In the cave that I had stumbled into by chance, I am standing in front of an old man. He's just told me the location of a master who's able to teach me my new martial art 'The Fury Of A Teenager'.
"Well, I better go now then! Thanks for everything!"
I say and walk towards a staircase I noticed behind the man. The old man stops me and says
"Wait!"
I turn around and say with a confused face
"What?"
The old man says
"At least let me teach you the basics."
"Oh..." I say
I didn't expect him to actually teach me something...
...
Efter being taught some basic moves and the core stance, Flaming Hand walks up the stairs and suddenly emerges through the ground.
The whole group immediately starts panicking. OctopusesAC screams
"WHAT IS THAT!? WHY IS SOMEONE COMING OUT OF THE GROUND!? SAVE ME KEYBOARDWARRIOR!!"
After screaming that, he hides behind Keyboardwarrior92. JokerCard lets out a girly scream and runs behind KeyboardWarrior92.
"Why are you hiding behind me!?" KeyboardWarrior92 exclaims.
"What are you all doing?" Flaming Hand says nonchalantly.
A giant wave of relief hits everyone, including KeyboardWarrior92. KeyboardWarrior92 thinks in her 'Thank god it was Flaming Hand, I don't know what I'd have done if it was someone else.'
OctopusesAC instantly yells at Flaming Hand
"What were you thinking!? You scared the living hell out of me!"
JokerCard, with tears around her eyes, nods in agreement with OctopusesAC.
Flaming Hand just responds
"I inherited some legendary Martial art! It's super cool, look at this."
He pulls the core stance of the art. Pulling his right leg back in an arch-form and his left leg straight. His left arm straight forward with a fist and his right arm at his waist in an upside-down fist.
"Legendary... Martial art? That sounds awesome, can I also get it?"
OctopusesAC asks in astonishment.
"Yeah, just jump down the cliff here."
OctopusesAC slowly pushes out
"whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
He then snaps and yells
"How can you even say that so casually!? Jump down the cliff, you say!? Are you actually insane?"
Flaming Hand sighs and says
"I was surprised too when it happened. Now, just do it."
Flaming Hand performs one of his newly learned moves 'Flying punch'.
He punches in the air in OctopusAC's direction. The pressure from Flaming Hand's punch causes OctopusesAC to fall down the cliff.
As he falls down, OctopusesAC screams
"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
But instead of the silence Flaming Hand had expected, upon OctopusesAC's landing, he hears an extremly loud
"BAANG"
This causes the team some worry.
"Did you just kill OctopusesAC?" JokerCard asks 'the confused gentleman with a warm hand'.
"eeeeeeh, I'm not quite sure."
Suddenly a white portal opens up in the sky and out comes a pissed off OctopusesAC.
He lands on his original spot on the hill, with his arms crossed.
OctopusesAC glares at Flaming Hand with an intense aura. Flaming Hand breaks the tension with
"I guess the old man only needed one disciple, hahahahaha."
OctopusesAC raises his fist and says
"You fuckin'... I'll kill you!"
Flaming Hand backs up, with his hands in the air he says
"Woah, calm down. I'll buy you a 'life-recovery potion' when we get to Mandra, okay?"
It takes some extra promises and some helping hands from JokerCard and KeyboardWarrior92, but OctopusesAC finally lets go of his fist.
...
"Finally! I can see it in the distance, it's Mandra!"
KeyboardWarrior declares after about 25 minutes of extra walking. The statement makes the morale of the team shoot through the roof.
"The city certainly looks like an ancient Greek one." JokerCard adds.
The city is filled with white houses in ancient Greek architecture, it also looks like quite a big place.
The closer we get to the town, the more I'm overwhelmed by it. People with carriages are everywhere, and the town is very lively.
When we enter the town, we get greeted by a guard
"Hello, travelers. Welcome to the city of Mandra."
Upon being greeted, I respond
"Thank you, do you know where we can find an inn?"
The guard lightens up and responds
"Well you're in luck, travelers. Mandra's first inn opened up just a couple of days ago..."
The guard goes on to explain directions to the place.
As a guy who's good at orienteering, I picked up the location of the place really quickly. We then start walking towards the inn, but KeyboardWarrior92 interrupts it and says
"Can't we explore the marketplace before we look for the inn? I'm really curious."
Before I have the time to respond, the others join in. JokerCard says
"Yeah, I'm super hungry~~~~! Pwease, Flaming Hand."
OctopusesAC responds in a serious manner
"And you know what you owe me."
I laugh a bit and respond
"Yeah, sure. I'm going to get some information on a guy I'm searching for."
But before running away, I take out 3 bags of money.
I toss one to OctopusesAC, which contains enough money for the life-recovery potion. It costs around a third of what I have, Ouch!
I toss a bag to JokerCard, which contains a bit of money for food.
I toss a bag to Keyboardwarrior, which contains a bit of money for whatever.
When I toss the bag to KeyboardWarrior, I receive a confused look from her.
I chuckle and turn around to walk away.
Time to look for my new trainer!
...
"Is that him?" A shadowy figure says from the top of a building.
"Don't ask me! You have the poster in front of you!" Another figure says and hits the others head.
The shadowy figure is wearing an all-black uniform with a yin and yang logo on the back, he also has really long hair. So long that it covers his eyes, making it relatively hard for him to see. He has to constantly blow the hair for him to be able to see.
The other figure is wearing the same uniform but has ripped out a star form on his stomach, so it reveals his muscles. This figure has short and spiky hair.
"Come on, Agaro. You know I have trouble seeing with all this hair." The long-haired assassin says in frustration.
"I don't care Ocaro. If you can't perform your work correctly, then disappear!" Agaro yells at Ocaro.
Ocaro looks down in anger and whispers to himself
"What a way to take things too far."
"Whatever. We're going to have to wait until the target moves to a less populated area." Agaro states and stares at Flaming Hand with impatient eyes.
"Let's move." Ocaro says.
"Yeah..." Agaro responds slowly.
...
"Excuse me, do you know where I can find someone called 'Yohia'?"
I asked.
The person I asked, a farmer selling some fruit, gets an awkward facial expression and ignores me.
"Hello?" I say in a useless attempt to grab the guy's attention.
After being met with more silence, I let out a "Tch" sound and look around for someone else to ask.
As I look around, I see JokerCard sitting with a pile of sweets. As usual.
I stop a pedestrian walking with a couple of baguettes and repeat my question.
After asking, I'm met with the exact same reaction.
Just what the hell is going on here?
After the pedestrian leaves, I hear someone whispering "Pst, Pst. Listen up".
I turn around to the source of the sound and see a man sitting by a cardboard box with cups on.
I move a bit closer, and the guy starts talking
"I hear you're looking for Yohia."
"Yeah?" I respond. He continues
"I know where he is."
"Really!? Where is he then?" I ask the guy. Waving his index finger in the air, the guy makes "Tch, Tch, Tch" sounds before saying
"I'm sorry, but I can't give away that sort of information for free, yah know?"
Of course he would like to have money. Reluctantly I ask the guy
"Fine, how much do you want?"
But the guy waves his index finger again and says
"I don't want your money. I want you to bet on this game with me. It's simple, I'll just put this silver coin in one of the cups and mix the cups around. Then you'll have to guess which cup the coin is in. The starting bet is 430 silver coins."
The guy gets a wide grin on his face.
430! That's a lot of money! Normally, one would never agree to something like this. But Luckily, I have multiple ways to assure my victory in this. I pull out 4 gold coins and 10 Amarea coins and slam them on the table.
Amarea is a mineral only found in the south of Olympus, it's worth a bit more than silver but is more common than gold.
"You're on!"
The guy smiles mischievously as he puts the coin under the middle cup. He then starts to mix the cups, he is so fast that his motion seems to blend together. Without using an ability, It's impossible for me to track the cup. When he finishes up, I'm left in a confused state. But I just shake off the confusion and start concentrating.
"Well, go ahead." The guy says over-happy.
Idiot, your expression says it all.
I open up my ability window, NPCs can't see players' UIs so the guy thinks he has the upper-hand.
On the list, I select the ability 'Ultimate Search'.
Despite the name, the ability is pretty useless. I can find anything I want inside a 1-meter radius, but the condition is that I must have owned a version of the item for at least 6 weeks. Fortunately though, I have owned a silver coin for more than 6 weeks.
I type 'Silver coin' into the info bar that had popped up.
Immediately, I get a blue-ish hue over my view.
When I look at the cups, I see that there's no coin in any of them.
I knew it! This guy sure has guts, I'll tell you that.
When I look at the guy, I see something.
"What's up? Hurry up and choose already." The guy says impatiently.
When I look at his tie, I see something highlighted in yellow.
"Well, then..." I say and move a bit closer to the guy.
"What're you doing!?" The guy says.
I quickly reach the back of his tie and pull out a silver coin
"I'll choose this one!"
The guy gets a terrified look on his face. I pull the guy's tie closer to me and say to him
"Now tell me where he is!"
"H-H-He us-usually hangs o-out at the-the graveyard." The guy says.
I throw him back a bit and throw his silver coin at him.
I grab my money and start running.
A sign is in front of me, it has three arrows pointing at different directions, the one that catches my interest says
"The Grand Graveyard."
and points to the right.
I'm coming for you, Yohia!