As Arcus reached the mouth of the cave, he stood confused by what he saw. "What on Earth is a longsword doing here?" he thought as he stared inspecting the sword without touching it.
He was careful enough to not touch the sword in fear of accidentally receiving an ability. He did not want a sword ability and this sword was a longsword. It required a lot of strength to even lift it.
"REMOVE THE SWORD AND YOU SHALL WEILD MY POWER!" the voice he had heard the last time spoke from what seemed within the sword, startling Arcus.
"Woah the sword spoke!! But I don't want a sword ability. Thank you for your offer kind sir... or sword." Arcus told.
"WHAT?! NO YOU FOOL! IT'S NOT THE SWORD THAT IS TALKING. SWORDS CAN'T TALK!"
"Huh? You have a point. So are you like some spirit trapped inside the sword and you're saying that by setting you free I'll gain your powers?" Arcus asked.
"WHAT?! NO.. I MEAN YES!!! YOU GUESSED IT! NOW SET ME FREE SO THAT I CAN GIVE YOU MY POWERS."
"Woah a spirit transformation! Like a Dryad?"
"A WHAT?!! YOU DARE COMPARE ME TO A TREE SPIRIT?! YOU CAN GO BACK NOW. I'M NOT GIVING YOU ANYTHING!"
"Ok OK, I'm sorry. I was just curious. Let me help you."
"THEN WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO ON, GET TO WORK!"
"Fine fine!!"
Arcus now considered the fact that he was being tricked and doubted if he would get anything out of it. But he decided to help anyways because the marsh seemed devoid of any life except for a lot of plants and a few trees.
At first he tried to dig the ground to earth out the tip of the sword, only to realize that the ground was extremely hard and digging was not an option. He then tried pushing the sword without avail. He then went out to find a vine which he tied to the hilt of the sword and pulled on the vine with all his might. He tried a lot of things, nothing seemed to work.
"I wonder if there's something inside the cave that might help" he thought as he started walking deeper inside the cave. He suddenly slipped on something and fell. He didn't stop and continued to fall as the darkness of the cave engulfed him.
"ARGHHH!!" he screamed as he fell of something and immediately felt multiple pairs of eyes stare at him. The darkness was gone and the cold, damp floor of the cave was replaced with that of a polished gymnasium's. His ears turned red as he got up realizing he was back.
"So did I get my ability?" he asked.
"Well it's time to find out." the official said.
Arcus was once again asked to place his hands over the orb to check his new stats.
"What happened? Did I manage to free the spirit? I don't feel any different though. Did it fail? Was I tricked?" multiple questions ran across his head as he tried to reach a conclusion on what had happened as he nervously approached the orb, reaching his hands out as he proceeded to touch it.
.
Arcus opened the door to his apartment as he tried to be as quiet as possible. The old door creaked the loudest it had ever creaked which made his heart jump. "Stupid old door!" he thought as he slowly shut the door behind him.
He gulped as a drop of sweat ran down his forehead. His old man lay on a couch with a newspaper covering his face.
"Oh! How I wish he was dead." Arcus thought as he passed the sofa and headed towards his room. That's when he heard another loud creak as he stepped on a loose floor board. A drop of sweat glided down his face and hit the floor.
"So you're done with school, eh?" he heard a voice behind him speak as his body froze.
"Yes sir"
He stood still as his father walked towards the fridge, opened it and took out a can of beer. As Arcus took a step further, his father spoke again.
"You got yourself one, didn't you?"
"Got what?"
"Oh you know what I am talking about."
"I-"
"Show me what you got. I can sense your Soul Energy now. So there's no point hiding it."
Arcus's face turned pale from shock. He would keep his ability a secret until he got into Military School, where he would train to become a Reaver, join a major guild and leave this hellhole for good.. was what he had planned on doing.
His father reached his hand towards Arcus's sorry excuse for a schoolbag as he pulled it away from him and started searching for something inside the bag. Arcus had not bothered hiding his Ability certificate as he had never thought that his father would one day show an interest in the dirt sack he carried to school.
"AHA!! Found it! Now, let's see what ability you managed to-" he stopped mid sentence as he stared at the paper wide eyed. "You... What the?" his father asked as he continued staring at the piece of paper in his hands.
The piece of paper finally slid from his hands and fell on the floor revealing Arcus's stats.
[ABILITY CERTIFICATE]
[Name: Arcus Black]
[Ability: Wolf Transformation]
[HP: 5/6] +0
[SE: 50] +New stat
[Strength: 4] +0
[Vitality: 3] +0
[Agility: 2] +0
[Intelligence: 5] +0
[The +(number) denotes the difference between current stats and original stats.]
[Stats while transformed]
[HP: 5/6]
[SE: 50]
[Strength: 4]
[Vitality: 3]
[Agility: 2]
[Intelligence: 5]
"To think there existed an ability that was as useless as you." his father said before he started to roar in laughter.
"The best part, even after you gained an ability your stats remained the same!" he said before he started to laugh again.
Arcus stood with his head hung in shame. He wanted to kill himself. A wolf transformation was amongst one of the worst known abilities. There were two stages to its evolution. A species change and then the change in form. For the first stage, the user would have to eat the meat of a wolf type energy beast which would then allow the user to transform into the particular beast. Wolf type beasts were usually weak.
The strongest known user of a wolf transformation was an infamous criminal who managed to steal and eat some Cerberus meat from a military faculty. The Cerberus was a monster at the bottleneck stage of A-rank, which made it the only known wolf type beast above D-rank. Such high tier meat would cost him millions of Nummi. The only other way to obtain high tier meat was to kill a beast personally. Which was impossible for Arcus.
As Arcus began to curse his luck, he noticed that his father had stopped laughing. His father was standing a few feet away with his hands stretched out towards Arcus.
"NOOO!!", Arcus screamed as his voice was immediately suppressed by a yellow translucent barrier that surrounded him, trapping him inside a hemisphere that had a radius of 2 meters.
His father opened the door of the house and left, shutting it behind him. His father had the ability to erect barriers. This ability was monopolized by the military and a few large scale guilds after the end of the war. His father had obtained this ability before they started to monopolize it. The ability helped his father get a well paid job in a large guild. Financially they were well off but not a single penny was ever spent on Arcus. His mother had died in the war when he was 2 years old, he and his father lived alone together ever since. He attended a government school, ate one meal per day that was offered by the canteen and got his other necessities working odd jobs. His father was rarely home but whenever he was, he would take the opportunity to beat Arcus up for whatever reason possible. Today was a day he especially didn't want his father home when he would return from school.
Arcus began to weep as he tried to break the barrier in vain. He had never managed to break out of the barrier before. This time he even transformed as he tried to break the barrier hoping it would make a difference. His transformation was that of a black wolf with red eyes. The only difference that the ability brought to his original body was, the change in his eye color, which was now the same as his transformation's. He did not mind this change and in fact was happy because he previously had the same green eyes his father had, the ability had taken away the only resemblance between him and his father.
An hour later the door opened and his father walked in with a bag. For a moment he retracted the barrier before he erected it again, this time surrounding the both of them. He dropped the bag he was carrying and threw out a punch to Arcus's stomach. The punch connected and a few seconds later Arcus was on the floor throwing out the only meal he ate in a day. He then noticed a kick headed towards his face. He tried to put his arms up in defense but before he could do so, the kick hit his jaw. Broken teeth and bloody gums fell to the floor.
This went on for half an hour after which his father opened the bag he had brought in with him and spilled the contents on the floor. What looked like raw, rotten meat now lay in between them. "That's the meat of a Chupacabra. I spent 500 Nummi to get that! Can you believe it?! Now go ahead and eat. Your ability should evolve with that, consider it a birthday present. Happy Birthday son."