Chapter: Change of fate

Wren had been standing out front of Lord Chonglu’s palace all night and morning, he had felt faint, hungry and tired from standing for so long, still he remained there, not moving from his spot.

Finally it was reaching mid afternoon when two men, escorted by Lord Chonglu personally, were leaving the palace.

Others might not know the truth but Wren did, Lord Chonglu never left the side of his children since they had fallen ill. Seeing him out in the sunlight, sending these people away, Wren’s mind could only shake.

They must’ve healed them, if they were able to heal the two twins whose issue couldn’t be resolved through the healing houses or medicines, they could help Qin’er.

This thought was at the front of his mind, but there was also a smaller voice that chided him for his previous actions.

Because you were lacking, you turned arrogant, falling into your role heavily and attacking others without care. What would mother have thought? What was father trying to tell you when you hid your emotions and wanted to lash out at them?

Wren felt his stomach turning, his own actions turned over in his mind again and again to the point that he had imagined himself in their shoes, it didn’t feel good.

He was angry for not doing what he set out to do, for not becoming strong enough, he shouldn’t have put this on others.

The guards and servants all moved around awkwardly as the Lord Chonglu bowed to these two men, one of them lifted him back up with a smile.

Then the two men were chatting to one another as they walked down the hill, looking over Wren and his entourage.

Wren dropped to his knees and kowtowed in the dirt.

“Great masters, this lowly one is Wren Silaz, I slandered you and talked out of spite when we first met, if you wish to punish me I will accept it all, I only ask for you to help aid someone that is innocent!”

“Silaz?” One man asked.

“Trading shop, monster core,” the other replied.

“Ah, okay yeah that makes sense,” the first said.

***

Erik and Rugrat looked at the young man in the dirt, his guards all took a knee behind him and kowtowed too with grimaces on their faces.

Erik and Rugrat had been angered by the boy’s actions but they took them as actions of an arrogant youth that needed to learn some lessons.

Since then they had been through a lot.

Erik squatted down and looked at the boy, Rugrat was behind him, he looked relaxed but he was watching Erik’s back even now, his finger tracing one of his storage rings, ready to pull out a weapon if he needed it.

“Raise your head,” Erik said. Kowtowing in the ground was all good and all but he wanted to see if the boy had changed, if he was different.

The boy did so, not matching Erik’s eyes.

“Give me your hand,” Erik said.

The boy held it out freely, gritting his teeth as if he expected to lose it the next second.

Erik held the boy’s wrist and used organic scan, with it he could pick up the speed of they boy’s heart and figure out if he was lying or not.

“Your name is Wren correct?” Erik asked, working to establish a baseline.

“Correct,” Wren said.

“Your last name is Silaz,” Erik asked.

“Correct,” Wren said, confused by the questions.

“Do you believe your actions were wrong that day? Yes or no.”

“Yes,” Wren hissed, his face turning red.

“In the future will you treat others as you wish to be treated, no matter their position? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Wren said, recovering some strength as he looked up at Erik slightly.

“Who do you want to help?” Erik asked.

“My sister,”

“Is she hurt?” Erik asked, the boy flinched as if he had been stabbed.

“Yes,” he said, Erik could hear the helplessness and feel the truth in his words.

Erik released his hand and stood up.

“Well, let's go and check up on her then and don’t try to be such an arrogant prick in the future, or we’ll come and kick your ass,” Erik’s voice dipped slightly into a growl as his aura leaked out a bit, focused on Wren who shivered under it.

“Y-yes,” Wren said, goosebumps covering his body.

As soon as it arrived it left, with Erik pulling Wren up from the ground with ease.

“Lead on Wren.”

***

Elan Silaz smiled as he looked out over the garden. It was one of Qin’s good days, she was sitting across from him looking at the pieces on the board, her brows pulled together in serious concentration, giving off a childish charm.

She moved one of her pieces on the board as her father looked at her move.

She held her finger on the piece, checking her move and analyzing it.

Looks like she saw through my sneak attack.

Elan pushed his lips together as she let go of her piece.

“Your turn, dad!” She said excited to see what he would do.

A woman at the side of the room cleared her throat.

Silaz looked over, his hand in the air.

Qin also looked over, Elan couldn’t help but frown as their private time was interrupted.

“Young Master Wren seeks an audience with Head Silaz and Young Mistress. He left last night to stand in front of Lord Chonglu’s residence all night and morning, kowtowing before two men that departed, they are the ones that acted upon the Healing Moon House and the ones that young lord Domonos talked of,” the woman said in a rush.

Elan felt a mix of emotions, hope, fear of that hope, pride at his son having learned from his losses.

“Wren apologized?” Qin couldn’t help but ask.

“That,” the servant looked awkward before nodding.

Elan lowered his hand and seemed to be deep in thought.

What if they can’t help her, will this just be another wasted visit and test? Raising her hopes only to break them. It would be too cruel.

Just as he was about to speak another voice interrupted him.

“Dad, we should see them at least,” Qin said. Elan looked over at her, he could only sigh, she had seen through him easily.

“Very well,” Elan said, smiling at Qin, then turning to the servant. “Bring them here.”

It wasn’t long until Wren entered the room with two men right behind him.

The men were wearing blackened clothing, at a glance Silaz could tell that they were fighters, but they didn’t seem to be interested in fighting, instead looking around the gardens and his home in interest.

“Father,” Wren said, stopping and bowing to his dad.

The two men didn’t bow and instead looked at Qin.

Elan felt his anger building, but he didn’t see any lust in their eyes, instead they seemed to be appraising her, checking her condition as he had seen many of his people look over monster cores, they looked at her the same way.

“These two healing grand masters have agreed to visit and lend their aid to Qin,” Wren said, the stress and respect in Wren’s tone made Elan look over the two men again.

“What would you need to do?” Elan asked.

“Just need to use a spell to see what the issue is, from there we can figure out what might make it better,” one man said.

Elan, looked to Wren and then the man and finally Qin.

As if understanding what he was going to say, Qin smiled softly.

“Please do your spells,” she said, offering her hand.

The man nodded and stepped forward.

He didn’t take her hand but instead held her wrist and closed her eyes.

“I never thought this was possible!”

“What is it?” The other man asked.

The first man used a sound transmission to the other so they couldn’t hear him.

“No way! If I had that!”

Another sound transmission followed.

After a flurry of them, the first man released her wrist and they started to talk freely through their sound transmission devices.

Their expressions were animated and then they slowly darkened before they frowned, then they seemed to reach an accord.

“We have a plan that might work, but it relates to some skills that we don’t want others to learn so we would have to ask that Qin would have to swear and oath that she wouldn’t tell others what happened and that no one else would record or try to gain any information while this is going on,” the man’s eyes landed on Elan.

“You can help Qin?” He demanded.

The men looked at one another.

“We believe so.”

“I will need an oath that you will do nothing to harm Qin and only look out for her best interests,” Elan said.

“These oaths are getting tiring,” the taller one complained.

"We swear on the Ten Realms that we will do nothing to harm Qin and only look out for her best interests unless otherwise provoked,” the other man said.

With the oath established Elan nodded.

“I swear that I will make sure that there is no one that tries to learn of Erik and Rugrat’s techniques while they are assisting Qin Silaz,” he said, establishing overlapping oaths.

***

Erik, Rugrat and Qin were guided to a secure room that was used for conversations that the Silaz family didn’t want getting out.

Once inside Erik started stretching.

“Dude, I swear the right shoulder is all kinked to fuck.”

“Come on, I just made it like last week,” Rugrat said, inspecting the shoulder.

“It's pinching me in the back!” Erik said as Rugrat checked on the shoulder.

‘“You’ve just got fucked up shoulders,” Rugrat said.

“You made fucked up shoulders,” Erik complained.

Qin wrung her hands as she looked at the two ‘grandmasters’ arguing about armor.

“Look, you check it out,” Erik said, he pulled off the straps and gave it to Rugrat.

Rugrat sighed and looked the shoulders over and put his head inside.

“Fuck you need deodorant,” Rugrat complained.

“Yeah you need a shower and all,” Erik shot back as he stopped in front of Qin.

She looked up at him timidly, he had a handsome albeit rugged face, and the black shirt under his armor showed his muscles.

She looked up into his crystal blue eyes, she somehow felt a bit safer.

“You’ve got crystals in your mana channels kid,” the man said, grabbing a chair and sitting down. He didn’t have any of the air of a grandmaster as he lounged there, looking more like a mercenary.

Qin jumped as there was a banging noise behind him.

“Will you shut it!” Erik yelled to Rugrat.

“You want a fixed shoulder or not?” Rugrat shot back as he continued to work on the shoulders, putting them back into place.

“You admitting they’re fucked up?”

“No!” Rugrat said, but even to Erik’s ear it sounded like a kid not getting their own way.

Erik revealed a grin to Qin and winked.

She moved her hands faster she hadn’t really seen that many people outside of the family in her life, seeing these two lively fellows seemed to be a lot for her.

“Umm, these crystals, w-what does that mean?”

Erik let out a sigh and leaned forward a bit, trying to relax her a bit.

“It looks like there was a mutation in your body, you see you have mana channels that run through your body, they pull mana in from the outside world, store it in your belly, or your dantian, you can draw this out and, through spells, create phenomena in the world,” Erik said.

Qin nodded her head, her hands slowing their speed as she looked at him interest.

“Now, these channels, usually they’re clear, but yours got filled up with crystals. In fact it made a gem in your dantian, first I want to test something out,” Erik said holding out her hand and indicating for her to come forward.

She did so, Erik held her wrist again and then allowed a thin strand of mana out of his mana gate and allowed it to touch the mana gate in her wrist.

Not only were her veins filled with mana crystals her gates were crystalized as well!

He watched the thread of mana with his organic scan as it touch the mana crystal, he felt a tugging sensation as the mana gate pulled on his mana, he continued to let out a small amount, the mana gate seemed to become more refined as her mana channels swelled, Qin’er let out a low hiss of pain.

Erik pulled his mana back as he looked at her, her legs were shaking and there was sweat on her face.

Her mana channels swelled as if they were trying to draw the mana in, the crystal seemed to crave for it. It almost looks like when someone has a punctured lung and it separates inside, you need to bleed out the air or else they can’t breath.

He had seen the same when someone was wounded and he healed them, their body wanted that healing energy.

The same thing went for the crystals.

Having an idea, Erik turned to Rugrat.

“I need you to make a needle that can pierce skin and bone as well as mana gates, I want it to be able to hold mana. Like how we attack them from the inside this’ll be from the outside,” Erik said.

Rugrat nodded slowly.

“Okay, I can make basically a shard of metal that will be mana conductive, I don’t have the skill or the smithy to work on anything indepth here.”

“That should be enough,” Erik said.

Rugrat put the armor to the side and then he sorted through his storage rings, “where are you?”

While Rugrat searched around Erik looked to Qin.

“It looks like you have a special constitution, one that has changed your mana channels and gates, what I want to do is open a small hole in one of your mana gates, this should allow mana to pass into your body, equalizing the pressure inside and out,” Erik said.

“O-okay,” Qin said with a pale face, she had a weak body with the constant pain being in places that had high mana and remaining at home most of the time, her body was incredibly weak.

Still she was stubborn and she had endured through the pain, covering it over so that her father and brothers wouldn’t worry.

She sat down on a chair offered by Erik as Rugrat finished up with the needle.

He cleaned it up with some fire and gave it to Erik.

Erik took out wraith’s touch and put it on Qin’s wrist.

He focused on the needle, he poured mana into it, finding that it circulated easily, it was a rough looking needle, more of a metal shard that Rugrat had knocked off of a piece of ore.

He would have never used this back on Earth, now he wasn’t so worried.

He built up more and more mana in the needle until it glowed blue faintly.

“Rugrat I need more!”

Rugrat moved over, holding the needle as well, poured in more mana so that it was showing blue lines, the light of the needle higher than that of the lights in the room.

Erik jabbed the needle into her mana gate, the sudden blast of direct mana didn’t break open the gate but it drilled a small hole through it.

It was like a vacuum had been opened, mana in the room rushed towards Qin, it slammed into that opening and rushing into her mana channels, the crystals in her channels started to change, they seemed to almost liquify, her mana channels growing bigger and turning into crystal, as mana passed through her mana channels it was refined repeatedly, her mana system seemed to come alive as it reached down into her danatian, being sucked in by the crystal there.

“Look at the mana gate,” Rugrat said.

Erik moved his scan back to see that under the influx of mana, Qin’s mana deprived body was drawing in a massive amount of mana, the mana was like water rushing through a mud wall, chunks of the mana gate were being torn apart as it was forced open, the mana in the room only picked up speed as her entire body was undergoing a massive transformation.

The crystal in her body started to dissolve and integrated into her mana channels.

The crystal in the middle of her body was condensed multiple times over, pulling in the neon blue mana.

That pure white crystal started to take on a blue hue, becoming more vibrant as it condensed further and further.

“Core compression stage,” Rugrat said, as he was focusing on mana gathering system, he could identify what was going on inside of her body.

The now pinky nail sized sphere started to rotate slowly within her dantian.

Qin’er let out a gasp as the mana running through her body stopped moving, the rush of air settled back down, the disturbed dust and letters that had been on a nearby desk, floating back to the ground.

Qin opened her eyes, they looked like aqua blue pearls.

Erik who had been using organic scan noticed the blue channels that had been glowing brightly now dimming down slightly.

He broke out of his daze and looked inside her body.

“It looks like the crystals are actually refining the mana as it passes through her body, when it reaches her dantain it is naturally accumulating, with such purity the mana gathers naturally instead of needing to be forced together,” Rugrat said, explaining what they were seeing.

“This must be like the modifications that mana gathering cultivators use to improve their abilities,” Erik said.

“Right, to break through into the compressed core stage in one shot, leaves one jealous,” Rugrat said.

“Umm, what happened?” Qin asked in a daze.

Erik and Rugrat let go of her wrists and looked at her, she was just a girl, a little lost with everything that had happened.

“You opened your first mana gate, you had a lot of pressure inside your mana channels, we opened one of your mana gates so that the pressure would balance out, you’ve got a high talent for mana,” Erik said.

“I only have one mana gate though? I thought one needed more mana gates to be stronger?”

“They do and they don’t, there’s a lot of theory and information about it all,” Rugrat said, even he hadn’t been able to understand it all and he had access to the gnome’s records.

“Qin, what do you want to do in the future?” Erik asked.

Qin was kind of struck with his question.

“I umm,” she looked kind of lost for a few moments but gathered herself.

“Well, I guess I can do a lot now, but I’m not really good with fighting, I don’t want to hurt people and I wouldn’t want to run the business, too many meetings and stuffy old men,” Qin scrunched up her face, making the other two smile at her expression.

“Talking about this with anyone else will break your oath,” Erik said as he pulled out a emblem, this emblem was something that Rugrat and Taran had made together, it was an invitation, it was nearly impossible to fake, the idea was that the person with this would go to the Wild Reaches Trading outpost, hand this to a contact there and then be taken to Alva Dungeon.

Qin wasn’t well suited for fighting and she didn’t want to run a business, but she was smart and she could think quickly as Erik had seen already.

The sects and other schools would ask for her to fight, Kanesh Academy, would be a place that she could grow her talents.

She could learn to make different things, or build on current theories. Erik was also being selfish, right now she had just awakened her magical abilities. If he could open her other mana gates that were still sealed with crystal, just what would the result be.

Qin’s attention was focused on Erik and the simply looking piece of metal.

“This is an invitation to a place that you won’t have to fight, to a place that you can learn more about your abilities, about crafting, growing your skills and other pursuits, where you can find a path. If you are looking for an option, try this one out,” Erik passed it to her.

“How does it work?” She asked, turning it around in her hands.

“Go to the Bloody Ram in the Wild Reaches Trading Outpost at dusk and look for a person wearing this on their clothing,” Erik said.

She nodded and looked at the piece of metal.

“Thank you,” she said, honestly.

“Get some rest little one and take your time getting used to your changes, only tell your father what has happened,” Erik said, he saw the way that Elan Silaz looked after his daughter, he would know the correct thing to do.

“Could I be a healer like you with this?” Qin asked as she held up the invitation.

“You can be whatever you want,” Rugrat grinned.

Erik nodded and looked to Rugrat with a look.

“Your shoulder should be fixed now,” Rugrat said.

Erik pulled his armor back on as Rugrat checked everything in his storage rings.

They left the room, Elan, Wren and the elusive Yui were all there, as the door opened they looked behind Rugrat and Erik in to the room, seeing Qin there, they couldn’t help themselves and rushed forwards.

Elan slowed his steps and looked to Rugrat and Erik.

“What can I do to repay you?” He asked.

“Two coppers, please,” Rugrat smiled.

Elan froze, before he pulled out two coppers, a confused look on his face.

“Have a nice day,” Rugrat said as the copper disappeared into his storage ring.

Erik and Rugrat started walking away, Elan had been willing to give up his trading house, everything he had built, but they let it go just like that?

“Father,” Qin’s voice reached him as he turned to see her smiling there, she had hidden the signs of pain before, but now he could see her truly relaxed expression he couldn’t help but feel burning hot tears fall down his face, seeing his daughter healthy and not suffering anymore.

***

Erik and Rugrat walked through the streets of Chonglu, it was late afternoon and people were moving through the low light, heading home, getting drinks with friends, it seemed almost peaceful.

They both wore cloaks, hiding their appearances and their armor.

People moved out of their way as they headed through the city.

“Did you hear about the Healing Moon House?”

“Grandmaster Eri, tossed from the highest window, I didn’t like him, but isn’t that kind of overboard?”

“Haven’t you heard the announcement by the Lord Chonglu denouncing Grandmaster Eri and laying his crimes bare? Healer? More like crook in flashy robes!”

Erik turned a deaf ear to it all as they entered the largest square in Chonglu city.

In front of them lay Chonglu Cities Ten Realm totem.

They walked up the steps towards the totem, no one moved to stop them but people watched them in interest.

“Are they going to try ascending?”

“I want to ascend to!” A young boy said with shining eyes.

“It’s dangerous going through the realms, you’ll scare your mother talking like that!” His mother berated him.

“But I’ll bring back a princess and make you a queen!” The boy said, living in his heroic fantasies.

Somehow I doubt it’s going to be that easy.

Erik thought, looking up at the totem as they paused in front of the massive pillar.

Erik and Rugrat looked at one another.

“Teleported into the unknown, sounds similar,” Erik said.

Rugrat laughed, the two of them had gone through life and death, but from it, they still wanted to venture more, to see what these ten realms had to offer, they had people in Alva Dungeon relying on them. Their path might not be easy, but they could take it one step at a time.

A screen appeared in front of them

==========

You have reached Level 10, meeting the requirements to ascend to the Second Realm.

==========

Do you wish to ascend?

==========

YES/NO

==========

“Second Realm here we come!” Rugrat yelled selecting the ‘yes’ a flash of light enveloped them.

“Another two off to try the second realm,” a man said, drinking from his mug.

“I wonder if they’ll make it back?” One of his friends asked as the sun started to dim and the moons rose over Chonglu.