****

Part of the old story, make sure to check out the remade Alteration here.

***

Sounds of falling water drops and rhythmic footsteps resounded in a dark cave. The walls were bathed in warm red light, making it just barely possible for Blake to see where he was stepping. The lightsource was Teruna who walked a few meters ahead of Blake and carefully mustered the wolf in front of her with caution every now and then. She dimmed her light down to a bare minimum so that she wouldn't attract any monsters which would pester them.

The three of them all walked silently and it didn't seem like they were paying too much attention to the path ahead or anything at all that wasn't in their immediate vicinity. Their gazes were mostly directed at the floor, but their eyes were unfocused. They were all deeply in thought about something and had troubled expressions on their faces.

*Ding*

A ringing sound broke the silence for Blake and he looked tiredly at the message that popped up.

Faction quest complete:

The young hedgehog which was given the task of keeping an eye out for player groups matching your description has sent you word of them approaching.

Message: ''5 players. 15 minutes walking away from the forest. 1 bag and many buckets.''

Rewards for quest completion being sent to the hedgehog:

+150 Faction reputation

+800 experienceBlake tilted his head slightly after seeing the numbers.

Hmm too bad it is a set amount of experience for such an easy quest. It does give a solid amount of intimacy but I don't really see how that is useful.

-''Haa...''

He sighed heavily and rubbed his temples.

I totally forgot about that quest after all this mess. I have much more pressing things that I need to think about so time is of the essence. Maybe I could ask Rose to pick it up for me if she is near enough... Her town is close supposedly so one Teleportation shouldn't be that expensive I hope.

A whisper came from him.

-''Minion overview.''

Now lets see if my hard work paid off.

Faction membersMercenariesList allList all

MercenariesGlonMercenary 2Mercenary 3Mercenary 4Mercenary 5ExpandExpandExpandExpandExpand

These Absolute leader runes are the real thing... I can see all the more important things they did since the moment they burned the forged Mystery artifacts. Now lets see what they have been up to.

He expanded all the windows and started reading the actions. Before he managed to continue a pop-up appeared before him.

Provision:

5 Gold

1x Grass-stalker scale

The percentage I get from drops is really low, they must have hunted a lot. It seems like the scale is some ingridient, but I really don't have the time to check it out.

He closed the window and continued reading the mercenaries activities.

Hmm... it seems quite normal. Repairing armor at the blacksmith, finishing some quests, doing a raid, auction visits...oh...

Red letters were starting to appear and they covered the column of Mercenary 3. Words were starting to form and it seemed like they were slowly dripping as if painted with blood. Blake waited a moment for the letters to finish appearing and read: TREACHERY DETECTED

I can't really see just what that treachery is with the letters covering everything...

He minimized the letters that appeared and started reading the activities of Mercenary 3:

Mercenary 3Finished A chain for every opportunity questBought 10x Health potions and 2x Boulder potionsMace reparations at Olaf's Weapon&Pet SalonLeft JedoronJungle entrance raid finishedReturned to JedoronSold various itemsVisited an Information merchantLeft Jedoron

Blake tapped that part of the window.

This must be it.

Another window appeared.

Mercenary 3 visited an Information merchant 10 hours ago for a Vigor aquanet inquiry and received the quest Return information that can only be completed after finishing the quest that was given by you.

Blake clicked with his tongue.

Naughty, naughty... Trying to sell the information about why I want the liquid? Now, what shall I do with you?

Another pop-up appeared and it showed two options.

Quick stealDeny quest

I don't want to Quick steal because he'd know that something is wrong with the quest... Denying it shouldn't reveal anything I think, but I do need to come up with a plausible reason for the denial. I really need to finish this quickly, I have much more important business at the moment...

He spoke up with a very tired voice.

-''I will need to go for a minute or two, so please carry me while I'm not here.''

Teruna slowly turned around and nodded. Blake just took off his goggles in time to avoid the feeling of her spikes.

***

He slowly got off his chair and headed towards Rose's room squinting all the time because of the sudden change of brightness.

-''Rose?''

The door swung open after a few seconds and his sister appeared with a worried expression on her face.

-''How did the situation resolve? Just what happened exactly? Is Teruna ok?''

The sudden outburst of questions startled Blake and stunned him for a moment.

-''Hey... hey! Slow down. The situation is under control for the moment, but it is nowhere near ok. I don't have any time to waste because of some sudden developments. That's also why I was looking for you. You did say that you were somewhere near Jedoron, right?''

Rose still had an extremely worried expression on her face while she nodded hurriedly.

-''I'm currently at the Forgotten Temple, there were some nice juicy bits of lore there.''

A tired smile appeared on Blake's lips for a moment.

-''Your lore fanaticism is finally coming in handy. You are a lot closer than I even hoped for.''

Rose frowned.

-''Who are you calling lore fanatic? Also, it is always handy, just because of the abil...''

Blake weakly lifted his hands in surrender.

-''Ok, ok. It is a great thing, but I really need you to log in and go to the forest near Jedoron now.''

Rose looked at him with suspicion.

-''Why?''

-''Umm... Did I tell you about the quest I gave a group of players?''

She nodded.

-''You mentioned it. So you want me to pick up the quest items? How should I explain them that a player is picking up quest items for a NPC? What about the quest rewards?''

He bit his lip and looked desperately at Rose.

-''They would get suspicious at best. My hope was that you have either a sneaky race or a stealth related class so that you can steal the things without them noticing. We wouldn't even have any problems, I already denied them the quest because of treason.''

Rose slowly shook her head.

-''No, neither my class nor my race are stealth based.''

Blake's face distorted in frustration, but Rose interrupted him just before he said anything.

-''Well there is something that could help me a bit... Tell me, is the meeting spot near the forest or in the forest?''

He tilted his head.

-''In the forest, why do you ask? Do you want to try stealing it without any game boosts?''

A slightly unsure smile appeared on Rose's face.

-''Well, no. I did say that I don't have any conventional stealing abilities, but lets just say that I have a few more options if

it takes place in the forest.''

He looked at her with unhidden sceptcism and continued with a hurried and tired voice.

-''If you say so, but your main focus is the bag. The liquid in the buckets isn't as important. Just don't get caught.''

Rose glared at him angrily.

-''At least pretend that you believe in me!''

Blake turned around and waved lightly with his hand while walking away.

-''I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't. Now I really have to hurry back and so do you. The meeting is in around ten minutes, try not to make them wait for too long.''

Rose just wanted to answer something back, but Blake was already gone and she just groaned in frustration and headed towards her computer to log in.

***

He better have some damn good reason to push all this onto me...

Rose angrily huffed with her goggles on while waiting for Alteration to boot up. After a few seconds the darkness started to slowly fade out and a moss-covered stone wall came into sight and endless forest in all other directions.

Ah,now the final change to finish the loading.

Rose stretched out her hands in front of her and watched with an amused and fascinated expression how her arm suddenly started to become green.

However the change wasn't just limited to the hands, her whole body was changing colour and shape. Her skin turned green and seemed to shine dimmly. Her clothes slowly changed and her sleaves turned brown and shifted their form to perfectly fit her arm, but it had a gap both at the shoulders and the elbows. It finally stopped changing and turned into thin wood with artistic carvings on it. Excluding that, she wore a cloak made of dark blue petals and plain, brown leather armor beneath it.

I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing this.

Rose chuckled making a noise like leaves being rustled from a rough wind. Her face also turned green, her eyes changing color into black and green and her hair turning into a mixture of vines and small violet and light red flowers.

Rose looked around herself for a moment and her gaze got caught on the rock wall. She deeply sighed making sounds of wood creaking and put a hand over her leather armor.

Too bad I didn't manage to decipher much apart from the beginning, I will have to come back later. Before I head towards the meeting spot I'll at least make use of what I discovered.

-''Men'rah dan zialhor.''

The rustling sound of her voice seemed to have no effect at first but after a second she started to glide her palm across her leather uniform making it change it's form slightly and replacing the leather with organised leafs that stuck to each other like scales and after a few moments the whole armor was changed.

Leaf scale armor

An armor changed under the influence of of a spell.

+10% light absorption (converts into +2 health regeneration per second while in the sunlight or up to two hours after being in the sunlight)

+87 armor

+20 mana

-15% threat generation against plant monsters

-23% fire resistance

Race restriction: VerdelariansRose mustered her changed armor for a few moments.

These side effects are great! Too bad the armor rose only by 2 points...

She turned away from the wall and started to run at an incredible speed.

Now I need to find those adventurers... I just hope I'll manage to get this right. I want to help out Teruna and her guys, but it seems like Blake wants to do most of the helping alone, that damn idiot. I will make him tell everything to me when I finish this, he is like a magnet for trouble.

Worry started to appear on her face.

He said it was under control, but that the situation isn't looking good... Just what is happening again? I checked the forums and didn't find any mention of a mob that would fit the wolf's description. Just what is happening and why was Blake in such a hurry?

She ran for some time silently with a grim expression, skilfully avoiding all monsters that would appear.

There they are.

She noticed a group of people wondering between trees and cutting their way ahead. It seemed like they just finished with some battle because they were surrounded with goblin corpses and they slowly went from goblin to goblin, looting them.

Rose's eyes widened and she hid behind a tree trunk.

This is as good as it will get. Now or never.

-''Menar v'edul.''

She whispered under her breath and ran into a nearby tree trunk,not crashing but seemingly getting swallowed up into it and leaving no trace. Several seconds nothing happened and then she finally appeared again diving soundlessly out of a tree trunk right next to the bag the players left and not that far from the buckets. Rose wore a visibly disturbed expression.

I hate this feeling so much... but I did invest a lot of hard work and research to obtain the skill.

She picked up the bag that laid on the dirt and turned to the buckets, but she suddenly stopped after hearing the voices of the players that were just a few meters away.

-''There. I think we looted all now. Did everyone get their share?''

Shouts of affirmation were soon heard and the players were now finishing and starting to turn around. Rose was completely terrified and her gaze changed repeatedly between the forest and the buckets.

What now?! I have what's most important, but should I risk it and go for more? Blake did think that I couldn't pull it all of. I'll show him!

-''Leaf storm!''

Rose used the ability and put her hands in the air. Leaves were starting to fall off the trees and it seemed like some kind of wind was carrying them around violently because they soon filled all the air and were moving one moment here and the other there. The players all noticed that something is wrong and the were confused and panicking.

-''Are we being attacked?!''

-''What is this?!''

-''What kind of mob does this?''

-''Someone check our things!''

Most were hiding behind trees and bushes, but two fought against the strong storm heading towards their things and, with doing so, Rose. The latter was now standing in front of the four huge buckets and leaned down, hurriedly digging a small hole in the dirt.

I won't make it!

She placed something that looked like a pebble in the hole and covered it with dirt. She then placed both her hands over the former hole and whispered panickingly.

-''Sprout.''

A plant started appearing right beneath her arms. It had very small leaves and its body was very wide, but not tall. It stopped growing after five seconds, forming a big brown spherical plant with only little leaves at the sides and a big hole on top.

The players were fighting through the leaf storm and were now nearly there. Rose quickly shouted some last commands while pointing at the buckets and taking the bag into her arms.

-''Quickly drink and follow!''

With those words she started running again and headed towards the nearest tree trunk.

-''Menar v'edul!''

And with that she disappeared again into the tree. The plant she left behind was already hastily pouring the liquid into itself, bringing the buckets near with the help of it's rapidly growing and moving roots. It just managed to empty the third bucket when the players finally noticed it.

-''There! The monster! It must be the cause of this!''

-''Wait! It is drinking the liquid! Stop it!''

They were charging towards the plant with weapons in arms. Suddenly Rose's voice resounded to the plant,its source being a nearby tree trunk.

NOW!

The plant stopped pouring buckets into itself and suddenly moved its roots to the dirt underneath it. The roots dug into it and went deeper and deeper at a rapid pace. As that went on the plant seemed to be shrinking. It halved its size for every second the roots dug deeper.

The plant was the size of a tennis ball when the players suddenly caught up and one of them swung his sword to destroy it. He halved the little ball making a bit of Vigor aquanet liquid spill but it seemed to be but just a fraction of the plant because the two halves quickly also went under the earth and disappeared out of sight.

-''Dammit, just what was that?!''

Better leave them alone and contact Blake. I think I can be quite satisfied with what I managed to pull off.

Rose dove out of a tree around two hundred meters away from the spot the players were and hid in the bushes. She typed a message to Blake and ran off.

I did it.

Soon muffled yelling could be heard in the distance.

***

Blake sat on the rock floor of the cave and typed something on a window while Teruna and the wolf were sitting in front of him silently. Teruna was the one who broke the silence.

-''So, what now?''

Blake looked for a second up.

-''Give me a moment, I need to finish this quest failure message.''

He made a few swift movements with his hands and closed the window in front of him.

-''Go on.''

Teruna continued with a worried voice.

-''Did you make a decision? What should we do?''

Blake bit his lip and responded in a serious manner.

-''What can we do? We must go into the Trickster's dungeon.''

***

Afterword:

So, yeah... Alteration isn't dead. Sorry for making a big pause again. I was just way too busy to continue writing. But now I have more time so I should be able to continue writing.

This chapter is a bit small but it was a bit hard writing after such a long pause, but I do thing that it has quite a lot of content considering its size. I really don't know what size the next ones will be but I'm fairly sure they won't be any smaller.

As always please rate/review/comment to let me know what you think. I'm not sure if my writing style has changed because of the pause so that would be one of the things I'd like you to adress(although most will just ignore this like always).

Thank you for reading.

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