A quick walk through the streets and we are right into the store. I get the keys from my pockets and open the door in the back that leads right into the warehouse. Inside it, Skelones is painting something in a frame on the wall. There is a sea with lots of fishes, birds and a small village on a beach. He has improved quite a bit lately as painting became his hobby when he had nothing to do, but he still likes to draw the sun smiling every time.

“Oh, hello there.” Skelones says, still painting as he talks, quite focused on his project. I am impressed he can paint at all with those tiny hands, I hope Varia can get him a body like his old one soon.

"It's time, we are going to do it. And I am going on an adventure too."

Skelones stopped painting and turned to me. "Those are good news. I still remember my first adventure. I mean, the first one after the last time I reset my memory. I fought with giants and learned martial arts with an old man who had a big green mustache and lived on top of a mushroom."

"That sounds exciting. But it doesn't beat finding a kickass skull-face ancient droid who fights using his hands and electricity with an enchanted recycled body made of bronze." I say.

"Oh my, let's get to work, shall we? I don't have that much free time nowadays…" Varia says.

"I miss when we traveled the world." Skelones says to Varia, but they let the conversation end here before it gets too Moody.

Jumping into action after understanding the situation, Mazurka summons the box Varia gave her, dropping the heavy thing on the table. Varia quickly opens it and organizes the materials. One thing I recognize is Skelones old left arm that we brought with us through the caves and into the city.

"We can't actually use this one but it's good to have something to use as a model. Look at the way the pieces of metal connect and try to be familiar with them. Now, give me your arm." Varia says, to which I extend my right arm and they measure it.

"The first step is shaping the metal, it's better if you do it so the mana used will be marked by your imprint." Varia says, giving me a glove of alteration and taking out a few bars of metal from the box.

It's really hard to do it by myself. I tried to make a mirrored version of my arm using the metal but failed every time.

"Okay, there is a better way of doing that." Varia says, taking some metal and shaping it into an almost perfect mirrored arm, but hollow inside, so I just fill it with the metal provided, and afterward, they remove the covering so only metal shaped by me remains. Then I tried to make the articulations according to Skelones old arm, giving my best to copy them, which took quite a few hours as Varia had to inscribe some runes at each piece at the articulations.

"Alright, this part is done." Varia says, holding the black metallic arm, making the hand flop, a sign that the articulations are working. "Now we are going to inscribe it. Use Diminish Weight, Enhance Hardness, and Connect Motion. I will inscribe the rest and hide them so no one would be able to just erase it.”

We inscribe the runes together at a specific order, carefully so we don’t make a mistake. At This point, the shop is already open and Gleen is here, watching the whole process. I hope the boy can handle the store in my absence, he has a bright future ahead of him but he is still too young to take that much responsibility.

"Now comes the hard part, connecting it to your body. I need you to breathe and hold this piece of wood with your month, then I am going to link it to your body. You will need to concentrate on thinking this arm as part of yourself during the process and afterward as well until you get used to it." Varia says, giving me the cylindrical piece of wood. I put it into my mouth. Mazurka offers her hand to me "Hold it tight if it hurts." She says. Gleen helps to hold the mechanical arm in place as Varia shapes runes all over the part where it connects to my severed left arm. The runes shine with a silver glow, making some pain in the region but it's tolerable. The runes then glow gradually brighter as does the pain, until it gets to the point that I have to externalize it a little with my voice, making a brief scream and holding tight Mazurka's hand. In the corner of my HUD, I notice the body health diminishing a little while mental health took more of a hit. Then, the light becomes unbearable bright and the pain gets so strong that I pass out for a second, and now it's done.

Pain Resistance is now 2%

I try to move my new limb, it takes quite the effort but it’s doable, albeit slowly. But the pain… there is still some leftover pain. Probably something to do with my nerves making new connections. Taking a look at it, my flesh has some runes glowing close to the metallic arm, but it slowly fades away, disappearing as if it was never there.

"Those runes on your body are a reaction, it shows you adapted to the arm." Skelones says.

"Done. I am going home now, too much to do. Be sure to call me if anything goes wrong, alright?." Varia says. I try to wave to them with my new arm but I find it a little hard to move, so I do it with my old one. The weight is really well distributed though, this is a real masterpiece and I can't even imagine what kind of runes Varia used to make it work like that.

I stand quite a few minutes admiring the thing and slowly moving the fingers, then the pulse, turning around, opening and closing my hand…

Mazurka holds my mechanical hand with both of hers, then says "Can you feel me?" To which I respond "Yes, you are hot… I mean, your hands, I can feel their heat, they are hot." I say, nervously looking away to avoid eye contact and hoping she didn't get the wrong impression… bad choice of words there. But the arm is working perfectly well, I could feel the texture and the shape of her hands, which were a little rough, as is common for adventurers.

"So… I guess I should go and get ready for when we leave… buy supplies and stuff like that…" I say, still not looking at her and probably with my face all red, but I have no way to confirm that.

"Sure. We should leave in two days, is that okay?" Mazu says and I nod. We both leave the warehouse and go on separate ways.

I am really looking forward to this adventure, It will be a nice change of pace, exploring the world while being well equipped, prepared, and not being hunted down by bucketheads. I learned so much from the many mistakes I made in the past… The horizon awaits for me, so I better get ready!

I had a little run through the town to get myself all the supplies for the trip. The first thing I did was buying some much-needed potions but what I found instead were healing tablets! Albeit more expensive, they have the same effect of a potion without needing a glass vial to hold them which saved so much space… And I got a good amount of money in the last two months So it’s fine. For my equipment, I spent quite some time deciding what should I take with me, this could be a good chance to put some enchantments to good use, but I need to choose the weapon… Something balanced and good both at range and up close. I stopped in a weapon store and bought two daggers and a staff, all made with bronze, better to go with something you are familiar with, right? And wave runes are common, so It didn’t take too long to get my hands on one, the daggers are going to need it.

For protection, I ended up going with wood. One of the masked droids, Broduk, is a woodcarver and a really good one at that. At one time, we had talked endlessly about wood and enchanting, so we came up with a good idea of using a really light and flexible wood to make a suit of armor, enchanted with Hardness and Disperse Weight, which would help against blunt damage. Broduk got really excited to actually work on it and got it done real quickly, he just had to take some measurements, and soon after he manipulated wood to make the suit. The way it came out was a subtle armor consisting of small wooden plates overlapping each other into larger parts, which kinda reminded me of the armor that some eastern warriors wore in those cartoons, but more delicate and slim. The enchanted flexible wood and the wood shaping abilities of Broduk allowed for thin pieces that wouldn't draw too much attention, and I had it painted black to match my mask and hood too. I was impressed by how the armor made almost no noise when walking. It was really light as well which is a really big improvement over my last armor… I am not going to wear that much weight for so long again. I also bought some traveling gear such as ropes, a pan, a bedroll, waterskin, and some flavored ration bars and with that, I was ready to go.

The wind coming from the window is chill today, but the cloudless sky has this big ball of fire throwing beams of light at my skin, so despite the cold air, this still is a quite hot day. Sometimes I like to sit in front of the window and get some sunlight at me, it used to help when I was really depressive back then, I think it has to do with Vitamin D.

Well, I think this is enough. I make sure everything is ready for the trip and I put on my mask, the helmet Broduk made so I don’t get a concussion, the hood of attraction on top, and my wooden suit of armor. Then I get the backpack with everything else inside and I grab the daggers, placing them on my belt along with the wand pistol, and finally, I take the Staff I had just enchanted with Weight Diminish and Arcane Aura. It’s not very complex, but it should allow me to deliver quick strikes with Arcane energy, which is my higher-level rune, so it should be safer to go with that.

There are a few things I want to try, but I might do that later with more time. For now, I got some of the Myhrite from the caves and made some rings, necklaces, and bracelets with it so I have extras with me in case something happens with my rings. I did try to make a mana gathering Artifact with Arcane Gather, but it was far slower than the Myhrite, maybe this has to do with the material?

It must be time now, so I better go meet with everyone to say my goodbyes.

“There you are. Kids grow up so fast these days, the next thing you know they are going on a quest to explore old ruins. Be careful there, Kali. Remember don’t just be book smart, be street smart too.” Skelones says as I enter the store. Everyone is here it seems. I heard Morgus is leaving too, but I don’t know where, nor did I ask, it’s not like the guy would tell anything anyway. Varia will have Gleen making Artifacts, he learned a lot from me from our time together and I kinda feel proud for the kid, Skelones is going to help him too, he has a lot of knowledge to share.

“I hope I don’t miss you all too much. It was good, being with you.” I say.

“Bring me some souvenir from the trip for my birthday!” Says Gleen, the boy who used to be too shy to speak is already asking for presents, huh? “Sure, I will look for something.” We finished our goodbyes and left, always better to leave early so we have more daytime.

We stride the streets of the city until we get to one of the gates. The place we are going is to the east, it should take us some days to get there and maybe some more to find the exact location. People don’t know much about these ruins as they are not easy to access, which is why this task was given to someone who can warp space. What I know is that the architecture resembles what I saw in the cave I woke up a long time ago. Had I stayed there, I would have found much more about them… But I was so impulsive at the time, I wasn’t thinking much about what would be better to do back then.

We pass the gate and exit into the ruins that surround the city of Kavros. As we are crossing it, I notice the makeshift houses that the less fortunate people live, the light of the day makes it easier to see how many people are staying outside the walls. I know they are mostly criminals or people in debt, but It’s kinda bad that they have to be there.

I still feel a little awkward with Mazurka after what I said, but I am not so nervous anymore… but why is she looking at me now?

“We are being followed.” Mazurka whispers. So that is why. We should have a sign to warn each other in situations like that. As for the people following us… We best speed up. So I walk faster and make a turn to the right, then to the left and to the right, trying to mislead them. After a while, Mazurka says “Do you know where you are going?” I have no idea, actually, I wasn’t thinking that much ahead… Looking around, I notice we are in the middle of some quite high buildings, it would be a perfect place for an ambush…

Then it happens. Six guys each holding metal clubs come from behind the broken walls surrounding us. One of them steps up and says. “So, we saw you drop this and we tried to get it to you, but you were walking so fast…” He is holding my bedroll. Damn, the armor distributes weight so well that I didn’t notice it falling down. “Oh, thanks.” I say and walk forward to him, grabbing the bedroll. He doesn’t let it go, however. “What is it for us? We had the trouble of getting here with it, you see.” Says the smartass. “Alright, Here, have a couple of coins as a reward.” I say. He doesn’t appear to be happy with the amount, though. “This cost far more than that, we are keeping it.” He says. What the fuck? I could have beaten the shit out of him but I choose to be generous instead. Suddenly, the bedroll is gone from his hands and everyone looks at Mazurka, who is now holding it. “I love how their faces look when I do that.” She says and makes the thing disappear from her hands. I have to admit her magic is quite cool. All six of them run away, scared and yelling ‘Witch!’ as they go. “That was cool.” I say.

“Yeah, Hey, Let’s go this way, it will be faster.” She said. I wonder if she have some skill that improves her spacial memory? Maybe she can feel the space around her or stuff like that… Nah, she didn’t warn me when my bedroll fall out so she probably doesn’t have anything like that.

“So, where things go when you make them disappear?”

“Do you want to see?”

“No… Maybe another time.”

We left the ruins and I can finally see the grasslands we saw the other night. The grass is looking a little more golden, with a touch of green now, Perhaps they look differently according to the light shining upon them? Seeing the wind blowing on the grass makes me feel so calm. We go following the road, for now, until our next stop which is going to be some village called Kalundrum.

It’s a good day to walk, actually. The weather is good, the wind is refreshing and beyond our little encounter back at the city ruins, no trouble came up. The animals living in the grasslands are mostly birds and reptiles, but there should be some rabbits or armadillos judging by the holes I saw on the ground. From time to time, I see some people walking some big animals along with them in the distance, but I can’t figure out how they look from here. We have come to a point where the road lead to a bridge over a calm river. The familiar Squidcrabs are swimming on it, a few of them are walking along the edge of the river. “This is a good place to rest.” Mazurka says.

We sit on a stone close to the river and I take out a ration bar to eat. This one reminds me of honey, but salty instead of sweet… How weird. A Squidcrab approaches us and I throw a piece of ration for the hungry guy. They grab it and started to eat calmly, which reminds me of when I first fed one of them, but this time they are much less afraid of me, how curious. I take another piece and feed it again, but this time, I don’t throw it, I just hold until they take it from my hand and I take the opportunity to pet the head of the creature.

Friend of the Squidcrabs is now level 3

This got to be the most useless skill ever… It only gives me 1 point of charisma no matter how many levels it has. Still, life is not always about making the most optimal choices, you have to enjoy things from time to time. “I don’t think I ever saw someone do that.” Mazurka says. “Well… They can be quite friendly. And smart too, I saw one holding a stick once. But we should get going, It’s so calm here that I am going to sleep if we stay another minute.” I say, getting ready to leave and continue our trip. I am quite excited to discover more of this world. I had my share of bad things so I hope exploring it brings something good. This world is hard, I know, but if I survived up to now, I can get through whatever comes up and find wonderful things.