While they sat in silence, brightness slowly creeped in from the cave entrance, illuminating the cave and allowing them see each other's faces more clearly.
As Riven slowly drifted back into his thoughts, he remembered something he was now required to do everyday to avoid the consequences.
[Daily Quest]
Kill at least one monster (0/1)
50 push-ups (0/50)
50 sit-ups (0/50)
2km run (0/2)
Rewards:
+100exp
+50sp
+2 stat points
Consequences for failure: -1 all stats
'I guess I'll check out the store or allocate my points after the mission then,' Riven thought after opening the quest tab.
"Uh... hopefully you both don't find this weird," Riven voiced. "There's a routine exercise I make sure I complete every day so..."
"Oh, okay. Go on then," Aria replied.
Moving towards the back of the cave, Riven finished with the push-ups and sit-ups first.
'I'll have to find a beast to kill later today, hopefully it'll be as easy as the last, and I won't have to risk getting hurt,' Riven thought.
Getting up, he started heading outside the cave.
"Err, Riv..."
"I'll be back soon," Riven cut her off. "Going for a short run. When I'm back we can decide where to head to."
"But..." Riven was already out.
Few second later Riven appeared back in the cave.
"Back already?" Kasey asked, holding in a laugh.
"You guys didn't tell me we were right in front of a dungeon! What if we got attacked by beasts, or another horde comes out? We'd be done for!" Riven exclaimed.
"I tried telling you but you were in too much of a rush," Aria said, her face flustered after seeing Riven's reaction.
"We decided to stop here for some time since it'd be hard for the others to figure out we'd stay this close to a dungeon."
"Still, that's quite dangerous. I wonder why you both aren't as worried as I am," Riven replied.
"Well, that'd be because..." Kasey started but Riven cut him off.
"In any case, I'll be off now. Back soon!" He dashed out.
Stepping out of the cave once more, Riven turned to look at the dungeon gate and couldn't help sensing the energy it was emitting as it was almost making his body vibrate, his hairs were standing on their ends.
*Ding*
The system interface came up.
[New quest received]
Enter and close a dungeon.
Quest timer: None
Quest rewards:
+Unknown
Consequences for failure: Death (near future)
[Accept]-[Reject]
'Hm? A quest. Wait.. the dungeons can still be closed? That's a new discovery. I don't think even the others knew this.'
'Well I guess it wouldn't hurt to accept it. The fact that theres no timer and the consequence is death in the near future means soon enough I won't have any choice but to enter and close a dungeon.'
'I guess the system just wanted to give me some information and reward me when I eventually do it. This just means I can't afford to rush this mission.'
Having accepted the quest, Riven turned around and started his 2km run towards an unknown destination.
When he saw the bar change to (1/2km) he kept running for a bit before deciding to turn back to meet the others.
As he got closer to the cave, he started hearing sounds of struggle, like a fight was going on.
As he increased his pace, weaving through trees, a sudden roar resounded from the direction he was headed to.
'Oh no, I knew they shouldn't have stayed there. And we'd have left already if it wasn't for me.'
Soon, Riven could see the Cave entrance in the distance, and there he saw Kasey and Aria outside fighting against a group of beasts, two lion like beasts included.
'Shit!' Riven cursed.
Rushing towards them, he couldn't help but acknowledge how good the both of them fought together.
'No wonder Thorne said they were the group's best fighters. Their quite good to be able to hold off this amount of beasts off with just the both of them.'
Soon both Aria and Kasey caught sight of him and started maneuvering their way through the beasts towards him.
Quickly throwing a fireball, it hit one of the beasts and Aria cut through it with a sword, killing it.
'Did she always have that sword with her?' Riven thought. 'And the sheath? Was that always at her waist? I don't remember seeing it on her.'
The trio grouped up and Riven looked around to see more beasts coming towards them from different parts of the forest.
"We need to deal with these ones quickly and get away from here before they overwhelm us, we can't afford to have a horde on us," Aria stated.
"Yeah," Riven replied, pushing a beast back with a fireball. "And I could really do with a sword right now!"
"Here!" Riven heard Kasey's voice. Turning towards him, Kasey threw a sword towards him.
Catching it in mid-air, Riven examines the sword which looked like it was made from the earth.
"You created this just now?" Riven asked.
"Yeah," Kasey answered. "Takes a lot of skill, practice, and concentration though, so it's not something any ordinary earth mage could do."
"Oh." Riven quickly removed all thoughts of trying it out himself.
'The sword is quite sharp, I wonder what level of expertise is need to have to be able to do something like this.' Riven looked towards Aria to check if her sword was made from earth like his.
'Huh, her sword's steel, and it looked quite durable and sharp too,' Riven mused. 'Ok! Time to get away from this.'
Riven charged towards the beasts, shooting a fireball at one and following up with a stab with the sword right after.
'Huh? How can I fight like this? Is it this body that's remotely acting on its past memories? That'd be good.'
Finally, with a slash to its neck, Riven finished off the beast he was against.
[Daily Quest]
Kill at least one monster (1/1)
50 push-ups (50/50)
50 sit-ups (50/50)
2km run (2/2)
Rewards:
+100exp
+50sp
+2 stat points
[You have successfully killed a monster]
+500exp
'Huh! It took me this much mana just to kill a single beast?' Riven exclaimed.
'I think I'll have to allocate those stat points now to know if they'll be off any help right now.'