Luca DR
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Accidentally summoned 16
🕑 Added 2024-02-06 23:20:19 +0000 UTC16 – First quest
Having no armor, Ishrin had to enchant his clothes as best he could so he wouldn’t feel completely naked and without protection. He did it by consuming the broken lizardman armor and weapons he still carried around in his inventory, along with the mostly useless core fragments. After that hurdle was done – and with what he called a Reality Index that was so high he wouldn’t get any mana regenerated until tomorrow – he headed to the forest.
There were benefits to being more real than his surroundings. Ishrin was slightly tougher, thanks to a minor reality-bending effect, and slightly stronger. This was due to his mind subconsciously changing reality itself, although the effect was so minor and temporary, and the ritual to achieve it so hard it was barely worth mentioning.
Still. It was knowledge Ishrin could use now that he had to go up the tiers all over again. In a way, what was happening to him was what cultivation did as it moved you up the tiers. But while cultivation did it without defying the heavens (contrary to what many philosophers believed back when Ishrin was younger), doing rituals without mana was very much against the rules of the place everyone called reality. Becoming iperreal made you utterly mana-repellent.
No biggie. Ishrin had a sword that could cast without need of magic, and he had Liù. The pixie did not care about mana at all. She was attuned to elemental light and only needed her mind to cast a connection to the plane she originally came from in order to use her powers.
They slowly left the city with the sun at their backs. The road to the forest was clear, dry and almost empty, and Ishrin knew it by heart after going back and forth several times in the last few days. Every time he took slightly less, thanks to a passive ritual circle he was laying out whenever he had spare materials. Just a trail of charged salt, but with enough trips it would speed up his travel time significantly.
The forest was as magical and verdant as it was the day Ishrin came to this world. There was a quality to it, something that set it apart from all the forests of Eternia, his old world. He couldn’t quite describe what it was, but he could feel it, better than ever now that he was not running for his life or utterly defenseless. Being in mortal danger had a way to inhibit your ability to experience the pleasures and views of your surroundings.
Ishrin smiled as Liù flew in circles around his head. The light that hit this world did it in a way that was slightly different to where he used to live. All around him were the calls of birds and far away monsters, the squelch of the wet earth beneath his feet and the smell of plants.
He slowly arrived at an archway of stone overgrown with vines and colorful flowers, and beyond this natural gate he could see the forest opening up into a small glade in the sunshine. It was rocky and the trees were tall and sparse.
The monster he was looking for in order to complete the guild quest was a small, fiery spirit made of ethereal energies that burned with magical fire. It was a small fire wisp, or the closest thing to it that the world of Prima Luce could conjure up as the mana and the elemental fire that was becoming increasingly abundant around the volcano mixed together.
As soon as the sprite saw Ishrin looming closer, it ignited to full power. The forest all around began to hiss and sizzle, the ground drying up and cracking and the trees and leaves burning and charring, their water quickly evaporating.
Possibly dangerous. Ishrin knew an appraisal spell, but it was higher tier magic and he couldn’t use it yet. Still, with his mana sight alone he estimated the sprite to be at least a Tier 2.
He was almost about to leave when he remembered that, for anyone in Noctis, the sprite was actually Tier 4. He smiled. He was going to rather enjoy this power disparity.
I should probably find a way to rethink my own tiers. I am getting tired of having to do math every time.
In the end, Ishrin decided to refer to everything around him by the tier it was according to a local. Making the sprite a Tier 4, and himself a Tier 1 capable of casting two tiers above his level. Not fully accurate, but good enough, and at a high level there were so many other factors to take into account other than just tier that it became a moot point. His magic pebble sword was a Tier 5, more than enough to take out the sprite.
Keeping his distance – even from several meters away he could feel the heat singing his skin – he slowly took aim with his sword. The sprite was a slow-moving floating orb of fire, and it was homing towards him in a straight line. Pretty hard to miss a shot.
The magic pebble flew true, shooting out of the blade as it cut through the air with great resistance and strained Ishrin’s muscles. It left a hole in its wake in the body of the little sprite, making it nothing more than a hollow ring of fire that quickly dissipated in a whirlpool of superheated air.
Ishrin waited patiently. Slowly, what little magic was left of the spirit coalesced into a small gem. It hovered in the air for less than a second before dropping in his outstretched hand, red and slightly hot to the touch.
His work was not over, though. The quest asked for a Tier 3 core, and not a Tier 4.
“We are going to need a ritual to downpower a core.” Ishrin said. “It’s going to be tedious.”
Liù, who had been hanging around in his front pocket, head pocking out to watch the fight, chimed. It was a slow, sorrowful note.
“Penchant for the dramatic, eh? How about we pick up some of these mushrooms I see all around and make some stew first?”
The chime that followed was much, much livelier.
***
Ishrin ate. Surprisingly, Liù also ate some of the stew. She did so by submerging her head into Ishrin’s bowl of steaming hot mushroom stew, and only emerging a while later after the level of the soup had dropped significantly. By all means, she ate more than her bodyweight in soup.
Where did it all go?
There were no visible signs that Liù was more than 50% stew right now.
All in all, Ishrin decided that his culinary experiment was barely passable, blaming inexperience and rustiness for his bad result. It was fine. It was food, and did its job. At Tier 1, Ishrin couldn’t really go too long without eating. Longer than a normal human, sure, and the same went with sleep, but compared to his lack of needs back in Eternia; having to eat, drink, sleep and go to the bathroom at least once a day was annoying.
He kept forgetting about it and then stuff came up at the most unexpected moments. Once it even happened in front of Melina, who had laughed at that. Ishrin had not expected to feel embarrassed, yet his cheeks had turned red. Curious. He did not care about what other people thought about him. Only his wife.
To make up for the bad stew, Ishrin decided to treat himself to a nice dinner back in Noctis. He had spotted a good restaurant that looked cheap enough he could afford it once he got paid for the core he just got, and Liù seemed to perk up when he mentioned more – and better – food. Was she a foodie? Or a glutton?
Probably the second. He shook his head, cast the Tier 3 Major Haste spell now that he had access to mana again and shot off towards the city. As he walked, he made conversation with his pixie.
“You know who else could walk very fast? Qi cultivators. Real nasty people back in Eternia. Fixated on martial arts and stuff. I sure hope there are none here.”
Liù chimed.
“Oh yeah, they don’t have spells. They use martial arts to power techniques. They call mana ‘Qi’ and sit around being arrogant all day.”
Chime.
“No, I don’t hate their way of cultivating. I hate their arrogance.”
Another chime.
“The ritual I used to summon you was from a former Qi cultivator! How could I hate them?”
A meep. Ishrin decided it was best to let the matter rest for now, but then the pixie stuck out her tongue and faked a gag. Huh. It seemed she inherited his hate for Qi cultivators.
“Still, we should be good hypocrites and use their techniques if they benefit us. Never throw anything away, you know?”
My inventory is already full of trash because of this. Mekano would call me a hoarder.
The city loomed close, its walls dark against a backdrop of orange clouds. Sunset was barely past, but the light was fading quickly. Ishrin cast a Night Vision to fight the darkness, not trusting the few magical or oil lamps to do the job. At barely Tier 3, the spell was not the best, but enough.
The guild looked busier than usual; with a small line of armored adventurers Ishrin had never seen before waiting to enter. It wasn’t hard to realize that most of the people here were new, because while Noctis was in no way small by this planet’s standards, its adventurer population had been rather diminutive. In the few days Ishrin had been here he had seen almost every single one of the adventurers at least once, and even though they were barely a blip in his millennia-spanning memory, he wasn’t all that bad with faces.
There were a lot of Tier 3 and 4 people among the newcomers. Weak ones, most of them weaker than Lisette, but their presence did not bode well. They would cause trouble. On top of that, Ishrin was curious to see if their arrival was connected with the volcano.
Only then did he realize that perhaps there might have been another reason.
But none of them reacted when I entered the guild. According to Melina, nobody knows what I look like or my tier. Which is good. Better leave before someone figures it out, though.
“Not worth it.” Ishrin said out loud. The fact that he had a pixie was known around here, and he tried to act casual as he talked to his pocket. “There’s an address on the back of the Quest, why don’t we check that out instead of waiting in queue?”
Liù on her part seemed happy at the idea of visiting the city, and so began their quest to find Billytines Avenue in Noctis with no prior knowledge of the city. Fortunately, an elderly lady was very helpful in providing directions, and after a few minutes of deliberately slow walking they were in front of the shop. It was a tiny thing, a wooden building encroached from all sides by the two or three-story stone buildings that made up this part of town like thin fingers that reached up into the sky from the ground below. Among the grey of the bare rock and bricks that reminded of the ways Earth Shapers built things rather than stonemasons, the wood and huge glass windows of the shop were a stark contrast.
Uncle Billy’s weaponry, the sign read. Even from outside Ishrin could see the faint glow of magical weapons, faint but very present. The fact that he could see it at Tier 1 meant that the power embedded in the weapons was nothing to scoff at. On display were various armor sets, swords and even a bow that sported a huge green gem encased in its sturdy wooden frame.
Autumn sale! Everlasting bow of Might and Leaf – Yours for 87 gold pieces!
The little bell at the top of the swinging door chimed, stealing Liù’s attention away from the weapons and their ornate display cases.
“Hello.” Ishrin said to the empty room. Beside the weapons, nobody could be seen. Not customers, not seller.
“One moment please,” came a voice from the back.
A tiny door opened, revealing the back of the shop for barely a moment. He could see crates of weapons stashed upon each other, spears, bows and piles of gems overflowing from small pouches and leather bags. The small corridor that weaved through the apparent mess was hidden by the figure of a short man with a rusted iron-red beard, long eyebrows and deep-set eyes surrounded by too many wrinkles.
“Hello, I’m Dwymer. What brings you here, young lad? Looking for a weapon?” the man said in a heavy accent.
Dwarf! And definitely not uncle Billy.
“I’m here to deliver you this core,” Ishrin said, clearing his voice. “As per guild Quest.”
“Ah yes, the core. Give me, let me see.”
