But how much of that was this fierce beast inside and how much was the result of growing confidence at his ever-increasing strength?
The instinctual part of himself that thrilled in combat and roared with unchecked aggression whenever a threat reared its head was not him. And to continue to let it control him would ultimately spell his death.
And yet, it seemed to lend me some strength. Or was that just in my head?
Without that unknown urging in the back of his mind for destruction and danger, he might have tempered his desires to Dominate the Treant. Instead, he might have chosen to fight it one-on-one for fear of losing more EXP.
Instead, by letting himself be driven by that insatiable beast, he wreaked untold death and devastation upon monsters that would have otherwise gleefully killed him if given the chance.
As if thinking about death summoned the specter, Hal nearly fell on his rear when the Reaper lifted through the ground a few feet ahead of him with a bored expression.
When their eyes locked, it was clear the Reaper hadn’t expected him either, because her golden eyes flew open and she rushed several feet away through the air. Right through one of Hal’s Wortlings as if it wasn’t even there.
Immediately put on the defensive, Hal looked around for the impending threat. The Reaper could only mean one thing; his death was imminent.
Perhaps the Reaper had seen his distress because she put out two pale blue-toned hands. “You have nothing to fear,” she said, though her voice had a watery and thin quality to it he hadn’t remembered before.
Not that he could recall her talking to him once he had grabbed her, pulling her away from that black abyss and whatever those robed figures had in store for her. Only his Premonition trait had alerted him to the danger.
Now, thinking back on that moment, Hal wondered if he had made the right decision. He had made a split-second decision and despite the Reaper’s attitude toward him, he didn’t feel it right that she should be ambushed.
He hadn’t expected that he would bring her to the land of the living. All he wanted to do was get her out of harm’s way. The fact that she was still here made him wonder if something was wrong.
“You’re not here to take me away?” he asked her, his right hand easing toward the [Goblinbane] at his hip.
“Do you really think you can hurt me with that piece of metal?” she asked, her words dripping with disdain. Hal noticed she didn’t make a move to come any closer.
Then he remembered the way she reacted when he touched her. She had become corporeal. Hal took two strides to close the distance between them and she lurched away toward the river at her back.
Her beautiful visage crumpled into a scowl. Golden eyes burned with indignation.
“If you’re not here as a warning of my impending death, what are you doing here?” he asked.
For a heartbeat, a flicker of doubt and worry crossed the Reaper’s face. Her bright eyes dim and uncertain.
The tension eased out of the air and Hal let go of the [Goblinbane’s] grip. “You don’t know,” he answered for her. “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?”
Like she was trying to ward off a chill, the Reaper crossed her arms over her black armor and shook her head. Her curtain of raven-black hair shimmered in the light of his Guild badge.
“Why are you afraid of getting near me?” Hal asked, taking another step forward.
Her resolve wavered but she ended up floating back in the end with a look of frustration. “I shouldn’t be here! This is the land of the living but I cannot get back.” She pointed an accusing finger. “Because of you.”
“When I pulled you out of that incoming attack?”
“I could have handled myself,” she insisted, fists balled tight. “Now I’m stuck here.”
Hal motioned to her. “You’re not really, are you?” Noting her ghostly appearance.
The Reaper stared at his hand as if it were a viper. “What are you doing here?” she asked, motioning to the area around them.
Figuring it probably wasn’t prudent to press a literal Reaper too far, Hal willingly let her lead the conversation away from his probing questions. “Potion supplies.” He motioned at the vines nearby.
“Just you and Ashera?” she asked.
Hal narrowed his gaze at her. “How do you know her name?”
The Reaper rolled her eyes. “I’m a Reaper.”
“Well,” Hal said, looking around and focusing on the Wortling’s Woodsense. Still no threats nearby, strangely. While they hadn’t been stalking him like before, there was almost always something out there. “If you want to join us, you’re welcome.”
The Reaper sniffed disdainfully, curling her lips at the invitation. “You couldn’t stop me if I decided to follow you. Nor if I decided to leave at a moment’s notice.”
Hal strode toward her, his eyes intent on the river beyond. “As you say. I’m only offering, you are more than free to do as you please. I would enjoy the company though,” he said over his shoulder as he passed the Reaper.
She floated at a constant distance from him, circling around and out of his path, wary at first and then with growing interest.
“You’re an odd one, Hal.”
That brought him up short. “Fair enough,” he admitted, turning on his heels to face her. “You got a name I could call you?”
Hal had meant it casually enough. She knew his name and apparently the names of his friends. Though he suspected she knew more than just Ashera’s name.
But the way the Reaper’s face contorted in a mixture of revulsion and fear sparked curiosity in him.
“Are you all right? I only asked for your name,” he explained, thinking that perhaps there was a cultural divide. “If you would rather, I could simply make up a name. I can’t very well keep thinking of you as Reaper.”
Her throat worked like she was choking. When Hal took a concerned step forward, she didn’t move away or break her gaze.
Something was definitely wrong.
Before Hal could begin to guess at her malady, she blurted out, “Nothricient!” As if she was compelled under torture to give up her name. Her golden eyes looked upon Hal with a mixture of fear and hatred. Confusion clear upon her face.
“Nothricient,” Hal said aloud, tasting the word. It had a nice ring to it. There was something sturdy and old about it that he liked.
As soon as he said the word, that thin golden tether appeared again. He only remembered seeing it once, immediately after he was resurrected. It reached out from Hal’s navel and stretched toward the Reaper, who promptly fled from it as if it were a monster. She dipped through the ground, came back up, danced among the trees, and even alighted upon the branches high above Hal.
Throughout it all, Hal was keenly aware of her presence and precisely where she was at any time even when he couldn’t see her. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the way he could sense the Wortlings.
Something was very different this time.
In a fit of worry, he checked his EXP to see if he somehow triggered Dominate on accident. He didn’t think it was possible, and his EXP confirmed it. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Eventually, despite her best efforts, the tether connected and drew her back to Hal. He had no idea what it was but he could tell Nothricient did. And it clearly disturbed her.
As the tether reeled in the Reaper, Hal felt his long-absent Ethereal Instability kick in again. It passed through him like a cold shiver and his hands were as ghostly as Nothricient’s had been.
When Hal looked through his hands at her, she was standing no more than five feet away. Not floating. Standing. For as ethereal as Hal had become, the Reaper had become just as corporeal.
Nothricient’s gold eyes bore into Hal’s brown, her voice barely a whisper. “What are you?”
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“I don’t know what I am,” Hal said, just as surprised as the Reaper. The golden tether between them flashed and with a mental tug, Hal felt a wave of warmth wash out the c
oldness that settled into his bones.
When he looked down, they had switched states. Hal was solid once more, and Nothricient was once more translucent.
With a push, Hal could shunt whatever force it was that made him corporeal to the Reaper. And with a pull, he could take it back.
The applications were manifold. But it seemed horribly one-sided. He doubted the Reaper appreciated being forced to and from corporeality without her consent.
“I’m sorry,” Hal said sincerely. “I don’t know what… any of that was any more than you. Less, probably.”
Nothricient stared at Hal long enough for it to get awkward. She drifted forward until their noses practically touched. The hair on the back of Hal’s neck stood on end as she reached an ethereal hand toward him and poked his chest.
Her finger dove through the acid-eaten aketon he wore but stopped at his skin. They both looked at her finger then locked eyes. “Interesting,” she said, finally drifting back a respectable few feet.
Hal reached out toward the tether and passed a hand through it. He felt a soothing warmth. Like stretching his hand out into a beam of sunlight.
Seeing that Nothricient wasn’t going to elaborate further, Hal continued toward the river, his Wortlings Rooted a safe distance to the side still.
It wasn’t too hard to spot the lilypad-like things that idly spun clockwise in the middle of the river.
“You shouldn’t have been able to do that,” said the Reaper.
Hal took a few cautious steps back from the water’s edge, as a flash of light picked out a few slow-moving roots snaking out of the water. He wouldn’t have seen them if he didn’t know to look for them. “What do you mean?” he asked, keeping a sharp eye on the roots.
Your Perception has risen to Level 14.
+2% Perception highlight chance (+28%).
+5% Awareness of magical items (+70%).
A few feet from the water’s edge they stopped, straining as if they had reached their limit. Hal judged the distance between himself and the creature. Close enough.
“Like binding me,” she said. Reaper or no, Nothricient certainly had a talent for responding at the worst possible time. Whenever his attention drifted from her and he tried to focus, she would reply.
She drifted up alongside him until they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. “Or force me to reveal my true name,” she continued. “None of that should be possible. You are no Necromancer, no Dark Knight nor Death Dealer. What little strangeness I felt in your soul hardly hinted at your capacity to bind a Reaper. How did you do it?”
Her words sounded like an accusation. As if he could simply tell her how he did it, and she could undo it. She acted like she had been tricked by a child.
“I don’t know how I did it,” Hal answered honestly, doing his best to keep his temper in check. The memory of the robed figures in the void launching an attack at Nothricient came to him, crystal clear. “When I grabbed you and pulled you away from the attack, my party must have revived me at the same time. Maybe you were brought with me in that same window?”
None of it made any sense to him. He hadn’t been sure he believed in an afterlife, it had all seemed so far in the future. Distant beyond thought.
But when it finally came for him, he didn’t find himself cowering from it as he thought he would. He had embraced it to save another’s life. Perhaps foolishly, but it was his life to give.
Eager to put the memories of his death behind him and finish his quest, Hal began casting his newly acquired Drill Branch. But he didn’t notice the roots that coiled like snakes to strike at him off to the sides until it was too late.
Halfway through the spellcasting, they struck.
Nothricient reached out to Hal and a shiver of cold rushed through him a hair’s breadth before three diving roots, pointed and twisted like drills in an odd mockery of his own fumbled spell, dove into his chest.
He expected a sharp burst of pain but he felt nothing.
Looking down, he understood. The Reaper, now corporeal, reached into the empty air beside her and a wicked black scythe appeared in her grasp.
She swept it down in a graceful arc, severing the roots cleanly. Three leaping strides brought the Reaper to the water and Hal felt the tether strain. He went along with it but found he couldn’t float through the air as she could.
His steps came sluggishly at first but they gained speed as the Reaper held her scythe above her head poised to strike. She brought it down, tracing a black line through the air and down into the floating disk. It warped and split the air with a dull pop.
The Waterwheel never stood a chance. It continued to spin in a clockwise rotation for a second before the imperceptible cut became clear and the two pieces split open.
Within the greater piece several smaller discs spilled out, Hal guessed that was what he was after.
Nothricient reaps the [Waterwheel Lily | Lv.18].
You obtain:
4 [Waterwheels]
1 [Living Root]
The lack of EXP and essence was strange, he supposed it was because Nothricient wasn’t technically in his party. But he felt it was something more than that. He doubted Reapers were common and he didn’t think it was precisely a Class that one could acquire.
Hal felt the warmth of corporeality steal over him again. The Reaper floated out of the water and to his side. “Do try to have a care,” she said. “You mortals are ever so fragile.”
He had no idea why she had saved him. He doubted the attack would have been fatal but he appreciated it all the same and told the Reaper as much.
She merely shrugged her dark armored shoulders.
The next Waterwheel Lily Hal came across he destroyed from afar with a combination of Drill Root and Bomb Toss. The thing never came close to hitting him.
As they turned back toward camp, Hal tapped Assimilation, restoring his MP from the Rooted Wortlings.
Hal instructed the Treant to go far and wide, creating as much havoc as possible and killing any monster - aside from his - that it came across. The lumbering giant stalked off, each step quaking the ground as it went.
It was too bad the gargantuan Treants weren’t able to fit through any of the exits to this place. There was something indescribable about sitting high on a Treant’s shoulder, raining death and destruction down on the monsters.
When Hal walked into the light of the campfire he found Ashera hadn’t been idle. She had several colored cloths rolled out around the edge of the fire with various herbs and ingredients strewn about. At their center, she had set up the alchemist vials of dragonglass she had shown him earlier.
Small ghost-blue flames danced from tiny disks situated beneath some of the bulbous glass containers, boiling the contents inside.
More of a shock to Hal was the group of Wortlings he left around the camp. Their black skin had hardened into rough bark-like armor and they had grown nearly two feet. They towered over him with oddly handsome angular faces. Their claws had grown into long curved daggers and their feet were firmly planted into the earth.
Ashera caught his curious glance. “Yes, they were quite a surprise when I returned. Do you have all the ingredients?”
“All but the water,” Hal said.
“I have seen to that.” She spread out ten faceted vials filled with water on to a maroon-colored cloth.
Hal emptied out the requested ingredients onto that same cloth.
Quest Complete: Alchemical Ambitions.
After a rocky start, you managed to acquire the requested ingredients and await your first lesson on the long road to becoming an Alchemist.
Objectives
Acquire the following items:
5 [Witherroot] (Complete).
5 [Waterwheels] (Complete).
5 [Vials of Tree Sap] (Complete).
10 [Vials of Fresh Water] (Complete).
Rewards
Unlock Alchemy Skill.
Unlock Foraging Skill.
500 Experience Points.
100 Plantoid Essence.
The Plantoid Essence was a single allotment of 100 points that he was capable of allocating as he deemed fit.
Unlike the EXP he earned, it needed to be spent immediately. He couldn’t bank it until a later date. A glance over his shoulder showed the Reaper idling behind him about ten feet.
He thought back to when Nothricient had pulled him along. They had reached the end of the tether then. By Hal’s guess, the limit wasn’t more than fifteen to twenty feet.
He turned his attention back to the plantoid essence.
While he hadn’t fought a Planttrap himself, they hadn’t seen particularly strong. Treants on the other hand were devastatingly effective.
That alone made his choice for him. He dropped the entirety of the 100 plantoid essence into treant, bringing it up to 260.
He was only 40 more essence away from earning a new perk. A familiar notification greeted him as soon as he committed the essence.
[Monster Attunements]
Treant: 1
Barkskin 0/5
Cover your skin in a thick layer of regenerative bark.
Lv1: +5% Temporary HP (tHP), regenerates 1% per minute.
Lv2: +7.5% tHP, 2% per minute.
Lv3: 10% tHP, 3% per minute.
Lv4: 15% tHP, 5% per minute.
Lv5: 20% tHP, 9% per minute.
Rooted Stance 0/1
Draw upon the sturdiness of a Treant, increasing your resistance to movement effects by 50%.
Thorns 0/5
Every physical hit reflects a portion of the damage back at the attacker.
Lv1: 5% Reflect
Lv2: 7.5% Reflect
Lv3: 10% Reflect
Lv4: 15% Reflect
Lv5: 20% Reflect
Thorns sounded nice on paper, but without actual numbers, he wasn’t sure he wanted it. If he Leveled it up though, depending on how strong it was, he could see some good uses for it.
Beastborne- Mark of the Founder Page 50