Galahad managed to fit all the extra gear he grabbed into the bandit tent bag and everything he kept was in his own pack. He found a few places that sold preserved foods like jerky and nuts to adventures for the long days they spent in the Bluewalk dungeon.
He ended up spending over a hundred credits on food to eat on his walk to Diagon, and that was after eating sandwiches with the nice owners of the villas and their grandchildren. Despite telling himself to control what money he had left, the urge for food kept growing exponentially for him. It was like his body was never satisfied with how much he ate, the only suppressant was just eating heaps of whatever could find.
After paying the sweet elderly couple a visit and buying supplies, he noticed a very prominent structure standing out among the buildings and decided he wanted to test something.
He walked into the only crystal resonance tower in Bluewalk to pair with mana resonance for the second time in the span of a month.
Galahad entered the sleek looking tower and recognized it to be almost identical to the last one he went was inside. The tower had a mana pool circulating power into the giant crystal in the ceiling and a few technicians mozying about the area, clearly not given enough motivation to actively work.
He had to find a technician willing to help him this time and after being waved off by the first few, he eventually found someone that would help. The man willing to work with him couldn't have been any older than Galahad and clearly gave off the vibe of a recent new hire. When Galahad stopped to talk with him, he kept staring at all the bandages along Galahad's arm, obviously curious about the reasons for so much wrapping.
Galahad ignored the light pressure coming from the technician of wanting to know the backstory; the more people he told, the more people would question him about injuries he secretly no longer had. Despite no longer needing the bandages, he only wore the bandages in case James, Vallori, or some random person from Teramore spotting him in Bluewalk. He felt it was best to avoid unwanted attention until he arrived in Diagon and after situation with his trapped friends was resolved.
The technician walked him to a side room with the same kind of mana energy pillar running along the wall like his other visit. After being asked a bunch of questions that mirrored the first time he entered, he watched his Karmic Plate receive a connection to the resonance tower of Bluewalk.
Just like before, Galahad was blinded by the crystal's request to pair with the tower. The same thing happened with ripples of purple waves all across the white space and the technician was still oblivious. He kept talking about safety protocols and reviewed Galahad's plate information.
Galahad seemed two for two on the connections, he wasn't sure what would happen if he did refused, but there was no real reason not to accept.
Before leaving, the rather young technician wrote down everything off the crystal while reminding Galahad not to assume the stats given were completely accurate.
To the technician all he saw was:
————————————
[ Galahad Mystroff ] lvl. 10
Class: Spartan
1075/1085 HP
Title: Lone Survivor
Attack: ???
Defense: ???
Agility: ???
————————————
Meanwhile Galahad was able to see in his mind:
————————————
[ Galahad Mystroff ] lvl. 10
Class: Spartan
[ 120/900 XP ]
1075/1085 HP
Title: Lone Survivor (1/1)
Attack: 31
Defense: 28
Agility: 28
Skills:
Fury and Fyre [ 3:02 ]
————————————
'I guess after I chose a class, the power from the mana orbs aren't just building up my stats now. It's probably building up this strange version of Chi that I burn when activating my skill.'
Once the whole process and procedures were complete, Galahad stepped outside and checked James's name on his list of contacts in his head. If someone wasn't paired to the same resonance tower, their names would show up grey instead of white, indicating a scry message couldn't be made between.
It seemed that rule applied in Galahad's head. Every name on his list was grayed out except [ James Disark ].
'Let's see if this works.' Galahad concentrated on the name and an text bubble obstructed most of his view.
[ To JAMES DISARK ]
[ . . . . . . . . . . ]
[ Cancel ] [ Send ]
It was empty for a second, before Galahad watched the message he wanted to send begin typing itself out.
[ I am leaving for Diagon now. I'll probably see you around the library at Teramore when I get back. Bye. . . Also, if you see more of those berries from the other day, don't eat them. . . You'll get sick. ]
[ Cancel ] [ Send ]
He confirmed for it to be sent to James and a little chime went off after he exited out of his list of scry contacts.
[ Task Complete: You have sent a scry message without directly using your Karmic Plate. ] [ Remove Task ] [ Keep Task ]
Galahad cleared his self-made task and started pondering the reason of the black orb doing this to him. Not a day had gone by where he hadn't thought about the cause of the spriggan and blemmyae making such an odd item. He only remembered the echoing mentions of a vague 'Him,' and the possible link it might have had with the false god the psycho elf was talking about.
Whatever the case was, he now had control over the black orb's power. He was going to exploit its abilities to save his friends from becoming one of the many faces permanently frozen in the depths of the cavern.
'Such a strange ability though, I wonder why this happened with my Karmic plate? Would I have ever figured this out without somehow absorbing my original one? And where did it learn to create all new class options?'
So many questions flew through Galahad's head yet again as he started walking towards the edge of the town. Before leaving, Galahad stood at the exit of Bluewalk, checking over his gear before taking a few steps out the gateway to roads further away from Teramore.
'Next stop is Diagon.'
"Are you leaving now?" Asked Vallori from behind him. She and James approached Galahad before he made it out past the fence. James was wearing the same jacket from their journey together, but Vallori was wearing casual clothes and a jacket instead of her guard armor.
"I was hoping to talk to you for a bit before you left, I have a few questions I wanna ask you." She asked when Galahad turned to their voices.
Galahad had to suppress a flinched at her sudden and blunt questioning. For all he knew, she could have been aware about any of the things Galahad had done recently, none of which could be considered good. Paranoia was festering in the back of Galahad's mind.
James butted in right after Vallori asked for Galahad to stay. "He's not a criminal, you don't have to be so abrasive with the request Vallori. She means to ask you out to dinner with us, we're stopping by the most favored tavern in Bluewalk before heading back to Teramore.
Galahad had to angle his head up at Vallori whenever he looked her in the eyes, making him think of how Trista had to look up at everyone else when talking. Her faced seemed rather flushed at James words, but Galahad was too busy releasing his held breathe to notice.
"Yeah sure, I'll head out later then." Galahad said with a reflexive smirk. In his mind however, he was dreading the obnoxious delay to come.
*****
Night had fallen as Neita began nodding off in the carriage, she never found comfort confined to a small wooden box moving unsteadily on wheels. It was her constantly overactive brain that had drained her of so much mental energy that she losing the willpower to stay awake. Just when she was about to lay against the door of the closed carriage, the driver stopped.
"Good lord, what's the cause o' that." exclaimed the middle-aged driver from outside.
Neita nearly flew out of her seat when the driver stopped and woke up, now fully alert. She stepped out the carriage to see what the driver was making a big fuss about and immediately spotted it. A bright orange light was emanating from somewhere a little over the hills.
'I would have thought the sun had set hours ago, what is-' She soon realized what it was and jumped out of carriage's closed cabin.
"What towns are we near? That fire is gonna need water magicians fighting it, immediately!" She shouted at the driver. The large source of light could only have appeared if a village sized fire had erupted. They needed someone with water magic to stop the fire from spreading into the forest.
The driver didn't seemed to fazed at Neita's panic, he knew the area well enough that there was no hope for whoever was out in the valleys.
"I'm sorry madam, but this road is the only one that leads to Teramore this time of year and the nearest bit of settlement is Bluewalk, which we passed three hours back where we came from. We can't do anything about that except pray to the Nine that they have mercy on whoever is out there. Let's hurry to be on our way before the forest beasts get a whiff of us."
Neita was stunned at the driver' lack of reaction. 'Does everyone who works in the Guild office have to be so heartless, its unbelievable.'
Neita looked down both directions of the endless trail, nothing indicated in either direction that someone was coming. She cursed the merciless world she lived in and ran in the hills, hoping she wouldn't be too late to save anyone who might be in danger.
"Miss wait! Its not safe to out here in the dark! There's mystical creatures and monsters out here!"
Sadly his pleas were ignored and Neita had already disappeared over the hills. She had no idea what to expect, but if she could save at least one person from the catastrophic inferno, then at least she knew she was finally doing what she believed was right.
*****
Before Galahad really knew it, he was sitting in a tavern that reminded him of Mower's back in Teramore. It had a similar lay out of tables and a bar, the only difference was they didn't have a special broth or any kind of especially well-made plate. The tavern mainly sold third-rank dishes made by whoever was available in the back kitchen.
The hardly mediocre food and drink in a bar half as full as Mower's on a quiet night was reminding Galahad of one of the many reasons why he didn't like Bluewalk.
He couldn't wait to get out of the rundown town and on his way to his meeting with the Count's associate. He needed to figure out a plan sooner or later, time was against him and each moment he spent not focused on getting back into the cavern was making him more and more agitated to the point of thinking he had to solve his problem by breaking into the dungeon gate wearing a mask and live inside the dungeons until he found his friends.
He kept that crazy thinking in the corner of his mind. For now, he was dealing with the less life-threatening issue of drunken James singing with a few older men in the back of the tavern. James knew the words well enough, but his voice was a very different pitch that screeched above his new best friends' voices. Galahad almost stood up to grab his drunken acquaintance, but James's cousin grabbed Galahad by the good arm to stop him.
"Let him live a bit, he's never normally so active. He was only ever this comfortable when he had a book in his hands." Vallori smiled and gestured to Galahad to sit back down.
"So," She continued. "James told me about what happened to you in Teramore, real nasty incident from what I've heard so far."
Galahad frowned after hearing that, he wasn't sure what James did and didn't know about the dungeon event; there could have been a number of things he told Vallori. Galahad felt he needed to tread carefully.
"What do I need to fill you in on? I'll try and answer what I can." Galahad tried to put on a tone that signified not wanting to discuss too much so she wouldn't realize any gaps in his story.
He brought an ale up to his mouth and stared intently at Vallori, awaiting her questions while answering his own.
Vallori seemed a bit embarrassed at his stare, but she had no idea Galahad was waiting for his powers to read her level, he was not ogling her or getting mad at her. Now that he connected to the town, he could see levels and names without directly touching someone by only staring hard enough.
Back when he was on the road, he was able to see James's level until they moved out of the city limits. The name was still there, but it became grey like when someone's contact was out of range of the towers.
[ Vallori Disark ] lvl. 58
Battle Class: Valkyrie
'Damn, not only is that level insanely high like Dante's but it's also another class name I don't know. I'm starting to think maybe everyone else has classes as unique as mine. First Spartan, then Viking, and now Valkyrie.' Galahad's frown beneath the mug furrowed his brows as Vallori started to talk.
"I don't mean to ask you to talk about everything that happened." She said managing not to stammer. "I just mean it's hard to deal with pain both physically and mentally. The gods know I how much I've had to deal with."
'Huh, she must have been fighting a lot since she was young. Only way someone her age could get such a high level, either that or a life of nonstop, intense training.'
Now that Galahad knew this wasn't a casual attempt of an interrogation, he felt his body loosen a little. That also might have been the ale as well though.
"It's never fun dealing with pain." He said after putting his glass down. "It's always lingering after the scars fade and everyone expects you to go back to normal simply because they want it to be. They confused their projections of emotions as empathy, thinking it helps."
Vallori nodded, understanding him. "Your parents right? That's exactly how mine were, back in Teramore. I came here to get away from everything for a bit and ended up spending a long part of my life running security here in Bluewalk. They wanted me to act like nothing happened and go back to how everything was before, but I thought I needed a change of pace for a while. Hense getting hired in Bluewalk as perimeter security."
"And did it help you?" Galahad asked.
Vallori paused with a swig of her ale before answering. "At this point, I don't even know. I tried a lot of different things, including trying to write. It helped me vent for a little while, but the pain kept catching up to me.
She made a face like the ale was going bitter on her tongue. "After trying to make everything feel different for so long, I just think it's about time I try to going back to normal for once."
"Yeah, cheers to that . . . Uh, We may wanna get James, he looks like he's about to start climbing the bar table."
Vallori snapped out of her deep-think trance and saw her cousin making his along the table to dance.
'Damn it James!' She thought after going after him. 'I bought those Blenta berries earlier in hopes you'd stay more calm when I talked to your cute friend.'