain | Level - 1]
-[Spirit Link | Level - 1]
***
"...What?" Ryan let out in disbelief. Mana , Intuition, and Spirituality... he awakened as a Magical Class. Ryan Aglecard, who had never really shown even a hint of magical talent. Hell, he wasn't even particularly interested in magic beyond what you saw on TV as a kid. His lowest stats were quite literally the two most important stats for a magic user; Mana and Spirituality. And it wasn't even a contest.
"There's something... something wrong, right?" he muttered to himself, "I know that people awaken talents they didn't know they had, but... seriously, a fucking magic class?"
If he had known this was going to happen, then he would have taken Magical Theory instead of Physics in high-school. But that wasn't what was important right now. Ryan looked down at his hand, and the red gemstone still held between his fingers.
A mysteriously glowing gem he had never seen before, as well as a sudden awakening as a magical class he never heard of before. This was obviously connected somehow.
Ryan took in a deep breath as he collected his thoughts. Keeping the gemstone in his hand, refusing to let it go for now, he walked over to his desk and picked up his phone. With a few quick motions, he pulled up a group chat and dialled. As usual, it didn't take long for someone to pick up.
"Yo, what's up?" a deep and immensely tired voice asked, its owner seemingly distracted, and Ryan didn't even hesitate to respond.
"Modak, I need you and Silvia to come over, right now."
"It's like 5pm, the subway's gonna be hell," Modak replied with a loud groan, "It's not something we can talk about like this?"
"No, it's not, I-" Ryan started trying to explain, when the sound of another person joining the call interrupted him, and Ryan instinctively pulled the phone away from his ear in preparation for what was about to happen.
"Hey, hey, hey, how's it going?!" Silvia, the third of the group, energetically yelled as she always did when answering a call.
"Ryan wants us to come over."
"What? Do you know what time it is? The subway is going to be hell."
"That's what I said," Modak immediately replied, happy to hear his opinion seconded.
"Who gives a shit, this is important, please come over," Ryan practically pleaded. His confusion and excitement were mixing into a mass of constantly whirring, storm-like thoughts that had him basically petrified at trying to figure out what he was supposed to do.
The other sides of the call were silent for a few moments, as Modak and Silvia worried about their friend, "Are you alright? What happened?" Modak quickly asked, though Ryan could already hear footsteps and doors being pulled open, as his two friends already got moving.
"I'm fine, I... I awakened," Ryan said bluntly, and the voices of his friends immediately died down. The only thing that Ryan could hear was the yelling of Modak's younger siblings, echoing through their apartment. By the point that Ryan wasn't sure if something was wrong on the others' sides, Silvia finally broke the silence.
"Holy fucking- give me thirty minutes, I'll be right on my-" she started yelling out, hanging up mid-sentence as she hurried to get ready.
"Wait, are you serious? You awakened?" Modak questioned, clearly unsure if he heard right. At that point, three or four other voices popped up in the background of Modak's call.
"...wait, who awakened?" a woman, probably Modak's mother or maybe his sister, asked, quickly parroted by the young voices of two of his younger brothers, "Someone awakened??" - "Who did?"
Modak let out a loud groan as he tried to focus back onto Ryan for a moment.
"Yes, I really, seriously awakened," Ryan replied, and Modak quickly replied.
"Alright, I'll be right there."
With a deep sigh of relief, Ryan dropped down onto the edge of his bed, "Thanks, man. See you in a bit."
As the call disconnected, Ryan placed his phone to the side, looking back down at the gemstone in his hand. His fingers rubbed over its surface, looking at it a bit more closely. If this gem was related to his awakening, then he should take care of it well. And as if it was responding right to Ryan's thoughts, the soft glow, which had disappeared once Ryan took it out of the box, seemed to come back as a slow pulse. The light dyed his fingertips red, and a shiver ran over Ryan's body as he noticed new windows pop up in front of him.
***
[You have received a new Quest!]
[Maximus’ Request]
[The noble Spirit Maximus is trapped in an ethereal form. Construct him a vessel so that he may protect the world once more]
[Conditions – Construct Maximus’ Body with the provided materials]
[On Success – Maximus’ Gratitude]
[On Failure – Maximus’ Disdain]
***
"Maximus?" Ryan read as he looked over the quest information. He wasn't even surprised that he got a quest in the first place; at this point, any more surprise felt almost forced out of him. But what did worry him was that there was basically no real explanation, and he had no idea who the quest-giver was supposed to be. And then, there was something else important he couldn't figure out.
"What materials?" perplexed, Ryan looked back down at the gemstone, but as he moved his head, noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Wisps of red light, the exact same colour as the light coming from the gemstone, was floating over his desk. They were gathering together, forming a shape; some kind of box.
Ryan jumped up and walked over. These were the 'materials', then? Carefully, Ryan held out his hand toward the mass of light, holding his breath nervously. And then, the moment the tip of his finger touched it, the light scattered like a bunch of flies that had gathered on rotting fruit. And what was left behind in the light's stead was a familiar-looking box, that quickly fell down onto Ryan's desk with a loud slamming. The box fell right on top of the model-pieces that Ryan had prepared during his call with his mom, flinging them all across the room. If his mind hadn't gone completely blank at the sight of the object that appeared in front of him, he would have been pissed, but right now, he didn't even care about those pieces.
Because on the desk in front of him, he had a whole new model. A classic box with bright art on it, depicting a suit of armour in the middle of swinging his sword at some kind of training dummy. That's what the light had given to him.
These were the materials he was supposed to use to 'construct a vessel'.
Maybe Ryan really did go insane after all, since there was no way this was what he thought, it was probably just the appearance of the box. Carefully, Ryan pulled open the box. Inside of it, neatly stacked on top of each other, were a number of frames holding a number of small model pieces. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief.
"What the actual fuck is going on?" Ryan let out involuntarily, "What the... I... what?!"
Ryan reached into the open box and pulled out the frames. They were definitely real. He could feel them press up against his skin, and he could feel their weight. Their... surprising weight. As Ryan pulled the frames out, they were way too heavy. The pieces and the frame holding them were made of actual metal, instead of the hard plastic they were usually made of. Tucked in-between the frames were thin sheets of leather and finely-woven fabric, each also prepared in a way to allow for smaller pieces to be cut out from them. Ryan dropped down onto his chair, not sure what to think.
"I guess I'll just get started?" he muttered, reaching out to his clippers, placing them against the edge of the first piece attached to the metal frame, and tried to cut through it. Just as he thought, it wouldn't budge; it was metal, after all. Since he would prefer not to damage the clippers, he just put them to the side, grabbing his exacto knife to maybe get started with the leather. After placing it onto his cutting-mat, he tried to cut through the thin strip keeping the leather piece in place, but even then, he wasn't able to cut through it.
"Huh?" Ryan muttered, pulling over a piece of paper he had laying on his desk, and the knife cut through it with ease. But the leather didn't even have a mark on it. And when he tried the same with the fabric, it didn't work either. No imprint, nothing at all to even hint at the fact that Ryan was pushing down onto it with as much strength as he could. If he pressed it down any harder, he was worried the knife was going to break in his hand. Clearly, this wasn't something normal. At least there was that, and his class wasn't just related to building regular old models.
Ryan glanced to his side, at his status window that was still open. His eyes landed at the bottom of the window. There were three skills, Spirit Construction, Spirit Domain, and Spirit Link. Just from the names, he figured the first of those three would be the one he needed right now. And as he focused on it, another window popped up in front of his face.
***
[Spirit Construction]
[Level - 1] [Proficiency – 0%]
[Allows the user to construct the Spirits’ physical bodies]
[Effect – Spirit Construction for 20 Minutes]
[Cost – 10 MP] [Cooldown – 1 Hour]
***
"That's... not a very helpful description," Ryan muttered annoyed. Clearly it was the right skill, but he didn't want to use it without thinking about it first, so Ryan quickly pushed the pieces to the side. He turned on his computer and quickly opened a browser, making his way to one the sites saved to his quick-access, 'AWKND', an all-round wiki about awakeners, skills, classes, and anything related.
The first thing he did was search for the name of his class, 'Spirit Keeper'. No direct results, but there were a few entries about other spirit-related classes.
'Spirit Summoner', 'Spirit Whisperer'... even a class called 'Spirit Killer'. He remembered this one pretty well. A couple years ago it made headlines because someone went around killing all the nature spirits that he could find, and then ended up awakening as that class. But even then, there was nothing about his class, and none of his skills showed up in the skill-search either. At least he had regular stats, so he knew what they were all about already.
Even just searching the keywords separately and looking into the keywords 'Spirits' and 'Keeper', he couldn't find anything that helped him directly. So, he moved on to a separate site and looked up some things about Spirits themselves.
- A spirit is a being called into existence through a concentration of magic that has attained a sense of self. Due to their nature, spirits are aligned with certain specific concepts and essences related to the area and magic they were born from, such as Rivers, particularly old Trees, and even sites of worship have been known to produce spirits over time. They...
So, what? Did that mean that this model kit was so old that it suddenly turned into a spirit? Ryan sighed and leaned forward, continuing to read through the whole article. And toward the end, he came to a simple conclusion.
"I don't get any of this shit," he groaned to himself. At this point, he had no other choice. If he couldn't find any information about it online, then he just had to use this 'Spirit Construction' skill. It didn't seem like anything harmful, and if it only used '10 MP', it should be fine. If he remembered right, even the most basic mage spells used 20 MP, so the effect couldn't be anything dangerous.
Slowly, Ryan concentrated on the skill, and his mind was filled with a cloud of information. Of concepts that he hadn't known about before. He had heard this described before, but it was really just as weird a feeling as every other Awakened claimed. While he didn't get any particular details, Ryan simply understood how to activate the skill, as if he was gifted some kind of muscle memory. As he tried to make use of it, something welled up in Ryan's chest for the first time in his life. It felt like that warm feeling spreading through your body after drinking something hot on a freezing cold day. That feeling started in his chest and slowly moved down his arms and into his hands.
For a moment, he could swear that his fingertips let off a slight glow, but he couldn't actually see anything. Now that the skill was active, Ryan reached out to the metal model frame, tugging on one of the pieces. It felt... different, but he still wasn't able to detach it from the frame. As Ryan once more reached out to his clippers to give them another try, his eyes landed on that box filled with his dad's old stuff.
That gemstone was in there, so maybe the tools were related as well. He reached out to them, carefully grabbing the old, seemingly blunt clippers. He felt the warmth flow from his fingers into the tool, and on its metal parts, small runes and patterns began to glow. Immediately, Ryan knew that he had been right.
He brought the clippers to the metal frame, and tried to cut through the thin connection holding one of the pieces in place. And as if he was cutting through a thin thread, the metal was cut through. For a moment, Ryan actually thought he somehow missed, but he very clearly saw the narrow gap where there wasn't one before. After doing the same two more times, the first piece fell onto Ryan's cutting mat, and as he looked at the smooth edges of the piece, a heat grew in his chest.
It wasn't that same magical warmth that he felt when activating his skill just now. It was the heat of excitement that made Ryan's heart beat loud enough that he was sure Runar could hear it from downstairs. Without a moment's hesitation, Ryan grabbed the piece-organizer that was still holding a few plastic pieces of that orc-armour model that hadn't been flung through the room earlier, and emptied it out onto the edge of his desk.
Immediately, Ryan started removing all the small metal parts from the frames.
