4921 years ago from the current date...
Immortal Realm, year 83967.
Garden of Eden, Sanxion district.
In the midst of a beautiful and lively green forest that flourished with arraying creatures, rapidly flowing river streams, calm breezes, and valiant mountains could be seen walking a nearly naked man who only wore a cloth rag over his private parts.
His extremely developed body was of white complexion. Long black hair flowed to his broad and muscle-bound shoulders, while his face displayed a look capable of resonating awe within most people.
Coupled with his sharp jaw-line and captivating eyes, this man's handsome face was alluring and assertive.
He walked with a confident pace, his chin facing up towards the perfect azure sky, while his limbs cleared the jungle path.
As he brushed his hands past a group of luscious bushes, Zereth came across a large temple of sorts.
It looked to be created out of pure gold, yet, was covered in a thick layer of moss and vines. An abandoned monument.
'I finally found it... the temple of the seventh warrior.'
As he said this in his head, small breezes of white wind began forming below his feet, having wind-molded feathers sticking out of them.
He hovered closer to the temple in an instant before being abruptly stopped by an unfamiliar figure who appeared in front of him out of nowhere.
"Cease your movement!" Roared a tall and burly figure, almost completely adorned in knight's armor made of black steel.
He stood only inches away from Zereth, who hovered backward several feet immediately on sight of the brute.
Swiping his large broadsword towards Zereth, the knight stood his ground firmly.
"You have no permission to enter this grand monument, peasant. Leave here, or your imminent death will follow."
Zereth started at the brute for a couple of seconds with a look of annoyance, before his expression immediately turned to that of interest, as he pulled up the knight's status.
"Alright. Screw the damn temple! It looks like whoever you are, you are stronger than the ghost of the seventh anyways!" A large grin showing all of his teeth stretched across Zereth's face, who was eager to begin this battle.
The large knight seemed to slightly be taken aback by such a response.
"You-- what? Hmm... I have defended this temple for hundreds of years, yet, I have never had a single fool come here just to fight the spirit of the grand warlock." The knight said with a hint of confusion and disappointment in his tone.
"What? Why else would they come here? Are they stupid or something?" Zereth began laughing whole-heartily at the foolishness of those people.
With a look of disdain on his face, the knight replied "They come to seek guidance. They are not moralless cowards like you, who seek battle and bloodshed over honor." The knight paused, holding a look of disdain.
"Tell me then, plebeian, why do you seek this battle? It would be a shame for you to die before I comprehend this pathetic knowledge."
On hearing this question, Zereth ceased his laughing. He looked at the knight for the first time in this conversation with seriousness.
"My son... if you do not already know the answer to that silly question, then that is precisely why no one will remember your name."
These words were like bullets to the knight's glass heart. Something that he himself had never thought of before.
A realization of sorts assaulted the knight's mind, which made him question what he had truly been doing all his life.
Defending a forgotten piece of gold...
It was a duty given to him by his parents who had long since passed.
Was his entire life worth just living through his ancestor's wishes?
More and more reckless questions began thrashing the knight's mind, who did not have any idea that he was already under a spell placed upon him by Zereth.
[Voice of Belief (Active) Allows the user to manipulate a certain belief of the victim. Victims must believe this themselves in the first place to a certain extent to use.]
Before he knew it, a wave of sudden anger had enveloped the mad brute, who now screamed in rage before charging at Zereth with the broad sword in hand.
Zereth, whose excitement for the fight had still not calmed at all, joined the brute in the attack, lunging forward himself with wind feathers already strapped to his feet.
***
7 days later from the current date...
Mortal Realm, year 2934.
Kingdom of Joutenhiem, Bolnuir city.
Pant... pant...
Zareth could be seen panting heavily, standing over the body of a dead tiger-deer hybrid creature.
He had a small, bloodied metal sword in his hand, one he stole from Drufus' collection not long ago, and faced the dead beast for a few more moments before hovering his hand over the corpse.
'Inventory.'
With that, the entire corpse was instantly absorbed into his palm like some sort of vacuum, only leaving behind a small blue beast core of the pure beast variety.
He learned when first using Inventory that cores seemed to be unaffected by his skill. Still, they were quite small, so storing them wasn't a problem.
Luckily, Zareth had developed a few skills of his own to help aid him during these hunts. One of which boosted his speed by many folds.
It was called "Flash.", a skill where wind formed beneath his feet and allowed him to move a good bit quicker, as he hovered above the ground, making no contact with it whatsoever.
Although he didn't have enough mana to fly just yet, even with his recent breakthrough into the next sub-rank: Earth Formation, this was the best he could do.
At first, the skill was extremely difficult to conjure, and then maintaining it while moving around proved to be even harsher.
Thankfully, he already had some experience with this in his past life.
A similar skill at his disposal in the Immortal Realm was called "Hermes Boots."
And although the two skills didn't work exactly the same, Zareth made their principles as similar as possible.
Another thing of importance to note was Zareth's ability to use Hale whilst sleeping improved drastically, however, with his new Earth Formation rank, mana seemed to barely inch up from using basic Hale.
Throughout the seven days, Zareth had hunted as much as he could, however, he quickly found out that beasts weren't really as common as they seemed to be on his first hunt.
It seemed he had gotten lucky then, because throughout the week he had only hunted down a total of three pure-ranked beasts, with this Antlered Tiger being the last of the bunch.
Of course, there was a reason why he waited before selling these beast parts.
First off, it wasn't that simple to begin with, as no shops would stay open at such late times anyways.
However, Zareth's intentions were never to sell his beast parts to the open market which would only be open during the day, for that would be pure stupidity.
Nowadays, Freya would not even consider taking Zareth out to the Townsquare, let alone allow him to wander off and sell things.
Instead, Zareth wanted to sell.. to the black market.
For such a prosperous city, at least within the outskirts of Joutenhiem, not having a black market was pure ludicrousy.
During his long and eventful life in the Immortal Realm, he had dealt with his fair share of black markets and knew exactly what environments they would be located in, so finding one wasn't going to be trouble either.
As for the reason why he waited to gather at least three beast parts before selling them all? Well, it would give anyone he sells to an impression of abundance.
Abundance was one of the most important things in the art of selling, as it built trust and dependence almost immediately.
If a shop owner saw that Zareth could easily pull three fat beasts out of his pocket seemingly like nothing, Zareth would immediately be more valuable as a customer and business partner than any other schmoe who walked around trying to sell a single rabbit corpse.
This was a skill that Zareth learned very early on in the Immortal Realm, as it was so critically significant in your ability to not just sell your product but to continue to sell it.
With all of this in mind, Zareth began heading for the Townsquare.
He used Flash to travel there as fast as he could, thankfully, the skill used very little mana as Zareth had created it in such a way.
Arriving in only half an hour, he still easily had over three hours to conduct his business.
The main market center was as dry as a ghost town. All of the shops had closed their doors and blocked their stalls, and no vendors nor people were in sight.
Finally, Zareth arrived in front of a pub that still looked to have its lanterns turned on.
At its entrance, a sign read "Fried Fish Tavern."
Just from the outside, Zareth could hear the loud drunk talk and laughter that resonated from the building. This was the perfect place for a black market to be hidden.
Without any hesitation, Zareth pushed open the short double swinging doors and entered the bar with a confident stride, or at least, as confident as a ten-year-old walking into a bar could look...