Even though I went to lie down in my tent, after taking my armor and weapons off I ended up feeling pretty much naked and uncomfortable. After an hour of trying and failing to get some sleep even though Poniard simply sprawled out and passed out, I got up and left the tent. Some of the others were still awake and hanging out on the platform of suspiciously raised ground and tables, eating all the leftovers that I was surprised were even left over.
"You're pale," an Eliza without her helmet remarks, staring at my arms and upper body that were exposed because I went to sleep in gym shorts.
"If you would actually smile I would probably burst into flames from the brightness," I say in the same emotionless deadpan manner that she spoke with before flashing a smile and stealing one of the few remaining kebabs.
"That wasn't easy to come by," Karen playfully complains when I took the kebab from the dying grill and started unwrapping it. "I had to wait until the guy who made them and everyone possible went to sleep before I could bring those out. Do you even know how to make them?!"
"Haven't the faintest clue," I reply shamelessly while biting half of the buttery and sweet but vaguely salty soft apple off the top of the kebab. "Whoever made these is pretty good, though. Where is the guy? I might just kiss the chef for this one."
Chiming in with something as icy as what Ms. Gwyn said to Frank earlier, Eliza quips, "It's this short brownish green guy with a face that's half mouth and a mouth that's all fangs sleeping in that tent over there. Give him a kiss." Then she did something I did not expect, she flashed a pearly white smile that actually was not unappealing but then went back to her dead fish expression.
Emilia and Ms. Gwyn both looked at Eliza as if they has suddenly swallowed the same frog and then worriedly looked over at me. I however, simply doffed my kebab to her like a hat and say, "Good one. The smile, not the joke, you could have done better. You could have said there might be parts of him out on the hillside, but that sure was a winning smile."
"Holy crap, are they… flirting?" Emilia asks in shock, earning deadpan looks from both Ms. Gwyn and Karen who were obviously unhappy with her just then.
Giving Emilia my best poker face, I emotionlessly say, "No, this is called conversing, you might know what that's like if you did not make assumptions. I also don't think it's appropriate for YOU to make those remarks after what you told me following said assumptions."
"Oh… you're upset about that…" Emilia says awkwardly, now avoiding everyone's gaze when even Eliza turns to look at her. "That was just supposed to be a joke to lead into what I said next. Sorry, I don't think we've met yet. Hi, I'm awkward and misunderstood," she says to play off the situation, stretching her hand out to Eliza instead of me.
Returning the handshake, Eliza says, "Charmed, I'm quiet and misunderstood for homicidal."
"I'm disorganized and demented," Karen remarks to nobody in particular, chuckling lightly when Ms. Gwyn gives her and arched eyebrow look.
Shrugging her shoulders when the others suddenly turn to look at her expectantly, Ms. Gwyn exaggerates a sigh and says, "Oh, I'm quirky and unmotivated."
Of course, who else would they look at next but the only other person here? Me, the guy sprawled out on his own table and savoring the last few pieces on his kebab. "I'm an idiot," I say with a dismissive wave of my hand just to make them stop staring at me.
"Has he always been… that?" Karen asks Emilia and Ms. Gwyn curiously, gesturing at me by circling an empty kebab while pointing and saying the word 'that'.
"At first he was just so quiet, now he says whatever he wants," Ms. Gwyn replies in an oddly chipper manner, as if she were wielding that double-edged sword in a positive manner. "We've really only been on a couple of missions together, but he's quick and reliable and, most importantly, he's not afraid to swim in a C grade giant octopus-spider-slime-thing. But… still. THAT might get worse as time goes on."
I wanted to make a few choice jokes about the ambiguity of 'THAT' but that would only add fuel to their fires. Instead, I looked to Eliza and said, "Enjoying the foods?"
Her eyes actually widened a little as if surprised by being asked such a normal question in this situation. Then they narrowed ever so slightly as she said, "Yes, I've never had fruits cooked like this so it is interesting and rice is one of my favorite foods."
"Good, then you owe me a meal," I say a little loudly on purpose, earning myself a worried look from Karen who knew well enough what was coming next. "You can pay me back by cooking breakfast."
"That's fine," she replied smoothly with even less pause than expression. Then she hit me with another winner and smile combo. "But, what will the others eat?"
"If everybody woke up and saw that smile bright and early they'd be feeling satisfied all day," I reply with another doff of my now empty kebab. "Alright, I'll let you ladies go back to enjoying your stolen goods. Have a good night everyone." Then I all but ran back to my tent before I could get suckered into another losing war of wits.
The next day I was awoken by Poniard who woke up just before the sun every morning. Unlike usual, though, he was actually waking me up by lightly shaking my arm until I was finally roused. Worried that we were in some way under attack again because of the urgency with which I was woken, I hurriedly left the tent with my ivory swords in one hand.
When I actually got outside, I could see the sky was a cloudy but bright gray overhead with the sun rising up in the far distance. The hilltop all around and inside our camp seemed to be aglow with a sea of tiny diamonds lightly swirling about the grass and weeds like drifts of snow. If not for the sheer quantity of this phenomena it would have been beautiful.
As it was, watching the natural revenant field phenomena brought with it no small amount of relief. Not only did this mean we probably would not be plagued by undead again tonight but that we might also get some form of reward. Bringing some form of super rare loot back home would bring all of us either a lot of money or a lot of contribution.
As the seconds ticked by, the snow drifts of crystallizing mana began growing larger and moving with more speed and strength. Not unlike the way Leo had converged all of the flames around camp into a wall, the lights of mana began to converge into a single point where the tiny flakes of snow became large shards that began to meld together. Some shards would randomly break and try again but others would stick to one another and slowly form a proper stone.
While the sun rose steadily higher all of the manifested mana began to condense faster and faster. Some times a shard of the main stone would simply shatter and the pieces would drift away because they had no use, other times the pieces would converge once again but then start sifting through the grass and ground. It was like watching magnets attract and repel each other at first.
Finally, as the crystallized mana began to dwindle in supply as more and more pieces stopped fitting together the entire convergence of mana just started solidifying while the others just went on their own way like wild spirits. The solidifying magic stone took on a slightly rounded cube shape and the light it glowed with began to darken from a clear stone to one of dark violet energy.
Seeing the color of the stone reminded me of the strange lines on Poniard's body and I could not help but look down at my companion. However, instead of standing next to me to enjoy the show Poniard was running out of camp while wielding the ax from our last goblin mission oddly enough, though, the pinkish flint head of the ax was actually glowing a little as he ran out toward the phenomena.
Instead of running out to the cube like I thought they were, though, Poniard started pouncing and chopping into the grass around it. After a few chopping hops, though, he must have finally hit his target because the grass around him burst apart with a flash of dark purple mana. Within the flash of magic light, though, Poniard seemed to be absorbing the light with the flint ax head.
When the light faded I could see that the once pinkish glowing stone was nor forming bright purple glowing lines that replaced the previous mana in the ax head. Just like that, Poniard seemed to be hunting the crystal shards that could not integrate into the cube as was using them create its own magic stone.
More likely than that, though, was that the shards were just excess magical death energy that would simple recycle into a future revenant field and Poniard was trying to drain all the death energy possible to avoid that future event.
After only a few more flashes of chopped light, though, the ax Poniard was wielding began fracturing around the vibrant purple lines showing through the opaque pinkish flint. Then the flint just seemed to crack apart and fall away. Where the flint fell away, though, lime rock powder drifted away from within the flint and revealed the sources of the glowing purple lines.
Inside the lime of the ax head water had passed through so much carrying so much spare minerals that the flint ax head had actually contained an amethyst geode. The geode looked like some kind of glyph or otherworldly character from the angles and odd curvature of its lines but this only added to the mystery. I was dying to know how Poniard did that.
Hell, I was dying to know how Poniard KNEW to do that. They should have only been born like a month or so before we met, Poniard was not old enough to have actually experienced their world. Could this be some for of instinctive genetic memory the lesser sentient species of this world use to naturally maintain the balance of this world?
Big questions like that one were too far above my pay grade to think about, so I simply started walking out to fetch Poniard when I noticed the crystals were not the only source of light in the area. Poniard's face and head and neck were now glowing with longer, darker, and bolder purple lines which now glowed dully like the mana in the air.
The lines of color that had once stretched across the sides of their head now met the corners of their eyes, the line going up to the base of their skull now stretched half of the way up the crown and they had begun developing new lines under their eyes, around their mouth, and going down their neck. I at least had some idea what they meant, now.
Those lines had something to do with mana and the fact they were the same color as the revenant phenomena energies meant that Poniard was a magic-aligned goblin with an affinity for death energy. As to how that was possible or how it came about, I felt like I had a few guesses.
For one, the hearts. After asking around discreetly about goblin habits while training the new generation, I learned that goblin familiars did in fact go after the bodies of creatures they recently killed. However, just like I thought, they were always stopped to preserve profits and so nobody ever figured out WHY they did it.
Now, after having rampaged through like three dungeons while eating various cores and hearts, Poniard was developing into some form of dark mage or shaman. Magic using goblins were not rare, you just usually did not see them until mid or upper D dungeons like most magic using enemies.
But, after dealing with quite a few goblin settlements and seeing how they behave with kills I can deduce that the amount of different hearts over an amount of time determined their growth types.
Wild goblins in their world would claim their kills quickly before another goblin had a chance to take it and stronger goblins like hobs and high evolutions would potentially take from the weaker goblins. Instead of taking their food, though, they would take the hearts and grow themselves at the expense of others. Poniard, though, was the only goblin and had no competition for hearts when with me.
However, there was one variable that I could not help but worry about. While I had never seen what became of goblins and stuff after killing and eating people besides sending more people to kill them, Poniard had eaten a human heart. That COULD have been responsible for some things, but mages classified goblins as a border species between light and dark magics so they were often associated with dark and death elements as well as natural magics like primitive witch doctors.
Now, as the last of the revenant field mana was simply dissipating into the air, Poniard came over to where I was waiting a dozen yards away from the magic stone. In his hand was no longer an ax but a short staff tipped in an amethyst geode that looked like a Chinese or paleo-written character.
Giving me a very human expression in the form of a smile that only revealed the tips of his fangs, Poniard raises his staff proudly and proclaims, "Good job!"
The stone that once sat suspended in the air while forming into a cube with vaguely bulging sides, the solid dark purple crystal now dropped like a normal rock to the ground. Unlike a normal rock, though, this cube thing was emitting faint crackles of dark purple static that made me wary to touch it. However, Poniard fearlessly walked over to pick it up and unceremoniously tossed it to me.
The others who had stayed back for the process were all coming forward now to get a better look at our 'reward'. Karen, somehow, was the first to arrive after moving like a blur through the others. The corner of her slightly open mouth was shiny and wet from drool as if she had just awoken from wonderful flights of fancy concerning the cube she was staring at with a wide-eyed intensity.
"My God…" she murmurs in awe while shamelessly taking the one-by-one-foot round-faced cube from me. "It's a C grade death stone. This thing… oh my God, this thing will make us rich!"
"But what does it do?" I ask curiously, sidestepping to stand between her and Poniard who was now wielding the staff like a weapon.
Unconcerned with Poniard who had been baring their teeth after seeing the stone taken from me, Karen looks toward the others who were all light jogging over and says, "It depends on what you use it for. Got a friend who was just shot in the face as well as a healer and dark elemental magic user? Within ten minutes of death, several people could be brought back to life using the death energy in here and a healer augmented with an artifact of the same grade. On a much smaller scale, dead bodies can be reanimated. Say you're in a dungeon with a troll right at the start, kill it and raise it and it'll tank the rest of the dungeon for you."
That was actually pretty useful and impressive. It was also two grades higher than the portal, which meant some of the enemies from last night could have been in or close to C grade. Probably the bodies some of the parts came from were from C or even higher beasts.
"Best of all, the fact there was a revenant field here and it was a natural one means the portal will probably close after tomorrow," Karen says with a relieved sigh despite tightening her grip on the death stone when Ms. Gwyn tried to take it for a closer inspection. The two of them actually gave each other some serious poker faces for a second, but Karen caved.
"The question is, can anybody use it or only mages with an affinity?" Ms. Gwyn asks after closing her eyes with a look of concentration. "I can feel the mana in the stone, but I can't quite get to it."
"Well… you're a healer," Karen points out as if it should have been clear from the start. "You're made up of so much life energy that the death energy cannot safely interact with you without being damaged, even at this grade. Leo, though, would be able to use it to augment his flames with corrosive damage from the dark element."
"So… would it be worth keeping or worth selling?" Ms. Gwyn asks seriously. "We're all E and this thing is C, all of our problems up until C could basically be solved by this thing."
Frowning hard as if she did not want to admit it, Karen remains silent for a few moments with an almost wistful wetness in her eyes. Finally, she says, "Even without a magic user of the proper affinity, the corrosive damage that thing puts in Leo's fire alone should puddle upper E and lower D trolls in less than a minute. However! Using it without the proper affinity drains excessive energy from both the stone and the user, its one of the costs of using death energy items. Some people with conflicting energy, like a water or ice mage to fire items, cannot use an opposing item without resulting damages."
"I see…" Ms. Gwyn says slowly, staring at the stone with a look of deep contemplation in her eyes. "If we had a dark magician or some shit, we would be set for life. Instead, we'll just have to sell it and upgrade our gear for when we start doing D dungeons in the future."
"All my stuff is C or C graded ammo, for now, so focus on you guys," I say quickly, staying in front of Poniard who had calmed down with the arrival of other people and was actually holding their staff behind their own back.
"Aw, isn't that so…" Karen starts to say while smiling in my direction until they seem to remember something. "Gwyn, oh my God, we do! We have a dark magician or some shit!"
Since there was no point in hiding it anymore, I simply hanged my head in defeat and sidestepped back out of the way so everyone could see the improved magic lines on Poniard as well as his staff. When Ms. Gwyn first looked at Poniard they did not get it. Then Poniard posed proudly with his new staff standing at his side and she made the connection.
Glowing dark purple lines, rough textured amethyst geode protruding from the split of where an ax head once rested in a length of wood, and their earlier actions all seemed to click together in our team leader's head after a few short seconds. All but disregarding Poniard who was probably looking to be praised for his pose, Ms. Gwyn turns to me and asks, "How?"
"I don't know," I reply instantly, trying not to harden my features into a steely poker face that would only give myself away but instead trying to look as confused and bewildered as the others with a high shrug. "He has not even evolved yet but he's developing into a shaman goblin. This will probably put him in D rank without evolution if it has not already. Maybe this is his type of evolution. Maybe a lot of things, but I dont know any of them for sure."
*