<>(Zack)<>

The purpose of me fighting the Slimes was to get stronger, so that I could be strong enough to fight Goblins. Goblins have loot. Well, so do Slimes, but I can't afford the vials to gather up any ooze one might leave behind, once slain.

Not that they do that often, but it does happen.

I could, of course, collect the tails from the Rats, after killing them, but for now, I want to avoid killing the Rats. Not out of fear or anything, but more out of the simple fact that they're a fair bit smaller than me and have some decent speed, so they're irritating to fight, and so I will be until I'm a little bit better with a sword and have some higher stats and am used to fighting a bit more than I am now.

That said, Goblins are more my size. I'm agile enough that I can probably take on a weaker Goblin one-on-one. Probably.

If not, I'll run like hell.

Plus, I want to get some wood from the forest so I can make a fire in my fire pit. Which is why I talked Jesse into giving me a hand ax before I left, just in case I find some decent logs that won't fit in my Inventory. Or in the fire pit.

With that in mind, I enter the forest, sticking to the trail for a little bit, then moving off of it, sticking to the shadows of the trees. Every thirty to forty minutes, I find a group of Goblins, but stay away from them.

I do not want to test my luck against a group just yet, especially since every group bigger than two has at least one that isn't a base-Level. My luck also brings me across lone Goblins higher than base-Level, and I don't want to try them, not unless I can handle a Level 1 Goblin just fine.

After lunch, I search some more until I finally locate it. A single, lone Goblin. Level 1, too. So happy for that. It's taken way too long, though at least I have wood for a fire.

The Goblin walks through the woods and I stalk it, silently observing my surroundings as I do. I draw my knife, then run forward as silently as I can. The Goblin begins to turn to face me, but I move to the side, staying behind it and plunging my blade directly into its back, where its heart would be, were it human.

The Goblin wails and flails for a moment, but its Health steadily drops from 38 to 0 in just a few seconds from the stab wound. I didn't perform an instant-kill, but close enough.

I look at the blood on my blade, then the stab wound in the Goblin's back. It's lying face-down, arms spread to the side. The Goblin has an ugly green hide and is somewhat fatty, with a metal helmet on its head that leaves its face exposed. It's about a foot shorter than me, and has on just a loincloth made of ratted leather.

I flick my knife, the blood dropping off of it. Even the basic weapons here will ignore light amounts of blood. Repeated exposure, however, wears off the resistance, meaning it'll need properly cleaned after enough use. The more basic, less-powerful the weapon, the quicker that will happen.

I kick the Goblin, flipping it over. It has a pouch stuffed into the waist of its loincloth, and I pull it out, finding two old silver coins that look worn with time. They both have a 1 imprinted on one side, a Crystal on the other. The pouch also contains a glass marble, clear all the way through.

I send those to my inventory, then look through my knowledge of what is useful that can be harvested from a Goblin. Their ears are a demand, so I cut those off, then do the same to its nails, since those can also be used for alchemy, if the pervert was honest with me about that.

That done, I spend a couple of more hours searching for another lone, Level 1 Goblin, but failing to find it, I make my way back to town and into the Trading Post.

"Hey, pervert," I approach the counter, dropping the two ears and ten nails onto the counter. "I got lucky and have some loot to sell."

"Why'd you put those on the counter?" Jesse squeals.

"Oh, shut it, Pervert," I say. "How much can I get for them?"

"Nails are by weight," he tells me. "You can get two copper per ear."

He pulls out a scale and places the ten nails on it, then watches as the single plate moves down on its own. He taps something on the base of it, and the nails vanish, replaced by a single copper coin.

The scale is an interesting contraption. A thick stone tablet around six inches on each side serves as the base, a rod sticking up about a foot from the center, then a branch extends from the top toward me, a brass plate hanging from that by three chains. A series of glyphs glow around the base while in-use, but they fade to reveal their etchings after the coin appears. A small rectangular stone plate rests on the side facing Jesse, angled at about ninety degrees. That was the part he tapped on.

"You had just enough weight," he tells me. "To qualify for a single copper, Zacky!"

I will cut out your tongue and shove it in a Slime.

"Thanks," I grab the coin off the scale, and he puts the scale back under the counter, then grabs the ears and adds them underneath, handing me four more copper coins. "Can you explain the monetary system to me? After giving me some food, of course."

"Uh-uh!" He waves a finger at me. "Not before you pay this time, since you have money!"

"I need that for better equipment," I tell him. "Give me food, Pervert, unless you want me to keep using your cheap crap to fight, and cost me my life because it's too weak for me to get stronger with."

He pouts, but gives me a couple of apples, a strip of jerky, and two loaves of bread. I start eating, and he sighs.

"You have no shame," he says, then looks me up and down. "You need some new clothes, too. Your shirt got destroyed a couple of days ago, and your pants are getting torn up. The tunic I gave you to replace your shirt's soaked in blood already and has some rips in it."

"Yeah, I know," I say. "I'll be getting new clothes before I get new weapons, but they're expensive, you know. But now I'm fighting Goblins, I'll be fighting differently, and my clothes probably won't get destroyed as much."

"You managed to carve up a Goblin without problems?" Jesse asks. "Your cuts are clean and smooth. How did you do that? Did you puke at all? Did you-"

"I'm not squeamish," I tell him. "Carving up small animals was a way of life for me before here, you know."

"Uh-huh," he looks unamused. "We don't remember our past lives, Zacky! They're erased when we wake up in the Crystal of Light of Air's chamber!"

I will strip each of your twenty nails off your body. While you're conscious.

"I still cut up small animals back then," I tell him. "Anyway, the monetary system here. Explain."

"Goblins are a lot different than small animals, Zack…"

"And?" I ask. "As a Dark Knight, it's to be expected that I can simply cut up a Monster without issue. It's not like I was cutting you up for not telling me about the monetary system."

"One hundred to one," he says. "For each level to equal the next. Copper, silver, gold, diamond, platinum. A load of stale bread, which is what I've been giving you, is worth two copper. An apple is worth four, and a strip of jerky is worth five. And every time I give you food for free, since it's coming from the System and not from a supply chain, I have to pay for it."

"Consider it your act of charity," I smile at him. "After all, you wouldn't want the sweetest, kindest, gentlest boy you've ever met and will ever know to starve to death, right?"

Jesse huffs, then I leave, making my way home, thinking about what he said.

It seems that stuff is pretty expensive here, compared to what I can earn easily.

I pull out the copper coins Jess gave me, then the two silver coins I acquired from the Goblins. They probably won't work as real currency, since they have that slightly-black tinge to them, but I still want them for a little bit longer, which is why I didn't give them to him.

The designs and sizes of the coins are the exact same, the only difference being that five are made of copper and two of silver. That, and the silver ones have a blackish tinge to them. I'll ask Jesse in the morning what that means for them.

I send the coins into my Inventory, then strip off my bloody and sweaty clothes, washing them under the pump, before washing myself off.

Really need to figure out how to heat up water to wash stuff, especially with it growing chillier at night.

With that in mind, I make my way to the wood storage room and pull the sticks and branches and stuff out of my inventory, stacking them up and making piles. That done, I grab what is needed for a fire, along with a few more, then move to the 'central' room of the L-shaped house.

There, I build up a proper pile of wood in the fire pit, then get it started. Once the fire is built up and warm, I curl up in front of it, closing my eyes and allowing me to fall into a light slumber.

The mage stands near a forest, looking around. He's actually fully-dressed for once, a knife with a black hilt sheathed on his right hip, an empty, black sheath for a broadsword strapped to his back. The dream shifts, allowing me to view his front, where he's holding his blade,

The broadsword has a semiwide blade pitch-black in color, save for the pure-white fuller on both sides, along which black runes were etched. The hilt itself is a mix of black and white metals, the grip itself a swirl, the crosspiece carved with dragons, the pommel, a black claw gripping a white orb.

Though the sword itself looks dangerous, even while stabbed into the ground and seemingly ignored, the air it gives off, even in this dream, pales in comparison. The blade seems as if it could rip through reality itself, and something tells me that if the mage wanted to, he could slay even the most powerful of beasts with that weapon.

A weapon he has casually stuck into the ground, as if it's not something that matters.

My thoughts on that lack of care are interrupted by the appearance of a boy around ten years of age, at most. He's small, looking a little bit younger, and has white-blond hair and brilliant blue eyes. He's dressed in a white tunic with a sky blue mantle with white trim over it, sky blue shorts, and brown leather boots that reach up to his knees.

A staff that seems to be made of the same black metal as the mage's sword is strapped across his back, white runes etched along it. He approaches the mage, who smiles at him and puts a hand on the younger boy's head, ruffling his hair. The younger boy blushes, looking down and smiling a little.

"Where are the others?" The older boy asks.

The younger boy shrugs, and the older one laughs, ruffling his hair again, then pulling his sword out of the ground, quickly sheathing it.

"Are they at least rested?" He asks, and the younger boy nods. "That's good. Alexander is going to make every effort he can to keep us from getting into that temple."

Alexander? What temple?

The dream shifts, turning so that I can view the mountains in the distance. They are maybe three or four miles from the two adventurers, and though the sky above them is blue, not far into the mountains, a wall of a milky, pink-orange-yellow something swirls and shifts, a border, of some sort.

Nothing can pass through it, my senses say. Nothing at all.

Not in the slightest.

Looking from side to side, I can see this shifting barrier wrapping around, though it doesn't fully wrap around the forest they're just outside of. Something tells me that even though the wall seems to fade away, it likely continues off into the distance, surrounding us much further out.

Looking back at the mountains, I spot the temple, my vision adjusting to bring me to it. Or at least, what is likely the 'temple'.

On the peak of one of the mountains stands a ring of pillars of a dark grey stone, resting on a circular stone pad made of the same stone. Red, blue, white, and brown runes covering the floor, merging in the middle to form a violet circle of runes roughly five feet across. The runes themselves seem to just be colored stone poured into that pattern, no glowing involved.

Even in the dream, I can feel the raw, ancient power here. It feels… like Big C's power.

I look around, really looking at the pillars. There are eight of them, each one with a single emblem carved into it, the same emblems on the gates in Big C's temple space. Fire, stone, water, air, fire, stone, water, air. Arranged so that the elements they support stand next to them, the same stands across from them.

Four of the pillars have a lighter color of grey to them than the others, looking at them. The Crystals of Light, while the other four represent the Crystals of Dark.

I return my focus to the mage and his healer, the dream shifting so I'm at them once more.

"I know," the mage says to the younger boy. "Once they get here, we'll head out. After another dozen yards or so, the protection yielded by the forest will wear off, and Alexander will notice us and attack with as much might as he can muster. We're lucky there's a Dark Temple hidden in the forest, otherwise, the welcoming committee would already be here."

The younger boy stares at him.

"Yeah, I know," the older boy nods, looking to the mountains, then the temple. "Once we reactivate the temple, this Boundary is safe from the power of the Shadow of Life for at least another thousand years. Longer, if we never die."

The mage looks through me for a moment, then the dream ends, and I wake to the barely-warm coals of my fire.

Sitting up, I stare at the coals in my fire pit.

That was… unsettling. I know he couldn't have possibly seen me, but when he was looking at whatever it was he was looking at through me, it felt as if he was looking right into my eyes. And his own were violet, signaling the use of his magic.

That temple…

With it inactive, the Shadow of Life can influence things here? So whatever that temple is, it prevents him from attempting to breach the Boundary and reach reality?

If so, then he's right in that whoever this Alexander is would probably protect it dearly, if he's on the side of the Shadow of Life. He's probably some high-Level Adventurer who wants to see the Shadow of Life free.

Probably in exchange for something.

If that's the case, though… then why would he have someone so young with him? He himself is definitely incredibly powerful, as evidenced by the first vision I had here in the Boundary, but that boy definitely couldn't be older than ten.

Not unless he's got that halting to his age Nik mentioned to me that can happen to people, but he said it usually takes awhile for that to occur. So then why would a boy have it by ten?

He must be exceptionally powerful, then, to have halted his aging at just ten years of age. But why would he have done so much before then? And how old is he really?

Actually, how old is the mage?

I need answers.