Chapter 20

“Thank you so much for letting me share your inventory pouch,” I said to Samantah.

“Of course. Now that you’ve got your own, you’ll be better prepared. Tosin, there’s something Antoine and I would like to ask you.”

“Sure, what’s that?”

“Well, we’ve gotten along quite well now haven’t we? Would you like to explore another dungeon with us?”

“Yea, I’d love to. Tell me more.”

“It will be a level 3 dungeon and more than likely to be another one with afflictions such as poison. Toppirius has called upon me to shine light onto an Obsidian Shard. It’s currently in the clutches of a level 3 cauldron wielding Hag boss. I’m bound to the calling of Toppirius, so I have to fulfill his request.”

This was a tough proposition for me. I still felt inept when it came to dealing with afflictions. I still hadn’t any cure poisons aside from my two potions. No. I couldn’t accept Samantah’s recruitment. Not until I was more than prepared, so I politely declined, explaining why.

“What if we give you a few days to prepare? I know you could use the experience,” she said.

A few days to prepare would be good. I did enjoy fighting beside both Antoine and Samantah, and I’m not sure how often I would adventure beside other healers. Maybe it would be a good idea to tag along. I could make use of everything that I was sure to prepare and level up. I could learn more about afflictions. I’m sure the dungeon would also be an excellent learning opportunity. The more I thought about it, as long as I had a few days to prepare, I was growing quite excited by the prospect of working with Samantah and Antoine again.

“Wait,” I said. “It’s not going to be just the three of us right? Especially for a level 3 dungeon?”

Samantah gave a brilliant laugh. Her hair swayed and the curled ends bobbed. As her hair moved, the curls transformed into depictions of woodland scenes over and over again. A familiar sense of calm flowed through me and I felt relaxed in her presence. I couldn't help but chuckle along with her.

“Of course not. I’m going to recruit some more magic heavy adventurers this time. Mages, Anciennes, and maybe an elementalist. I’m not quite sure about that just yet.”

“I’d love to come along,” I said.

“Excellent! We’ll leave the day before the next full moon. It’ll be a week's worth of travel again. We might go through a dungeon on the way to better get to know each other. You do what you need to do until then. When we meet, it’ll be in the morning at the bar here. We’ll stock up on food, water, and travel forth.”

“Count me in,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

This was perhaps the most excited I felt since the day I became an adventurer. I couldn’t believe I was planning on crawling through a level 3 dungeon already. I felt a mix of thrill and apprehension. Without wasting another moment, I dealt with my loot and trading post affairs.

The first thing I’d done on returning was purchase an inventory pouch for 1 gold. It had a capacity of 10 items, and I planned on leveling it up to increase that. Most expensive thing I’d purchased so far. It didn’t feel like it though.

I sold the statues, the buzzard pelts, plate armor boots, the burlap sack of carrots, the ristra of dried red peppers, and 3 silver rings. For all that, I’d received 32 silver and 38 copper.

I decided to keep the runic stylo, the book titled “Beyond the Blood,” the gold necklace with the blue gem on the charm, and the Reanimate Monster Corpse scroll. I kept my personal bag for now, only because I didn’t know how much I would level my inventory pouch and I needed the space until then.

Our return to Klayvale had taken nearly six days. On average, a little more than 5 crystals had grown per day. Six days worth of spellbook grown mana crystals earned me an additional 123 mana points, bringing my new total to 223. I could now perform daily upgrades to all my gear without too much worry over shrinking my available mana pool.

The next thing I did was repair my waffle stitched cloak. It cost half a silver to repair the burn and tear. It felt good to have it back to new.

I put all my scrolls, the spellbook, the waterskin, and the 2 Cure Poison potions into the inventory pouch. I was tempted to level the pouch’s capacity to fit the rest of my healing potions in there, but thought instead to wait a couple of days to do that. Samantah said it was a good idea to level the pouch’s durability for every capacity leveled. If I planned to store a weapon—especially one as large as my flagstaff—I’d need to level the pouch’s durability quite a bit. “I’ve seen countless pouches tear open at the seams from lack of durability,” She had said. “All the owners belongings just dump all over the place and they end up scrambling to carry as much as they can.”

Leveling aside, I sought out Waldorf the alchemist once more for some advice.

“How’d your Cure Poisons treat you?” Waldorf said.

“Haven’t used them yet, but I got my hands on a spellbook and I wanted to get a Cure Poison rune. I remember you said they were usually divine made.”

“Ah yes, but I’m not exactly an expert on runes. There might be a rune master around here. Often she’s on some quest. She’s usually near the double doors at the main entrance.”

The rune master was a woman named Bennette. She was an older woman with a straight spine and spindly straw colored hair. One eye was faux. Her skin was freckled from age, not from birth.

“Cure Poison you say?” Bennette said once I’d explained what I was after. “I could inscribe the rune for you. 50 silver for my service. I can inscribe it right into your spellbook at a basic level 1. It can be cast using 30 mana. It will cure up to level 5 basic poison afflictions until the rune reaches level 6. Then it starts to cure higher level afflictions.”

“Half a gold,” I said. “That’s brutal, but it’s really important that I invest in Cure Poison.”

We admired my spellbook for a few minutes. Bennette was delighted by it and enchanted to be the very first person to install a rune onto its pages.

The process was quite quick. She cast out her mana bar, and whipped out an obscenely lavish runic stylo. She drew a single point from her mana bar and drew a multilayered rune in mid air. In the stylo, the blue mana was turned to gold ink. The rune was perfectly drawn and it hovered there, wavering as though through heat waves. The edges burgeoned with the colors of fresh magma.

Then Bennette retrieved a glowing coin from her inventory. It was brilliantly white like a far away sun through a clarity of empty space. She then put the tip of her runic stylo to the coin and it melted into the pen like flowing quicksilver. She finished her last drawings on the rune, then touched the stylo to the rune and dragged it down to the first empty open page of my spellbook.

When I asked her about the coin, she said affliction runes require a divine element. Divine coins can be amassed from fulfilling requests from divine entities and can be used in a number of ways. Being a rune master, Bennette used them specifically for her services.

“Why else did you think this was worth 50 silver,” she said with a wink.

The rune settled onto the page and then dimmed to black as it absorbed into the paper. Bennette took a good look at her handiwork and smiled. Then with the same stylo, she dipped the tip in a vial of black ink and filled out the description of the rune.

I watched in amazement as her Arcane Imprint swelled at the bottom of the page like ink was bleeding through the page beneath it. Her Arcane Imprint was a wooden bowl, filled with a rainbow of clays. Fourteen thumbs were aligned in an arch over the bowl. The whole thing was within a circle of teeth. At the root of every tooth was a mini tree.

It was the most awesome Arcane Imprint I’d ever seen. From what I could recall, Garmar’s had been a bird clutching a thistle or something. I still didn’t know what mine was as I hadn’t yet created a scroll.

“You’re all set healer,” Bennette said. “I can’t help noticing you’re collecting quite the items on your flagstaff there.”

“Yea, they’ve all come in handy.”

“Be cautious when you take alignments with divines and deities. Nasty stuff can come from bad agreements. The pot could be stirred for all of us.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“Wars are sometimes sparked from disagreements between demi-deities, deities, and divines.”

“What about legends?”

“Rarely, but they’ll certainly have their influence too—don’t get me wrong.”

“I appreciate the warning.”

“Just a second young healer. I warn you because I wanted to tell you about Ghospo. She’s the divine that brought the Cure Poison rune to the world of Felke. She has a temple located in Honeybush. It’s a small town south by half a day’s march. You seem to be on the path of forging alignments. I thought I’d mention Ghospo with a word of warning.”

“I think I’ll do exactly that. I want all the help for afflictions I can get.”

“I’m glad I could steer you straight. If you want to arrive in Honeybush by evening I’d suggest you get yourself going.”

I spent a few more minutes with Bennette, thanking her for the Cure Poison rune, and writing down instructions on the last page of my spellbook. She pointed out the rune that allowed me to erase a single page at a time, which required 10 mana.

Just before I left, she leaned in and beckoned me to lean in as well.

“I saw the enchantment in your spellbook for Manifest Mana Crystal,” she whispered. “It’s a locked enchantment, meaning no power in this world can level it up. Locked runes, or locked enchantments are quite rare. Especially one whose function will greatly aid you in your beginning years as an adventurer. I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend keeping that to yourself. Do you understand what I am saying?”

I nodded.

“Did I speak clearly? You understood every single word I said?”

“Yes,” I whispered back. “Every word.”

She leaned away again and a smile returned to her face.

“Very good healer. If you ever need my service again, please don’t hesitate to find me.”

“There is something I do need help with. I don’t understand almost all the runes in the spellbook. Could I pick your brain sometime on what all the runes are? I’ve no clue where to start in identifying them.”

“Of course. I’ll go over them with you when you return. How about that?”

“Deal,” I said.

With that, I was off. I refilled my waterskin, purchased some simple foods and left the trading post. Snow fell on my sleeves.

As soon as I left the city, I came upon less maintained roads where the snow had been left to pile up to extraordinary heights. Paths had been paved in every direction, leaving clean cut columns of snow standing on their own every now and then. When I could see over the walls of snow, I sometimes spotted the tops of bare trees. Branches occasionally collapsed under the weight of all the snow.

By evening I reached Honeybush through a last narrow path that few seemed to have traveled lately. I came upon the temple and lifted my hood in greeting at the old man who waved me forward.

“Welcome to Ghospo’s Temple, young adventurer.”