26. Amulet

Ardan zipped the bag back up, quick as a flash, and stared at his room’s wall in shock. “I must be seeing things.” He said out loud.

The bag didn’t move. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Slowly, he unzipped the bag once more and peered inside. Yep. The glowing black orb was still there. Glancing at Halcyon, he remembered the words he’d told him in the dungeon. Black orbs will respawn the monster in a few hours if the boss isn’t killed.

It had been a few hours.

“Oh shi-” Ardan began, scrambling away from the bag as if it were about to explode.

When nothing happened, he felt like an idiot. How did it get into my bag in the first place? Then it hit him. He’d scooped up the Gloom’s white orb in a hurry. Did he gather the black one too? Not knowing what to do and when Halcyon would wake up, he stuffed the bag under his bed and stood up. Yes, it was a ticking time bomb, but he would have to consult Halcyon about it later. There was simply nothing he could do about it now. Besides, if it hasn’t spawned already, it’s not like it’s going to spawn now, right?

Ardan crossed over to Sandria’s room quickly. “Hey Sandria, you wanna know what happened now?”

She put down her pencil and gestured towards the bed. “Sit, and tell me everything. Do not miss out on a single detail.”

Gulping at her seriousness, Ardan did as she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“So where did you go? It's not like you to run away without telling me. In fact, why didn’t you tell me? Don't you trust me?” She asked, a hurt look on her face.

“I do.” Ardan said. “I just knew you'd probably stop me.”

“If you knew I would stop you, then why did you go?”

“I don't know.” Ardan said, exasperated. “I just needed to know. I needed to find out. You probably don't get it- especially since this system isn't affecting you.”

She nodded. “Fair point. But what's done has been done, and I'm not holding any grudges against you. So can you tell me what happened now?”

“I guess... I never really meant to go in in the first place. I just wanted to prove Halcyon wrong. That dungeons couldn't exist.” He took in a deep breath, held it and let it out. “It all started last night, when I reached level ten.”

+ - + - + - +

“-and that’s how I escaped from the dungeon. I owe Halcyon my life.” Ardan finished explaining to Sandria. So far, she had been silent the majority of the time, only bursting out when he described the Gloom.

She sat there for a few minutes, seeming to ponder about something.

“Show me.” She said, jumping off her seat. “Show me these so-called ‘orbs’. And wake Halcyon up already for goodness sake. We need to do something about this respawn thing. If it’ll really do what you said it does, then there’ll be trouble. Massive trouble.”

Nodding his head approvingly, he accompanied her to his room, where his bag and Halcyon lay underneath the bed. Ardan yanked out the cable plugged into the staff, patting it softly. “Come on, Halcyon. Wake up.”

When he didn’t react, Ardan started to get frustrated and resorted to molesting it. “Come on… Haven’t you slept enough already?”

Sandria was also beginning to become a little impatient. “Maybe he’s not fully charged yet. Wasn’t there another way of charging?”

There was, but Ardan had no idea how to do it. “Mana, supposedly. But what the hell even is this mana thing? I don’t even know how to use it, let alone charge something with it. What, am I supposed to just will my mana into it?” He said sarcastically, putting his finger into the blue circle where the charging port was.

Whoosh.

A sudden feeling of nauseousness hit, and Ardan fell to his knees.

“Phew, I’m back! Hey there Ardan! You look much better!” Halcyon said brightly.

Shocked, Ardan dropped the staff and looked at his mana bar. Zero. “No way…” He whispered. “That actually worked?”

Sandria, on the other hand, didn’t show any hint of surprise, instead unzipping his bag. “Halcyon. Ardan here has told me what happened. Including a little problem he picked up in the dungeon.”

“Oh?” Halcyon looked at Ardan, then Sandria, wondering what their current relationship was. She didn’t look happy at all.

Before she continued, she gasped slightly and gently lifted up the black orb out of Ardan’s bag. “This.”

“Oh, no.” He whispered softly. Ardan imagined if he had eyes, they would be wide open. “That’s the Gloom’s, I’m assuming, since I watched you pick up the rest.”

Ardan nodded and pursed his lips. “So what do we do now? Will it respawn? When will it respawn?”

“How long has it been?” Halcyon asked.

“Around four hours.”

Halcyon sighed. “And I suppose you’re not strong enough to break it, are you?”

“Break it?” Ardan asked. “What do you mean, break it?”

“The only way to stop a monster spawning from that thing is to break it. By the way, you might want to hurry up. It’ll respawn at the five to six hour mark.”

Palms sweating, Ardan took the orb from Sandria and held it out to Halcyon. “Alright. Tell me how to break it. I can at least try.”

Halcyon sighed once more. “Don’t bother. You can’t. How about you do something useful instead, like opening up your shop.”

“My shop?” Ardan questioned, not seeing what that had to do with the respawn orb. But regardless, he opened it up anyway. “Ok, what now?”

“Go to the items section. If you didn't already know, it's a marketplace for players to buy and sell items.” He said matter-of-factly.

“Huh.” Was all Ardan said, but thoughts were racing around in his head. Other ‘players’? Who are these other players? But unfortunately, he had more pressing issues to deal with.

“Alright, so do you see the screen? Is there an item- any item that has the word ‘bind’ in its name?”

Ardan glanced over it, surprised to see it was simply a blank screen. “Uh, no? There aren’t any items whatsoever.”

Halcyon tuttered irritably. “Of course there aren’t any items. You haven’t searched anything up yet, have you?”

“Search things up?”

It was only then that Ardan noticed a ‘search’ bar below the shop tabs. He felt like a complete idiot. “Search, bind.”

And surprisingly, only one result came up.

Item Profile

Binding Amulet

(Accessory)

Quality: D

Able to hold one soul

Price: 180§

“It’s a… binding amulet. Whatever the hell that is.” He said before turning to Halcyon. “Hey, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” As he spoke, the screen flashed, and was replaced by an item window.

Halcyon tuttered once more and sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to try that. Buy it, please. There’s no time to explain.”

“No time to explain?” He exclaimed, annoyed, but still complied with Halcyon’s request. “Purchase binding amulet. I don’t see how this will help, anyways. Besides, it’ll be the rest of my money, gone. Such a waste.”

That last statement pushed Halcyon off the edge. “You know what was a waste? You breaking that health potion in the alleyway. Just buy the goddamn thing so we can get this over with, ok? You caused this too, you realise.”

Ardan fell silent and shut his eyes as the bright light filled the room.

- Alert! - Payment Complete.

An item fell to the floor with a loud clunk. The amulet.

Rusted bronze with a small necklace attached to it, it seemed more of a pendant than an amulet. The item attached to the necklace was small, able to fit in Ardan’s hand with ease. It was oval shaped, and seemed to contain some sort of stone that shimmered brightly even though there was no light. It swirled with every colour, red, blue, green, black, you name it, it was somewhere in there. However, apart from the stone, the necklace was badly kept and felt cold and dirty in his grasp.

“This? This is what I spent a hundred and eighty currency for?” Ardan asked incredulously.

“Hold the orb and the amulet together.” Halcyon instructed, ignoring the question.

Ardan did so, and looked at the two things. Nothing was happening, except that the shadows from the black orb began wafting a little. He assumed this was the beginning of it’s respawn and started to panic. “And? And what do I do?”

“And pray. Pray that this will be enough.”

Meanwhile, Sandria had been furiously taking notes on the series of events that was taking place, intrigued. She couldn’t figure out what was going on. Magic? Otherworldly magic? She had no clue.

Pray? What the hell. Halcyon must be going crazy. There’s no way that praying will help- He stopped thinking as the shadows were slowly sucked into the amulet. Something was going on. That was for sure. Like a vacuum, the amulet sucked the entirety of the blackness into the stone, which slowly turned the same milky black. A few moments later, all of the orb’s aura had disappeared, leaving a colourless ball in his left hand.

- Alert! -

Item: Binding Amulet has been successfully used.

Item: Binding Amulet has transformed into Amulet of Gloom