As I make my way through Amroth’s winding streets, I stop at a souvenir shop to see if I can find something symbolically useful for what I’m trying to do. A number of cute aranea plushies in different outfits sits on one shelf. One of them is dressed in a classic librarian outfit with a beige shirt and a patterned gray-brown skirt, wearing glasses with lenses for each of her eight eyes.
“Cute,” Anise says. “Is that for your sister?”
“… maybe,” I say. “There’s something I need to use it for first, though.”
With [Mystic Inspiration], I’m now able to keep Clairvoyance going at all times with an Inspiration flow rather than a drain. I tie up [Fractal Consciousness] with processing the overwhelming amount of conceptual information I’m reading, but it would be more useful to be able to direct it into extra mental ‘eyes’ just as the system goes in the third eye. A single extra eye to handle both the system and every type of psychic vision I have is not enough.
What, exactly, is this third eye? I had at first assumed it to be a neural implant of some sort. It seems at a level beyond my understanding of technology, though. Everyone with a system has a third eye in their heads, and none of the naming ceremonies I’ve participated in involved implanting anything into babies.
Ultimately, though, it’s just a conduit to let the mind process the information. The human brain naturally takes in information from the eyes, ears, and so forth at every moment of the day. And the aranea brain (I give the plushie a squeeze) must also take in information from all eight eyes. The system just adds another sense, but I already have another sense. Clairvoyance shouldn’t need to use the same conduit the system information is coming in from. I need to improve my sense processing. And I think I know how to do it.
Who’s to say my soul can’t have more eyes?
My Inspiration meter shudders as a fourth eye opens in my soul, color and sensation flooding into the new perception. I get it stabilized after a few minutes, but keeping it open cuts into my Inspiration regeneration. I don’t mind, though. It will be easier and cheaper as I level it up, plus I will be eventually able to open more “soul eyes”. I’m not going to try yet.
Thinking of aranea and how often the number eight comes up, I have to wonder if eight is an optimal number of eyes. I haven’t met an aranea reincarnator yet, but I haven’t met many aranea at all yet. Though I could probably eventually have as many eyes as I want.
With two physical ones and one to handle system windows, and one for each state of magic, that would be seven eyes already. I could put in a minimap, too. Or do like spiders do and have them bring in information from other directions. Despite being metaphysical, the third eye and any additional eyes are still limited in how wide a field they can focus on. That will probably also increase as I level it up.
I shunt my psychic senses into the new eye and keep the third for the system display. I was getting tired of having system windows block my ‘view’, especially when trying to identify people. It’s probably nice for most people who don’t have an additional sense in the first place to not have their normal vision blocked.
I stand and stretch the cramps out of my legs. I hadn’t brought a pillow this time and maybe should have.
“Skill training going well?” Anise asks brightly.
“Yeah,” I say. “I just wish you could see the world like I see it. It’s beautiful.”
“Only if you started giving everyone you like pieces of yourself,” Anise says with a grin.
“I am still a long way to figuring out whether that’s even feasible, but I think I got a step closer today.”
While I was busy staring at the sky, Wren has been doing some investigating.
“So, I checked the Adventurers’ Guild records and found a Crow Talgarth Tempest Tiganna joined up back in 730.”
“I… feel dumb that I never even thought to look there,” Rowan says. “It seems so obvious, though.”
Wren shrugs. “You were busy procrastinating and following around a guy who does whatever he wants.”
“What did Uncle Crow’s record say?” Rowan asks.
“He joined up with an adventuring party named the Punctual Aspirants.”
“Punctual Aspirants?” I say. “And I thought I had a hard time coming up with a name. They must have been short on adjectives.”
“Especially ironic since they went off on their first quest and never came back,” Wren goes on. “They went to the Secret Garden. Not a dangerous run. It should’ve been easy. I’ve done it twice with different parties and never ran into any problems that weren’t caused by ‘differences of opinion’ with my teammates.”
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“Didn’t anyone look into it?” Rowan asks.
Wren shrugs. “If they did, the guild records don’t say. I’d’ve expected someone’s core to have given a quest to find them sooner than five years later, but who knows why cores do anything.”
“And mine only asked me to find his sword…” Rowan says. “But when I checked, his plaque in my Hearth said he was still alive. So I’d assumed he’d just lost his sword and then something else happened to him that I’m too low level to do anything about. I thought I would at least be able to get the sword.”
Wren nods. “He might have been locked up, sold off, brainwashed, run off to join a traveling circus, who knows? In any case, not like a bunch of Basics can do anything about it.”
“I don’t know if our chances of finding out what happened in the Secret Garden nine years ago are very good,” Rowan says. “Even if I’d gone there immediately, the trail would have been long cold.”
“It’s a place to start, anyway,” I say. “And the rest of us haven’t done it before, too.”
“Dungeon runs are a good source of minor Deeds when you don’t want to do what your core wants you to,” Wren says. “Or you don’t even get quests. Dungeons usually give you one to complete them, which I honestly don’t mind. If I went there, I probably meant to complete it anyway.”
“Yeah, I get those even if I can’t see them,” I say. “I don’t know if winter is the best time to be running a dungeon with ‘Garden’ in the name, though.”
“It has waited this long,” Rowan says. “It can wait until spring.”
“Procrastination!” Wren says. “I love it.”
“I don’t know what sort of clues we’d even find there after nine years,” Basalt puts in.
“There’s probably a card-playing tree I can interrogate, at least,” I say. “But yes, is there anything in this garden that could have killed an entire adventuring party without a trace?”
“It’s rated as low-Elite,” Wren says. “Just barely more dangerous than Wonderland and less dangerous than the Lost Valley.”
“I think it’s safe to assume that nothing that’s normally in that dungeon did in Crow Talgarth and his party,” I say. “Especially since Crow at least is still alive somewhere. Hmm. Several years ago, my party was kidnapped by goblins in the Hedge Maze while I was exploring a hidden loot room the others couldn’t fit into.”
“You think it might have been goblins after all?” Rowan asks.
“Maybe. There’s lots of goblin tribes and not all of them are friendly. But maybe it was humans. Or maybe they got off track and never got to the Secret Garden at all, or got lost on the return journey.”
Rowan frowns. “True, they might have been ambushed outside the dungeon by goblins or bandits, too.”
“What other villages are near there?” Basalt asks.
The Adventurers’ Guild has a big detailed map of Tempest that takes up an entire wall. We have to wait until another party finishes examining it before we can take a closer look, but I can still peer over their heads since we’re on the north side of the domain.
Hundreds of locations dot the sprawling map, from rural Hearths to dangerous dungeons. Each location is labeled with a rating in skulls, from one skull at Basic, two at Elite, three at Heroic, and even a couple of Epic-rank dungeons marked with four red skulls. The Hedge Maze and Spooky Grove are marked with half a skull.
“Looks like the closest Hearths are Nefern, Halkyn, and Pelenna,” I muse.
I suppose I should stare at maps more often. Maybe my Knowledge skills have been lagging due to how little I’ve been actually putting them into practice. The system is clearly not impressed by me just knowing things from other lives.
Rowan frowns thoughtfully. “If anyone knows what happened nine years ago, they might.”
We decide to spend the next week doing basement runs and getting to know one another a little better. There’s diminishing returns to doing the same thing over and over, but there’s still plenty we can get out of it, and we can switch up what we’re doing to get more experience and practice in different things.
I take the opportunity to try to get Basalt to at least be able to use basic [Aura Sight]. Although he’s not interested in investing heavily into Clairvoyance, he can’t deny the usefulness of being able to detect enemies around us. This rat basement is the perfect place to practice skills like that. And it beats going back out into the snow.
“So what’s it like, being a reincarnator?” Wren wonders.
“I have five million ghosts in my head and I’m still learning to be me,” I say. “Most of them are quiet and I’ve been kind of leery about waking them up.”
“Man, my sordid life story is much less interesting than yours,” Wren says.
“It’s hard to out-weird a reincarnator,” Anise says.
“Pretty sure Drake’s weird even for a reincarnator,” Basalt puts in helpfully.
“I’m 9 years old with the memories of an adult man. There’s some things I need to do but I need to reach Elite rank and grow up a little more before trying any of it. So I’ve been training hard.”
“Well, I’ve got some ideas on how to hit Elite without quests from your core, at least,” Wren says. “I’ve been trying it myself, but most parties don’t want to have anything to do with me once they find out I’m a quest denier.”
“And you’ve toned down the ‘attitude problem’ around us,” I say. “I can tell. You’re being careful about what to say for fear you’ll offend the only people you’ve run across who will accept that.”
Wren sighs. “You can tell that, can you.”
“It’s written all over your soul. Don’t worry. You can be as snarky as you like so long as it doesn’t mess up actual diplomacy, and I don’t do a lot of actual diplomacy. Turns out it’s pretty useless when everyone just does what their quest log tells them to anyway.”
We enter the next identical basement room and pause just past the doorway to let Basalt scan the area before we aggro anything.
“[Aura Sight] is up to level 3,” Basalt says. “And I’m detecting… 5 rats? No, 6 in this room.”
“7,” I say.
“Blast, now I see it.”
The rats leap at us when we step forward, and I duck behind a stack of crates to use them as cover. Hiding behind things is also an important skill to grind.
My companions’ blades tear apart another batch of monsters. Rowan’s replacement shield has been serving him well enough, but I hope I’ll be able to make him a decent one eventually. I’ll have to see about getting a little crafting done while we’re here.
“Tempest seems to like throwing people at monsters, not so much each other,” Wren says, wiping off her daggers. “Rust isn’t like that. Sure, there’s rats and slimes everywhere, but the city is more savage than Tempest’s dungeons. Even its reincarnators have to claw their way up through the midden a lot of the time.”
Upon searching the basement, I discover a secret door behind a stack of crates. Opening it reveals... another identical room full of rats and crates.
“I count... 9 rats in this room,” Basalt says, hefting his axe but waiting for confirmation before attacking. “Did I miss any this time?”
“9 it is,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
After clearing out a few more rooms full of rodent-shaped monsters, we complete the dungeon and claim our rewards.