Lucien

  The smell of the open road took over as we left the vilge behind us. Today, Tanvi, Starr and I were going to go dungeon diving until we couldn’t dungeon dive anymore. The pn was to level me up as much as possible. She mentioned having heard about a beginner dungeon being nearby enough, about three miles or so, up north. She said it was by Monshik Mountain range, where the Grand Monshik Mountain was. “From up there, you can see the Isnd of the Infernal Surge,” she procimed as we continued to walk the grass fields. “But you can’t really see too much of the nd past the thick red mist of death.”

  “How often does the mist stretch over Grusnabi?” I asked.

  “There is no pattern to it. But if you ask me, it loves to strike when our harvest is at its healthiest. The year it took Mother Sylena was the worst.”

  “The Infernal Surge… when exactly did it appear?”

  “The same day our titans and our gods disappeared. It was winter… it was a day I’d never forget…. In our region, we call that day The Purge.”

  My face went tight. “I’m… almost afraid to ask why.”

  Her smile waned down. “You could imagine.” She turned away from me, the expression on her filled with regret. “The streets were littered with demons, Lu. There was no corner you could hide in. My parents were taken by the surge. I got to see those demons rip them apart.”

  My chest tanked. “Tanvi, I’m so s—”

  “No, I’m sorry, Lu!” she said, turning back to me with a forced smile on her face. “For turning our first conversation on the road into a dark one!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Tanvi,” I reassured her. “We are companions now, much like me and Starr. And part of being companions is sharing our stories, the good ones and the bad ones. This expedition is not just about increasing my level. It is also about understanding Nemetesnia and the people who live in it. And who better to learn this from than you, the one who has lived through it all?”

  “I don’t really talk about those dark stuff. It brings me to a bad pce….”

  “Hey, then we don’t have to.” I said to her with an understanding smile. “I get it. I’ve been there... losing my parents, the burden of loss. But we are a team now, Tanvi. Supporting each other when we need it the most. And when you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”

  Tanvi’s smile, previously forced, now seemed to soften around the edges. “You are certainly wise beyond your level, Lu.”

  I chuckled. “Now, you’re making me sound like an ol’ sage.”

  She giggled. “Did you ever tell anyone about how you got here? I was paying close attention to you, ya know. When you said you fell through a portal? How did that happen?”

  “Oh, right. Yesterday. No, actually. I hadn’t given anyone those details just yet.”

  “Oh, really? Not even Kai?”

  “Heh, yeah. Not even her.”

  “Is it something you want to talk about?” she beamed. “I’m here for you too, Lu!”

  “It’s nothing painful to relive, just scary as shit.”

  “Oh, then I gotta know!” she tweeted, her face lighting up instantly.

  I was gd my night with a werewolf girl could put her in better spirits!

  “Like I said, I was a tutor back home, part time. She went to Acadia, and this girl wanted some help on her chemistry css for an exam the morning after. Her name was Laura.”

  Tanvi raised an eyebrow at me. “A… a Lau…ra?”

  “Yeah. A Laura. Laura Lockley. Anyway, I went to her pce and the night seemed promising. Things were getting hot and heavy, and I was all for it. Until she took a nice bite out of my neck.”

  Tanvi gasped.

  “She wanted to eat my heart out, and no, I’m not paraphrasing. So I dashed out of her pce, trying to find help, but she chased me into the streets off of some paranormal shit-show of horrors. I’m not easy to scare, and she did a pretty good job of that with her speed and strength. It was out of this world, it was like she was teleporting. And she was strong enough to ssh through metal. When cornered, I told myself I had to fight. If she wanted to kill me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. So we dropped a few stories down from a building, and I switched her position to slip behind me. That way, I could use her as a cushion for the fall. But when I snatched her neckce, a portal opened up underneath us. All I remembered was thinking of being safe, being as far away from her as I could to find help. But, I ended up in Etheryn instead.”

  “Lu, her speed and strength seemed out of this world because they were!” she fretted profoundly as she balled up her fists and inched closer to me. “Who you just described to me right now is Aura Mooncw of the Mooncw wolfkin pack!”

  “Who?”

  “Aura! Aura Mooncw!” she cried enthusiastically. “She is the general of the Goblin King’s army!”

  “Wait, until now, I didn’t even know Etheryn had goblins.”

  “Long bck hair, jade eyes? As sexy as a vixen but with the explosive power of a wildebeest?”

  “Yeah….” I said slowly, finally comprehending what this actually meant. Laura Lockley was a pseudo name. The so-called crazy werewolf chick who tried to kill me yesterday was actually from Etheryn.

  “That’s Aura. She is an elite wolfkin dark mage of the Mooncw pack,” Tanvi’s voice sounded like a warning as she described her. “Many wolves in her pack were sughtered, and the ones who were spared were forced to swear their loyalty to the Goblin King, Norruk of Sbuangarr. Sbuangarr is goblin territory. The trained wolves of the Mooncw pack are his first line of attack when raiding vilges in Nemetesnia, beastkin country.”

  “Well, that expins the supernatural part. But what was she doing in my school?”

  “Your school? Oh no, Lu,” Tanvi looked visibly shaken.

  “What?

  “I’ll need to add this to my report to the High Priestess!”

  “What? Report what?” I insisted. I could feel Starr tense up too just as I did, her cws subtly sinking deeper into my shoulder.

  Tanvi looked up to me wearily. “Lu, Aura was stalking you. It’s no coincidence that a dark mage found you on our sister pnet out of nowhere! Opening a dimensional route like that is no simple task! She had an agenda, and that agenda was getting rid of you!” She gasped. “It makes me wonder if she had anything to do with our missing deities! That’s scary!”

  “Hold on,” I said, walking myself in front of her. “We are talking about a dark mage. An elite dark mage, yes, I’ll gdly take that into consideration, but a dark mage nevertheless. Let’s not jump into conclusions and say that she got rid of my mom, a bunch of other gods, and their entire lineage. She is still a mortal, right?”

  “True, but how do you expin how she got to you?”

  “Not sure. I mean, I am still only human. I’m not sure about the other titans, but I’m not exactly bullet proof.”

  She scratched her chin. “So, she traversed realms to get to you and kill you.”

  “Yeah, and also said something about preventing me from foiling her pns.”

  “I wonder what those pns were…. You didn’t ask?”

  “No, I was kinda’ wrapped up in trying to stay alive!”

  “I still can’t wrap my mind around how she opened a portal to and from Earth.”

  “Well, my guess is that it has something to do with the crystal on my chest, the same crystal that was hanging off of her neckce.”

  Her eyes grew. “Her crystal fused with you?”

  “It did. Kai called it a ley line crystal.”

  “Ah, that makes sense! Aura stole a hidden temple ley line crystal. Buried temples from eons ago, from the birth of Etheryn. They are very hard and very rare finds. Aura is smart though, so it doesn’t surprise me that she found one. So, if I could wrap this unbelievable story together, she found a god crystal and located a god! Using the power of the crystal, finding you was easy. She realized you weren’t of our realm and opened a channel to Earth, tried to murder you, and when you grabbed the crystal, its power and your power linked, pushing you both back to the nd where it came from.”

  I looked at her funny. “Was all of that supposed to make sense?”

  She giggled and turned to me. “To you, maybe not, but that’s because you’re not from here. Earth is very simple, I suspect, because you guys don’t even have your own gactic champions to protect you. We do that for you!”

  Again, I looked at her funny.

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry about all of that, it will only confuse you! Just focus on the fact that your crystal pretty much brought you here, and you willed it to separate you from Aura! You said you were thinking about being as far away from Aura as possible, right? Well, it did just that! While also bringing you home.”

  “But, my home is Earth.”

  “No, your home is here,” she said tenderly, looking up to me with those beautiful green eyes. “Your new home. Where you are needed.”

  When Kai first mentioned the ley line crystal, I was so engrossed in our other topic of discussion to read much into it. But now that Tanvi expined what happened st night, I became invested.

  “I’m following all of this, however, I still don’t understand what she gains from offing me.”

  She sighed, slumping her shoulders. “I don’t either. And we won’t know unless we ask her. Buuuut, Aura is a bitch! Oop!” Tanvi jumped, covering her mouth at her blunder. “Sorry! Don’t tell Kai I said that! She’d wash my mouth out with soap!”

  I ughed. “She did say you were a potty mouth,” I teased. “But you don’t have to worry about all of that with me. And, I’m also in no mood to see her again.”

  “A traumatic first encounter and hopefully your st. When Buliba found you, she was accusing you of working for her under the Goblin King.”

  “Well, with what you know now, you understand that could never be the case. Though, I could only imagine that she wants the king dead. Wonder why she didn’t use the ley line crystal to murder him.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. The crystal cannot be used for combat, offensively or defensively. Not unless you are of godly blood.”

  “Hmm, I was never able to use any godly powers. I think that’s where my innate healing, fertile charm and undead sense came from. If I had to guess, maybe the crystal awakened my skills, something she unfortunately can’t experience for herself.”

  “Don’t spare her any pity, Lu!” she huffed. “She tried her hand in pushing our borders back, and we chased her away. We lost many warriors, too.”

  “Oh, trust me, I’m not. Just making an observation.” Though honestly, if it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have been able to unlock all of this hidden potential.

  “Good. Because she is scum! As scummy as her lord and what’s left of her grimy, scummy pack! And if we cross her again, we will be ready! Because we have our ever glorious, all powerful prophecy!” she boasted, falling into her hype-girl persona again.

  I snickered. “Heh, you sure do like stroking my ego, huh?”

  She chortled. “And it’s my honored mission to buff you up! I take this task seriously, Lu!” she huffed, her faux seriousness in her pouty face making her look even more adorable. “I bet dungeon raiding isn’t something you do back at home?”

  “Not unless you’re talking about video games.”

  “Video games? What’s that?”

  I chuckled. “A concept that may be too advanced for Etheryn. But go on. Teach me everything there is to know about raiding dungeons.”

  “Okay! Here’s a crash course! In our world, dungeons come in tiers. Tiers one through five to be more precise. Five will be your more difficult dungeons with your more difficult dungeon bosses to beat. Lesser monsters often hang out in tier one and tier two dungeons. The levels you’re guaranteed to run into range from 10 to 25 in those, with the dungeon boss usually being a bit stronger than the highest level dungeon baddies.”

  “Okay, I’m following so far.”

  “Now, monsters respawn in waves. The max amount of waves depends on the tier of the dungeon. To give you an example, a tier one dungeon has a maximum wave of four, which means that you and your group can beat the monsters in that dungeon four times over, minus the final boss. The final boss can only be beaten once, and that works this way for all dungeons. For a tier two dungeon, that wave number drops to three times. Tier three, two times. Tier four, one repeat, and stly tier five, where there is no respawning of monsters.”

  “What if you step into the dungeon, step out after your wave allowances, and try to step back in?”

  “The dungeon will refuse entry if it detects any member of your group having entered before within a year’s time. After a year, you are allowed to enter again.”

  “Hmm, interesting—a built-in anti-dungeon farming system,” I said, where I noticed a cave along the horizon.

  “Yeah, you can say that. If you visited one dungeon and maxed out the waves, or rounds, all you need to do is move onto another dungeon.”

  “Well, how many are there?”

  “A lot! We are never short on dungeons! In fact, dungeons do have a habit of spawning. However, our dungeon core hasn't created any new dungeons for a decade now.”

  “Ever since the gods and titans left?”

  She nodded. “Yep. They have a part to py in that. Not exactly sure what, though. I’ve never seen a newborn dungeon!”

  I chuckled. “Well, who knows? That might change with me around.” I turned to the leopard beastkin while Starr peacefully scratched the back of her head with her stretchy foot, still perched on my shoulder. “Hey, speaking of groups, we ought to party up before we raid.”

  She csped her hands together. “Of course! Silly me, I got so caught up with expining the mechanics of our world that I forgot about the basics!”

  “No worries, Tanvi. So, how do we form our party?”

  “I can send you a request to join yours since I know you well enough. You can’t have parties with strangers in Etheryn. You should have gotten a notification from your codex.”

  “Ah, yeah. I see it.”

  Barros Guild

  Accept Tanvi of Ecuzni into your party?

  [Y] [N]

  I accepted, and just like I’d added Starr to my party, I had access to viewing Tanvi’s codex. Though unlike Starr, I was in for one hell of a ride.

  When my jaw dropped, she immediately jumped to me and pressed a finger to my lips, then whispered, “Shhh…. Don’t tell the High Priestess what you saw here.”