by A P Gore
Thia, who had evoked his memory.
The air turned cold as dusk drew closer, but the warmth of love heated Noah's heart. He called Thia back, and she came running, jumped on his lap, and started licking his face.
“Thanks, sweetheart.” He patted demon girl's back. He didn't mind her affection today. She had made his life happier, twice in one day. First by saving him, then by giving him a fraction of his life back.
18. Temple of Sumara
T he Temple of Sumara only opened at night. The goddess seemed to love dark things. Noah had no problem going there alone, but Thia wouldn’t let him. He should have waited for her to go to sleep, he thought, while they walked over the faded old road in the cold night. Thanks to their new clothes, they smelled nice and were better protected from the chilly wind that reminded him of his first meeting with his deceased wife. That had been a cold, windy night too.
Noah stopped in his tracks as he spotted a shadow moving around a corner. He whispered to the demon child sitting on his shoulder, playing with his hair, “Shh, don't make any noise, child.”
Thia froze, along with everything else. The breeze died, and the town grew so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop. It was like the opening of a horror movie. Noah liked horror movies, but he didn’t want to live one. He relaxed when the shadow didn't return.
It must’ve been a demon or some other stray creature.
As he resumed walking, Noah watched every shadow, every moving contour, every dark corner for a threat while making sure they didn’t stray from the road. The demons of the town lived in the ruins. Noah hadn't yet gotten an answer to why the city was like this and what happened here, but whatever it was, it was major and dangerous. He didn’t want to deal with any threats right now. The pain of death was too real to face again and again. And now he had Thia with him, who wasn't immortal. He’d always respawn, but she would simply dissolve into meat and skin like the other creatures of the game world. The thought made him shudder.
“Daddy. Danger.” Thia wrapped her hand around his head and jerked, urging him in the other direction. The result? Noah stumbled over his own feet and fell flat on his face.
“Thia...” He swallowed the rest of the words when something flew over his head with a woosh. Someone had shot something at him. Thia was on her feet, crouched in a fighting stance. In the dim light of the moon, he spotted two nails growing out of her fingers.
He didn't remember seeing any demon growing nails, but to be fair, he didn't know many demons personally.
Noah readied his poison orb. Every muscle in his body tensed and his adrenaline level spiked.
Thia relaxed after a few seconds. “Danger. Gone.”
Noah pushed himself up and jumped to his feet. “How did you know?”
“Thia. Sees. Dark,” she replied in her broken language.
I must ask Mathial how to improve her language.
“Lucky for us.” Noah pressed on toward the temple, but now he danced on his legs whenever he heard any sound—even at the sound of the chilly wind blowing across the narrow lane. After twenty minutes of walking, they reached the Temple of Sumara.
This time, Noah observed the temple in detail. He was here to pray to the goddess for advice. The temple was grand—grand in the sense of a palace being grand. He could have easily fit twenty copies of his real-life home in the temple, and it was a lavish two thousand square foot house. Being on a secret flagship project had its perks.
The temple’s main attraction was the stone statue of Sumara standing on a raised platform. The temple must have been a grand attraction of the city once upon a time, but now it matched the city’s current condition: ruined. Noah trudged through the temple, observing the trappings of its former glory with curiosity. This a side of himself he had never seen before, an amateur archaeologist exploring a ruined temple and imagining what it’d been like in its heyday. The clues were all around him; ripped off flags painted in red and white color,, various small statues whose heads were chopped off, eight strong pillars forming a perfect line along the path to the main statue like beakers containing specimens in a lab.
Thia jumped onto a nearby statue. Noah spared her a glance but kept walking. She was a kid. If she wanted to play, he’d let her play.
As he climbed the stairs, the enormous statue of the goddess captured his full attention. She wore the same smile she had when they’d met in the respawn room. She had dark red eyes that looked like they were painted in blood. A shiver passed down his spine as the eyes seemed to focus on him. He shoved the thought away and dropped to his knees, closed his eyes, and chanted Sumara's name in his mind. He wasn't sure if the prayer would work, but he needed her guidance. It was high time he started working on his class skills, and curse of creation was the first of them.
Nothing happened. He bowed deeper, half expecting Goddess Sumara to pop up in front of him and offer him a discussion. It remained a distant dream. After few minutes, he gave up.
He checked on Thia, who was sitting next to a small, headless stone statue of a demon. She was busy trying to break the statue with her tail.
Noah smiled and moved toward the other statue of a demon. He could call it a demon statue only because of the tail wrapped around the stone figure’s waist. While moving through the temple, he spotted a fork in the wide path that lead from the door of the temple to the goddess’s leg. The small branch veered off the main path and ended abruptly before a small lion-like animal sitting next to Sumara's statue.
Is there something hidden here?
The thought sent excitement rippling through Noah’s body, like a research specimen had shown a positive result to his tests. He traced his hand over the lion's body, trying to find a trigger for whatever was hidden there. He found nothing, but he wouldn't give up so easily. Most experiments resulted in failure, after all. Failure dogged his path every step of the way, but perseverance and patience eventually showed him the path to victory… until now.
After an hour of careful searching, Noah gave up and turned back toward Sumara’s leg. Thia landed on his shoulder without warning, and the sudden jolt made him lose his balance. He windmilled his arms, but ended up kissing the dust. When he went to push himself up, he spotted a small hatch below the right big toe of goddess. Looking around, making sure no one was in the temple, he pulled the latch. A door opened in between the goddess leg and the lion's body.
He’d found it! Though, Thia deserved some of the credit. Together, they walked through the door and into the room beyond.
It was his respawn room.
A grayish error notification appeared.
*ERROR* Non-player entity detected in the respawn room. Sending the entity back.
Thia was lifted from his shoulder and pushed out the doorway. She tried to dig her long nails in the door, but the force overpowered her small figure.
“Thia!” He ran after her.
“She’ll be safe, don't you worry.” Sumara’s seductive voice echoed from behind him. Noah turned to face the goddess sitting on the table, her legs hanging in the air. “She’ll be waiting for you when you leave the room. That's a nice surprise you have bound to yourself. Fancy her?”
“Whew.” Noah was still preoccupied, hoping the little demon wasn’t hurt. It took a few seconds to realize what the goddess was implying. “NO. She is like a daughter to me, you—” He clamped his lips shut. Insulting her wouldn’t end well for him.
The goddess’s thin lips curved into a full-blown smile. “That's fine. Don't worry, you'll get a much better option if you stick around…” She licked her lips.
Noah frowned but remained silent. It was better to let the goddess run her full naughty thought circle.
The goddess stopped thinking after a minute. “So, why are you here then? Did you already learn the coffee recipe?”
“Coffee? No.” Did she really think he would find a coffee recipe so soon? He hadn’t even looked into the new profession description yet. Which he would have to do, eventually. Another t
hing to add to his long to do list.
“What do you want, then? Here to eat some fancy food from the real world?”
“No, that’s not why I’m here, but it’s a nice idea. Anyway, let me order your favorite item.” Noah willed two coffee takeaway cups and flashed the most convincing sugar-coated smile he could conjure. “Please accept my offering, Goddess of the Curse.” He bowed, ignoring the coffee’s distracting, fragrant aroma. He had to focus on his act.
“Already speaking like a dark creature of death.” Sumara giggled, but snatched the coffee from the table and wrapped her red lips around the lid’s opening.
Noah waited patiently until she hastily finished the two cups of coffee. Around coffee, she acted like a child with candy. Like Tia.
An innocent laugh and the smell of baby shampoo occupied his mind.
Noah ordered two more coffees when he heard the sound of the empty cups dropping into the dustbin.
After dropping her third cup in the dustbin, Sumara stared at him with overcaffeinated eyes. “Spit out. What do you want?”
“I want to know how to use this damn skill. The curse of creation. And what does the physical tag mean? When you said Cursemancer, I thought I would mutter curses under my breath, wiping out my opponents by inflicting plague.”
She giggled so hard that coffee spilled out of her fourth cup. She stopped as soon as she noticed. Silence hung between them as she stared at the coffee spilled on the table with wide, red eyes.
“Please, Goddess, take this.” Noah ordered another cup.
Her eyes dilated, looking at the fresh cup. “You'll get that too, but in due time. You are just level 2, yet you are talking about fucking world domination.”
“Okay,” he replied, shoulders slumped in disappointment.
She continued, “There are better things than plague, you know. Your curse of creation is one of them. I expected you to be at least level five by now. It’s a shame that you are still lingering around level two, killing rats.”
“How can I use the curse of creation?”
“Have you even looked at the description of the curse? The fucking description?”
Noah glanced at the curse. “I have to use a crystal to capture a physical action and that would be bound as a curse.” He considered the meaning for a moment, but nothing came to him.
“Tell me, dude, what are physical actions?”
“Like, slamming a dagger on a rat's head?”
“Correct. So, you can capture that as a curse in your arsenal.” She sipped her way through her last cup and sighed like she was drinking something divine.
“Is this a crystal?” Noah pulled out the first crystal that had dropped from the orc.
“Yes, that's a copper crystal. A low grade one. That would allow you to store a simple physical effect in it and add it as a curse to your spells.”
“But how?”
“That's what you have to find out. But I'll show you something else, something unique that only you can do. Do you have two crystals?”
“I do.” He pulled out the other crystal he had found after killing the rats, the blue one. When he placed both crystals on the table, they glowed in neon colors, and a prompt appeared in front of his eyes.
Two compatible crystals found. Do you want to use your sentinel mana to activate the skill mode? Yes/No.
“What is this?” Noah's face lit up in amazement.
“That's your unique spell. You can enhance, modify, or combine different crystals.”
“How do I do that?”
Sumara facepalmed. “How do you do things in the game?” She squeezed the empty coffee cup lightly. Her polished red nails were quite the contrast against the yellow paper cup.
“By willing it to happen.” Noah’s cheeks heated. He was acting like a noob. “Thanks, I got it.”
He accepted the skill mode and was sucked into an empty room. The room looked like his respawn room, but it didn't have drawers placed at one corner. A glass table was fixed at the center of the room. Two molds were placed on the table, along with a few tools like a cutter and sculptor. The two crystals he had were present on the table too. He took the chair and touched the crystal. A property appeared in front of his eyes.
Copper-2 Crystal of Rat's brain. The crystal can be used for enhancing a weapon or armor. Enhancement provided: +1 to Defense.
The crystal can be used as a ritual ingredient. Contains one crystal core which can be used for other purposes. Do you want to break it into its core? Yes/No.
Out of curiosity, Noah selected Yes. The crystal floated in the air and spun, throwing blue light around. After a few rotations, the crystal started breaking down. Pieces fell down, some small, some large. A few more seconds passed, and only a marble sized ball remained floating in the air. Another property appeared in front of it.
Copper-2 Core of Rat's crystal: The core can’t be used as an ingredient for enhancement anymore. The core can be used to create spell gems. If you keep this in the same shaped crystal mold, it will grow into a crystal. Or you can merge it with other crystal cores for creating spell gems.
Noah quickly accessed the forums to read more about the crystals. There wasn't much information on them there, but one particular user mentioned how costly and rare enhanced crystals were. According to another forum user, one such crystal sold for five hundred gold and could be found only from high level monsters who had devoured other monsters.
Five hundred gold floated in front of Noah's eyes, and he almost tried to grab it. In the last ten or fifteen days he’d come to understand how valuable gold was, even in the demon town.
Chuckling inwardly, Noah broke down second crystal. It gave him the second core, a pale purple one.
Copper-1 Core of Orc's crystal: The core can’t be used as an ingredient for enhancement anymore. The core can be used to create spell gems. If you keep this in the same shaped crystal mold, it will grow into a crystal. Or you can merge it with other crystal cores for creating spell gems.
He held a core in each of hand and grinned at them with the wickedest smile he could conjure. It was easy, very easy. He would be a millionaire in the game soon. Now the only remaining thing was to combine them. But how?
He looked at the molds. They were of various sizes and shapes. They even had small connectors to attach them to other molds. He picked a ball-shaped connector.
Circle shaped mold.
Usage: 20/20
Quality: Uncommon.
Used for storing circle shaped crystal core.
The mold can be used to grow back crystal shell. Enhancement property gained by the shell: Random.
If used with another mold and connector, it can combine two crystal cores into a spell gem. Spell gems can be used to enhance spells.
That was a lot of information to digest. He searched for the spell gem information, but none was available to him right then.
Noah picked up another circular mold. There were two of each shape. He placed a core in each circular mold and attached a connector to the molds. A new property appeared in front of the mold.
Do you want to combine the cores to create a spell gem? Creation time: 10 days. Spell gem quality: Uncommon. 1% chance of gaining a high tier gem of the same quality. Yes/No?
There was no way Noah’s curiosity was letting him not try that thing. If the enhanced crystals were that valuable, he wondered how valuable the spell gems would be.
Noah removed the fresh spell gem from the molds, then set the molds on the table and willed himself out of skill mode. Sumara was still sitting in his respawn room, playing with her nails, when he reappeared with the gem in his hand.
Sumara winked. “You seem to have figured it out.”
He grinned like a king. “Yes. I've just combined two of my cores to form a spell gem.”
“That's advanced, even for you.” She smirked.
“How does the crystal enhancement work?” he asked.
“That you can learn from any trainer in the world. Your unique s
kill allows you to break down the crystal and rebuild it again. No one else knows how to do that. On top of that, the spell gem combining skill is an adept-level skill which you have access to at level one. Isn’t that awesome?”
“It is. But what’s an adept level?”
“Come on, dude. I’m a goddess and not your free loading guide. Ask others, I ain’t gonna provide you all the information for the sake of a couple of coffee cups.”
Noah sighed. He’d better not piss her off, but still he had one question left. “Anything you can tell me would be great. I’ll come here every day and order you coffee.” He tried to sweeten the deal.
She dashed forward with a green orb spell on her hand. It looked like his poison orb but had six sharp, thick, finger-sized needles rotating around the middle orb. “I won't hesitate to curse you the next time you try to bribe me. Did you forget what happened to the town, already?” A threat was visible in her eyes.
Noah knew she was serious. “Yes, Goddess. I’m sorry.” He dropped to his knees, falling into a bow. He didn't want a curse haunting him for the years he would spend in the game.
19. Chance
A swarm of notifications covered Noah’s vision when the goddess left the room.
Congratulations! Your luck in finding the door to the room of respawn was nil. And yet you found it. +2 chance.
Congratulations! You have received Goddess Sumara’s blessings for using a Sentient Skill. Experience gained: 1300.
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Because of the goddess’s blessing you gain 3 skill points and 3 stat points.
Congratulations! You are a fortunate human to receive such a divine blessing. +2 chance.
+4 for chance, wow, and a much-needed level up too. Now what should I do with these skill points and stat points?