13

The little elf girl looked at him quizzically, and kept staring for a while. Charles looked at her and waited for a moment to see if she was going to speak, but she didn’t.

“What?” Charles asked.

“It’s almost night, we can’t go now.”

“Right. We leave in the morning, then.”

The forest out of the window was dark and silent. Anyone without Charles’ implants would have a hard time seeing what was in front of their face, as the little light of the moon was not enough to penetrate the dense canopy. He turned to look at the forge, his gaze only for a moment going over the two emerald gemstones that were the elf’s eyes. He was glad that he still had things to do, so that the night would not be a waste of time.

He closed the virtual window in his view that was displaying the LAI’s analysis on the girl’s motives and just went to work. He hoped that he could take his mind off that presence in the room with him, but instead found his thoughts going in that direction.

In the end, there was nothing to do about it now. It was too late to go back on his word, something he would never do unless there was a good reason to.

He looked at the pile of materials on the worktable, and approached it with heavy steps. As he got closer, the steps became more confident and relaxed, until he could feel the sensation of the bare metal on his skin. The copper coil needed for the electrical generator was almost ready, only requiring the central magnet in order to generate electricity. He also wanted to build a rudimentary battery and a power transformer, but he lacked the necessary materials to make them right now.

He switched to something else entirely, focusing on making new projectiles for his railgun. He needed more of the generic, disposable kind as well as some more specific ones to use in different situations. He had already thought up designs for small and precise needle-like darts, large and heavy ones that could smash fortifications and even clustered ones that would split up in many parts once shot. The only limitation was their maximum size so that they could fit in the barrel of the gun.

“Uhm.” Eereen mumbled softly, playing with her fingers while looking at the floor.

Charles sighed and looked at her, placing a finished rod of iron on top of a pile of them with an audible clang. This was going to be another bothersome conversation for sure, and he had already reached the threshold number bothersome things for today.

“What?”

She looked at him for a moment while mumbling something, but was not saying anything yet. Charles gave her a second, exhaling loudly while she collected her thought, and waited some more.

“Just say it, come on. I know you want to say something, it’s quite evident at this point.”

“You said something about quests, why?”

His face relaxed. “Easy, because I don’t have them.”

The girl said nothing, but Charles noticed that she was about to ask about it and just spoke before she could. “The damn system seems to have a bone to pick with me, but that’s not enough to stop me.”

“I see…” the girl replied in a low voice.

After a couple minutes spent in silence while she watched Charles work, she mustered up the courage to speak again. The LAI informed him that she turned beet red before speaking.

“Do you not sleep?”

“Uh?” He paused, the heavy hammer resting in his right hand.

Her face indicated quite clearly that she was getting sleepy, sitting there in the low light of the forge. He had to admit that he too would be sleepy if he was in her position. The soft red light of the fire, along with the silver shade of the moon coming in from the windows made for the perfect environment to help someone sleep. The air coming in from outside was cool and pleasant, but not uncomfortable, and the forge kept the room warm and cozy. If one liked the sound of metal being hammered, then this place was quite nice for a nap.

“Ah, right, you need to sleep.”

Eereen made a face. “You don’t?”

He shrugged. “Well, I do, but at the same time I do not.”

The elf looked at him in the eyes, scrunching her eyebrows cutely while thinking deeply. Charles killed the idea of her being even close to cute and cuddly before it could turn dangerous. He focused on the presence detector for a moment and smiled when he saw that the LAI had not picked up any signs of movement outside. The small light blue radar was devoid of red dots and only showed his black one and the girl’s green one. It was no longer yellow, he saw.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” she said in the end.

“It’s like, you know, sleepwalking. I actually sleep but my body keeps working while the mind rests. Everybody does that where I’m from.”

Her eyes lit up. “Is it like a skill?”

“Something like that, I guess?” Charles said, and resumed hammering the piece of metal. He had rested enough.

“But you said that you can’t see the system. Then it must be a spell! Can you teach it to me?”

“No.”

She looked at the floor with a sad face, but Charles just looked at his tools and at the red-hot metal on the anvil. He was still not looking at her face, too worried about the potential issues that came with that. The fact that she showed that emotion even though he was not looking was odd but not worthy of investigation.

“Can I at least sleep?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

There was a moment of silence, then the girl spoke again.

“Uhm…”

Charles threw the hammer at the floor, got up to his feet and threw his hands in the air. “What now?”

The girl gulped. “Is there a hidden door or something?”

Charles looked at her sideways.

“Why would there be one? And why would I tell you if there was? But why are you even asking?”

“There is no bed here, so I thought that perhaps there was a hidden bedroom.”

His face fell. He had not even considered the issue, and now he felt like an idiot.

“Ah, that. Just let me… Crap.” He gripped the hammer tightly.

“What’s wrong?” There was concern in her voice, but he dismissed it. He was thoroughly annoyed because he knew where he could find a bed and he knew that he could not get there now.

“My fucking ring. That dickhead Giona has it.”

“Is it important?” She asked, jumping slightly at the mention of either the name or the ring.

“Of course, it is!” He said, slurring the words while the events of the day replayed in his mind. “Half of my stuff is… was… hopefully will be in there goddammit! And that Giona, that man is just annoying. He’s been following me for days just to ask about the fucking ring and I even handed it to him!”

Her face assumed a serious expression. “I don’t think that he followed you to do that. I think he wants to get on your-”

“I don’t care. The fact is this. There’s no bed, sleep on the floor.” He said, and ordered the LAI to take control while he tried to sleep.

When he woke up, he noticed with satisfaction that the workshop now featured a couple new metal tools and a nice stack of ammo for his gun. The elf girl was sleeping in a corner of the room, curled up into a ball on the floor. Her bow and quiver were on the ground next to her, not even in reach in case she needed to use them in a pinch.

Of course, if anything managed to get past Charles, he was quite sure that she would not be able to do anything, nor would a bow and arrows be of any use against him, but it was the carelessness of her actions that bothered him. Then he decided not to care, and briefly wondered why he even wasted so much brainpower pondering over such things. Were her tactics beginning to work on him?

The thought of his storage ring however, sudden and overwhelming in its urgency, derailed that train of thought. He darted out of the door with purpose, leaving the still sleeping figure inside to rest.

He reached the guild, making good time this time around because the guards at the gate just opened a wide path for him to go through, going so far as to push the people in line away from in front of him. If this was Giona’s doing, and if that man managed to refill the ring to full again, then perhaps Charles could consider cutting him some slack.

He reached the Guild, and went straight to the master’s office, once again without anyone stopping him. The adventurers were looking at him oddly, and the LAI informed him that they were most probably scared and intimidated by his presence for some reason.

He knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for an answer.

“Oh, Charles my friend.” The guild master said.

“Cut the crap. Ring.”

The master tossed the ring, which Charles caught and put on his finger in one fluid motion. After the LAI confirmed that there were no issues, he checked the content of the artificial space. He looked at all the items in the storage, and a smile crept on his face. Perhaps this Giona was not a bad man after all.

“Nice.” He said and left, tossing another gold coin at the master before leaving.

He was not going to repay for the damage that was done when they collapsed his space, but the man had been useful and deserved some sort of reward. On the way out he decided to stop by to see Isabelle, and got paid for the materials he brought in yesterday. He also noticed way more motes of white light enter his token compared to the last time.

When he reached his base again, the elf was awake and waiting for him next to the forge. She was examining it and the rest of the equipment, but as soon as she saw him, she immediately returned to her corner. He checked if she had touched anything by overlapping a scan of the room on top of his vision.

“It’s time to go.” He said, scooped up some stuff into the ring, and then motioned to the girl to follow him out. “You know the way, right?”

She nodded. “I’ve been close to the tower once.”

“Then let’s go. Make way.” He said, then followed the elf into the deep forest.

The forest was thick and difficult to navigate for Charles, who had no power in his suit to help him move around. The girl, being a wood elf instead of a former reclusive space engineer, looked much more comfortable than him in this environment and was moving around with ease even without the use of any skills that he could see.

She was born to be here, in the forest among the tall trees and the thick underbrush. Charles was not, on the other hand, as he was born and raised in space quite far from anything natural and green that was not just painted that way. This forest was proving to be quite the challenge for him, with all its insects and annoying thorny bushes that were in the way. For a moment he even entertained the idea of starting a forest fire with magic, but his miser mana pool compared to the cost of even a fireball put a stop to that idea.

He kept swatting around, trying to cut the branches to open a path for the best part of the morning until he understood that his actions were pointless. He was going very slowly and was wasting too much energy being angry at inanimate objects like the trees, while Eereen was moving nimbly around without any tools. She looked like a monkey, Charles thought with a smile, a smile which faltered when he realized that a girl acting like a monkey was having it that much easier than him here.

They reached a small clearing around noon, and stopped to eat something. They didn’t have to hunt or gather anything as the ring was full of delicious looking food that was gently provided by the guild master to repay for the damages to Charles’ possessions. As he took out some dishes, he also noticed that something seemed to click within the ring, and asked the LAI to reactivate the item level up notifications for him to see.

[Item level up! Meyreen Ring of Holding new level: 353]

He exhaled, and a little more air than normal left his nostrils. He reasoned that the level up happened because of all the work the guild master did in order to refill the ring, and while it was a nice thing it was not too useful right now. The space inside expanded quite a bit, and he predicted that between his natural regeneration and the automated absorption of mana from the environment he should be able to fill it up again within the day. He decided not to do that in order to have some free space in case he wanted to pick up something that interested him and was very bulky, an event that was unlikely to occur in the city but now in the forest could happen at any time.

They resumed walking and kept going until night, with the elf sleeping in a tent he provided while he had his LAI keep watch and build stuff with the tools in the ring. Making a campfire costed him more than half of his mana because he tried to use a small fireball to start it, but in the end he reasoned that he didn’t have anything better to do with his mana so it didn’t matter too much. A thing he noticed was that the mana cost for the spell was a fraction lower this time than the first time he casted it, which probably meant that the cost was not fixed and rather depended on his comprehension of the magic itself. Incidentally, the fact that the LAI knew perfectly how to cast it did not matter at all, and did not do anything to lower the cost while his own personal insights did.

Morning came, and they resumed walking again. They spoke little along the way: Charles was not too interested in making small talk and entertaining a conversation while the elf did not do anything to initiate it after the first few failed attempts. She revealed something about the system, however, after she noticed that it was the only thing that could keep Charles interested.

He learned that everyone in this universe got the tutorial when they were between 16 and 18 years of age, an age which could also change depending on the race’s life span. A wood elf like Eereen, who could live for thousands of years, usually received the tutorial much later than a human.

After the tutorial a person could finally make use of the system beyond the simple farming of levels, meaning that Charles was basically blocked at a state before the tutorial. When they completed it, they could choose a class and finally complete both system and guild quests.

He knew already that the guild was using some sort of magic to track quests, but now he learned that both the guild and certain individuals the system deemed to be powerful enough could issue quests through it. Eereen, for instance, used to complete her village’s quest which were issued by the chief. Sometimes by the system as well, which only reinforced his opinion that the thing had some agenda that it was pursuing ever since it came to this world.

The system gave quests to people directly as well, quests which were usually personal and personalized to the extreme. The common denominator was that they were always encouraging personal growth through hardship and conflict, offering great rewards whenever one managed to survive or slay powerful enemies.

Classes granted bonuses, this much Charles knew, but also unlocked skills. The skills were the system’s way to help people with magic, since they lowered the cost to just a fraction of the arcane way of casting and also could be learned much easier with the help of the system itself. They were limited, however, to whatever the class offered and if a person wanted to use other magic then he had to learn it himself.

The level multipliers changed as well, the 1.01n Charles had being the base growth, which then was multiplied by the class bonuses. The warrior class had a multiplier of zero on mental stats, for instance, making them unable to progress in magic but at the same time they had a high multiplier on physical stats.

After a few days of walking through the dense forest, which seemed to be without end and completely devoid of the dangerous animals and monsters they were warned about in town, they reached a deep chasm in the ground. It looked like a gash left by the strike of a gargantuan sword, and it looked eerily unnatural in its shape and smoothness.

The edges were almost polished and there were no trees surrounding it, making it look like a road made of stone in the middle of the forest, with a huge hole at its center. Charles examined it with his augmented vision, and a few diagrams appeared before his eyes.

“That looks odd.”

“It wasn’t there the last time I came.” Eereen said, walking towards the edge of the slit in the ground.

“Which was how long ago?” Charles asked. He too was going towards the opening, now walking on the smooth gray stone.

“Three hundred years ago.” She said.

He did some mental math and hummed silently after realizing just how old she was.

“Look!” Eereen said, bringing him back to reality. She was pointing her finger at the bottom of the chasm, where Charles saw a river of flowing lava.

“Well, that explains the stench.” He said.

“It reminds me of home.” The elf commented, eliciting an odd look from Charles.

“I don’t want to know.” He said, waving his hands. “Now, we need to go to the other side, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, damn.”

He looked over the edge again, and briefly considered what to do. The chasm was easily thirty meters wide while the lava was barely fifty meters below. The heat and the toxic fumes were strong enough that even if they managed to build a bridge, they would not be able to cross it safely. And he was not going to die or get sick because of this, not even if he needed magnets as badly as he did.

“We need to go round it, hopefully it won’t be more than a kilometer or two long.” He said, then started walking in the direction of the lava flow.

By going that way, he hoped to find a spot where the lava went either underground, closing the chasm and making it possible to cross, or on the surface where it spread out and cooled enough to make it possible to walk on it.

Eereen was walking in silence, quite close to the edge of the chasm. Charles kept an eye on her, almost fearful that she would slip and fall inside the river of lava. She coughed softly, looked around and then acted like nothing happened.

He ignored this the first couple times it happened, but by the third time he was about to ask her if she wanted to take a longer route where the air was less toxic. Before he could do so, however, his LAI warned him that a skill had been used next to him and automatically recorded. The elf was now breathing without issue, and seemed perfectly fine as if she was breathing fresh air instead of the foul, stinking sulfuric gases.

His AI began to analyze the skill, but he felt that he already knew what it did. It made it possible to survive while breathing volcanic gases, and for some reason the girl, who was a wood elf, had it. Just what was her village going through, that she had gained such a skill?