“No, Wushu, simply no.” David whispered, “Look at how many of them there are.” They stood by the entrance of a cave that descended beneath the ground. Of course, they were still in the Garden-Forest, but the cave in question had been dug out, and as it turned out, the ones that had dug the cave had been the Froggers.

Their name—Frogger Poisoner—didn’t really do them justice, for what they produced wasn’t really poison—it was honest to God acid.

They could spit it or coat their body parts in it and then attack their enemy with their beefy child-like arms, and if that wasn’t enough, dig a hole through them with the acid.

Indeed, Deviant-err—David wasn’t really happy that his Level four Quest asked him to take care of an entire cave full to the brim with Froggers that could literally melt a hole through him with a punch.

He would be like butter to their incandescent knife. Still, Wushu had a… different idea about it.

 

A.S.U.T. is now level 19. Universal Translation 19%

 

“What do you mean they are just right? Go ahead then, be my guest. You start taking care of them; I’ll go take a piss, discharge my Well since I’ll be discharging something else as well, then I’ll come back when you’ve taken care of half of them, what do you say?”

Wushu made an anti-clockwise circle, then waved in place like a serpent.

“Oh, you were joking now?” Taunted David, “I didn’t know I had signed for a dragon comedian!” The sounds of low-croaking from the cave disappeared.

David immediately shut up, “Did I—Did I say that out loud?”

Wushu made a clockwise circle, then let himself hang in the air for a few moments. Just long enough for David to realize it that he had to—

“Scram!”

As David ran away, through the trees, a silently snickering dragon followed him. He was definitely having fun with the weird Human.

They swiftly reached cover behind a huge tree, it took them roughly forty seconds, and sincerely, David had no idea if he had indeed been followed or not, but he wouldn’t really care much about it. As long as he was safe, that was all that mattered.

So he let himself slowly slump down while leaning on the tree’s bark and puffing out a moan of relief, “That was very close, Wushu—to close for—”

When he raised his eyes, he saw Wushu in a tense zigzaggy position that made him look like a physical depiction of lightning. The Dragon intently stared right above David’s head; he was also charging lightning in his mouth; David could see it accumulate as if a lamp was turning on inside of the creature’s mouth. But then Dave understood that the Dragon was serious, and he was pointing at something, something right on top of him, so he slowly raised his head up.

 

Crawling SpiderSnake

Level: 16

 

A snake with stubby legs that could not properly be defined as those of a spider—yet just as creepy—and the peculiar set of eyes of a spider was staring at him. The creature, seemingly smiling, was instead opening its mouth wide as it descended on top of David’s head.

The moment he saw it, David raised his hand high, yet started screaming, and shot his Arcane Missiles, forgetting that his Well had already reached the maximum capacity.

But, the lightning hit first. The bolt of lightning shot by Wushu, paralyzed the creature enough so that David could attack the monster with a barrage of Arcane Missiles; taking advantage of the creature’s stuck wide-open mouth, David aimed at the creature’s insides and released his tiny Arcane Missiles. Yet he screamed and kept on screaming until Wushu head-butted him.

“Ahhhh—Hey! That hurt, uh?”

 

The Source

Your Class level reaches 3.

 

Mind + 1, Resilience + 1. You receive 1 Attribute point.

 

“Oh, did we win? I hadn’t even noticed...” Dave chortled, “Piece of cake, eh?”

Wushu shook his head.

“That’s mine,” Dave said. “You are not allowed to take that expression, dragon. Anyway, since placing one miserable Attribute point into Resilience will not solve my problem, I guess trying to solve it by increasing my Intelligence might actually be the better option. Source, place the point into Mind.”

 

Status

Name: Deviant (David Anderson) Son

Blessing: Blessing of The Source (Unique) – Resilience + 1 every Level

Title: Trespasser (Unique): Locked

Level: 3

Arcanist Magician, Class level: 3

Class Perks: Source Sight

 

Attributes

Health: 86%

Stamina: 89%

Well: 100%

 

Alacrity: 5

Constitution: 5

Perception: 4

Strength: 5

Mind: 14

Resilience: 14

Charisma: 4

 

Attribute points: 0

 

“Yeah… no new Skills, eh? Well, anyway, I’m dying, and this is not alright.”

He flushed out his Well with Arcane Discharge. The purple veins that had started showing on his hands disappeared completely, yet now he was left with a twelve-hour cooldown. He had to take care of his problem, or he would indeed die.

Dave could relax once more.

“Why are you staring at it like that?” Dave asked the dragon.

Wushu was staring at the serpent that he would undoubtedly not be able to eat. The giant creepy snake had died while still twisted around the tree branch. Its grey scales did not emit any blue to violet light as the veins bulging from Sourceborns usually did.

“You can’t eat it; it’s just too big for you. Besides, weren’t you sleeping until a few minutes ago?”

“Ah, right, shooting lightning is tiring—why am I even listening to you.” David shook his head, realizing that his new life had turned a thing such as speaking to a Dragon into a…reality.

 

A.S.U.T. is now level 20. Universal Translation 20%

 

“Oh, so no ranking-up? I guess it’s a Class thing, then. Pity.”

But David had tougher problems to crack than trying to decode the depths of the Source’s System.

“Well, Mushu, I mean, Wushu, we need to find a way to take care of those Froggers. Also, I can’t hide that I’m becoming rather hungry, so let’s think back at what their cave could offer to us.”

David had seen something into the cave that might offer him a chance to take care of the Froggers. It was a mirror of water that they used to drink. For some reason, they only drank from there. It was a good thing. The problem was that he had no way of poisoning the water.

Or did he?

David looked up.

“Do you think this thing is venomous, Wushu?”

Wushu answered with an anti-clockwise turn.

“Then, I guess we should go find ourselves something venomous, or we are most likely going to spend the rest of the day, here, until we—pardon, I die.”

 

***

 

Cyana’s Echo had encountered quite a few problems to reach David, but she had made it.

As strong as the Biomancer was, she had chosen not to place barriers on her garden. It was a little mysterious by itself, but it allowed Cyana to stare at David.

She was still baffled at the “how” that weak creature had killed her brother. As the Captain had said, the only explanation for such a feat must have been tied to some unknown effects of the Trespasser Title.

Cyana knew nothing about Trespassers or Source Quests, but he was supposedly following one from what she heard him say. It was a rare thing, rarer than anything she had ever heard before. Her brother had said nothing about Source Quests.

Historically, there had been recorded times of Source Quests given en masse while their original planet looked for a new Warden to establish who the new one should have been. The Source had commanded tournaments and races of all kinds. Yet, after their Warden had been found, he remained the same and had never changed since that day of one thousand Xaphi’relian years before.

Warden Xantus was Xaphi’rel Emperor’s very brother, and he had become Warden of Fiendom. And yet, he was not as powerful as the Xaphi’rel Emperor himself.

In Cyana’s mind and tied to what she had studied, defeating somebody like the head of the Xaphi’rel Empire was just a myth.

Still, whatever Xaphi’rel proclaimed was law, and it was right. Until that point, Xaphi’rel had been the kindest sovereign in Fiend’s history, starting from the ages before their industrial revolution until the day he became the Emperor.

His immortality had been blessed by the Source, they said. He had been elected by the Source itself, and she served only him by serving the Empire. No matter what she felt for Virael, no matter what her heart told her, she followed the Kva’ri, and one of the Kva’ri’s pillars stated that The Source was right and just and that it should be followed no matter what. If that was true, the Human creature in front of him, whatever he had done, had done it through the Source, which meant that he had gained his Title justly. However, The Kva’ri also stated that shed blood must be paid with reclusion until the perpetrators learned of another way to behave during their mortal lives.

The Kva’ri is just; the Kva’ri is right. Just as the Xaphi’rel Empire was just and was right.

Cyana drew closer to the Human, studying how he ran, the way he behaved, for contrarily to how extremely feminine it looked, almost as a Fay, the genetic analysis stated that it was a male. The Human was indeed weak yet looked carefree; it was likely that it was hiding something behind that smile. She would have to learn how to study his expressions to understand them; still, something else passed through her mind as she studied him…

She was so close to him, hovering in front of him and moving with him, that if she only had another Magic Mastery under her belt, she would have been able to—she placed her ghost hand on his head—destroy him even in that form.

That thought shook her out of the mental state in which she was letting herself fall. That was not Kva’ri; that was a form of depravity, the very opposite of what Kva’ri professed; she was ashamed of herself for having had that thought.

Well, maybe it was for the best, but her spying came to an end, for a veil of mist, peculiar to Fey Myst-callers, began to descend on the Garden-Forest. She would have to leave for she had no way of seeing what was going on in such a thick magic mist.

The haze soon became even denser still, and she was left with nothing to do but recall her Echo back.

She returned to her senses, opening her eyes to the quickly expanding veil of mist, and sighed.

Five addressed her, “Don’t worry, Three. It’s all taken care of; the higher-ups will give us free rein. It’s just a question of time.”

But Cyana had other doubts, “He is wearing a muffling device, so I cannot tell how much he has leveled up; however, he is growing fast. He follows a Quest for now, and judging by the way he acts, it is not the first Quest he challenges. He might grow enough to escape us if we let him go for longer.”

“That is a useless worry, Three,” answered Virael, who was returning from the umpteenth call. “He might increase in Levels, but that doesn’t give him Class Mastery; he’s nothing but a child; we’ll just need insurance that the Ancient won’t retaliate to our actions, then he’ll be in our hands.” Virael sat down, taking the Kva’ri’s posture of meditation, “In the meanwhile, we wait.”

She nodded, sitting down as he did; Five, who didn’t seem to be a Kva’ri practitioner, waited standing and staring through the Garden’s tall trees. Cyana thought about what he might be seeing, but it was unlikely he could see much more than her, even in these conditions.

 

***

 

“That thing is venomous?” David asked, nodding at the weird green jelly that moved about.

“That is a slime, Wushu…It’s like the weakest thing in existence.”

 

Virulent Green Slime

Level: 23

 

David’s eyes grew wide. “Or maybe not…are you sure I can take that thing on by myself?”

Wushu rotated anti-clockwise.

“No? Then why did you bring me here?” A series of aerial acrobatics followed his question.

“To level up, but how? I can’t beat a frogger without your help, and you want me to shoot down something twenty levels higher than me? With its Resilience, my magic will probably feel like I’m throwing snowflakes at it...”

Wushu said no, then pointed at a thick branch on the ground.

“Oh, hey, I guess branches do break even on this weird planet,” David exclaimed, “What do you think I should do, puncture it to death?”

Clockwise rotation, followed by acrobatics.

“After you attack it with lightning—hey..."David said, looking around, "we didn’t have a mist before…”

The veil of mist slowly descending on the forest. “This does not help, mini-Erin,” he said to the sky, “did you hear me? It doesn’t!” He shook his head, almost exasperated, "Creepy lolicon..."

He sighed, then turned over to Wushu, “Anyway…how did you say we were going to do this?”

David nodded at the Loong’s movements. Meanwhile, his Resistance to Curses improved because of the amulet.

 

Curse Resistance reaches level 6. Resist low-level curses with a 6% increased efficiency.

 

The appearance of another increase in Curse Resistance wasn’t really terrific, but being slowly cursed and building resistance to it was better in the long run.

“Alright then, you blast him several times with lightning, and when it’s half-fried, I’ll attack it.” Dave nodded, yet Wushu continued speaking.

“Yes, nobody is going to steal your food;" Dave rolled his eyes, "you can have it all for you, mate. If we live through this, I’ll even prepare fish and chips for you. Meanwhile, I’ll wait here; you go get it, tiger! Or is that one of your mortal enemies?”

Shrugging, David hid behind a mossy rock. He gripped the branch tight in his hands and looked at the creature slowly moving, leaving a trail of the poisoned ground as it did.

The ground on which the slime slithered through, fumed with dying moss and grass, they had been literally eaten by the slime’s mucus, eroded from the outside until nothing remained.

Still, Wushu’s lightning was…peculiar; it barely emitted sounds when shot, it should have come with thunder, but it didn’t. But given the dragon’s skill-set, David had made half an idea about his attack pattern.

It would be clearer now.

Wushu moved about in the air, releasing its lightning every time it was off-cooldown. Meanwhile, it evaded jets of green mucus, which the slime—that was simply an amorphous ameba of slithering gel—spat at it. The Dragon, agile like a...dragonfly...danced in the air and all around his enemy.

After Wushu cast his fourth lightning bolt, he got very close to the slime, opened his mouth wide, and released a white light immediately followed by loud thunder. It was only sound—sound and a little shockwave that more than displace the gelatinous enemy; it simply scared it.

The thing repeated for a few, interminable minutes, then, finally, Wushu retired and quickly made forms in the air, which David understood right away, were addressed to him. He would have to take action.

“Are you sure he is not going to kill me with his poison jets?”

Wushu made a vertical wave pointing upwards.

“Oh, he can’t anymore!? Then long live the Queen!” Saying so, David charged at the slime.

He would still have to be very careful, especially not to end up stomping on it. He was fairly sure that he would get himself poisoned even through his suit of leather if he did.

Not only had the slime shrunk considerably by throwing all that matter around. As Dave strikes connected, the creature kept losing chunks of its gelatinous matter and became smaller by the seconds. Each consecutive attack made the creature shrink and shrink; that pattern continued on until David’s now—now sizzling—branch couldn’t take, nor give, any more beating.

Every swing displaced some of the slime, which ended up splashing to its left or to its right, while the slime attacked by swaying his mass up or down, or even right to the left.

In the end, the slime had considerably shrunk, arriving at a point that could not be considered a serious threat for David. Once done, only a foot-sized mass of green mucus enveloped around a crystal was everything that was left of the slime.

“Is it dead?” David asked, wheezing; he knew that the creature had yet to fall. Wushu answered in kind.

“Then how do I end it?” He exclaimed more than asked as he threw the branch aside; it had become effectively useless,

“Oh, right, magic.” Realizing so, he unleashed Arcane Missiles that, more than aimed at damaging the creature, were meant to displace the last remnants of the mucus that were still attached to the crystal. Their momentum would be enough.

David pointed his hand in front of the creature. From his wrist to his fingers, energy started radiating, then Arcane Missiles shot forward one after the other, aiming at the crystal.

The Missiles momentum, more than magic power, did the trick, and after thirteen shots, the crystal stopped moving through the mucus and, instead, rolled forward on the ground.

If fighting a Sourceborn level twenty-three didn’t do the trick, nothing would level up his Class.

 

The Source

Your Class level reaches 4.

Mind + 1, Resilience + 1. You receive 1 Attribute point.

 

Congratulations. You have unlocked Arcane Construct.

 

Arcane Construct: Conjure an object made by an untainted Source. It can hold any type of item indefinitely or until shattered. It follows the caster around. 10% Well filling per cast. 10 seconds cast time. Limit to 1 Construct. 1 minute post-breaking cooldown.