• 3^rd Person POV

Dawn have arrived on Evan’s small glade as he stands up from his cuddle pile with Umbra. He dismisses Umbra as he recalls himself to Clamshore.

Arriving on its plaza, Evan decided to stand amidst the citizen since his face is different due to the illusion from his [Robe of Everchanging]. He looks around the place until he finds a shop where merchants come and goes frequently.

Coming in, he’s greeted with a man who’s wearing a red cap with a tassel at the end, green jacket and buttoned up shirt. It appears the man is around 50 to 60 years old with slim body exuding an air of elegance and professionalism.

“Welcome to The Contract’s Mark, how many I help you?” The man ask as he assess the person up and down. “A magic caster eh? its quite rare to see a person like that here”

Evan feels a bit braver since he’s covered by illusion but he still unable to speak as he opted to write on his notepad then use the same thing that the old lady who sold him alchemy set did.

The words on his notepad begin to appear in front of the man but it is slow and steady taking care not to surprise the old man as he reads them using his monocle.

“I see… I see, you wanted a custom-made stamp that you’re able to customize whenever you need. Hmmm…” The man rubbed his chin while thinking. “If that’s what he’s asking, I believe we still have some things in stock. The latest version stamp with customizable parts.”

“Come this way please, we certainly have what you wanted” The man leads the way as Evan follows him to the display.

“We mainly deal with various wooden stamps in differing qualities for merchants including assessing their validity as well. Especially if it comes from the capital city or other kingdoms / empires. Ah! This is our latest version.” The man display a well-made wooden stamp already lathered with lacquer that’s fitting for Evan to use. It is also remarkably polished that it shines underneath the light.

“Here let me show you the difference between a normal stamp” The man pick a normal stamp randomly as he press it on top of a blank paper. It shows a symbol of a sailing boat and marks encircling it.

Then he uses the latest version giving the same symbol on the blank paper, but he made a gesture to show a particular part of the stamp.  There’s a dial on top of the stamp that allows him to change the date of the stamp and names. The butler like man as he twists the dial and presented him with multiple stamps giving different names & dates.

He also shows another big dial behind the stamp that allows him to change the mark. From the simple sailing boat into another set of images.

Evan eyes gleams a little bit as he writes. “How much would it be?” the words slip out from his notepad and appears right in front of the man. He began to read

“Ah… this would be 400 GC, it is made from high-quality wood and from the finest wood carver combined with clever blacksmiths to create the ingenious dials after all.” As Evan contemplates a little bit upon hearing it.

Nevertheless, he brought out 400 GC from his inventory and give it to the man as he professionally smiles and said, “Thank you for your patronage”. “Well… I wonder why a magic caster need a stamp? He’s not an official, is he? Nah… at least he paid” The man waved goodbye to Evan as he sat behind the table awaiting more merchants.

After purchasing that expensive stamp, Evan have only 100 GC left as he move to the alleyway as his figure vanish out of thin air and reappears back to the small glade.

“That’s it for today, I need to take a rest” He logs out from Eidolon to make dinner before taking a hot shower, brushing his teeth and finally fall asleep on his bed.

--

*BEEP *BEEP *BEEP. Waking up from his alarm, Evan do his usual routine before making a nice breakfast to himself in a form of muesli bar & a fruit. Cleaning his milk moustache, he stands up from the kitchen and wash the dishes. Thinking of several things in his mind to do upon entering the world of ‘Eidolon’.

“Firstly, I think I’m going to check the forest of darkness about the leylines influx the quest mentioned. Then do something on it, I don’t know what but after that probably infuse the newbly bought stamp.”

His eyes twitched for a second as he cleans up his hand and hurriedly take his phone. He opens the ‘Eidolon’ app to keep track of his status in-game without inside the console. Mainly it is used to see ‘Player’s Market’ progress.

In there, he can see his own shop username of ‘M&M’ and see the GC that it has. Evan cannot find any items available for sale instead all of them are sold. With him getting the notification to his phone that all of his items are sold out. There’s even reviews on the item.

“Guys! It has no CD at all!! You can chuck them without limit. I tried it and it works” – User CookieBeater.

“Careful with the rare grade mana potion though, those stuff-like drugs for mages. Feel extremely powerful for a minute then suddenly goes weak nevertheless 5/5 want to go on power trip again” – User FireStarter

“Wait… I’m making drugs?” Evan thought to himself thinking of the potions he made. He slowly nods making the connection especially the rare grade mana potion which fits the category of drugs really well since it has side-effect.

Before long he shrugged his shoulders. “Eh… I got big money from it and the side-effect isn’t that bad too as long as the consumer knows what’s going to happen” Evan put the phone beside his console connected as he enters the world of Eidolon.

He logs in the same place as he left before. Which is the small glade that he deems a safe spot, today he’s going to the forest of darkness. Leaving the glade, his robe change colour into deep purple and looking quite sharp as if there are shoulder pads.

In turn his face becomes much sharper as well complimenting the garment he wore as the illusion & transmutation effect settles in. “I’m safe for now” Evan think as he walks the beaten path.

“HYA!” “AGH!” “TAKE THAT!!” Several grunts and shouts can be heard left & right of him since there are players who’s eagerly grinding for levels and growing their skills.

Evan continues forward until he can spot a familiar field from a distance. There are some slimes roaming about and being defeated by players that he also recognize. “Yup! As I guessed, more already taken this place”

As what Evan predicted, beginners and other players have swarmed the slime field taking the loots for sale and exp since more & more players join. “Thankfully, I have my travelling garden providing me extra money and alchemy.”

While walking, Evan opens his inventory panel. He can see his GC is increased from 100 to 1650 GC as he smiles a little bit gaining the money. “I guess… I can deal ‘legal’ drugs. Hehehe… I’m just going to make sure the side-effect isn’t too badly or eliminate them all together. That would be another problem to think about” Evan mindlessly walks to the forest of darkness.

No one blink an eye at him since he looks different and looks like a pretty high-level player where entering the forest of darkness would be normal. Upon entering the forest, the sounds from other is quietened to a point that he can only hear the rustles of leaves.

His pupil change colours like kaleidoscope as Evan can see the flow of mana in this place. “Yeah... its easier to change my senses like turning switches on/off now rather than concentrating” From then on, he sees surges of mana flow twist and turn erratically.

Growing curious he tries to dip his hand towards it. In normal players eye, they would only see Evan trying to grab something invisible in air. But Evan can feel that the wisps of mana are very turbulent and tenacious as he follows where it is going.

“It seems the flow leads to much deeper part of the forest” As Evan cast a spell that shrouded his feet preventing noise to come out and using his own magics to turn himself invisible. He marches onward following the tendrils of mana.

He can hear the bushes rustle, creatures groaning as they fights against one another or other veteran players. Evan took care to avoid them all and gaining their attention since his muffle spell works wonderfully.

What appears to be half an hour of moving onward, Evan can feel the atmosphere of mana begun to thicken but its not the particular flow of mana that makes him breathe easier rather it is dense that makes it harder to breathe. As if the air itself becomes humid, looking around Evan can see the inner part of the forest have rotted.

Leaves turn dark and withering upon contact with the blackened soil, rotted trees can be spotted amidst the still living plants. Some already fell and rotted inside, from everywhere Evan look though. He did not see any mushrooms growing.

Just rotting, drying, and withering without any causes if he sees it without the lens of mana. With it, Evan can see what’s currently going on. The mana inside them is being extracted by some kind of phenomena. “I’m sure that’s something definitely is going wrong” Evan toggled his [Mana Shield] on as he moves forward.

He can see it himself that an armour made from pure mana is stick on the surface of his skin like a tight-fitting spandex but it’s not uncomfortable rather he cannot feel the pressure at all. Since his muffle spell is on, he did not make any sounds even when he crushes the dry leaves on the blackened soil.

After a while probably an hour or two, he encounters a glimpse of a glade. Filled with only withered trees, the smell of rot permeates the air as it is withheld by the system. As it becomes stronger when he moves closer to that place.

Looking around, Evan cannot hear any more rustles or the grunts, flashes, explosion anymore. Proving that he’s already at the centre of the forest and the deepest part. He also sees how the flow of mana after being extracted now being twisted and knots everywhere.

Entering the glade, he’s greeted with the largest coalescing mana he’s ever seen. It is so bright in his eyes that its quite blinding until he turn it off for a second. What revealed in his eyes are… a large tree almost 25 metre in height and its bark are remarkably thick probably 20 metre in diameter.

Its bark are ebony black with glowing veins emitting sickly greenish glow. There are no leaves on the tree rather it is twisting as Evan can hear the barks splintered and crushed by the twist. For now, it doesn’t seems to be hostile to him and Evan is 100% sure that thing is an enemy as something emerges behind him.

A wolf-dog easily dwarfs Evan with dark blue fur and white underbelly. It sniffs around then witnessing the massive tree in front of Evan & him. In doing so, Umbra begun to whine and tremble. His tail is tucked between his tails and his conical ears twitched & went down as the large wolf-dog hide behind Evan.

“Umbra??” Evan sees what’s going on as he look at the tree in more caution than ever. He approaches the plant he began to touch its bark. Upon he did it though, something begun to appear as the entire place turn strange. The flux of mana began to converge surrounding him & the tree.

As a prompt appeared on his face, something that made his eyes widened beyond measure in shock. Before him lies a large grid panel that consist of 16 squares divided into further 16 larger squares with runes.

“What’s this? A fantasy sudoku?” Evan thought as he sees the resemblance of normal sudoku, but this is 16x16 version of it containing only weird scribble that looks like runes. “Oh no….” Evan guesses right, this is the challenge that he must endure. His heart and mind starts to cry upon seeing the grid