“What is it?” I asked her as she scooped up another spoonful.
“I got a message. The corpse honey increased your Constitution by 10. I’m trying another one. Yes! Another message!”
If it was like the Verdant Plum we got in the gorg cave, this would be golden, and I got a ton of it.
I avoided eating it for now. I still was not sure about increasing my stats now that my aura was back to normal. Before anything, I would go back to Miflin and ask her how to proceed with things.
“Great, this is a real gold mine. See if you get a message after you eat enough, a percentage increase maybe.”
“Mmm…” she answered while stuffing herself with the bloody thing. In the meantime, I went to the crystal and, taking the tip in my hand, I snapped a fragment and gave it to her.
She was licking her lips, stained red by the honey. “I got fifty points of Constitution total! Isn’t this too much? This thing is incredible! But no percentage increase. Still, it’s really good. It would do much for our own people, and we have so much still!”
“A pity. A flat boost is good too though, but try this now. Maybe this would give it. It should be a crystallized form of the honey, maybe it’s more powerful or something.”
I gave the fragment to her. She took it and put it in her mouth, licking it like a lollipop, while Alya looked around.
“Are you keeping more good stuff in here than the honey?”
“No, unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to go around gathering resources and hoarding them like a dragon. But I suppose now there is nothing that stops us from doing exactly that. This place is much bigger than Safe Zone 78. Here we can build our strengths. While I talked with Adrian, he let slip that his group was power leveling around here. There are a great many resources and monsters to hunt in these plains, maybe we should create some hunting parties… Tomorrow we would have to decide what to do. I would have to talk with everyone and hear their opinion.”
I was thinking that actually the presence of Adrian could work in my favor here. I could push people to join his group, especially the most useless ones, so my curse wouldn’t make me stuck with them if they chose to go their merry way. But I had to deal with it carefully.
“Yeah, it’s high time you start acting like the leader of the guild. Until now only Tom and Chloe actively worked to make everything run smoothly. I don’t know why you are so reticent about working with others but-”
“Wooooo! Yeah baby!”
Rhea’s shout stopped Alya mid speech. She was actually doing a little dance in the middle of the storage room.
“What did it give?” It must have been something good for having this reaction.
“Another plus fifty in Constitution plus a ten percent increase! It made me cross the 500 mark, yeah!”
That was actually very good, fucking really good actually. A ten percent increase was nothing to scoff at, and a flat 100? It would be enough for some people to become way more resistant than before. I was thinking of Frederick in particular.
“Tomorrow we’re going to push those numbers even higher. Honestly now I would like to go back to the shop, I need to have a conversation with Miflin.”
“I’m coming with you! There’s no way that I would be able to sleep now. I want my power up too!” Rhea was really excited. I could understand. Raising one’s stats was always an incredible experience, and actually she knew everything about me already so it wouldn’t really be a problem if she heard, maybe…
“Ok, let’s go. Alya?”
She waved me off. “I’ll go straight to bed. Today had been quite eventful, and I still feel like I’m about to explode from all the fruits I ate. You go, I’d get to my room. Actually, how are we going to exit this place?”
I retrieved my stylo and infused it with mana. It redrew a door on an empty wall. As I opened it we found ourselves in the bedroom in the tavern again. Now that I looked around, the difference between the two places couldn’t be more stark.
While the tavern wasn’t bad by any means, the simple wooden furniture and the single window weren’t anything compared to the opulence of the manor. There wasn’t even a mirror or a bathroom here…
“I want one of those too,” Alya muttered as the stylo returned to me.
“Only a hundred something k, nothing special.” I said with a smirk.
“Fucking hell! Should I sell a kidney then? What the fuck is wrong with the prices in the shop?”
“I don’t know if you checked the most expensive stuff, but there are bloodlines that go for tens or even hundreds of millions, along with some skills and items that are totally crazy.”
“Killing monsters is not enough, huh? We really need to go and find more stuff like that honey, or the life potion.”
“I think this place was meant to be tackled as a team, a party, like Quinn says. Fighting off the monsters in the lair, big boss fight and then dividing the rewards, a power up for everybody, then you sell the rest, thus gaining a ton of points. But if you are strong enough, you can do it by yourself, and the rewards are so much better… I believe that is what Adrian is doing.”
The girls looked at me, then at each other.
“Yeah, but in the end we are going to be fighting God knows what outside the tutorial. One person can’t do everything alone, no matter how powerful. We need allies, and powerful ones at that,” said Rhea.
I looked at them in turn. “I agree that we need people who can diversify and bring expertise in different areas, but when it’s going to be a matter of life and death, only power would dictate who is going to be left standing. Having the best crafters in the universe won’t be worth anything if we can’t protect them. Actually, they would only bring a target on our back. And having a group of strong people is less important than having a single extremely powerful individual.”
“Eli, you can’t manage to protect everyone by yourself. Even if all the resources flow into you, alone you won’t be able to face all of the threats ahead.”
“You’re wrong, Rhea. I’m sorry, but with the exception of Adrian, even if all of you and his group attacked me at the same time, you wouldn’t be able to face me. And I’m not saying this out of arrogance, but simply because it’s the truth.”
For a moment no one spoke. Rhea was on the verge of saying something while I didn’t really want to start an argument now. I had other plans for tonight other than discussing these matters.
“Ok, let’s all calm down and agree to disagree. Shouldn’t you go to the shop? I’m beat, so I would head to my room, my very fancy tavern room, and I would get a good night of sleep.”
“Yeah, let’s go. I really have to deal with what happened before, I’m not going to wait until tomorrow.” I said while opening the door.
As I stepped foot outside, the air was still smelling of food and there were still people talking animatedly downstairs.
We said goodnight to Alya, then proceeded out of the tavern. We got some looks from the remaining people, Adrian included, but nobody stopped us. Finally we started walking in the cool night air. The elemental city was beautiful at night, a little disquieting as the chaotic nature of the building placement was still strange to me, along with the passing elementals.
“Hello!” said Rhea to what looked like a stag made of crystalline water. The being bubbled something in response, then went its merry way.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” said Rhea excitedly. She was totally energized as we walked through the city. “This place, the tutorial, magic! Everything is so new and amazing. I always wanted to travel the world, but compared to our planet there are such sights around here that we could have never seen before! Doesn’t it excite you?”
I thought about it, and the answer was simple. No.
The sights were amazing, she was right. Magic was amazing, but I felt no excitement at the prospect of visiting new places or discovering new things. The only thing I wanted was to get rid of this curse. After that, I would roam the universe with her if she wanted, I wouldn’t mind exploring new worlds, cultures and the wonders of magic. But I wasn’t so optimistic as to believe that after the tutorial things would develop for the better.
“Only if I can see them with you…”
She smiled and took my arm, walking close to me.
“You can be surprisingly romantic under that cynical persona, you know?”
I know, and it’s just because I know what you girls want to hear. Not that I didn’t want to see the universe with her, but, you know… men have a different way of going about things. One needs to know how to play the game.
I smiled back and pulled her closer.
“C’mon, let’s go and get your present.”
And some answers.