Monsters and legends, p.5
Monsters and Legends, page 5
part #1 of Infinite Realm Series
Ryun got up and kept the tip of his sword pointed toward the monster. It looked from Ryun to Zach, and then back again. Deciding that an unarmed Zach was a better target, it launched itself at him. He barely managed to jump out of the way. Ryun stabbed forward, and caught the monster in its side. It screeched again and lashed out with its claws, scratching Ryun on his hand, he cried out and dropped the sword.
The sight of Ryun’s blood shook Zach to the core. He realized that this was real, that they could both die.
With a yell he jumped forward, his fist striking down toward the monster. He hit it in the back, and he felt the weight of his strike as it was sent down. It growled and turned, biting him on the leg. Zach cried out and raised his hand, something in his mind clicking and his fingers extended.
[Piercing Stab]
His hand stabbed into its eye. He felt his finger push past the eye and deeper until they hit something soft inside. The monster thrashed for a moment and then its jaws released his leg, and it fell to the ground, still.
Zach looked at it for a long while, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down his face. He didn’t feel tired, yet somehow he did feel weak. A flashing symbol in the corner of his vision drew his attention, and somehow without realizing it Zach brought the notification up.
Young Aniwye slain — 100 Essence
Achievement unlocked, title available—First Kill
Reward: 5000 Essence
He glanced at his status screen and saw that he had a new screen.
Titles
Reward
First Kill
Be the first person to kill a monster in the Framework-run world
5000 Essence
He saw that his Essence now totaled 5,150. He had gained Essence from killing the monster, and another five thousand from being the first person in the world to kill one. He didn’t know how to feel about that. The choice was taken from him as Ryun yelled out, startling him.
“Hell yeah! Did you get the achievement too? Five thousand Essence! This will give us a great head start compared to the others!”
Zach blinked. Ryun’s hand was bleeding which reminded him of his own injury. His leg was throbbing, but the only thing he could focus on was Ryun’s grinning face. Zach tightened his fist until his knuckles turned white.
“Hey,” Ryun called out as he took a step closer. “What, you didn’t get the title?”
“Yeah, I got the title,” Zach said through gritted teeth, and then he smashed his fist into Ryun’s jaw.
Ryun fell down to the ground, holding his face. Zach’s eyes opened wide as he realized what he had done, but he didn’t let himself pull back. He took a step closer as Ryun turned still on the ground.
“What the fuck was that?” he yelled at his best friend. “Are you insane? Do you realize that we could’ve died? Why in God’s name would you do something so inexplicably stupid? Do you think that this is a game?”
By the time he was done, he was breathing heavily and glaring at Ryun. He saw his eyes widen, then look at the back of his hand and the claw marks there. His eyes then turned to look at Zach’s bleeding leg.
“I…” Ryun started, but he didn’t finish.
Zach wanted to say something else, to make Ryun see how stupid attacking that monster had been, but his legs gave out and he fell down on his rear. Ryun scrambled next to him, looking him over. He grasped Zach’s pants and cut them with his sword, looking at the wound. Zach wanted to tell him off, but the fight had left him. He watched as Ryun cut out a strip from his pants and then tied them around his calf. Both of them had attended a first-aid class, as it had been mandatory for their campus dorm. After he was done with Zach, he bandaged his own hand. They didn’t have any water, so they couldn’t clean the wounds, but at least they had stopped the bleeding. He didn’t want to think about what they could catch from the monster.
“I’m sorry,” Ryun whispered once he was finished.
“Me, too. I shouldn’t have punched you,” Zach said.
He could see that Ryun was much more subdued now, compared to how he had been before. The reality of what had happened seeped in—finally. Zach saw him glancing at the dead monster and then to the surrounding forest. It looked far more intimidating now compared to how it had seemed before.
“We should leave this place,” Ryun said finally. “Are we… Are we going to try and find the others?”
Zach swallowed hard, Linda’s face jumping out to him. Finding her had been his first thought once he realized what had happened. But now…if there were more monsters around… He shook his head, dismissing the cowardly thoughts. They didn’t even know where they were, didn’t know what was going on anywhere else. They were going to need to look for a road or some sign of civilization, and they could look for the others at the same time.
“We should keep an eye for them, but our first priority should be finding a way back to the city. I am sure that there will be an organized effort to deal with all of this.”
“Right,” Ryun said. “If there are now monsters in the forest… We should probably use the Essence we got as the reward.”
Zach nodded. “Yeah, good idea.”
The first thing Zach did was look at the shop screen. From what the Dealmaker told him, if he wanted to purchase something from him, he could use the shop; if he wanted to make a deal he had to use the Visit option at the top, which would send him to the Dealmaker directly. He didn’t know how exactly that worked, but he had no desire to go back to that dark place. Instead, he looked through the shop. He could only look through what was called the basic shop, as other tabs were locked for him. He went through the list and picked up a simple sword for two hundred Essence, opting for a curved sword that resembled a katana. After that, he saw a small pack which looked to be filled with some basic necessities: a water bottle, a first-aid kit, a small tent, and a sleeping bag. It cost one thousand Essence, but he had no idea where they were and if they would be able to get back home before nightfall, so he picked that up as well. As soon as he pressed the Finish Transaction button, the two items materialized in front of him.
Ryun looked surprised at seeing them, but then he nodded. “Oh right, the shop. I should probably get a pack, too.” Then his eyes got the same faraway look he saw before.
The rest of his Essence Zach put into his Class, letting him level to level nine, and putting almost half of the Essence to level ten. He felt a strange heat go through his body, but it was gone quickly. His twenty-four free points he put into vitality and endurance, half and half. He didn’t know yet what the stats meant, or how much impact they had, but the feeling of the monster biting his leg was still inside his head. As soon as he put the points in he felt a lot better, almost as if he had suddenly recovered. He untied his leg and saw the wound—it was still there, but it was no longer bleeding and it didn’t seem to be hurting as much. He took out the first-aid kit from the pack and the water bottle and did all the work again, now cleaning the wound. Ryun helped him re-bandage it before he did the same for his hand. After he was done, he looked at his stat screens again.
Name
Zacharia Gardner
Race
Human (Earth—Iteration Seven)
Titles
First Kill
Essence
0
Class
Swordsman (U)
Level
9
Combat Ability
Piercing Stab
Movement Ability
/
Support Ability
/
Strength
23
Dexterity
31
Vitality
16
Endurance
17
Intelligence
7
Wisdom
8
Active Skills
Strike (0/10)
Once he was finished, he looked at Ryun, who was sitting down with his eyes closed. Zach could feel a strange kind of energy coming off from him, but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Then Ryun’s eyes opened and he looked at Zach.
“I guess I am a Cultivator now,” he said with a grin.
CHAPTER 3 – PAST – Ryun
First Steps
Ryun put in the first one hundred Essence into his path, and started his journey on the path of Cultivation, reaching the Early Stage of the Path of the Final End. It was a strange sensation, one moment he felt like he normally did, and in the next there was a heat inside of his stomach. He could feel his core, the Qi inside of it, the conduits stretching through his body. It was an incredible experience. With the purchase of the path he knew exactly what he had to do in order to advance, his core needed Essence to advance, and he could get it in several ways, such as by meditating and drawing in from the environment or by using the Essence he earned from the world. After spending one hundred Essence, he had another four thousand left since he’d bought a pack just like Zach. Looking on his path screen he was disappointed to see that he needed forty thousand Essence to advance to the next stage. It seemed like a lot, but he had gained attribute points from his first advancement, five to every attribute, along with the ability to use his path’s base technique, {Empower}.
He brought his screens up and looked at everything.
Name
Ryun Nacht
Race
Human (Earth—Iteration Seven)
Titles
First Kill
Essence
4,000
Strength
11
Dexterity
12
Vitality
12
Endurance
11
Intelligence
12
Wisdom
13
Cultivation
The Path of the Final End (R)
Stage
Early Mortal (0/40,000)
Base technique
Empower
Branch technique
/
Fruit technique
/
Active Skills
Cut (1/10)
His skill had gone up a level, which was good, though he didn’t know how or why it did. Probably because he managed to cut the monster? But he was the most interested about his new technique. He switched his breathing pattern according to the knowledge inside of his head, and immediately he felt the Qi rush from his core, spreading through his body. It lasted for only a moment before he felt weakness and lost the breathing technique. He grimaced at his own stupidity. His core was small and undeveloped. Essence allowed him to shape and improve his core, but he needed to train in order to increase his own reserves and improve his ability to handle Qi. The {Empower} technique could be used to empower parts of the body only, allowing him to ration his Qi and use it for longer. The technique allowed him to go beyond his current stats, increasing his ability depending on the quality of his Qi. He was itching to test it out, but Zach stood up, interrupting his musings.
“We should head out. There might be more of those monsters around,” Zach told him.
“Right,” Ryun answered and stood up. He looked up at the sky, noting the position of the sun. He assumed that not much time had passed since they had been yanked out of the car and dropped here, but if more had, he couldn’t tell. For all he knew they weren’t on the same planet and it had been a hundred years—but he didn’t have anything else to go on. “That way should be south.” Ryun pointed. “If we head there, we should hit the road eventually.”
“If we are anywhere close to where we were originally, then that way should be where the others were waiting for us.” Zach pointed in the opposite direction.
Ryun sighed. He knew that Zach had fallen hard for Linda, but he wasn’t sure about them going and risking their lives for her. Although, when he thought about it a bit more, if there were any more monsters around they would probably find them deeper in the woods—and Ryun was very anxious about getting stronger. He needed more Essence. He realized that Zach was frightened, but for Ryun this was everything that he had ever dreamed about. He had never felt at ease in his life. He had dreaded the existence that had been expected of him: to finish college, to get a job, get married, have a family. That had terrified him.
But this…this was far less terrifying in comparison. Having abilities, a set path to follow and get stronger, to make his own way in this world—this was what he had always wanted. He couldn’t tell Zach that. They might be best friends, oldest friends, but Ryun knew that Zach couldn’t understand. All Zach had ever wanted was to do those things that Ryun feared. He remembered trying to tell his friend about how he felt, how he felt out of place in society as it had been, but Zach had laughed him away, telling him that he would grow up. That had hurt his feelings, a lot. He had thought that Zach would understand, but not even he had.
Ryun shook his head of the thoughts and nodded. “Right, we should at least try and find them,” he said.
Then he remembered something that the Dealmaker told him. He turned around and picked up the dead monster, then started looking through his screens.
“What are you doing?” Zach asked, but Ryun didn’t respond as he found what he was looking for. The monster corpse disappeared from his hands.
“Huh, only ten Essence for a corpse,” Ryun said.
“What did you do?” Zach asked.
“Sold it in the shop,” Ryun said.
He had a suspicion that he could’ve gotten more if he had processed the corpse somehow. Still, it was good to know that he could do that. Seeing as Essence was both a currency and a fuel for his path, he needed to get as much of it as possible.
“Let’s go.” Zach shook his head and put his pack on his back before walking away. Ryun did the same and caught up to him.
“So you leveled up, right?” Ryun asked. He could still feel the heavy atmosphere between them lingering. But it would pass—it always did.
“Yeah, I’m level nine now,” Zach answered.
“Whoa, that’s great. What are your stats?” Ryun asked, and Zach told him.
“That… That is a lot more than me,” Ryun said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, all of my stats are around ten. I only got five points per attribute, and I can’t choose where to put them in. I need a lot of Essence until I reach the next stage,” Ryun said. He knew how many points he would get per stage, all the way up to Foundation Realm. He knew that once he reached the Foundation Realm he would get an increase in how many points he got per stage, but from what Zach told him, a Class always gave the same amount of points. Eventually his path would overtake the amount that the Class gave Zach, but that was far in the future. There were other benefits that Cultivating a path carried, but those were all in the next Realm.
Still, it made sense, as the Cultivators in his stories started slowly, building up their base until they reached higher stages where their power shined. He had Qi, too, something a Class couldn’t use, and he could use Qi to close the gap somewhat. For a moment he wondered if he should’ve picked a Class instead of a Cultivating path, but he dismissed the idea. Sacrificing quick strength now for more in the future was a price he was willing to pay. He would just need to be more careful.
“How much Essence do you need until you can reach the next stage?” Zach asked.
“Forty thousand,” Ryun said.
“I can’t tell if that is a lot or not. I mean I am already level nine.”
“I think we got lucky with the reward. We were the first people in the world to kill a monster. I don’t think that you would’ve gotten that far ordinarily.”
“I dunno, but I’m glad that I have, even though it would’ve been smarter to run.”
“Right, I know that, I just…got carried away.”
“You need to think more, Ryun,” Zach told him seriously. “This is not a game. Our lives are at stake, and we don’t know much. Besides, I’m not sure that I trust anything that that Dealmaker told us. I was acting weird when I was there, almost as if I were drugged.”
“Me too, it was like my inhibitions were lowered.”
“Now that you mention it, that was exactly right. I don’t know why, but I didn’t question the being at all. I believed everything that it said.”
Ryun didn’t respond. Instead, he thought a bit more on his own encounter. It was not that he thought that the Dealmaker had lied, but he was aware that he had just accepted everything that the being had said at face value. He even failed to question him on why all of this was happening or who was doing it. He shook his head; there was no point in dwelling on it, and he needed to be alert in case they encountered any more monsters.
Still, as they walked, he took the time to look at the shop. The basic shop didn’t have much in the way of items, but only some simple weapons, armor, and some supplies. There were three more shops, however: Class, Path, and Skill. For a moment he was tempted to look at the Classes, but he didn’t want to split his focus, as it would only make his advancement on the path that much slower. Instead, he looked at skills. There weren’t many; it looked like he could only see those that he could buy. He wondered if buying a skill would be prudent. He didn’t want to spend his Essence, but on the other hand he was lacking in stats compared to Zach. Perhaps he could use skills to bridge the gap a bit more. Before he could look through the options, a loud scream echoed in the forest.
