As Leon walked towards Verin from the rural outskirts, he realized an important piece of info. He had never checked and accepted whatever the material gift was.
Leon was still in the rural outskirts, although he was closing in on the more urban parts of Verin. So he walked off the crude cobblestone road that had been set up and found a nice tree to sit under as the sun had already made its presence felt as it heated Verin.
Under the notifications tab, it still had the notification that he previously read, since he never got the predetermined gift so that the notification would disappear.
-You have passed the level 20 threshold and Ultimate Blessing from ?????? has been upgraded. The blessing will now give your class an additional 5 Skill Points per level. Plus a predetermined material reward will be given
Feeling excited as so far the only physical gift he had ever gotten from the system was Ensis, Leon knew Ensis was essentially one in a kind so he was pumped.
When he tapped the notification, it gave him an option with the words: Do you wish to claim the predetermined gift? Y/N
Leon quickly tapped Y and claimed the gift, suddenly a dim light appeared in the air in front of Leon. At first, the dim light didn't disappear nor did he gain anything, he then realized he had to do something specific and held his hands out under the dim light in front of him.
The moment this happened, the notification on Leon's notification tab disappeared and the dim light also vanished, only leaving a marble in Leon's palm.
Feeling a little perplexed and underwhelmed with only a marble as a gift, Leon tried to find out what it was and checked the description it gave.
The marble's description was very confusing and unfamiliar to Leon.
-Blood Marble: A marble containing the ichor of a god. Merely crush the marble and the ichor will be put into action, this particular marble is using the ichor of ??????. Therefore a miniscule calamity will descend when crushed, effects and scale unknown use at your own discretion.
Leon was quite curious. First off it seems whatever he had set free in the monument was in fact a god as Leon found out randomly through some various books that ichor was a god's blood and the gold-colored liquid that the marble encased only proved his suspicions more right.
However, Leon wanted to know what a so-called calamity meant. To Leon, Calamity meant a lot of things. It could be a tsunami, earthquake, famine, plague, etc. With this in mind, he didn't want to use the marble at all, without incentive like the direst of circumstances would he break the marble as breaking the marble was also gambling with his life since the marble didn't say it did not harm the owner.
After some thinking about where to put the marble for safekeeping, Leon remembered the pretty big locket Sava had given him. After he received it back in Orsini, he had never really gotten time to examine everything on it.
Reaching into the breast pocket he had on his most inner clothing, Leon felt the pretty hefty locket and pulled it out. When Leon got a better look at it he was quite surprised,
The locket itself was bigger than your normal locket and was maybe twice or triple the size. The outside of the carvings was extravagant the say the last. One side of the locket was made of something that looked like gold, however, the composition of it seemed to not be 100% gold but had something else mixed in. On that side, an eagle was carved into the side with its wings outstretched and laurel around its neck. However the other side of the locket was made of a white material that Leon had never seen in his life before, but also had a small amount of silver that was visible to him. On that side, there was a giant bear on its hind legs roaring carved into the white side with ferocity, which was a stark contrast to the elegance and regal aura the eagle side gave.
Leon thought the locket was quite strange since the two sides seemed to come from two completely different lockets, but they were then joined together, although that's what Leon thought because the two sides looked too different from one another.
In the inside of the locket, most of the space was occupied by a picture of what Leon instantly recognized as his mother with a bunch of other people with the same colored golden hair surrounding her as they posed for a photo. Leon could tell her mother was the furthest person on the right side of that photo and right next to that photo was a smaller photo of Leon's Dad.
Even though Leon had already gotten most of his emotions out yesterday, he still felt emotional seeing them again. He realized that the marble was so small that it actually fit with the remaining space left in the locket, so he put the marble on the right side of the photo of his father and closed the locket.
To make sure it never got hurt, Leon put the locket underneath even his innermost shirt, so even if he took off his armor most of the locket would still be safe from being stolen and being seen.
Although Leon wanted to wear it in public, he felt like it wasn't appropriate and also didn't want to catch the eyes of any unwanted attention as the locket looked like it could be a family treasure and be sold for a lot of gold.
After finally getting that out of the way, Leon went to the fountain in the middle of the city, which was where the last time the whole group had gotten ready for a quest.
Seeing as he had gotten there early, Leon waited patiently at the fountain for quite a while, by the time someone else had come the sun was not directly overhead him.
In the corner of his eye, he could see Tomoe and Arwin walking towards him, Leon gave a gesture to come over.
"Hey. I see the two of you came here together?"
Arwin merely shook his head.
"Actually we met on the way here since both of our guilds are quite close to each other."
Tomoe gave a gentle nod, then Leon looked around the entire fountain.
"Where's Tecia? It's getting a little late."
Arwin and Tomoe both shrugged and while sitting on the edge of the fountain Tomoe set her spears on her lap.
"You should know how Tecia is, she's always late."
As if on queue a cloud of dust could be seen in the distance, the closer it got the easier it was for the three to hear a girl yell.
"WAIT FOR ME!"
Of course, it was Tecia who looked like she had just gotten up as she still had what looked like bread from her meal in her mouth as she ran towards the group.
Leon smiled as the whole group got back together for another adventure.